Pitt had not expected admission, at least not yet. Perhaps he was one of those who would deny everything, even when there was proof. Or it was conceivable he really did know nothing. Pitt would have to speak to all the servants as well. It would be long and wretched. Finding guilt was always finding tragedy. When he had first joined the police, he had thought it would be dispassionate, the solution of mysteries. Now he knew otherwise.
“When did you last see Mr. Nash?” he asked.
Hallam looked up, surprised, his eyes bloodshot.
“Good God, I don’t know! It was weeks ago! I don’t remember when I saw him, but not the day he was killed. I do know that.”
Pitt raised his eyebrows slightly.
“You believe he was killed when he disappeared?” he asked.
Hallam stared at him. The color rushed up his face, then ebbed away again. The sweat stood out on his lip.
“Wasn’t he?”
“I should imagine so,” Pitt said wearily. “It’s not possible to tell now. I suppose he could have stayed up there indefinitely, as long as that room wasn’t used. The smell would have got worse, of course. Did you give the maids orders to clean in there?”
“For heaven’s sake, man, I don’t care about housekeeping! They clean when they want to. That’s what I have servants for-not to have to think about things like that.”
There was no point in asking him if his servants were acquainted with Fulbert in any personal way. That had all been gone into already, and everyone had denied it, which was to be expected.
It was Forbes who elicited a surprising new fact or at least a statement. The footman admitted now that he had opened the door to Fulbert on the afternoon of his disappearance, while Hallam was out, and Fulbert had gone upstairs, saying he wished to speak to the valet. The footman had assumed that he had let himself out afterward, but now it was obvious that he had not. He excused himself for the lie in his first account, by saying he did not believe it important and had not wished to implicate his master on so flimsy a coincidence, being naturally afraid for his employment.
It ended in an unsatisfactory impasse. The valet denied having seen Fulbert, and nothing could be proven. Forbes said there had long been all manner of rivalries and old feuds among the household staff, and he had no idea whom to believe. According to previous testimony, either of the manservants could conceivably have killed Fanny, if one or more were lying, and neither of them could have attacked Selena.
Finally Pitt went back to the station, posting a constable to see that none of the Cayley servants moved from the Walk. The whole thing left a sour and unfinished taste in his mouth, but he could accomplish no more with questions now.
Fulbert was buried immediately, and the funeral was a small and somber affair, almost as if the dreadful corpse were in full view, instead of discreetly nailed into a polished dark, wood box.
Pitt attended, this time not out of pity for the dead, but because he needed to observe the mourners. Charlotte had not come, and neither had Emily. They were both still suffering from the horror of discovering the body, and in truth Charlotte had known him so little, her presence might be interpreted not so much as respect but rather as mere curiosity. Emily’s condition gave her ample excuse to remain at home. George, grim and white- faced, body stiff against the wind, was the only representative of the family.
Pitt borrowed a black coat to cover his own rather multicolored clothes and stood discreetly at the back, half under the yew trees, hoping no one would do more than glance at him, possibly even assume him to be part of the undertaking party.
He waited as the cortege arrived, black crepe fluttering in the wind. No one spoke except the minister, and his sing-song voice floated over the hard clay and the withered grass between the gravestones.
There were no women except the immediate family, Phoebe and Jessamyn Nash. Phoebe looked appalling; her skin was ashen, and there were dark blotches under her eyes. She stood with shoulders hunched; from the back she might have been an old woman. He had seen abused children with that same resigned look, terrified, and yet too sure of the blow to bother to run.
Jessamyn was totally different. Her back was as straight as a soldier’s, her chin high, and even the drifting black veil over her face could not hide the luminosity of her skin and the glittering eyes, fixed on the yew branches shifting in the wind at the far side, where the walk went down to the lych-gate. The only betrayal of emotion was the hard-clenched hands, so hard that, but for the gloves, surely the nails would have bitten into the skin.
All the men were there. Pitt studied them one by one, his memory turning over everything he knew about them, searching for reasons, inconsistencies, anything from which to distill an answer.
Fulbert had been murdered because he knew who had raped Fanny, and then Selena. Surely there could be no other cause, no other secret in the Walk worth killing for?
Could it have been Algernon Burnon? It would have needed no great strength to strike the blow, a single plunge with a knife. He was close to the open grave, his face sober, no passion in it. It was unlikely he had cared much for Fulbert. Probably, he was thinking of Fanny. Had he loved her? Whatever grief he had felt had been masked behind generations of careful composure. Gentlemen did not make exhibitions of their feelings. It was unbecoming, effeminate to show obvious distress. A gentleman managed even to die with dignity.
Who had decided on the long engagement? Surely, if he had felt such violent hunger for her, he could have insisted the marriage take place sooner? Many women married at Fanny’s age, or younger; there was nothing hasty or improper about it. Looking at Algernon’s calm face now, Pitt found it too difficult to believe there lay behind it ungovernable passion of any sort.
Diggory Nash was next to him, close to Jessamyn but not touching her. Indeed she looked so unlike a woman who needed any supporting arm, it would almost have been an impertinence, an intrusion to have offered her one. She was isolated in whatever feeling gripped her, unaware of the rest of them, even of her husband.
Did she know something about Diggory that they did not? Pitt stared at him from the discreet shelter of the yews. It was a less proportionate face than Afton’s and yet so much warmer. There was no laughter in it now, but the lines were there, and a gentleness in the mouth-perhaps not the power of Afton? Had some weakness of appetite, years of easy gratification, led him to a mistaken identity in the dark, rape of his own sister, and murder to hide it?
Surely such a character would have betrayed itself before now? Guilt and terror would have wracked him, haunted his solitude, kept him awake, ended in some desperate folly and downfall? All Forbes’s questions had elicited no complaint from any maid as to Diggory’s behavior. Admittedly, there had been advances, but no unwelcome ones had been pressed. Refusal had been accepted, on the rare occasions it was offered, with humor and resignation.
No, Pitt could not believe Diggory was more than exactly what he seemed.
And George? He knew now why George had been so evasive in the beginning. He had simply been too drunk to remember where he had been-and too embarrassed to say so, Perhaps the fright would have done him good, at least for Emily’s sake?
Freddie Dilbridge. He had his back to Pitt now, but Pitt had watched him as he walked down the path behind the coffin. His face had been anxious, confused rather than grieved. If there was fear, it was of the unknown, the inexplicable, not the all-too-plain fear of one who knows precisely what is wrong, and what the vengeance for it will be.
And yet there was something about Freddie that troubled Pitt. He had not yet discovered what it was. Dissolute parties were not exceptional. There were always those who were bored, occupied by no necessity to earn their bread or even to administer their property, driven by no ambition, who found entertainment in satisfying their own appetites, or the more bizarre appetites of others. Voyeurism was not novel, even a little moral blackmail afterward, a feeling of superiority.
Although that picture fitted his mind’s perception of Afton Nash better. There was cruelty in him, a delight in the frailty of others, especially the sexual frailty. He was a man who might well pander to tastes he despised, for the pleasure of reveling in his own superiority at the same time. Pitt could not think of anyone he had disliked as much. To be the victim of one’s own faults, however grotesque, he could find a pity for. But to delight in and prey upon the weakness of others was beyond the realm of any compassion he could muster.
Afton was standing at the head of the grave, his eyes on the minister, grim and hard. But then he had buried a brother and had a sister murdered in one short summer. Was it conceivable he was the arch-hypocrite and had
