unnecessary embarrassment.
Tellman felt a sudden stab of knowledge, as if he saw her in an ordinary dress such as his mother or Gracie would wear, the rustling silks obscured by a clearer sight. She needed to believe in Maude Lamont’s powers. There was something she was seeking that had driven her there, compelled her, and now that Maude was dead, she was lost. Behind those bright, pale eyes there was desperation.
Then she spoke again, and shattered the moment. He heard her perfect diction and the brittleness of it, and they were a world apart once more.
“Or perhaps it was my imagination,” she said with a smile. “I really hardly saw his face. He might have been afraid of the truth, mightn’t he?” Her lips curved as if it were only the inappropriateness of the situation which kept her from actually laughing. “He came and went through the garden door. Perhaps he is a highly important personage who committed a terrible crime and wants to know if the dead will betray him?” Her voice lifted at the fancy. “There’s an idea for you, Mr. Pitt.” She looked at Pitt steadily, ignoring Tellman, her face calm, vivid, almost challenging.
“It had occurred to me, Mrs. Serracold,” Pitt replied, his own face expressionless. “But I am interested that it also came to your mind. Was Maude Lamont a person who was likely to have used such knowledge?”
Her eyelids flickered. The muscles in her throat and jaw tightened.
Pitt waited.
“Used it?” Her voice was a little rough. “Do you mean some sort of. . of blackmail?” There was surprise in her face, perhaps a little too much.
Pitt smiled very slightly, still polite, as if he thought far more than he could say. “She was murdered, Mrs. Serracold. She had made at least one desperate and very personal enemy.”
The blood drained out of her skin. Tellman thought she might even faint. He knew with absolute certainty now that she was the one Pitt was concerned with. It was her presence at the seance which had brought Special Branch into the case and taken it from the police, from him. Did Pitt have some secret reason for believing her guilty? Tellman looked at him, but in spite of all the time they had worked together, the passion and the tragedies they had been involved with, he could not read Pitt’s emotions now.
Rose moved her position in the chair. In the silence of the room, even a faint creak of whalebone and taut fabric in her bodice was audible.
“I appreciate that it is terrible, Mr. Pitt,” she said quietly. “But I cannot think of anything which will help you. I was aware that one of the men cared intensely about his son and needed to know something of the manner of his death, which occurred in a battle somewhere in Africa.” She swallowed, lifting her chin a trifle as if her throat were constricted, although her gown was not high. “The other man I cannot say, except that he gave the impression that he had come to mock or disprove. I don’t know why such people bother!” Her delicate eyebrows rose. “If you disbelieve, why not simply leave it alone and allow those who care to pursue knowledge do so in peace? It is surely a decency, a compassion one should allow. Only a complete boor would disturb someone else’s religious rites. It is an unnecessary intrusion, a piece of gratuitous cruelty.”
“Can you describe what in his manner, or his words, gave you that impression?” Pitt asked, leaning forward a little. “As much as you can remember please, Mrs. Serracold.”
She sat without answering for several moments, as if clarifying it in her mind before beginning. “I have a feeling he was trying to catch her in a trick,” she said at last. “He moved his head from side to side, always watching just on the edge of his vision, as if not to miss anything. He would not allow his attention to be directed.” She smiled. “But there was never anything. I could feel his emotion, but I don’t know what it was. I only looked at him now and then because I was naturally far more concerned with Miss Lamont.”
“What was there to watch?” Pitt asked, his face perfectly serious.
She seemed uncertain how to reply, or perhaps whether to trust him. “Her hands,” she said slowly. “When the spirits spoke through her, she would look quite different. Sometimes she seemed to change shape, her features, her hair. There was a light in her face.” Her expression dared him to mock. There was irony in her, as if she would rob his charge of its power by making it first herself. Yet her body was rigid and her hands, on the edge of the chair, were white-knuckled. “A glowing breath came from her mouth, and her voice was utterly unlike her own.”
He felt an odd sensation well up inside him, a mixture of fear, almost a desire to believe, and at the same time an impulse to laugh. It was terribly human and vulnerable, so transparent, and yet so easy to understand.
“What did he ask her, as clearly as you can remember?” he said.
“To describe the afterlife, to tell us what there was to see, to do, how it looked and felt,” she replied. “He asked if certain people were there and what they were like now. If. . if his Aunt Geor-gina were there or not, but I felt as if it were a question intended as a trick. I thought perhaps he didn’t even have such an aunt.”
“And what was the answer?”
She smiled. “No.”
“How did he react?”
“That was the odd thing.” She shrugged. “I think he was pleased. It was after that he asked all the questions as to what it was like, what people did, especially if there were any kind of penance.”
Pitt was puzzled.
“What were the answers?”
There was a flash of humor in her eyes. “That he was asking things that it was not yet his time to know. That is what I would have answered him had I been the spirit!”
“You disliked him?” he asked. She was sharp in her observation, critical, opinionated, and yet there was a vitality in her that was extraordinarily attractive and her humor appealed to him.
“Frankly, yes.” She looked down at the rich silk of her skirt. “He was a frightened man. But we are all frightened of something, if you have any imagination at all, or anything you care about.” She raised her eyes and met his. “That does not give you a reason or an excuse to mock the needs of others.” A shadow crossed her eyes, as if instantly she had regretted being too candid with him. She stood up and in a graceful movement turned away, keeping her back half towards Pitt and completely towards Tellman. It obliged them both to stand also.
“Unfortunately, I cannot tell you who he was or where to find him,” she said quietly. “I regret very much now that I ever went there. It seemed harmless at the time, an exploration of knowledge, a little daring. I believe passionately in freedom of the mind, Mr. Pitt. I despise censorship, the curtailment of learning. . for anyone at all!” Her voice had a completely different tone; there was no banter in it now, no guard. “I would have absolute freedom of religion built into the law, if I could. We have to behave in a civilized fashion, respect each other’s safety-and property, too, I suppose. But no one should set bounds to the mind, above all to the spirit!” She swiveled around, staring at Pitt with color back in her face at last, her chin high and her marvelous eyes blazing.
“And was this third man trying to do that, Mrs. Serracold?” Pitt asked.
“Don’t be naive!” she said tartly. “We spend half the energy in our lives trying to dictate what other people will think! That is mostly what the church is about. Don’t you listen?”
Pitt smiled. “Are you trying to destroy my belief in it, Mrs. Serracold?” he enquired innocently.
The color glowed up her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It is just that one person’s freedom so easily tramples upon another’s. Why did you go to Miss Lamont? Whom did you wish to contact?”
“Why is it your business, Mr. Pitt?” She gestured for him to sit down again.
“Because she was murdered either while you were there or shortly after you left,” he answered, relaxing back into the chair and seeing Tellman do the same.
Her body stiffened. “I have no idea who was responsible for that,” she said almost under her breath. “Except that it was not I.”
“I have been told that you wanted to contact your mother. Is that not true?”
“Who told you?” she demanded. “The soldier?”
“Why should he not? You told me he wished to contact his son, to learn how he died.”
“Yes,” she conceded.
“What was it you wished to learn from your mother?”
“Nothing!” she said instantly. “I simply wanted to speak with her. Surely that is natural enough?”
Tellman did not believe her, and he knew by the way Pitt’s hands stayed motionless and stiff on his knees that he did not, either. But he did not challenge her.
“Yes, of course it is,” Pitt agreed. “Have you visited other spirit mediums?”
