hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but I’ve found men take it no less kindly, especially vain and successful men. There are many people who believe that loving someone puts the person into some sort of debt to you and gives you certain rights. More than one man has killed a woman because he thought she wasted herself on someone unworthy of her—someone other than himself, that is. I’ve known men with the notion that they somehow owned a woman’s virtue, and if she stained it she had offended not against herself or against God—but against him!”
Inigo stared into the polished surface of the table and smiled very slowly over something he was not prepared to share with Pitt, something at the same time funny and bitter.
“Oh, indeed,” he said sincerely. “I believe in feudal times if a woman lost her virginity she had to pay a fine to the lord of the manor, because she was then worth much less to him come the time someone wished to marry her and naturally had to pay the lord for the privilege. We haven’t changed so much! We’re far too genteel to pay in money, of course, but we still pay!”
Pitt would like to have known what he meant, but to ask would have been vulgar, and he probably would not have been answered.
“Could she have had a lover?” He went back to the original question. “Or an admirer?”
Inigo thought for a few moments before replying.
“Mina? I’ve never considered it, but I suppose she could have. The oddest people do.”
“Why do you say that? She looked as if she had been at least attractive, if not even beautiful.”
Inigo seemed surprised himself. “Just her personality. She didn’t seem to have any fire, any—gentleness. But then you said an admirer, didn’t you? She was very delicate; she had a femininity about her that would have been just what appealed to some—a sort of austere purity. And she always dressed to suit it.” He smiled apologetically. “But it is pointless asking me who, because I have no idea.”
“Thank you.” Pitt stood up. “I can’t think of anything else to ask you. It was most courteous of you to see me, especially here.”
“Hardly.” Inigo stood up as well. “Your presenting yourself didn’t give me a great deal of choice. I had either to see you or to look like a pompous ass—or, worse than that, as if I had something to hide.”
It had been intentional, and Pitt would not insult him by denying it.
He did not go to see Ambrosine Charrington the following day, but instead packed a gladstone bag with clean shirt and socks and took the train from Euston Station to Abbots Langley to see what he could discover about Ottilie Charrington’s death.
He spent two days, and the more he learned the more confused he became. He had no trouble in locating the house, for the Charringtons were well known and respected.
He ate a comfortable lunch at the inn, then walked to the local parish churchyard, but there were no Charringtons buried there—neither Ottilie nor anyone else.
“Oh, they’ve only been here for twenty years, going on,” the sexton told him reasonably. “They’re newcomers. You won’t find any of ’em here. Buried in London somewhere, like as not.”
“But the daughter?” Pitt asked. “She died here little over a year ago!”
“Maybe so, but she ain’t buried here,” the sexton assured him. “Look for yourself! And I’ve been to every funeral here in the last twenty-five years. No Charringtons—not a one.”
A sudden thought occurred to Pitt.
“How about Catholic or Nonconformist?” he asked. “What other churches are there close by?”
“I know every funeral as goes on in this neighborhood,” the sexton said vehemently. “It’s my job. And the Charringtons weren’t any of them outlandish things. They was gentry—Church of England, like everybody else who knows what’s good for them. Church here every Sunday they’re in the village. If she’d been buried anywhere around here, it would be in this churchyard. Reckon as you must be mistaken and she died up in London somewhere. Leastways, if she died here, they took her back to London to bury her. Family vault, likely. Lie alongside your own, that’s what I always say. Eternity’s a mighty time.”
“Don’t you believe in the Resurrection?” Pitt said curiously.
The sexton’s face puckered with disgust at any man who would be so crass as to introduce abstract matters of doctrine in the practicalities of life and death.
“Now what kind of a question is that?” he demanded. “You know when that’s going to be, do you? Grave’s a long time, a very long time. Should be done proper. You’ll be a lot longer in it than any grand house here!”
That was a point beyond argument. Pitt thanked him and set out to find the local doctor.
The doctor knew the Charringtons, but he had not attended Ottilie in her last illness, nor had he written any death certificate.
The following midday, by which time Pitt had seen servants, neighbors, and the postmistress, he caught the train back to London convinced that Ottilie Charrington had been in Abbots Langley on the week of her death but that she had not died there. The booking clerk at the station recalled seeing her on one or two occasions, but he could not swear when; and although she had bought a ticket to London, he did not know if she had returned.
It seemed an inescapable conclusion that she had died not in Abbots Langley but somewhere unknown, and of some cause unknown.
Now Pitt could not avoid seeing Ambrosine and Lovell Charrington any longer. Even Superintendent Athelstan, much as it pained him, could think of no argument to avoid it, and an appointment was duly made—politely, as if it were a courtesy. However, it was not as Pitt had intended: He would rather have been casual, and preferably have seen Lovell and then Ambrosine separately. But when he had reported on his visit to Abbots Langley, Athelstan had taken the matter into his own hands.
Lovell received Pitt in the withdrawing room. Ambrosine was not present.
“Yes, Inspector?” he said coolly. “I cannot think what else I can tell you about the unfortunate business. I have already done my duty and informed you fully of everything I knew. Poor Mrs. Spencer-Brown was most unstable, sad
