floor. There was a small stove in one corner and a kettle on it. The walls were almost covered with past playbills and posters. Some were lists of actors, others quite elaborate and beautiful evocations of glamour. Looking at them one could almost hear the music begin, see the lights dim. Pitt recognized the faces of Henry Irving, Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the young Italian actress Eleanora Duse and Mrs. Patrick Campbell.
But the room was unimportant. The figures that dominated everyone’s attention were standing side by side with a grace which was in all probability so practiced as now to be quite unconscious. Joshua Fielding was exactly as he had appeared through the lens of the opera glasses, except there was more humor in his face. Tiny lines around his mouth were less exaggerated than the gestures he had used to convey the same sense of wit and rueful amusement. He was perhaps less handsome. At a few yards’ distance his nose was not quite straight, his eyes uneven, one brow different from the other. Yet the very imperfection of it was more immediate, and thus more lastingly attractive than the flawless stage appearance, which lacked a certain humanity.
Tamar Macaulay, on the other hand, was surprisingly different from her stage presence. Or perhaps neither Caroline nor Charlotte had looked at her so closely. She was smaller and leaner. The extreme femininity she had projected was part of her art, not a natural quality; and the intense vitality, almost lightness of character she played had been set aside with her costume. In repose she was motionless, all her strength inward. Yet her face was one of the most compelling Charlotte had ever seen. There was power of the mind in it and startling intelligence. She was extremely dark, her skin was sallow and her hair black, and yet she had the extraordinary gift of being able to portray anything from ugliness to dazzling beauty. She could never have been lush, warm or voluptuous; but in Charlotte’s mind at least, she could have been anyone from Medusa, the Gorgon, to Helen of Troy, and been utterly convincing as either. With the power of personality behind her dark face, Charlotte could have looked at it and believed that men fought an eleven-year war and ruined an empire over her.
Pitt betrayed nothing so fanciful in his manner. He began with an apology.
“I am sorry to have had to ask you to remain,” he said with a tight smile. “You must be tired at the end of so long a day. However, I daresay you have been informed that Mr. Justice Stafford died in his box during the performance this evening.” He looked at Joshua, then at Tamar.
“I knew he was ill,” Joshua replied, looking away from Caroline and at Pitt.
Pitt realized his omission. “I am sorry. May I present Mrs. Caroline Ellison, and my wife, Mrs. Pitt. I preferred not to leave them standing outside.”
“Of course.” Joshua bowed very slightly, first to Caroline, who blushed self-consciously, then to Charlotte. “I regret the circumstances of our meeting. I can offer you little comfort or refreshment.”
“I knew he had been taken ill,” Tamar said, returning them to the matter in hand. Her voice was low and of unusual timbre. “I did not know he had died.” Her face pinched with sadness. “I am very sorry. I have no idea how we can be of help.”
“You called upon him at his home earlier in the day?”
“Yes.” She added nothing, no explanation. She had an extraordinary repose, even delivering such a bald reply.
“And I saw him later, in my lodgings,” Joshua added. “He seemed perfectly well then. But is that really what you wished to ask?” He looked very relaxed, hands in his pockets. “Surely Mrs. Stafford is the one to tell you anything you need to know. Doesn’t his own physician know his condition?”
Pitt corrected the misapprehension. “I am not a physician, Mr. Fielding. I am an inspector with the police.”
Joshua’s eyebrows rose and he straightened up, taking his hands out of his pockets. “With the police? I’m sorry—I thought he was taken ill. Was it an injury? Good heavens—in the theater?”
“No, it looks as if it may have been poison,” Pitt said carefully.
“Poison?” Joshua was incredulous and Tamar stiffened. “How do you know?” Joshua asked.
“I don’t,” Pitt replied, looking from one to the other of them, “But the symptoms were alarmingly like those of opium poisoning. I should be irresponsible were I not to allow the possibility, and learn what I can, tonight, while memories are sharp and recent, before I hand the matter over to whoever will handle it when the medical report comes in.”
“I see.” Joshua bit his lip. “And you have come here because both Tamar and I saw him during the day, and you suspect us?” His face was tight, full of hurt. Almost unconsciously he put out his hand and touched Tamar’s arm. It was a protective gesture, although she looked in some ways the stronger of the two. Her face was fiercer, less vulnerable than his.
Watching her, Charlotte thought of the little she had heard of the Godman case, and the appalling loss of her brother. She wondered what Aaron Godman had been like. If he resembled her, Charlotte could imagine how people might have feared him, and believed him at least capable of a passion that could have ended in murder!
“Among many others.” Pitt did not prevaricate. “But it is also possible you may provide some observation which will simply guide us to the truth.”
“You mean implicate someone else,” Tamar said coolly. “We have been through a murder investigation before, Inspector Pitt. We cherish no illusions that it will be a pleasant affair, or that the police will rest before they have found evidence to satisfy a court of someone’s guilt.”
Charlotte was acutely aware of how exact was her use of words. The wound of her brother’s conviction was far from healed.
“It is ours to present the evidence, Miss Macaulay,” Pitt replied without anger or criticism in his face. “Not to decide on it—thank God. But I have never knowingly provided anything which I did not believe to be true. I am aware that you feel your brother was wronged, and that it was in connection with that case that you visited Mr. Stafford today.”
“Of course.” Her amusement was genuine, if bitter. “I have no other reason for seeking his acquaintance. I am aware that actresses have a certain reputation. In my case it is not warranted. And I know no reason to suppose it was in Mr. Stafford’s either.” There was savage laughter in her eyes, a mockery of Stafford and of herself and all people suppressed of emotions. “He was a somewhat humorless man,” she went on. “Lacking in imagination, and in the unlikely event he were to pursue a romance, I think he would be more discreet than to choose an actress with whom to do it!”
Charlotte looked at Pitt’s face and saw the imagination take flight in him. Tamar was a woman a man might fall in love with, even passionately, but not a woman with whom he would have an affaire. She was the stuff of dreams,
