enough about her reputation to kill anyone to preserve it. There was never anything of the hypocrite in her in the old days. Are you equally sure about the husband-John Dalgetty? No evasions, Pitt!”
Pitt leaned against the mantel shelf and faced Drummond squarely.
“Absolutely,” he said without a flicker. “Dalgetty believes passionately in total freedom of speech. That is what the idiotic affair in the field was about. No censorship, everything open and public, say and write what you please, all the new and daring ideas you can think of. The people who matter most to him wouldn’t cut him because his wife was on the stage and posed for pictures without certain of her clothes.”
“But she would care,” Drummond argued. “Didn’t you say she works in the parish, attends church and is part of an extremely respectable community?”
“Yes I did.” Pitt put his hands in his pockets. One of Emily’s silk handkerchiefs was in his breast pocket and he had folded it to show slightly. Drummond’s eyes had caught it, and it gave him a slow satisfaction which more than made up for the cold, early ride on the public omnibus, so he could add a few more pence to the economy for Charlotte’s holiday.
“But the only person who knew,” he went on, “so far as I am aware, was Shaw-and, I presume, Clemency. And Clemency was her friend-and Shaw wouldn’t tell anyone.” Then a flash of memory returned. “Except in a fit of anger because Josiah Hatch thinks Maude is the finest woman he’s ever met.” His eyes widened. “And he’s such a rigid creature-with all the old bishop’s ideas about the purity and virtue of women, and of course their duties as the guardians of the sanctity of the home as an island from the vile realities of the outer world. I can well imagine Shaw giving the lie to that, as a piece of cant he couldn’t abide. But I still think he wouldn’t actually betray her-simply tell.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you.” Drummond pursed his lips. “No reason to suspect Pascoe-no motive we know of. You’ve ruled out Prudence Hatch, because Shaw would never betray her medical secrets.” Drummond’s eyes were bright. “Please convey my compliments to Charlotte.” He slid down a little in his chair and rested his feet on the desk. “The vicar is an ass, you say, but you know of no quarrel with Shaw, except that his wife is titillated by the man’s virility-hardly enough to drive a clergyman to multiple arson and murder. You don’t think Mrs. Clitheridge could be so besotted with Shaw, and have been rejected, to the point where she tried to murder him in fury?” He was watching Pitt’s expression as he spoke. “All right-no. Nor, I assume, would she have killed Mrs. Shaw in jealousy. No-I thought not. What about Lutterworth, over his daughter?”
“Possible,” Pitt conceded doubtfully. Lutterworth’s broad, powerful face came back to his mind, and the expression of rage in it when he mentioned Shaw’s name, and Flora’s. There was no question he loved his daughter profoundly, and had the depth of emotion and the determination of character to carry through such an act, if he thought there were justification. “Yes, he is possible. Or he was-I think he knows now that Flora’s connection with the doctor was purely a medical one.”
“Then why the sneaking in and out instead of going to the usual surgery?” Drummond persisted.
“Because of the nature of her complaint. It is personal, and she is highly sensitive about it, didn’t want anyone else to know. Not difficult to understand.”
Drummond, who had a wife and daughters himself, did not need to make further comment.
“Who does that leave?”
“Hatch-but he and Shaw have quarreled over one thing or another for years, and you don’t kill someone suddenly over a basic difference in temperament and philosophy. Or the elderly Worlingham sisters-if they really believed that he was responsible for Theophilus’s death-”
“And do they?” Drummond only half believed it, and it was obvious in his face. “Would they really feel so strongly about it? Seems more likely to me they might have killed him to keep him quiet over the real source of the Worlingham money. That I could believe.”
“Shaw says Clemency didn’t tell them,” Pitt replied, although it seemed far more likely to him also. “But perhaps he didn’t know she had. She might have done it the night before she died. I need to find what precipitated the first murder. Something happened that day-or the day immediately before-that frightened or angered someone beyond enduring. Something changed the situation so drastically that what had been at the worst difficult, but maybe not even that, suddenly became so threatening or so intolerably unjust to them, they exploded into murder-”
“What did happen that day?” Drummond was watching him closely.
