She waited so long that her hesitation was obvious, and she gave a slight gesture of capitulation. “No. I admit that, Mr. Pitt. I didn’t trust anyone until I met Miss Lamont.”
“How did you meet her, Mrs. Serracold?”
“She was recommended to me,” she said, as if surprised that he should ask.
His interest quickened. He hoped it did not show in his face. “By whom?”
“Do you imagine it matters?” she parried.
“Will you tell me, Mrs. Serracold, or do I have to enquire?”
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
“That would be embarrassing! And unnecessary.” She was angry. There were two spots of color high on her smooth cheekbones. “As far as I can recall, it was Eleanor Mountford. I don’t remember how she heard of her. She was really very famous, you know-Miss Lamont, I mean.”
“She had a lot of clients from society?” Pitt’s voice was expressionless.
“Surely you know that.” She raised her brows slightly.
“I know what her appointment book says,” he agreed. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Serracold.” He rose to his feet again.
“Mr. Pitt. . Mr. Pitt, my husband is standing for Parliament. I. .”
“I know that,” he said softly. “And I am aware of what capital the Tory press may make of your visits to Miss Lamont, if they become known.”
She blushed, but her face was defiant and she made no immediate answer.
“Was Mr. Serracold aware you were seeing Miss Lamont?” he asked.
Her look wavered. “No.” It was little more than a murmur. “I went in the evenings he spent at his club. They were regular. It was quite easy.”
“You took a very great risk,” he pointed out. “Did you go alone?”
“Of course! It is a. . personal thing.” She spoke with great difficulty. It cost her a very visible effort to ask him. “Mr. Pitt, if you could. .”
“I shall be discreet for as long as possible,” he promised. “But anything you remember may be of help.”
“Yes. . of course. I wish I could think of something. Apart from the question of justice. . I shall miss her. Good day, Mr. Pitt. . Inspector.” She hesitated only an instant, forgetting Tellman’s name. But it was not of importance. She did not bother to wait for him to supply it, but sailed out of the room, leaving the maid to show them out.
Neither Pitt nor Tellman commented on leaving the Serracold house. Pitt could sense Tellman’s confusion and it matched his own. She was nothing that he could have foreseen in the wife of a man who was running for potentially one of the highest public offices in the country. She was eccentric, arrogant enough to be offensive, and yet there was an honesty about her he admired. Her views were naive, but they were idealistic, born of a desire for a tolerance she herself could not achieve.
Above all she was vulnerable, because there was something she had wanted from Maude Lamont so intensely that she had gone to her seances time after time, even though she was aware of the potential political cost if it became known. And her hair was long and pale silver-gold. He could not forget the hair on Maude’s sleeve, which might mean anything, or nothing.
“Find out more about how Maude Lamont acquires her clients,” he said to Tellman as they lengthened their pace down the footpath. “What does she charge? Is it the same for all clients? And does it account for her income?”
“Blackmail?” Tellman said with his disgust unconcealed. “It’s pathetic to be taken in by that. . that nonsense. But plenty of people are! Is it worth paying to keep silent about?”
“That depends what she’s found out,” Pitt replied, stepping off the curb and dodging a pile of horse manure. “Most of us have something we’d prefer to keep private. It doesn’t have to be a crime, just an indiscretion, or a weakness we fear having exploited. No one likes to look a fool.”
Tellman stared straight ahead of him. “Anyone who goes to a woman who spits up egg white and says it’s a message from the spirit world, and believes it, is a fool,” he said with a viciousness that sprang from a pity he did not want to feel. “But I’ll find out everything about her that I can. Mostly I’d like to know how she did it!”
They stepped up onto the pavement at the far side of the street just as a four-wheeled growler passed by within a yard of them.
“Mixtures of mechanical trickery, sleight of hand, and power of suggestion, I should think,” Pitt answered, stopping at the curb to allow a coach and four to pass by. “I assume you know it was egg white from the autopsy?” he said a little caustically.
Tellman grunted. “And cheesecloth,” he elaborated. “She choked on it. It was in her throat and lungs, poor creature.”
“Anything else you didn’t mention?”
Tellman glanced at him with venom. “No! She was a healthy woman of about thirty-seven or eight. She died of asphyxia. You already saw the bruises. That’s all there is.” He grunted. “And I meant find out the things people don’t want known. Was she clever enough to guess from the bits and pieces people asked, like where did Great- uncle Ernie hide his will? Or did my father really have an affair with the girl in the house opposite? Or anything at all!”
“I expect with a lot of listening at parties,” Pitt replied, “watching people, asking a few questions, exerting a little pressure now and then, she could piece together enough to make some very good guesses. And people’s own conclusions for what she gave them probably supplied the rest. Guilt runs from imaginary threats, as well as real ones. How many times have you seen people betray themselves because they thought we knew, when we didn’t?”
“Lots,” Tellman said, dodging around a costermonger’s cart of vegetables. “But what if she pushed too hard and somebody turned on her? That’d be the end of it all for her.”
“Seems as if it was.” Pitt shot him a sideways glance.
“Then what’s it to do with Special Branch?” Tellman demanded, anger quick in his voice. “Just because Serracold’s running for Parliament? Does Special Branch play party politics? Is that it?”
“No, that’s not it!” Pitt snapped, wounded and angry that Tellman should think it a possibility. “I don’t care that much”-he snapped his fingers-“who gets in. I care that the fight is fair. I think most of the ideas I’ve heard from Aubrey Serracold are totally daft. He hasn’t got the faintest idea of reality. But if he’s beaten I want it done by people who disagree with him, not people who think his wife committed a crime, if she didn’t.”
Tellman walked in silence. He did not apologize, although he opened his mouth and drew in his breath as if to speak a couple of times. When they came to the main thoroughfare he said good-bye and strode off in the opposite direction, back stiff, head high, while Pitt went to find a hansom to report to Victor Narraway.
“Well?” Narraway demanded, leaning back in his chair and staring up at Pitt unblinkingly.
Pitt sat down without being asked. “So far it seems to have been one of her three clients that evening,” he answered. “Major General Roland Kingsley, Mrs. Serracold, or a man whose identity none of them knew, except possibly Maude Lamont herself.”
“What do you mean ‘none’? You mean neither?”
“No I don’t. Apparently, the maid also didn’t know who he was. She says she never even saw him. He came in and left through the French doors and the door in the garden wall.”
“Why? Was the door in the wall left open? Then anyone could have come or gone.”
“The door in the garden wall to Cosmo Place was locked but not barred,” Pitt explained. “Other clients had keys. We don’t know who. There’s no record of it. The French doors were self-closing, so there’s no way of knowing if anyone left that way after she was dead. As to why, that’s obvious-he didn’t wish anyone at all to know he was there.”
“Why was he there?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Serracold thinks he was a skeptic, trying to prove Maude Lamont a fraud.”
“Why? Academic interest, or personal? Find out, Pitt.”
“I intend to!” Pitt retorted. “But first I’d like to know who he is!”
