waging itself within his mind.
Pitt waited. Truth or lie, it might be more revealing if he allowed it to mature, even if it laid bare only some fear in Eustace himself.
“I’m sorry to have to say this,” Eustace began at last, “but I’m afraid it was Emily’s behavior, and … and the fact that George had fallen very deeply-and I may say, hopelessly-in love with another woman.” He shook his head to signify his deprecation of such folly. “Emily’s behavior has been … unfortunate, to say the least of it. But do not let us speak ill of her in her bereavement,” he added, suddenly realizing his charity ought to extend to her also.
Pitt could not imagine George killing himself over any love affair. It was simply not in his nature to be so intense about an emotional involvement. Pitt remembered his courtship of Emily; it had been full of romance and delight. No anguish, no quarrels, no giving way to obsessive or fancied jealousies.
“What happened last night that precipitated such despair?” he pursued, trying to keep the contempt and the disbelief out of his voice.
Eustace had prepared for this. He gave a rather shaky nod and pursed his lips. “I was afraid you would press me about that. I prefer to say nothing. Let it suffice that she showed her favors most flagrantly, where all the household might be aware of her, to a young gentleman guest staying here on my youngest daughter’s account.”
Pitt’s eyebrows rose. “If Emily did it in front of everyone else in the house, it can hardly have been very serious.”
Eustace’s lips tightened and his nostrils flared as he breathed. He kept his patience with difficulty. “It was my mother, and poor George himself, who were witness to it, I grieve to say. You will have to accept my word, Mr.-er, Pitt, that in Society married women do not disappear into the conservatory with gentlemen of doubtful reputation and return some considerable time later with their gowns in disarray and a smirk on their faces.”
For only an instant Pitt thought that that was precisely what they did do. Then anger for Emily swept away anything so trivial.
“Mr. March, if gentlemen were to kill themselves every time a wife had a mild flirtation with someone else agreeable, London would be up to its waist in corpses, and the entire aristocracy would have died out centuries ago. In fact, they would never have made it past the Crusades.”
“I am sure in your station in life, especially in your trade, that you cannot help a certain vulgarity of mind,” Eustace said coldly. “But please restrain yourself from expressing it in my house, particularly in our time of bereavement. There is really nothing for you to do here, beyond satisfying yourself that no one has attacked poor George-which is perfectly obvious to the veriest fool! He took a dose of my mother’s heart medicine in his morning coffee. Possibly he only meant to cause unconsciousness and give us all a fright-bring Emily back to her senses….” He trailed off, aware of Pitt’s monumental disbelief and floundering for a better solution. He seemed to have forgotten that he had said Jack Radley was here for Tassie, contradicting himself by branding him as of ill reputation. Or perhaps it was all right to marry a girl to such a man, simply not to allow him near your wife. The moral contortions of Society were still unclear to Pitt.
At another time Pitt might almost have been sorry for Eustace. His mental acrobatics were absurd, and yet how often he had seen them before. But this time his patience was worn raw. He stood up. “Thank you, Mr. March. I’ll see the doctor now, and then I’ll go up and see poor George. When I’ve done that, I’ll want to see the rest of the household, if I may.”
“Not necessary at all!” Eustace said quickly, scrambling to his feet. “Only cause quite pointless distress. Emily is a new widow, man! My mother is elderly and has had a severe shock; my daughter is only nineteen, and most naturally delicate in her sensibilities, as a girl should be. And Lady Cumming-Gould is considerably more advanced in years than she realizes.”
Pitt hid a bitter smile. He was quite sure Great-aunt Vespasia knew better than Eustace precisely how old she was, and she was certainly braver.
“Emily is my sister-in-law,” he said quietly. “I should have called upon her whatever the circumstances of George’s death. But first I’ll see the doctor, if you please.”