“I don’t know,” Pitt confessed. “I’ve been concentrating on Shaw, and he won’t tell me anything. Of course, it is still possible he killed Clemency himself, set the fire before he left, and killed Amos Lindsay because somehow he had betrayed himself by a word, or an omission, and Lindsay knew what he’d done. They were friends-but I don’t believe Lindsay would have kept silent once he was sure Shaw was guilty.” It was a peculiarly repugnant thought, but honesty compelled that he allow it.
Drummond saw the reluctance in him.
“Not the first time you’ve liked a murderer, Pitt-nor I, for that matter. Life would be a great deal easier at times, if we could like all the heroes and dislike all the villains. Or personally I’d settle for simply not pitying the villains as much as I do the victims half the time.”
“I can’t always tell the difference.” Pitt smiled sadly. “I’ve known murderers I’ve felt were victims as much as anyone in the whole affair. And if it turns out to be Angeline and Celeste, I may well this time too. The old bishop filled their lives, dominated them from childhood, laid out for them exactly the kind of women he expected them to be, and made it virtually impossible for them to be anything else. I gather he drove away all suitors and kept Celeste to be his intellectual companion, and Angeline to be his housekeeper and hostess when necessary. By the time he died they were far too old to marry, and totally dependent on his views, his social status and his money. If Clemency, in her outrage, threatened to destroy everything on which their fives were built, and faced them not only with old age in total public disgrace but a negation of everything they believed in and which justified the past, it is not hard to understand why they might have conspired to kill her. To them she was not only a mortal threat but a traitor to her family. They might consider her ultimate disloyalty to be a sin that warranted death.”
“They might well,” Drummond agreed. “Other than that you are left with some as yet unnamed slum profiteer who was threatened by Clemency’s uncovering work. I suppose you have looked into who else’s tenements she was interested in? What about Lutterworth? You said he’s socially ambitious-especially for Flora-and wants to leave his trade roots behind and marry her into society? Slum profiteering wouldn’t help that.” He pulled a sour face. “Although I’m not sure it would entirely hurt it either. A good few of the aristocracy made their money in highly questionable ways.”
“Undoubtedly,” Pitt agreed. “But they do it discreetly. Vice they will overlook, vulgarity they may accept-with reluctance, if there is enough money attached-but indiscretion never.”
“You’re getting very cynical, Pitt.” Drummond was smiling as he said it.
Pitt shrugged. “All I can find out about Lutterworth is that his money was in the north, and he sold nearly all his interests. There never was any in London that I can trace.”
“What about the political aspect?” Drummond would not give up yet. “Could Clemency have been murdered because of some other connection with Dalgetty and his Fabian tracts-and Lindsay the same?”
“I haven’t traced any connection.” Pitt screwed up his face. “But certainly Clemency knew Lindsay, and they liked each other. But since they are both dead, it is impossible to know what they spoke about, unless Shaw knows and can be persuaded to tell us. And since both houses are burnt to the ground, there are no papers to find.”
“You might have to go and speak to some of the other members of the society-”
“I will, if it comes to that; but today I’m going to Lindsay’s funeral. And perhaps I can discover what Clemency did on her last day or two alive, who she spoke to and what happened that made someone so angry or so frightened that they killed her.”
“Report to me afterwards, will you? I want to know.”
“Yes sir. Now I must leave, or I shall be late. I hate funerals. I hate them most of all when I look around the faces of the mourners and think that one of them murdered him-or her.”
Charlotte also was preparing to attend the funeral, but she was startled to have received a hand-addressed note from Emily to say that not only would she and Jack attend, and for convenience would pick Charlotte up in their carriage at ten o’clock, but that Great-Aunt Vespasia also would come. No explanation was given, nor when they arrived, since it was now five minutes past nine, would there be any opportunity to decline the arrangements or ask for any alternative.
“Thank heaven at least Mama and Grandmama are remaining at home.” Charlotte folded the note and put it
