“She seemed to be.” He sat on the edge of the table. “I met her Aunt Vespasia. Do you know her?”
“No. We don’t have an Aunt Vespasia. She must be George’s.”
“She ought to be yours,” he said with a sudden grin. “She is exactly as you might be when you get to be seventy or eighty.”
She let the pan go in her surprize and turned to stare at him, his body like some enormous flightless bird, coattails trailing.
“And the thought didn’t appall you?” she asked. “I’m surprized you still came home!”
“She was marvelous,” he laughed. “Made me feel a complete fool. She said precisely what she thought without a qualm.”
“I don’t do it without a qualm!” she defended herself. “I can’t help it, but I feel awful afterward.”
“You won’t by the time you’re seventy.”
“Get off the table. I’m going to put the vegetables on it.”
He moved obediently.
“Who else did you see?” she continued when they were in the dining room and the meal was begun. “Emily has told me something of the people in the Walk, although I’ve never been there.”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Of course, I do!” Why on earth did he need to ask? “If someone has been raped and murdered next door to Emily, I have to know about it. It wasn’t Jessamyn something-or-other, was it?”
“No. Why?”
“Emily can’t abide her, but she would miss her if she were not there. I think disliking her is one of her main entertainments. Although I shouldn’t speak like that of someone who might have been killed.”
He was laughing at her inside himself, and she knew it.
“Why not?” he asked.
She did not know why not, except she was quite sure her mother would have said so. She decided not to answer. Attack was the best form of defense.
“Then who was it? Why are you avoiding telling me?”
“It was Jessamyn Nash’s sister-in-law, a girl called Fanny.”
Suddenly gentility seemed irrelevant.
“Poor little child,” she said quietly. “I hope it was quick, and she knew little of it.”
“Not very. I’m afraid she was raped and then stabbed. She managed to make her way to the house and died in Jessamyn’s arms.”
She stopped with a forkful of meat halfway to her mouth, suddenly sick.
He saw it.
“Why the hell did you ask me in the middle of dinner?” he said angrily. “People die every day. You can’t do anything about it. Eat your food.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to point out that that did not make it any better. Then she realized that he had been hurt by it himself. He must have seen the body-it was part of his duty-and talked with those who had loved her. To Charlotte she was only imaginary, and imagination could be denied, while memory could not.
Obediently she put the food in her mouth, watching him. His face was calm, the anger entirely gone, but his shoulders were tense and he had forgotten to take any of the gravy she had so carefully made. Was he so moved by the death of the girl-or was it something far worse, fear that the investigations would uncover things uglier, close to him, something about George?
Two
The following morning Pitt went first to the police station, where Forbes was waiting with a lugubrious face.
“Morning, Forbes,” Pitt said cheerfully. “What’s the matter?”
“Police surgeon’s been looking for you,” Forbes replied with a sniff. “Got a message about that corpse from yesterday.”
Pitt stopped.
“Fanny Nash? What message?”
“I don’t know. ’E wouldn’t say.”
“Well, where is he?” Pitt demanded. What on earth could the man have to say beyond the obvious? Was she with child? It was the only thing he could think of.
“Gone to ’ave a cup of tea,” Forbes shook his head. “I suppose we’re going back to Paragon Walk?”
“Of course, we are!” Pitt smiled at him and Forbes looked glumly back. “You can see a little more of how the gentry live. Try all the staff at that party.”
“Lord and Lady Dilbridge?”
“Precisely. Now I’m going to find that surgeon.” He swung out of the office and went to the little eating house on the corner where the police surgeon in a dapper suit was sitting over a pot of tea. He looked up as Pitt came in.
“Tea?” he inquired.
Pitt sat down.
“Never mind the breakfast. What about Fanny Nash?”
“Ah.” The surgeon took a long gulp from his cup. “Funny thing, that. May mean nothing at all, but thought I should mention it. She has a scar on her buttock, left buttock, low down. Looks pretty recent.”
Pitt frowned.
“A scar? Healed. So what does that matter?”
“Probably not at all,” the surgeon shrugged. “But it’s sort of cross-shaped, long bar with shorter cross bar toward the lower end. Very regular, but the funny thing about it is that it’s not a cut.” He looked up, his eyes very brilliant. “It’s a burn.”
Pitt sat perfectly still.
“A burn?” he said incredulously. “What on earth could burn her like that?”
“I don’t know,” the surgeon replied. “So help me, I don’t even care to think.”
Pitt left the tea house puzzled, unsure if it meant anything at all. Perhaps it was no more than a perverse and rather ridiculous accident. Meanwhile he must continue the dreary task of establishing where everyone had been at the time the murder was committed. He had already seen Algernon Burnon, the young man engaged to marry Fanny, and found him pale but as composed as was proper in the circumstances. He claimed to have been in the company of someone else all that evening, but refused to say whom. He implied it was a matter of honor that Pitt would not understand, but was too delicate to phrase it quite so plainly. Pitt could get no more from him and for the present was content to leave it so. If the wretched man had been indulging in some other affair at the very time his fiancee was being ravished, he would hardly care to admit it now.
Lord and Lady Dilbridge had been with company since seven o’clock, and could be written off. The household of the Misses Horbury contained no men at all. Selena Montague’s only manservant had been either in the servants’ hall or in his own pantry in view of the kitchen all the relevant time. That left Pitt with three more houses to call on and then the distressing duty of going back to the Nashes’ to see Jessamyn’s husband, the half brother of the dead girl. Lastly there was the personally awkward necessity of asking George Ashworth to account for his time. Pitt hoped, above anything else in the case, that George could do so.
He wished he could have got that interview over with first, but he knew that George would not be available so early in the morning. More than that, there was a foolishness in him that hoped he might discover some strong clue before he came to the necessity, something so urgent and pointed he could avoid asking George at all.
He began at the second house in the Walk, immediately after the Dilbridges’. At least this unpleasant task could be put behind him. There were three Nash brothers, and this was the house of the eldest, Mr. Afton Nash and his wife, and the youngest, Mr. Fulbert Nash, as yet single.
The butler let him in with weary resignation, warning him that the family was still at breakfast, and he must oblige him to wait. Pitt thanked him and, when the door was closed, began slowly to walk around the room. It was
