Vespasia was looking at him, perhaps reading something of what was going through his mind.
“You must not judge Desmond Cantlay by yourself,” she said quietly. “But investigate the possibility, if you must. I suppose as late as this you cannot say when he was killed?”
“No; approximately three to four weeks ago, but that is hardly any use for establishing anyone’s whereabouts to prove him innocent or guilty. I should imagine he was killed shortly after the last time his servants saw him, which was three weeks ago last Tuesday. But even that is not proven. We don’t even know where he was killed yet.”
“You seem to know remarkably little,” she said grimly. “Don’t go seeking your information by spreading suspicions. Maybe Desmond didn’t know it. And doubtless, since it is a tool of his trade, Jones used it quite regularly.”
Pitt frowned. “Probably. But would he dare with Lady St. Jermyn?” He pictured that dark head with its severe silver streak. There was a remarkable dignity about her. It would have been a brash artist indeed who had tried to soften her with over-flattery.
Vespasia’s eyes widened very slightly, but her expression was beyond his reading.
“No,” he said simply. “Nor with the Misses Rodney, I suspect!”
The idea of an
“I’ll have to find his other subjects,” he agreed. “I have a list from the butler.” He wanted to ask her more; in fact, he had a vague impression that she knew something that deliberately she was not telling him. A shield for Gwendoline Cantlay or for someone else? Surely not Alicia again? Or worse than that, Verity? There was no point in asking. It would only offend her.
He stood up. “Thank you, Lady Cumming-Gould. I appreciate your help.”
She looked at him dubiously. “Don’t be sarcastic with me, Thomas. I have been of uncommonly little help, and you know it. I have no idea who killed Godolphin Jones, but whoever it was, I have some sympathy with him. But I am really only marginally interested in the whole affair. It is a pity he could not have remained decently buried in the butler’s grave. The parliamentary bill is a great deal more important than the death of one opinionated and indifferent little artist. Do you have any conception of what it could mean in the lives of thousands of children in this wretched city?”
“Yes, ma’am, I have,” he said, equally soberly. “I have been in the workhouses and the sweatshops. I have arrested starving five-year-olds already schooled in thieving, and knowing of nothing else.”
“I apologize, Thomas.” She was unused to retreat, but this time she meant it.
He knew it. He smiled at her, brilliantly, honestly, and for an instant they were equals. Then it vanished. She rang the bell, and the butler showed Pitt to the door.
But there was something nagging at his mind, and, rather than take out the butler’s list, he hailed a cab and traveled for more than two miles before alighting, paying the driver, and climbing a dingy staircase up to a small room that had a great south-facing window and an even greater skylight. A scruffy little man with enormous eyes looked up at him.
“Hello, Froggy,” Pitt said cheerfully. “Can you spare me a few minutes?”
The man looked at him skeptically. “I ain’t got nothing as I oughtn’t to. You got no right to look!”
“I’m not looking, Froggy. I want your advice.”
“And I ain’t ratting on no one!”
“Your artistic advice,” Pitt elaborated. “On the worth of a perfectly legitimate picture. Or, to be more precise, an artist.”
“Who?”
“Godolophin Jones.”
“No good. Don’t touch it. But ’e’s bleedin’ hexpensive. Where d’you get that kind o’ money? You bin takin’ bribes, or suffink? D’you know what ’e sells for-four or five ’undred nicker a time, or near enough.”
“Yes, I do know that, and I won’t press you to tell me how you know. Why does he sell that highly, if he’s no good?”
“Oh, now there you ’as one o’ life’s mysteries. I dunno.”
“Maybe you’re wrong, and he is good?”
“Now, there’s no need to be rude, Mr. Pitt! I know my business. Couldn’t sell one o’ them Joneses, not if I was to give you a chicken with each one. People as buy from me wants suffink as they can keep for a while; then, when nobody’s lookin’ for it anymore, ship it out to some collector what ain’t too choosy as to ’ow they come by fings. No collector wants a Jones. You ask why they pays so ’igh-maybe it’s vanity? Don’t understand the Quality, never ’ave-and you’re wastin’ your time if you thinks you can. They’re a different sort of animal from you and me. No knowin’ what they’ll do, or why. Except I can tell you this-that Joneses never change ’ands; nobody sells ’em ’cos nobody buys ’em. Now, that’s a rule, that is-if it’s worth buying, somewhere, sometime, somebody’s goin’ to sell it!”
“Thank you, Froggy.”
“That all?”
“Yes, thank you, that’s all.”
“Does it ’elp?”
“I’ve no idea. But I think I’m glad to know it all the same.”
On his return to the police station before the end of the day, Pitt was greeted by the sergeant who had previously met him with news of one corpse after another. His heart sank as soon as he saw the wretched man’s face flushed with excitement again.
“What is it?” he snapped.
“That plate, sir, the photographic plate from the dead artist’s house.”
“What about it?”
“You sent it to be developed, sir.” He was practically fidgeting in his fever.
“Naturally-” Sudden hope seized Pitt. “What was on it? Tell me, man, don’t stand there!”
“A picture, sir, of a naked woman, naked as a babe, but nothing like a babe, if you get my meaning, sir?”
“Where is it?” Pitt demanded furiously. “What have you done with it?”
“It’s in your office, sir, in a brown envelope, sealed.”
Pitt strode past him and slammed the door. With shaking fingers he picked up the envelope and tore it open. The photograph was as the constable had said, an elegant but highly erotic pose of a woman without a shred of clothing. The face was perfectly clear. He had never seen her before, either in life or in paint. She was a total stranger.
“Damn!” he said fiercely. “Damnation!”
Pitt spent the next day trying to discover the identity of the woman in the photograph. If she was a person of social standing at all, the picture alone was motive for murder. He gave the sergeant a copy and had him try all the police stations in the inner city to see if anyone recognized her, and he took another copy himself, this time with the body carefully blocked out, to see if anyone in society knew her. She did not have to be a lady; even a maid, seeking to make a little money on the side with such things, would lose not only her present employment but any hope of future employment with all its security, clothes, regular meals, companionship, and certain status of belonging. That, too, could be cause for murder.
Of course, he went back to Vespasia.
She hesitated a long time before replying, weighing her answer so carefully he was more than half prepared for a lie.
“She reminds me of someone,” she said slowly, her head a little to one side, still considering it. “The hair is not right; I seem to feel it was done differently, if indeed I do know her. And perhaps it was a little darker.”
“Who is it?” he demanded, impatience boiling inside him. She might actually have the last clue to murder on the back of her tongue, and she was havering like a nervous bride.
She shook her head. “I don’t know-I just feel a certain familiarity.”
He let out his breath in a sigh of exasperation.
“There’s no use trying to goad me, Thomas,” she replied. “I am an old woman-”
“Rubbish!” he snapped. “If you are going to plead infirmity of mind-I’ll charge you with perjury!”