Eustace left without speaking again. He resented the position he had been placed in; his house had been invaded and he had lost control of events. It was a unique and frightening occurrence-he was taking orders from a policeman, here in his own morning room! Damn Emily! She had brought all this upon them with her vulgar jealousy.
Treves came in so soon he must have been waiting close at hand. He looked tired. Pitt had not met him before, but liked him instantly; there was both humor and pity in the weary lines of his face.
“Inspector Pitt?” he said with a raised eyebrow. “Treves.” He held out his hand.
Pitt took it briefly. “Could it have been suicide?”
“Rubbish!” Treves replied dourly. “Men like George Ashworth don’t steal poison and take it in their coffee at seven o’clock on a sunny morning in someone else’s house-and certainly not over a love affair. If he’d ever have done it at all-which I doubt-it would have been in a fit of despair over a gambling debt he couldn’t pay, and he’d have blown his brains out with a gun. Gentlemanly thing to do. And he damn surely wouldn’t poison a nice little spaniel at the same time.”
“Spaniel? Mr. March said nothing about a spaniel.”
“He wouldn’t. He’s still trying to convince himself it’s suicide.”
Pitt sighed. “Then we’d better go up and see the body. The police surgeon will look at it later, but you can probably tell me all I need to know.”
“Enormous dose of digitalis,” Treves answered, walking towards the door. “Coffee would disguise it. I daresay your constable in the kitchen will have found that out. Poor fellow must have died very quickly. I suppose if you have to kill someone, short of a bullet through the head this would be about the most merciful and the most efficient way of doing it. I daresay you’ll find the old lady’s entire supply is gone.”
“She had a lot?” Pitt asked, following him across the hall and up the wide, shallow stairs to the landing and into the dressing room. He noted sadly that George apparently had been sleeping in a separate room from Emily. He knew perfectly well it was the custom among many people of affluence for husband and wife each to have their own bedroom, but he would not have cared for it. To wake in the night and know always that Charlotte was there beside him was one of the sweetest roots deep at the core of his life, an ever waiting retreat from ugliness, a warmth from which to go forth into the coldness of any day, even the most violent, the weariest and the most tragic.
But there was no time now to contemplate the difference in lives and how much or little it might mean. Treves was standing beside the bed and the sheet-covered body. Wordlessly he pulled the cover back, and Pitt stared down at the waxy, pale face. They were George’s features-the straight nose, broad brow-but the dark eyes were closed, and there was a blueness around the sockets. Everything was the right shape, exactly as he remembered him, and yet it did not seem to be George. Death was very real. Looking at him one could not imagine that the soul was present.
“No injury,” he said quietly. George was not really there, this was only a shell, but it seemed callous to speak in a normal voice in its presence.
“None at all,” Treves replied. “There was no struggle. Nothing but a man drinking coffee that had enough digitalis in it to give him a massive heart attack-and an unfortunate little dog getting a treat, and dying as well.”
“Which means it wasn’t suicide.” Pitt sighed. “George would never have killed the dog. It wasn’t even his. Stripe will get the details from the servants, find out where the coffee was, who could have reached it. I expect George was the only person to take coffee at that hour. Most people take tea. I’ll have to see the family.”
“Nasty,” Treves said sympathetically. “Domestic murder is one of the tragedies of our human condition. God knows what we do to each other in what is fondly imagined to be the sanctuary of our homes, and is too often a purgatory.” He opened the door onto the landing again. “The old lady is a selfish and autocratic old besom-don’t let her fool you she is in delicate health. There’s nothing the matter with her except old age.”
“Then why the digitalis?”
Treves shrugged. “She didn’t get it from me. She’s the sort who affects vapors and palpitations when her family thwarts her; it’s about the only hold she has over young Tassie. Without obedience dominion is empty, so she persuaded one of the other doctors in the area to prescribe it for her. She seldom misses an opportunity to tell me how he saved her life-implying I would have let her die.” He smiled grimly.
Pitt remembered other dowagers he had met who ruled their families with relentless threats of imminent
