Pitt looked at the very ordinary couple standing side by side in their hallway, faces set, hands clean, hair neat, the precise and God-fearing samplers on the wall, and wondered why on earth they should lie to him. What had Lizzie Forrester done that they should say she did not exist? Were they protecting her or disowning her?
He took a gamble.' 'The records say that you had a daughter Elizabeth born to you.''
The color flooded back into Forrester's face, and his wife's hand flew from his arm to cover her mouth and suppress a gasp.
' 'It would be less painful for you to tell me the truth,'' Pitt said quietly. 'Far better than my having to go and ask questions of other people until I uncover it for myself. Don't you agree?'
Forrester looked at him with intense dislike.' 'Very well- if you insist. Although we've done nothing to deserve this, nothing at all! Mary, my dear, there is no need for you to endure this. Wait for me in the back parlor. I shall return when it is done.'
'But I think-' she began, taking a step forward.
'I have spoken, my dear,' he said levelly, but there was insistence under his genteel tone. He did not intend to be argued with.
'But really, I think I should-'
'I don't care to repeat myself, my dear.'
'Very well, if you say so.' And obediently she withdrew, nodding miserably at Pitt in a sort of half recognition of his presence. She retreated back the way she had come, and again they heard the door latch open and close.
'No need for her to suffer,' Mr. Forrester said tartly, his eyes on Pitt's face, hard and critical. 'Poor woman has endured enough already. What is it you want to know? We have not seen Elizabeth in seventeen years, nor are we likely to ever again. She ceased to be our daughter then, and whatever the law says, she is none of ours. Although what concern it
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is of yours I fail to see!' He opened the front parlor door, twisting the handle hard, and showed Pitt into a cold room with too much furniture, all spotlessly clean. The tables were crammed with photographs, china figures, Japanese lacquer boxes, two stuffed birds and a stuffed and mounted weasel under glass, and numerous potted plants. He neither sat down himself nor offered Pitt a seat, although there were three perfectly good chairs, all with embroidered antimacassars on their backs. 'I completely fail to see!' he repeated accusingly.
'Perhaps I could speak to Elizabeth myself?' Pitt asked.
'You cannot! Elizabeth went to America seventeen years ago. Best place for her. We don't know what happened to her there or where she is. In fact, she could be dead for all we know!'' He said it with his chin high and his eyes bright, but Pitt caught a quaver in his voice, the first sign that there was pain as well as anger in him.
' 'I believe she belonged for a while to an unusual religious organization,' Pitt began tentatively.
The pain vanished from Forrester's face, and only rage and bewilderment remained.
'Evildoers!' he said harshly. 'Blasphemers, the lot of them.' He shook with the depth of his outrage. 'I don't know why they let them come into a God-fearing country and permit their wickedness to innocent people! That's what you should be doing-stopping wickedness like that! What's the use of your coming here seventeen years afterwards, I'd like to know? What good is that now, to us or to our Lizzie? Gone to join wicked men, she has, and never a word of her since. Mind, we're Christian people; we told her she'd be none of ours until she forsook her ways and came back to good Christian religion.'
It was nothing to do with the case, but Pitt asked in spite of himself. 'What was her religion, Mr. Forrester?'
'Blasphemy is what it was,' he replied hotly. 'Downright blasphemy against God, and all Christian people. Some
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charlatan who said he saw God, if you please! Said he saw God! And Jesus Christ! Separately! We believe in one God in this house, like all other decent people, and nobody is telling
