Southampton Row (34 page)

“He is afraid he is dying,” she hurried on. “I mean really very afraid. I suppose I should have realized years ago.” Now she was speaking too quickly, words falling over each other. “All the signs were there if I’d been looking, but it never occurred to me. He preached so vividly . . . sometimes . . . with such power . . .” That was true, at least it was how she remembered it. Her voice dropped. “But he has no belief in God. Now, when it really matters, he is not sure if there is anything beyond the grave. That is why he went to a spirit medium, to try to contact a dead person, any dead person, just to know they were there.”

He looked stunned. She could see it in his face, his unblinking eyes, the line of his lips. He had no idea what to say to her. Was it pity that silenced him, or disgust?

She felt both herself, and shame because Reginald was her husband. However far apart they were in thought or care, they were still tied together by the years they had been married. Perhaps she could have helped him if she had loved him enough? Perhaps the depth of the love she longed for had nothing to do with it; common humanity for a fellow being should have reached across the gulf and offered something!

It was too late now.

“Of course when she knew who he was, that gave her the means to blackmail him.” Her voice was now little more than a whisper. She felt the color hot in her cheeks. “‘Church of England Bishop goes to spirit medium to seek proof of life after death!’ He’d be a laughingstock. It would ruin him.” As she said it she realized just how much that was true. Would he have killed to prevent it? She had started out quite sure that that was impossible—but was it? If his reputation were gone, what had he left? How far had his illness, and the fear of death, unbalanced his mind? Fear can warp almost anything, only love was strong enough to overcome it . . . and did Reginald really love anything well enough for that?

“I’m so sorry,” Cornwallis said with a break in his voice. “I . . . I wish I could . . .” He stopped, staring at her helplessly, not knowing what to do with his hands.

“Aren’t you going to . . . to do something?” she asked. “If he finds the evidence he’ll destroy it. That’s what he’s gone for.”

He shook his head. “There isn’t any,” he answered quietly. “We put it in the paper to try to make Cartouche show himself.”

“Oh . . .” She was stunned. Reginald had betrayed himself unnecessarily. He would be caught. The police would be waiting for him. But that was what she had come here for, it had to be. She could never have imagined Cornwallis would simply listen and not act, and yet now that it was going to happen, she realized the enormity of it. It would be the end of her husband’s career, a complete disgrace. He would not ever be able to retire behind excuses of ill health, because the police would be involved. He might even be charged with something—obstruction, or concealing evidence. She refused to think, even in the very back of her mind, of a charge of murder.

Suddenly, Cornwallis was standing in front of her, his hands holding her arms, steadying her as if she had swayed and were about to fall over.

“Please . . .” he said urgently. “Please . . . sit down. Let me send for tea . . . or something. Brandy?” He slid his arm around her and led her to the chair, still holding her as she sank down into it.

“The drawing,” she said, gulping a little. “It wasn’t an
f
, it was a bishop’s crozier, under a hill. It’s very clear when you think about it. I don’t want brandy, thank you. Tea would be quite all right.”

Pitt knew that if he went to Southampton Row alone he could not prove anything satisfactorily, either about the identity of Cartouche or about his involvement in the death of Maude Lamont. Tellman was in Devon, and Pitt did not trust anyone from Bow Street, even supposing Wetron would give him somebody, which was unlikely without an explanation. And of course he could not explain, not knowing Wetron’s own involvement in any of it.

Therefore he went straight to Narraway, and it was Narraway himself who came with Pitt to Southampton Row in the bright, early sunlight of the July morning. They traveled in mere silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts.

Pitt could not rid his mind of his memory of Francis Wray. He hardly dared allow himself to hope that an autopsy would somehow show that Wray had not taken his own life, even if only to Pitt. Whether they could ever prove it to the rest of the world was another matter.

He repeated in his mind all that he thought he had asked of the people in the village. Were the questions so open, so accusatory, that anyone would have supposed from them that Wray was suspected of being involved in Maude Lamont’s death? And if he went to see her with the intent of exposing her manifestations as fraud, then where was there any fault or hypocrisy in that?

