Tellman straightened to attention again.
Yeats frowned. “Could be anything from a woman to a bad debt,” he answered. He seemed about to say something more, then changed his mind.
“He had plenty of money,” the man with the quiff said, dismissing that idea.
“Not the sort of man to throw up everything on a romance either,” someone else offered.
“How sad,” Wilde murmured. “There should always be at least one thing in life for which one would sacrifice everything else. It gives life a sort of unity, a wholeness. And then you spend your time soaring and plunging between hope and terror that you never have to. To know that you will not-it would be as dreadful as to know you will. Have a glass of wine, Mr. Pitt.” He picked up the bottle. “I’m afraid we can’t help you. We are poets, artists, and dreamers. . and occasionally great political theorists-of the socialist order, of course-except Yeats, who is tangling his soul in the troubles of Ireland, and that has no names an Englishman could pronounce. We have no idea where Bonnard is or why he went there. I can only say I hope he returns safe and well, and if you have to go and look for him, that it is somewhere with an agreeable climate, people who have new ideas all the time, and the last censor died of boredom at least a hundred years ago.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wilde,” Pitt said graciously. “I wish I could begin in Paris, but I’m afraid we know he did not take the Dover packet he was booked on, and I regret I have something uglier and more urgent to attend to than pursuing this any further.”
“Another judge?” Wilde enquired.
“No, a man found dead in a punt at Horseferry Stairs.”
Wilde looked sad. “Delbert Cathcart. I am very sorry. When you find who killed him, don’t forget to charge him with vandalism as well as murder. The unwitting fool destroyed a genius.”
Tellman winced.
“That kind of vandalism is not a crime, Mr. Wilde,” Pitt said quietly. “Unfortunately.”
“Did you know Mr. Cathcart well, sir?” Tellman spoke for the first time, his voice sounding a little hoarse and very different from those of the group around the table.
They stared at him in amazement, as if one of the chairs had spoken to them.
Tellman flushed, but he would not lower his eyes.
Wilde was the first to recover his composure.
“No. . only saw him once, at a party somewhere or other. But I’ve seen quite a lot of his work. You don’t have to meet a man who is an artist in order to know his soul. If it is not there in what he creates, then he has cheated you, and worse than that, he has cheated himself.” He was still holding the wine bottle. “Perhaps that and cruelty are the greatest sins of all. I never spoke to him-or he to me-in the sense you mean.”
Tellman looked confused and crestfallen.
Pitt thanked them again and, finally declining the offer of wine, excused them both.
Outside in the dark alley, Tellman drew in a deep breath and wiped his hand over his face.
“I heard he was odd,” he said quietly. “Can’t say I know what to make of him. Do you think that lot have anything to do with Bonnard and Cathcart?”
“I don’t even know that Bonnard and Cathcart have anything to do with each other,” Pitt said grimly, and pulled his coat collar up as he turned along the alley, Tellman’s footsteps sounding hollowly after him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The nightmare was so real that even when the old lady woke up the room around her seemed to be the one in which she had spent her married life. It was a moment before her vision cleared and she realized there was no door to the left leading to Edmund’s room. There was no need to be afraid. It would not open because it was smooth, patterned wall. She could see the light on the paper, unbroken. But it was shades of deep rose pink. It should be yellow. She was used to yellow. Where was she?
Her feet were cold. There was light coming through a crack in the curtains. She heard footsteps outside, quick and firm. A maid.
She grasped the covers and pulled them up to her chin, hiding herself. She saw the hands on the sheet, knuckles swollen and clenched, an old woman’s hands, blue veined, thin skinned with dark patches on them, the thin gold wedding ring slipping around easily. They had once been slim and smooth.
The past receded. But where was she? This was not Ashworth House.
Then she remembered. Emily and her husband were away in Paris, gadding around again. They were having the plumbing altered in Ashworth House and she was obliged to stay with Caroline. She hated being dependent. It was the worst part of being a widow. In fact, in some respects perhaps it was the only part that was really hard to bear. Now she was answerable to no one. There was a certain degree of sympathy and respect for a widow, the last one of her generation alive in her family.
Of course all that could change. . now that Samuel Ellison had arrived from America. Who in all the green earth could have imagined that that would have happened? Alys had had a son. Edmund had never known that. He would have been. . she stopped. She had no idea how he would have felt about it. It hardly mattered now. In fact, there was only one thing which did matter, and control over that was fast slipping away from her.
Where was Mabel? What was the use of bringing a maid all the way from Ashworth House if the woman was not there when she was needed? The old lady reached out and yanked on the bell rope at the side of the bed so hard she was fortunate it did not come away in her hand.
It seemed forever until Mabel came, but when she did she was carrying a tray with hot tea. She set it on the small table by the bed, then opened the curtains and let in the sunlight. There was a sort of sanity in it, a reassuring, pedestrian business in the very ordinary sounds of the day: footsteps, horses’ hooves in the street, someone calling out, a bucket dropped, a girl somewhere laughing.
Perhaps she would find a way to keep control of it after all?
It was eight days since Caroline had come back from the theatre saying Samuel Ellison had turned up.
Breakfast was satisfying, if a meal taken in near silence, and alone except for Caroline, could be said to be satisfactory. Caroline was even more self-absorbed than usual. Sometimes she looked thoroughly miserable, which was very unbecoming in a woman of her age, who had little to offer except good temper, knowledge of how to behave in any company whatsoever, and the ability to run a household. Since Caroline had no household to speak of, and she no longer mixed in public society, an equable nature was her only asset.
Her mood this morning was one of excitement and unattractive smugness, as if she knew something amusing which she refused to share. That was even more unbecoming. It was bad enough in a young girl, who could not be expected to know better, and had to be taught. In a woman with grandchildren it was ridiculous.
The reason for her satisfaction manifested itself in the middle of the afternoon. Samuel Ellison arrived yet again. Caroline had not the sense to put him off, even after all Mariah had said, and it seemed he was totally insensitive to all hint or suggestion, however plain. This time he brought flowers and a box of Belgian sweetmeats. They were ostensibly for her, but she knew perfectly well they were really for Caroline; etiquette forbade he be so open about it.
The old lady accepted them in a matter-of-fact manner, and even considered having the maid take them up to her room straightaway so Caroline would not have them at all. She did not do it, and then was annoyed with herself for her failure of nerve. It would have served them both right.
Before tea was sent for and he was made thoroughly welcome, the old lady considered excusing herself. A headache or any other such thing would have served. Certainly neither Samuel nor Caroline would have tried to persuade her to stay. They might be only too delighted were she to retreat. It would leave them unchaperoned, of course. But would they have the decency to care? She could not even rely on that. Family honor required she remain, and so did a certain sense of self-preservation. At least if she was present she might exercise some degree of control over events. Samuel would hardly speak about her if she was sitting right in front of him. Yes, painful as it was, it was definitely better to stay. She could not afford the luxury of running away.
After the usual exchange of pleasantries, Caroline asked Samuel about his early days in New York.
“I cannot imagine what it must have been like for you and your mother, completely alone in a city teeming with immigrants, many of them with nothing but hope,” she said earnestly.
