grandiloquent, full of scarlets and glinting metal, a child in an old man’s body playing at soldiers. Had it been intended as ironic it would have been clever, but again the colors were unsubtle and a little cloudy.
He went up to and found his eye drawn without consciousness to the left corner. There was a small caterpillar, totally irrelevant to the composition but cleverly masked in the background, a brown-bodied creature in a brown, mottled shadow.
“And I believe there is also one of your sisters?” He stepped back and turned to face the major.
“Can’t think what you want to see it for,” the major said with surprise. “Quite ordinary painting. Still, if you like-”
“Yes, please,” Pitt went after him into the next room. It was on the facing wall, between two jardinieres, a larger work than the first. The pose was fussy, the scenery cluttered with far too many props, the colors a little better but with too much pink. He looked in the left corner and found the same caterpillar, exactly the same stylized hair and legs, but green-bodied, to hide against the grass.
“What did you pay for them, sir?” he asked.
“Sufficient, sir,” the major said huffily. “I cannot see that it concerns your investigation.”
Pitt tried to visualize the figures after the caterpillars in the little book, but there had been so many of them, more caterpillars than anything else, and he could not remember them all.
“I do need to know, Major. I would prefer to ask you personally than have to discover by some other means.”
“Damn you, sir! It is not your business. Inquire as you like!”
Pitt would get nowhere by pressing the point, and he knew it. He would find the figures in the notebook in the column under?350, in line with the beetle, and total all those next to caterpillars. He would then try Major Rodney with that sum and observe his reaction.
The major snorted, satisfied with his victory. “Now, if that is all, Inspector?”
Pitt debated whether to insist on seeing the Misses Rodney now and decided there was little to learn from them. He could more profitably go and question the other person who had bought a Jones portrait, Lady St. Jermyn. He accepted the major’s dismissal and, a quarter of an hour later was standing rather uncomfortably in front of Lord St. Jermyn.
“Lady St. Jermyn is not at home,” he said coolly. “Neither of us can help you any further with the affair. It would be best left, and I counsel you to do so from now on.”
“One cannot leave murder, my lord,” Pitt said tartly. “Even did I wish to.”
St. Jermyn’s eyebrows rose slightly, not surprise so much as contempt. “What has made you suddenly believe that Augustus was murdered? I suspect a prurient desire to inquire into the lives of your betters.”
Pitt ached to be equally rude; he could feel it like a beat in his head. “I assure you, sir, my interest in other people’s personal lives is purely professional.” He made his own voice as precise and as beautiful as St. Jermyn’s, coolly caressing the words. “I have no liking either for tragedy or for squalor. I prefer private griefs to remain private, where public duty permits. And as far as I know, Lord Augustus died naturally-but Godolphin Jones was unmistakably strangled.”
St. Jermyn stood absolute still; his face paled and his eyes widened very slightly. Pitt saw his hands clasp each other hard. There was a moment’s silence before he spoke.
“Murdered?” he said carefully.
“Yes, sir.” He wanted to let St. Jermyn say all he would, not lead him and make his answers easy by suggesting them. The silence was inviting.
St. Jermyn’s eyes stayed on Pitt’s face, watching him, almost as if he were trying to anticipate.
“When did you discover his body?” he asked.
“Yesterday evening,” Pitt answered simply.
Again St. Jermyn waited, but Pitt did not help him. “Where?” he said at last.
“Buried, sir.”
“Buried?” St. Jermyn’s voice rose. “That’s preposterous! What do you mean ‘buried’? In someone’s garden?”
“No, sir, properly buried, in a coffin in a grave in a churchyard.”
“I don’t know what you mean!” St. Jermyn was growing angry. “Who would bury a strangled man? No doctor would sign a certificate if the man was strangled, and no clergyman would bury him without one. You are talking nonsense.” He was ready to dismiss it.
“I am relating the facts, sir,” Pitt said levelly. “I have no explanation for them, either. Except that it was not his own grave; it was that of one Albert Wilson, deceased of a stroke and buried there in the regular way.”
“Well, what happened to this-Wilson?” St. Jermyn demanded.
“That was the corpse that fell off the cab outside the theatre,” Pitt replied, still watching St. Jermyn’s face. He could see nothing in it but dark and utter confusion. Again for several moments he said nothing. Pitt waited.
St. Jermyn stared at him, eyes clouded and unreadable. Pitt tried to strip away the mask of authority and assurance and see the man beneath-he failed entirely.
“I presume you have no idea,” St. Jermyn said at last, “who killed him?”
“Godolphin Jones? No, sir, not yet.”
“Or why?”
For the first time Pitt overstepped the truth. “That’s different. We do have a possible idea as to why.”
St. Jermyn’s face was still very pale, nostrils flared gently as he breathed in and out. “Oh? And what may that be?”
“It would be irresponsible of me to speak before I have proof.” Pitt evaded it with a slight smile. “I might wrong someone, and suspicion once voiced is seldom forgotten, no matter how false it proves to be later.”
St. Jermyn hesitated as if about to ask something further, then thought better of it. “Yes-yes, of course,” he agreed. “What are you going to do now?”
“Question the people who knew him best, both professionally and socially,” Pitt replied, taking the opening offered. “I believe you were one of his patrons?”
St. Jermyn gave an answering smile, no more than a slight relaxation of the face. “What a curious word, Inspector. Hardly a patron. I commissioned one picture, of my wife.”
“And were you satisfied with it?”
“It is acceptable. My wife liked it well enough, which was what mattered. Why do you ask?
“No particular reason. May I see it?”
“If you wish, although I doubt you will learn anything from it. It is very ordinary.” He turned and walked out of the door into the hallway, leaving Pitt to follow. The picture was in an inconspicuous place on the stair wall, and, looking at the quality of it compared with the other family portraits, Pitt was not surprised. His eye scanned the face briefly, then went to the left-hand corner. The insect was there, this time a spider.
“Well?” St. Jermyn inquired with a touch of irony in his voice.
“Thank you, sir.” Pitt came down the stairs again to stand level with him. “Do you mind telling me, sir, how much you paid for it?”
“Probably more than it’s worth,” St. Jermyn said casually. “But my wife likes it. Personally, I don’t think it does her justice, do you? But then you wouldn’t know; you haven’t met her.”
“How much, sir?” Pitt repeated.
“About four hundred and fifty pounds, as far as I can remember. Do you want the precise figure? It would take me some time to find it. Hardly a major transaction!”
The vast financial difference between them was not lost on Pitt.
“Thank you, that will be near enough.” He dismissed it without comment.
St. Jermyn smiled fully for the first time. “Does that further your investigations, Inspector?”
“It may do, when compared with other information.” Pitt walked on to the front door. “Thank you for your time, sir.”
When he got home, cold and tired, Pitt was welcomed by the fragrance of steaming soup and dry laundry hanging from the ceiling. Jemima was already asleep, and the house was silent. He took his wet boots off and sat down, letting the calm wash over him, almost as capable of being felt with body as was the heat. For several minutes Charlotte said no more than a welcome, an acknowledgment of his presence.
