surprisingly small for such a house. It was very elegant, with a Sheraton table and chairs in gleaming wood, and a Bokhara rug which would have cost Pitt at least a year’s wages.
The windows looked onto a long lawn set with trees, sloping down to the water beyond. A willow made a cavern of green and reflected like lace on the barely moving current. A pergola was covered in roses, its latticed arches white through the leaves.
Mrs. Geddes was watching him.
“Used that a lot, ’e did.” She sighed. “Folks like ter ’ave their pictures took in beautiful places. ’Specially ladies. Makes ’em look good. . kind o’ romantic. Gentlemen prefer summink grand. Like ter dress up in uniforms, they do.” Her tone of voice conveyed her opinion of people who wore clothes that made them look more important than they were. “ ’Ad one daft ’aporth as dressed ’isself up as Julius Caesar!” she sniffed vigorously. “I ask yer!”
“But Mr. Cathcart had no objection?” Pitt tried to imagine it.
“O’ course ’e didn’t. ’Elped ’im, an all. Then that’s ’is job, in’t it? Take pictures o’ people so they looks like they wanter see ’emselves. Daft, I call it. But that don’t matter. I dunno wot yer wanter see ’ere, but this is all there is.”
Pitt looked around, uncertain himself what he wanted to ask. Had Cathcart been killed here? The answer to that might matter a great deal. This house was in an excellent place for a punt to float from down as far as Horseferry Stairs. But then so were scores of other houses that backed onto the river.
“Did he entertain here?” he asked. “Have parties?”
She stared at him with total incomprehension.
“Did he?” he repeated. Although the neatness of the rooms in the house he had seen so far made a party in which clothes such as the green velvet dress might be worn seem unlikely, certainly not before Mrs. Geddes had very thoroughly cleaned and tidied up.
“Not as I know of.” She shook her head, still puzzled.
“You never had anything to clear up, a lot of dishes to wash?”
“No, I never did, not as yer’d call a lot. Not more’n three or four people’d use. Why yer askin’, Mr. Pitt? Yer said as ’e were murdered. That don’t ’appen at parties. Wot yer on about?”
He decided to tell her a half-truth. “He was dressed for a party. . fancy dress. It seems unlikely he was out in the street in such clothes.”
“ ’Is clients dressed daft,” she responded hotly. “ ’E never did! More sense, even if ’e catered ter some as ’adn’t.”
There was probably a great deal Mrs. Geddes did not know about Mr. Cathcart, but Pitt forbore from saying so.
“Does he have a boat, perhaps moored on the river at the bottom of the garden?” he asked instead.
“I dunno.” A look of misery filled her face. “You said summink about a boat before. ’E were found in a boat, were ’e?”
“Yes, he was. Did you do any tidying yesterday when you came?”
“There weren’t nuffink ter do. Just cleaned as usual. Did a bit o’ laundry, like. Same as always. . ’ceptin’ the bed weren’t slept in, which was unusual, but not like it never ’appened before.” She narrowed her lips a trifle.
Pitt read the gesture as one of disapproval.
“He occasionally spent the night elsewhere? He has a lover, perhaps?” Remembering the green dress, he was careful not to attribute a gender.
“Well, I can’t see as she murdered ’im,” Mrs. Geddes said angrily. “That’s not ter say I approve o’ carryin’s on, ’cos I don’t! But she in’t a bad sort, that excepted. Not greedy, and not too flashy, if yer know what I mean.”
“Do you know her name?”
“Well, I s’pose as she’ll ’ave ter be told an’ all. ’Er name’s Lily Monderell. Don’ ask me ’ow she spells it, as I got no idea.”
“Where will I find Miss Monderell?” he asked.
“Over the bridge, in Chelsea. I ’spec ’e’s got it writ down somewhere.”
“I’d like you to come with me through the rest of the house to tell me if anything’s different from the way it usually is,” he requested.
“I dunno wot you think yer gonna find,” she said, blinking hard. Suddenly the awareness of Cathcart’s death seemed to have overtaken her again, now that police were walking through his house as if he no longer possessed it. They were going to be looking through his belongings, in his absence and without asking him. “If there’s anyfink wrong I’d ’a seen it,” she added with a sniff.
“You weren’t looking before,” he soothed her. “Let us begin down here and work upwards.”
“Yer wastin’ yer time,” she retorted. “Yer should be out there.” She jerked her head toward some unknown beyond. “That’s where yer’ll find murderers an’ the like.” Still she led the way into the next room and he followed after her.
It was a well-proportioned house and furnished in extravagant taste, as if Cathcart had had an eye to curtains and ornaments he might use in photographs at some future date. However, the whole created a place of distinction and considerable beauty. An Egyptian cat of clean and elongated lines contrasted with an ornate red, black and gold painted Russian icon.
A minor pre-Raphaelite painting of a knight in vigil before an altar hung on the upstairs landing, curiously highlighting the simplicity of an arrangement of sword-shaped leaves. It was highly individual, and Pitt had a sharp sense of personality, of a man’s tastes, his dreams and ideals, perhaps something of the life which had shaped him. Oddly, the knowledge of loss was greater than when he had stared at the body in the boat as it knocked against Horseferry Stairs, or again in the morgue, when he had been thinking more of Mrs. Geddes and the question of identification.
She showed him through every room, and each was immaculate. Nothing was out of the place one would expect to find it, no chairs or tables were crooked, no cushions or curtains disturbed. Everything was clean. It was impossible to believe there had been a fancy dress party there which had indulged in the sort of excesses the green velvet dress suggested, and certainly no violence in which two men had fought and one been killed.
The last room they reached was up a flight of stairs from a second, smaller landing, and it extended the length of the top story, with windows and skylights giving the light an excellent clarity. It was immediately obvious that this was the studio where Cathcart took many of his photographs. One end was furnished as an elegant withdrawing room, one side overlooked the river, and a person seated would appear to have nothing but the sky behind. The nearest end was cluttered like a storeroom with what seemed at a glance to be scores of objects of wildly varied character.
“I don’t come up ’ere much,” Mrs. Geddes said quietly. “ ‘Just sweep the floor,’ ’e says. ‘Keep it clean. Don’t touch nuffink.’ ”
Pitt regarded the conglomeration with interest. Without moving anything he recognized a Viking horned helmet, half a dozen pieces from a suit of armor, uncountable pieces of velvet of an enormous variety of colors-rich reds and purples, golds, pastel cream and earth tones. There was an ostrich feather fan, two stuffed pheasants, a round Celtic shield with metal bosses, several swords, spears, pikes, and bits and pieces of military and naval uniforms. What lay hidden beneath them was beyond even guessing.
Mrs. Geddes answered his unspoken thoughts. “Like I said, some of ’em likes ter dress daft.”
A closer examination of the room discovered nothing in which Pitt could see any connection with Cathcart’s death. In a large wardrobe there were a number of other dresses of varying degrees of ornateness. But then since Cathcart frequently photographed women, that was to be expected. There were also men’s clothes from many historical periods, both real and fanciful.
There were four cameras carefully set up on tripods, with black cloths for obscuring the light. Pitt had never seen a camera so closely before, and he looked at them with interest, being careful not to disturb them. They were complicated boxes in both metal and wood with pleated leather sides, obviously to telescope back and forth to vary the proportions. In size they were roughly a cubic foot or a little less, and on two of them brass fittings shone freshly polished.
There were also a number of arc lights on the floor. There was no gas supply to them, but heavy cables.
“Electric,” Mrs. Geddes said with pride. “Got ’is own machine wot drives ’em. Dynamo, it’s called. ’E says as
