charming or the brave, the funny or the kind.”
Pitt smiled. “And his rivals?” he pressed.
“Oh, I’m sure they hated him.” Kilgour moved back out of the study into the hallway and closed the door. “I keep that picture where I work. I have enough sense of the absurd to enjoy it, and when I get delusions of my own importance it is a very salutary reminder. My wife likes it because she does not see my weaknesses and has not a very quick eye to understand what Cathcart was saying. But my sister understands, and advised me to keep it out of general sight.” He shrugged ruefully. “As if I couldn’t see it for myself! But then she is my elder sister-so what may one expect?”
They returned to the withdrawing room and spoke a little longer. Pitt finally left with several names written on a list, both clients and rivals of Cathcart.
He spent the rest of the day visiting them, but learned nothing else that furthered his knowledge of Cathcart’s life.
In the morning he met with Tellman, and over a cup of tea in the kitchen they discussed the matter.
“Not a thing,” Tellman said dismally. He kept glancing at the door as if he half expected Gracie to come in any moment. He heard the marmalade cat, Archie, come trotting along the passage and look up hopefully at Pitt, then seeing he was unresponsive, go over to the laundry basket and hop in as well. He curled up half on top of his brother and went to sleep.
“Nor I,” Pitt replied. “He was brilliant, and I saw one of his competitors who acknowledged as much, but he was doing well enough.”
“You don’t murder someone because they’ve got a talent you haven’t,” Tellman said gloomily. “You might spread lies about them or criticize their work.” He shook his head, staring at his half-empty cup. “But this was personal. It wasn’t a matter of money, I’d swear to that.”
Pitt reached for the teapot and refilled his cup. “I know,” he said quietly. “Someone who merely wanted him out of the way wouldn’t do this. But I couldn’t find anything in his life to provoke this sort of emotion. We aren’t looking in the right place.”
“Well, I’ve been all around this day-to-day business,” Tellman said defensively, straightening his shoulders a little. “He lived pretty high! He’s got to have spent a lot more than he made taking pictures. And he bought that house, we know that. Where’d the money come from? Blackmail, if you ask me.”
Pitt was inclined to agree. They had already investigated the possibility of theft, using Cathcart’s knowledge of art and of the possessions of his clients. But none of the clients admitted to any losses.
“You must have talked to enough people.” He looked up at Tellman. “What did they say about him?”
Tellman reached for the teapot. “Spent a lot of money but paid his bills on time.” He sighed. “Liked good things-the best-but he wasn’t awkward to suit, like some folk. Always pleasant enough to the few that saw him, that is. Sent for a lot of things, or had them on regular order. Seems he worked pretty hard.”
“How hard?” Pitt asked, his mind turning over the clients he knew of from Cathcart’s list.
Tellman looked puzzled.
“Hours?” Pitt prompted. “He only took about one client a week, on average. Visited them maybe twice or three times, then had them to his studio for the actual photograph. That’s not ten hours a day, by any means.”
“No, it isn’t.” Tellman frowned. “Doesn’t exactly account for the time he seems to have been away, and people assumed he was working. Perhaps he wasn’t? Could have been doing anything. Wouldn’t be the first man that said he was working when he wasn’t.”
“Whatever he was doing, it made him money,” Pitt said grimly. “We need to know what it was.” He drank the last of his tea and stood up. “It’s about the only thing we’ve got.”
“Unless it was really the Frenchman and not Cathcart at all,” Tellman answered, standing as well. “That would explain everything.”
“Except where Cathcart is.” Pitt poured a little milk for Archie and Angus, and made sure they had food. Angus smelled the milk in his sleep and woke up, stretching and purring.
“Well, if it is Cathcart, where is the Frenchman?” Tellman continued. “He didn’t go on the boat from Dover, he came back on the train to London, but he’s not here now.”
“And as long as the people at the French Embassy maintain that they know where he is, that is not our problem.” Pitt made sure the back door was locked. “Let’s go and see Miss Monderell again. Maybe she knows where Cathcart spent the rest of his time.”
The door was opened to them by a startled maid who told them very firmly that Miss Monderell was not yet receiving visitors and if they cared to come back in an hour she would enquire whether Miss Monderell would see them then.
Tellman drew in his breath sharply, and only with difficulty waited for Pitt to speak. It was quarter to ten. In his opinion, plain already in his face, anyone who was not ill should have been out of bed long ago.
A flicker of humor hovered around Pitt’s mouth. “Will you please inform Miss Monderell that Superintendent Pitt would like to speak with her in the matter of Mr. Cathcart’s death, and unfortunately I cannot afford the time to wait upon her convenience.” His tone of voice made it clearly an order.
The maid looked startled; his mention of the police, and a death she now knew to be murder, robbed her of all argument. However, she left them to wait in the hall, not the withdrawing room.
Lily Monderell came down the stairs twenty minutes later, dressed in a beautiful morning gown of russet red trimmed with black braid, which showed off her extremely handsome figure to full advantage. The sleeves were barely exaggerated at all, and the skirt swept back to a slight bustle. It reminded Pitt of the fashions Charlotte had described in her letter. There was not the slightest crease or blemish in it, no sign of wear at all, and he wondered if it was new.
“Good morning, Mr. Pitt,” she said with a dazzling smile. She looked at Tellman, to his renewed discomfort. “Morning, love. You look as if you’ve been rode hard an’ put away wet. Have a cup of tea and a sit-down. Cold outside, is it?”
In spite of himself, Pitt stifled a laugh at Tellman’s expression of conflicting fury and dismay. He plainly wanted to be outraged, and she had denied him the chance. She refused to be intimidated or offended, she refused to see his disapproval. Instead, she swept around the bottom of the stairs and led the way to the dining room with her back to him, her silk skirts rustling, a waft of perfume filling the air.
The dining room was quite small but extremely elegant. It was papered entirely in warm yellow with a golden wood floor and mahogany furniture which could have been original Adam, or else was an excellent copy. There were tawny bronze chrysanthemums in a vase on the sideboard, and the maid was already laying two extra places at the table.
Lily Monderell invited them to sit down. Tellman accepted gingerly, Pitt with interest.
The maid came in with an exquisite Georgian silver teapot, gently steaming at the spout. She set it down admiringly, and Pitt had the strong impression that it also was new.
“There now,” Lily Monderell said with satisfaction. “Looks real good, doesn’t it!”
Pitt realized that one of the pictures he had noticed while waiting in the hall was new since they had been there before, or else moved from a different room. But did one keep pictures of that quality in a room not seen by guests? Lily Monderell was doing very well for herself since Cathcart’s death. And yet she had not been mentioned in the will. Did she know that? Was she spending on credit and expectation? It was ridiculous to feel sorry for her, and yet he did.
He looked at the teapot. “It’s very handsome. Is it new?” He watched her face closely to see the shadow of a lie before it reached her lips.
She hesitated so slightly he was not sure if he saw it or not. “Yes.” She smiled, reaching for it to pour.
“A gift?” He kept his eyes on hers.
She had already decided what to say. “No. Unless you count a gift to myself?”
Should he say something, rather than allow her to buy herself into debt on false hopes? It was none of his business. And yet where she obtained her money might very well be his business. If Cathcart had blackmailed his clients, or anybody else, then perhaps she knew of it. She might even have shared the information and have taken over since his death. It was Pitt’s duty to prevent a crime, whether it was continued blackmail or another murder. And the thought of Lily Monderell’s lying grotesquely, half naked, in a punt drifting down the cold Thames in the morning mist was peculiarly repellent. Whatever she had done, or was doing, to provoke it. She was so vital it would be a denial of life itself to destroy her.