And it was very easy to believe that in his outrage at the damage spirit mediums could do, he might well have used all his energy to expose them. Pitt thought back to the story of the young woman Penelope, who had lived in Teddington, and whom Wray must have known. She had lost her child and been tricked and misled by séances and manifestations, and when she had seen through them, in despair she had taken her own life.

He already knew that Maude Lamont had used mechanical tricks, at least some of the time—the table, for example—and he could not help feeling that the collected electric light bulbs were part of an illusion also. That number of them was certainly not for ordinary domestic use.

Was it conceivable she had some real power, of which she herself was only partly aware? More than one of her clients had said she seemed startled by some of the manifestations, as if she had not engineered them herself. And she had no helper. Lena Forrest denied all knowledge of her arts or how they were exercised.

Then another thought occurred to him, new and extraordinary, but the more he weighed it and measured it against all he knew, the more it seemed to make some kind of sense.

When they reached Southampton Row he climbed out of the hansom, with Narraway at his heels. Narraway paid the cabbie and they waited until he had driven away before they turned into the short alley of Cosmo Place.

Narraway looked at the door into the garden of Maude Lamont’s house.

“It’ll be locked,” Pitt observed.

“Probably.” Narraway squinted at it. “But I’m not climbing that damn wall and then finding I didn’t have to.” He put out his hand and tried the iron ring, turning it a quarter of a circle until it stopped. He grunted.

“I’ll give you a lift up,” Pitt offered.

Narraway shot him a malicious glance, but considering their relative heights, and Narraway’s slender build, it would have been absurd for him to have tried to lift Pitt. He regarded his trousers, his lips forming a thin line as he considered what the mossy stone would do to them, then turned to Pitt impatiently. “Get on with it, then! I would greatly prefer not to be caught doing this and trying to explain myself to the local constable on the beat.”

Pitt grinned at the idea, but it was brief, and there was little pleasure in it. He bent and made a cradle of his hands and Narraway stepped gingerly onto it. Pitt straightened up and in seconds Narraway was on top of the wall, scrambling for a moment, until he found his balance and sat astride, then he leaned forward and offered Pitt his hand. It was an effort to haul himself up, but after a few very undignified wriggles he breasted the wall, and a moment later swung his legs over and down onto the earth at the far side, immediately followed by Narraway.

He brushed as much of the moss stain and dust off himself as he could, then stared around. It was the reverse of the view he had seen from the strip of grass in front of the French windows of the parlor. “Keep back.” He waved. “Another couple of yards and we can be seen from the house.”

“Then what, exactly, are we doing here?” Narraway retorted. “We can’t see the front door and we can’t see the parlor. And now we can’t even see the street!”

“If we keep to the bushes we can make our way to the back of the house, and once we’ve seen where Lena Forrest is, we’ll know if she goes to answer the door, and we can get inside through the back,” Pitt replied softly. He moved over to shelter behind the laurels as he spoke, motioning Narraway to follow him. “Since Cartouche always came through the side door anyway, I think that’s probably the way he’ll come now, if he’s still got the key.”

“Then we’d better make sure the bar is up,” Narraway observed, looking back over his shoulder at the door. “And it’s not!” He strode rapidly over to it and in a single movement lifted the bar up and laid it back off the rests that kept it closed. Then he drew back behind the shelter of the bushes beside Pitt.

Pitt’s mind was still half occupied with the idea which had come to him. He looked up at the branches of the silver birch trees above the laurels. There would probably be nothing to see, no mark now, but he could not help searching.

“What is it?” Narraway said crossly. “He’s hardly going to come down from the sky!”

“Can you see any notches up there, notches rubbed bare of moss or scraping on the bark?” Pitt said softly.

Narraway’s face was tense, interest flaring in his eyes. “Like a rope burn? Why?”

“An idea. It may be . . .”

“Of course it’s an idea!” Narraway snapped. “What?”

“To do with the night Maude Lamont was killed, and tricks, illusion that there might have been.”

