nervous footman escorted him around step by step, watching him with increasing tension and unhappiness, as no mark or disturbance was found. If anyone had climbed over these walls lately, they had done it with a padded ladder placed so carefully it had not crushed the moss nor scratched a brick, and they had smoothed out the holes left by the feet of the ladder in the ground. Such care seemed impossible. How could he have hauled the ladder after him back to his own side without leaving great runnels in the moss on top of the wall? And once back, what then of the ladder marks in the ground? The summer had been dry, but the garden earth was still deep and friable enough to mark easily. He tried it with the weight of his own foot and left an unmistakable print.
There was a door in the farthest wall onto the path beyond the aspen trees at the end, but it was locked, and the gardener’s boy had the key and said it had never left him.
Hallam was out. Tomorrow Pitt would call and ask him about keys, if he had ever had another and given or lent it, but it was only a formality. He did not believe for a moment that anyone else had come along the pathway at the end and let themselves in to keep an appointment with Fulbert in Hallam’s house-and still less that it could have been a chance meeting.
He went home and told Charlotte nothing about it. He wanted to forget the whole affair and enjoy his own family, the peace and sureness of it. Even though Jemima was asleep, he demanded that Charlotte get her up, and then he sat in the parlor with her in his arms, while she blinked at him sleepily, unsure why she had been roused. He talked to her, telling her about his own childhood on the big estate in the country, exactly as if she understood him, and Charlotte sat opposite, smiling. She had some white sewing in her hands; he thought it looked like one of his shirts. He had no idea if she knew why he was talking like this-that it was to blot out Paragon Walk and what must be faced tomorrow. If she had, she was wise enough not to let him know.
There was nothing new at the police station. He asked to see his superior officers and told them what he intended to do. If there were no other explanation, no other key to the garden door, and no one had seen any other person, he would have to assume it was someone in Cayley’s household and interrogate them in that light, not only the footman and the valet, but Hallam Cayley himself.
They were unhappy with the idea, especially of accusing Hallam, but they conceded that it seemed unavoidable that it was someone in the house-most likely the valet or the footman.
Pitt did not argue with them or give them all the reasons why he thought it was Hallam. After all, most of it was deduction and the misery in the man’s face, the horror within him that was greater than anything outside. They could so easily have said it was simply the terrors of a man who drinks too much and cannot stop himself. And he could not have reasoned otherwise.
He arrived at the Walk in the late morning and went straight to the house. He rang at the front door and waited. Incredibly, there was no answer. He tried again, and again there was nothing. Had some domestic crisis occupied the footman to the neglect of his usual duties?
He decided to go around to the kitchen door. There surely would be servants there; there were always maids in a kitchen, at any time of the day.
He was still yards short of the door when he saw the scullery maid. She looked up and gave a yelp, grabbing at her apron front and staring at him.
“Good morning,” he said, trying to force a smile.
She stood frozen to the spot, speechless.
“Good morning,” he repeated. “I can’t make anyone hear at the front. May I come in through the kitchen?”
“The servants has got the day off,” she said breathlessly. “There’s just me and cook, and Polly. And Mr. Cayley in’t up yet!”
Pitt swore under his breath. Had that fool of a constable allowed them all to leave the Walk-including the murderer?
“Where have they gone?” he demanded.
“Well, ’oskins, that’s the valet, ’e’s in ’is own room, I reckon. I ain’t seen ’im today, but Polly took ’im a tray o’ toast and a pot o’ tea. And Albert, that’s the footman, I reckon as ’e’s probably gorn round to Lord Dilbridge’s, ’cos ’e’s got a fancy for their upstairs maid. Is anything wrong, sir?”
Pitt felt a wave of relief. This time the smile was real.
“No, I shouldn’t think so. But I’d like to come in all the same. I dare say someone could wake Mr. Cayley for me. I need to see him to ask him about one or two things.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t, sir. Mr. Cayley, well, ’e’s-’e won’t like it. ’E in’t very well in the mornings!” She looked anxious, as if she feared she would be blamed for Pitt’s arrival.
“I dare say not,” he agreed. “But this is police business, and it can’t wait. Just let me in, and I’ll wake him myself, if you prefer?”
She looked very dubious, but she knew authority when she heard it and led him obediently through the kitchens and stopped at the baize door to the rest of the house. Pitt understood.
“Very well,” he said quietly. “I’ll tell him you had no choice.” He pushed the door open and went into the hall. He had only got as far as the bottom stair when the barest movement caught his eye, just an inch or two, as of something unfixed among the straight wooden pillars of the stairway.
He looked up.
It was Hallam Cayley, swinging by his neck very, very slightly from his dressing gown cord, attached to the bannister where it ran along the landing.
Only for the first second was Pitt surprised. Then it all seemed dreadfully, tragically inevitable.
He started to climb up slowly until he reached the landing. Closer to, it was obvious Hallam was dead. His face was mottled but had not the purplish look of suffocation. He must have broken his neck as soon as he jumped. He was lucky. A man of his weight might easily have snapped the cord and ended up two stories below, broken- backed but still alive.
Pitt could not haul him up alone. He would have to send one of the servants for Forbes, and a police surgeon, the whole team. He turned around and went down slowly. What a sad, predictable end to a wretched story. There was no satisfaction in it, no sense of solution. He went through the baize door and told the cook and the girl simply that Mr. Cayley was dead and they were to go next door and ask one of the manservants to send for the police, a surgeon, and a mortuary coach.
There were fewer hysterics than he had expected. Perhaps, after the discovery of Fulbert’s body, they were not entirely surprised. Perhaps they had no more emotion left. Then he went back upstairs to look at Hallam again and see if there were any letter, any explanation or confession. It did not take him long; it was in the bedroom on a small writing table. The pen and ink were still beside it. It was open and not addressed to anyone.
