slum landlord to charge exorbitant rents and cram fifteen or twenty people into one damp and rat-infested room. Nor would he be the first to use his properties as brothels, sweatshops, and thieves' kitchens. There was the possibility Hamilton had been doing this and had been killed for revenge or from outrage-or that Verdun had done it, and when
38
Hamilton found out and threatened to expose him, Verdun killed him to keep him silent.
Or it might simply have been someone acting out of fury at having been evicted from a home, undersold, or beaten to a lucrative deal. However, Pitt did not speak any of these thoughts aloud.
'I imagine there's a good deal of money involved,' he said instead, as innocently as he could.
'Not a lot,' Verdun replied candidly. 'Do it to keep busy, you know. Wife dead twenty years ago. Never felt like marrying again. Couldn't ever care for anyone as I did for her. ...' For a moment his eyes were gentle, faraway, seeing some past happiness that still charmed him. Then he recalled himself. 'Children all grown up. Got to do something!'
'But it brings a good income?' Pitt looked at the quality of Verdun's clothing. It was shabby, worn into comfort, but his boots were excellent, and the cut of his jacket Savile Row, his shirts probably Gieves and Son. He did not look fashionable; he looked as if he was sufficiently sure of himself and his place in society that he did not need to. His was old money, quiet money.
'Not terribly,' Verdun interrupted Pitt's thoughts. 'No need. Hamilton made his income from something to do with railway carriages, in Birmingham or somewhere like that.'
'And you, sir?'
' 'Me?'' Again the wispy, tufted eyebrows shot up, and the round gray eyes beneath were bright with irony and suppressed humor. 'Don't need it; got enough. Family, you know.'
Pitt had already known it; in fact he would not have been surprised had there been an honorary title Verdun declined to use.
There was a rattling outside, a steady arrhythmical clatter.
'You can hear it!' Verdun said quickly. 'Horrible contraption! A typewriter, if you please! Got it for my junior
cleric-boy can't write so anyone but an apothecary can read it. Hideous thing. Sounds like twenty horses sliding round a cobbled yard.'
'Would you mind giving the police a list of your property deals in the last twelve months, Mr. Verdun?' Pitt requested, biting his lip. He was predisposed to like this man, but his mild, slightly vague manner might hide far uglier passions. Pitt had liked people before and discovered them to be capable of killing. 'And anything proposed for the future,' he added. 'It will be treated with as much confidence as possible.'
'My dear fellow, you'll find it excessively tedious. But if you like. Can't imagine you'll catch Lockwood's killer in the list of semidetached houses hi Primrose Hill, Kentish Town, or Highgate, but I suppose you know what you're doing.'
The neighborhoods he mentioned were all respectable suburban areas. 'What about the East End?' Pitt asked. 'No properties there?'
Verdun was quicker than Pitt had thought. 'Slum landlords? Suppose you were bound to think of that. No. But you can look through the books if you feel it's your duty.'
Pitt knew it would be pointless, but a clever auditor might find some discrepancy that would point to other books, other deals-even embezzlement? He profoundly hoped not. He would like Verdun to be exactly what he seemed.
'Thank you,
'Amethyst? Yes, slightly. Fine woman. Very quiet. Imagine there's some sadness there; no family, you know. Not that Lockwood ever mentioned it-very fond of her. Didn't say much, but it was there. Knew that. Do, if you've ever cared for a woman yourself.''
Pitt thought briefly of Charlotte at home, the warmth and the heart of his own life. 'Indeed.' He seized the opportunity the subject of family offered him.' 'But there is a son by Sir Lockwood's first marriage?'
