' 'Who?'' Drummond looked up with a frown. ' 'His son-in-law, for the money? Seems a bit hysterical. He'd get it anyway in due course. No plans for disinheritance, were there? Wife not likely to leave him, surely? It would be social suicide!'
'No.' Helen Carfax's worried, vulnerable face came sharply to his mind. 'No, on the contrary, she's obviously very much in love with him. And probably gives him all the
106
money he asks for; it seems to be the most attractive thing about her, to him.'
' 'Oh.'' Drummond leaned back wearily. ''Well you'd better go on looking at that. Unless of course Hamilton was the intended victim, and Etheridge was added to conceal the motive? But I agree, that is a bit farfetched-more of a risk than it would be worth. And there doesn't seem to be anyone in Hamilton's family or among his acquaintances with any motive that we can find. What about this picture you say Helen Carfax sold? What was it worth?'
'I don't know yet. I was going to look into that today. Could be anything from a few pounds to a small fortune.'
'I'll have Burrage do that. You go back to the Carfaxes' house. I don't know what else you can do, but keep trying. See if there're any women James Carfax is involved with, not just using. See if his debts are serious, or pressing. Perhaps he couldn't afford to wait?'
'Yes sir. I'll be back at lunchtime to see if Burrage has anything on the painting.'
Drummond opened his mouth to protest, then changed his mind and said nothing, merely watching Pitt go out the door.
But when Pitt came back long after luncheon at half past two, the news that greeted him had nothing to do with the painting. There was a hand-delivered note from Helen Carfax saying that she had remembered the exact nature of the threat her father had received, and if Pitt wished to call at the house in Paris Road, she would tell him what it had been.
He was surprised. He had believed it to be an invention, born of her desire to persuade both him and herself that the violence and the hatred that surrounded the murder had its origin far from her home or family, that it was something outside, beyond in the darkness of the streets where she never went; east in the slum and docklands, the taverns and alleys of discontent. He had not expected her to mention it again, except as a vague possibility, undefined.
107
Still, she had sent for him, so he left Bow Street and took a cab south across the river to Paris Road.
She greeted him quietly, her eyes one minute downcast, the next seeking his face. Her hands, clenching and unclenching at her sides, seemed stiff, and she rumbled with the door handle as she led him into the morning room. But then she was speaking of people whom she considered might have cut her father's throat and tied him to a lamppost like an effigy, a lampoon of authority and order.
'I daresay you know of it, Mr. Pitt, being a policeman,' she began, looking not at him but at a patch of sunlight on the carpet in front of her. 'But three years ago there was a woman named Helen Taylor who tried to become a candidate for Parliament! A woman!' Her voice was growing a little sharp, as though underneath her stillness there was a rising hysteria. 'Naturally it caused a certain amount of feeling. She was a very odd person-to call her eccentric would be charitable. She wore trousers! Dr. Pankhurst-you may have heard of him-chose to walk with her in public. It was most unbecoming, and quite naturally Mrs. Pankhurst objected, and I believe he ceased to do so. Mrs. Pankhurst is one of those who desires women to be given the franchise.'
'Yes, Mrs. Carfax, I had heard there was such a movement. John Stuart Mill wrote a very powerful tract on the Admission of Women to Electoral Franchise in 1867. And a Mary Wollstonecraft wrote about political and civil equality for women in 1792.'
' 'Yes, yes I suppose so. It is something in which I have no interest. But some of the women who espouse the cause do so very violently. Miss Taylor's behavior is surely an example of their-their disregard of the normal rules of society.''
Pitt kept his expression one of continued interest.' 'Indeed it would seem to have been unwise at the least,' he offered.
'Unwise?' Her eyes flew wide open and for a moment her hands were perfectly still.
108
