child in the ways of the world, compared to him!
The next time Charlotte spoke to him it was with a considerable chill in her voice. She saw Dominic staring at her in bewilderment, but she was too angry to care. And then all her old confusion about Dominic returned. She had loved him so much, and now all she could feel was a heart-sickening urge to protect him from-from what? From Pitt, the police-or himself?
It seemed as if the evening stretched forever. It was only eleven however, when George Ashworth took his leave and Charlotte excused herself and gratefully escaped to bed. She had expected to lie awake in a fever of thought all night, but she was hardly aware of lying down before the sleep of exhaustion overtook her.
The following day something infinitely worse awaited her. It was no more than ten o’clock in the morning when Maddock came to say that Inspector Pitt was in the hall and wished to see her.
“Me?” She tried to fend it off, hoping he would see someone else, perhaps that he had even come to see Papa, and was here now only to ensure that Papa would be in that evening.
“Yes, ma’am,” Maddock said firmly. “He especially asked for you.”
“Make sure it isn’t really the master he wants to see, this evening, will you, Maddock?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Maddock turned to leave, and as he was at the door, Pitt himself opened it and came in.
“Inspector Pitt!” Charlotte said sharply, intending to embarrass him into withdrawing. He was the last person in the world she wanted to see. Dominic’s tie loomed so large in her mind, it seemed as if Pitt would only have to speak to Millie, go into any part of the kitchen or laundry, and it would stare him in the face with all its appalling implications. She was even more afraid of what she herself might say. The sheer concentration on not mentioning it, the fear, kept it in the forefront of her mind.
“Good morning, Miss Ellison.” He watched Maddock disappear into the hall and closed the door behind him. “Charlotte, I came to tell you about George Ashworth.”
Relief flooded through her. It was nothing to do with Dominic.
“You know?” he said with surprise. What an extraordinary face he had; his feelings were so easily reflected, almost magnified in it.
She was confused.
“No? What about him? Did you discover something?” Again she was afraid, thinking of Emily. Was it Ashworth after all? That would at least mean he would not be able to hurt Emily any more, humiliate her by leaving her for someone else. The thought was touched with deep regret, which was ridiculous. It was only a very small part of her that had liked him.
Pitt was watching her. “You like him,” he observed with a smile. His eyes were gentle.
“I dislike him intensely,” she said with considerable sharpness.
“Why? Because you are afraid for Emily? Afraid he would kill her, or afraid he will eventually get bored with her and move on to someone else, perhaps someone with money, or a title?”
She resented his accuracy, his intrusion. Emily’s humiliation and hurt were none of his business.
“Afraid he might kill her, of course! What is it you came to tell me, Mr. Pitt?”
He ignored her terseness, still smiling. “That he probably did not even know the Hiltons’ maid, and he certainly did not kill Lily Mitchell. His actions are very fully accounted for all that day and night.”
She was pleased, very pleased, which made no sense. It meant Ashworth would remain free to humiliate Emily, and she cared very much that that should not happen.
“So you have eliminated one more person,” she said, looking for words, anything to say to him to banish the silence and avoid his eyes watching her, smiling, seeing every expression, every thought in her face.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Not a very satisfactory method of detection.”
“Is that all you can do?” She meant it as a genuine question, not a criticism.
He smiled a little wryly, a self-deprecating gesture. “Not quite. I’m trying to build up in my mind a picture of the kind of person we’re looking for, of the sort of man driven to do such things.”
Involuntarily she voiced the same thought that had so horrified Dominic. “Do you think perhaps he’s a man- who-doesn’t know
“Yes,” he said simply.
It was no comfort. She wished he had said no. It brought the person, the hangman, closer; it removed the gulf between them. He could be any one of them. Only God could know how he would feel when he discovered himself!
“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “It frightens me, too. He must be found, but I am not looking forward to doing it.”
She could think of nothing to say. Her mind’s eye could see only Dominic’s black tie, big enough to strangle the world. She wished Pitt would go away, before the very dominance of it in her mind made her tongue slip.
“I saw your brother-in-law the other day,” he went on.
She felt herself tighten. Fortunately she had her back to him and he could not see the spasm in her throat, the terror. She tried to speak, to sound casual, but nothing came. Was that what he had really come for, because he knew or guessed already?
“In a coffeeshop,” he continued.
“Indeed?” she managed to speak at last.
He did not reply. She knew he was looking at her. She could not bear the silence. “I cannot imagine you had a great deal to discuss.”
“The hangman, of course, but not much else, except a few other crimes. He seemed to feel this was the most important.”
“Isn’t it?” She turned back to look at him, to judge from his face what he meant.
“Yes, of course it is, but there are many others. My sergeant lost his arm a week ago.”
“Lost his arm!” she was horrified. “How? What happened?” She remembered the little man vividly. How could he have had such an appalling accident?
“Gangrene,” he said simply, but she saw the anger in his eyes. For a moment she actually forgot about Dominic. “He got an iron spike through it,” he went on, “when we went into the rookeries after a forger.” He told her what had happened.
“That’s horrible,” she said fiercely. “Does that sort of thing happen to-to many of you?”
She saw the flicker of hope in his face, then self-mockery as he derided his own feelings. Emily was at least partially right. He did care what she thought of him.
“No, not many,” he answered. “It’s as often tragic, pitiful, or even funny, as it is violent. Most people would prefer to serve their sentences and stay alive. The punishments for violence are too savage to be taken lightly. Murder is a hanging offence.”
“Funny?” she said incredulously.
He sat sideways on the arm of one of the chairs. “How do you suppose people stay alive, in the rookeries, without a sense of humour? Without a rather bitter notion of the ludicrous, without wit, one could drown in it. You wouldn’t understand the costermonger, the prostitutes, the dolly-shop owners, but if you did, you’d find them funny sometimes: savage, giving no quarter and expecting none, inventive, greedy, but often funny as well. That’s the sort of world they live in. The weak and the disloyal die.”
“What about the sick, the orphaned, the old?” she demanded. “How can you regard that with humour!”
“They die, just as they often do even at your end of society,” he replied. “Their deaths are different, that’s all. But what happens to a divorced woman in your world, or one who has an illegitimate child, or a woman whose husband dies or can’t meet the bills? He’s politely driven to ruin, and often suicide. As far as you’re concerned, he or she is ruined from the day of their disgrace. You no longer see them in the street. You no longer call on them in the afternoons. There is no possibility of work, of marriage for the daughters, no credit with tradesmen. It’s a different kind of death, but we usually see the end of it, all the same.”
There was nothing to say to him. She would like to have hated him, to have denied it all, or justified it, but she knew inside her it was true. Little bits of memory returned, people whose names were not to be mentioned anymore, people one suddenly did not see again.
He put his hand out and touched her arm gently. She could feel the warmth of him.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte. I had no right to say that as if it were your fault, as if you were part of it willingly or consciously.”
