Pitt looked at Tellman.
“Go and start your search.”
Tellman had only been awaiting the order. He departed briskly, his face grim.
Pitt looked at Carvell, who appeared as if he might well be sick.
“You think I did it?” Carvell said huskily. “I can see it in your face, Superintendent. Why? Why in God’s name should I murder my butler?”
“I’m afraid the answer to that is unfortunately obvious, sir. He is in a perfect position to be aware of your liaison with Mr. Arledge, and of your possible involvement in his death. If that were so, you might well have felt it imperative, for your own safety, to be rid of him.”
Carvell struggled to speak, and failed. He stared up at Pitt for long, dreadful seconds, then with utter hopelessness, sank his head into his hands.
Pitt felt brutal. Tellman’s voice was drumming in his head, his contempt for Pitt’s squeamishness, Farnsworth’s charge that he was running away from his responsibility, both to his superiors, who had believed in him and had given him promotion, and to his juniors, whose loyalty he expected, and above all to the public. They had a right to believe they were getting the best the police force could offer and that he would set aside personal likes and dislikes, individual quirks of conscience or pity. He had accepted the job, with its honor and its reward. To do less than it required of him was a betrayal.
He looked at the wretched figure of Carvell in front of him. What had happened? What torrent of emotion had roared through him so that he had killed the man he loved? It could only be some kind of rejection, whether simply that the affair had died or that Arledge had found someone else.
Why Winthrop first? Winthrop must have been the other man. Somehow or other the bus conductor knew of it, not that night, but at some other time. And of course the sneering Scarborough had known it too. He tried to imagine the scene when the butler faced his master with his knowledge, standing very stiff and tall in his livery, his magnificent legs in silken stockings, his buttons and braid gleaming, his lip curled. He would have had no shred of an idea that his master would kill him too.
But that was stupid. He had already killed three other people. How could Scarborough have been so blindly confident as to have turned his back on a man he had threatened, and whom he knew to have murdered three times already? There could not have been a struggle. Scarborough was half Carvell’s weight again, and at least six inches taller. Any face-to-face combat he would have won easily. Pitt would have to ask the medical examiner if there were wounds on Scarborough’s body, a stab to the heart or something of that nature.
Tellman would already be searching. Would he begin by asking questions, or by looking for the place where it had happened? Or for some conveyance in which Carvell had taken the inert body of the butler to the horse trough in the park? Or the weapon? Presumably he had kept the weapon right from the beginning. Dangerous. Was he supremely confident he had hidden it, or that it would never be searched for in the right place? Or that if it was found it would not implicate him?
“Mr. Carvell?”
Carvell sat motionless.
“Mr. Carvell?”
“Yes?”
“When did you last see Scarborough alive?”
“I don’t know.” Carvell lifted his face. “Dinner time? You should ask the other servants, they would have seen him after I did.”
“Did he lock up last night?”
“I really don’t know, Superintendent. Yesterday was Aidan’s Requiem service. Do you imagine I cared who locked up the house? It could have been open all night for all I thought of it”
“How long had Scarborough been in your service?”
“Five years—no, six.”
“Were you satisfied with him?”
Carvell looked bemused. “He was good at his job, if that’s what you mean. If you want to know if I liked the man, no I didn’t. He was an objectionable creature, but he ran the house excellently.” He stared at Pitt with unfocused eyes. “I never had domestic trouble of any sort,” he said hollowly. “Every meal was on time, well cooked, and the household accounts were in perfect order. If there was ever a crisis, I didn’t hear about it. I have friends who were always having complaints of one sort or another. I never did. If he sneered occasionally I really didn’t care.” A self-mocking smile touched his mouth. “He was superb at arranging to entertain. He would see to any size or scale of dinner party or reception. I never had to see to anything myself.”
A maid crossed the landing above them but Carvell did not seem to be aware of her, or of the sounds of movement now coming from beyond the green baize door at the end of the hall.
“I would simply say, ‘Scarborough, I wish to have ten people to dinner next Thursday evening,’ ” he went on. “ ‘Will you see to it,’ and he did, and supplied an elegant menu at very reasonable cost. He hired in extra staff if they were needed, and none of them were ever impertinent, slack or dishonest. Yes, he was a condescending devil, but he was good enough at his profession for me to overlook it. I don’t know how I shall find anyone to replace him.”
Pitt said nothing.
Carvell gulped and gave a choking little laugh that ended in a sob.
“Or perhaps I shall be hanged, and then I won’t have to bother.”
“Did you kill Scarborough?” Pitt said very gently.
“No I didn’t,” Carvell replied quite calmly. “And before you ask me, I haven’t the slightest idea who did, or why.”