“We’ll discuss it when we’re watching the woman. I don’t care how brilliant your theory is, it’ll do us no good if we miss Cartouche arriving . . . assuming he comes.”

Obediently, Pitt started to creep along the wall, as much as possible keeping concealed behind the various bushes and shrubs until they were fifteen yards away from the door in the wall, and only four yards from the scullery windows and the back door. They could see the shadowy figure of Lena Forrest moving about in the kitchen. Presumably she was getting herself breakfast and perhaps beginning whatever chores she had for the day. It must be a long, drawn-out, boring time for her with no mistress in the house to care for. They could not expect her to remain here much longer.

“Why were you looking for rope marks?” Narraway said insistently.

“Did you see any?” Pitt countered.

“Yes, very slight, a mark more like twine than rope. What was on it? Something to do with Cartouche?”

“No.”

They heard the sound at the same instant, the scraping of a key in the lock of the garden door. As one they shrank back behind the heavy leaves, and Pitt found himself holding his breath.

There was no sound until the key scraped again and then the slight clunk of the bar being dropped back. There were no footfalls across the grass.

They waited. Seconds ticked by. Was the visitor waiting also, or had he passed by soundlessly and might already be inside?

Narraway moved very carefully until he could see the side of the house. “He’s gone in through the French windows,” he said softly. “I can see him in the parlor.” He straightened up. “There’s no cover outside here. We’d better go around the back. If we run into the woman we’ll have to tell her.” And without waiting for Pitt to argue, he sprinted across the open space towards the scullery door and stopped just outside.

Pitt wondered for an instant if perhaps they should have left a constable at the front door, just in case Cartouche tried to escape that way. But then if he had seen anyone in the street he might not have risked coming in at all, and the whole exercise would have been useless.

Another alternative was for one of them to wait in the garden now, but then if Cartouche said anything, or Lena did, there needed to be more than one witness to it. He ran across the open lawn and joined Narraway at the scullery door.

Narraway looked cautiously in through the window. “There’s no one there,” he said, pushing the door. Inside was a small, tidy room with vegetable racks, rubbish bins, a sack of potatoes and several pots and pans, as well as the usual sink and low tub for laundry.

They went up the step into the kitchen, and still there was no one in sight. Lena must have heard the intruder and gone through to the parlor. On tiptoe, Pitt and Narraway crept along the passage and stopped just short of the doorway. It was ajar. They could hear the voices inside. The first was male, rich and melodious, only slightly sharpened by emotion. His diction was still perfect.

“I know that there are other papers, Miss Forrest. Don’t try to mislead me.”

Then Lena’s voice in reply, surprised and a trifle edgy. “The police already took everything that has to do with her appointments. There’s nothing here now but household bills and accounts outstanding, and that’s just the ones that have come in through the last week. The lawyers have all the old ones. It’s part of her estate.”

Now there was fear in his voice, and anger. “If you imagine you can continue where Miss Lamont was obliged to desist, and that you can blackmail me, Miss Forrest, you are most deeply mistaken. I will not permit it. I will do not another thing by coercion, do you hear me? Not one more word, written or spoken.”

There was a moment of silence. Narraway was standing in front of Pitt, blocking his view through the crack between the door and the jamb. His eye was about level with the top of the hinge.

“She was blackmailing you!” Lena said with consuming disgust. “You were so afraid of what she knew about you that you’d rather remove her papers for good or ill than have people know about you.”

“I no longer care, Miss Forrest!” There was a wild note in him now, as if he would overbalance out of control any moment.

Pitt stiffened. Was she in possible danger? Had Cartouche murdered Maude Lamont over this blackmail, and if Lena pressed him too far, would he kill again, once he knew where the papers were? And of course she could not tell him because they did not exist.

“Then why are you here?” Lena asked. “You’ve come for something!”

“Only her notes that would tell who I am,” he replied. “She’s dead. She can’t say anything further now, and it’s my word against yours.” There was an element of confidence creeping in. “There’s no question which of us they would believe, so don’t be foolish enough to try blackmail of your own. Just give me the papers and I’ll not trouble you again.”