of habit. They were in a small tobacconist and bookseller’s in Half Moon Street, just off Piccadilly, its shelves crowded, wooden floor creaking at every step. The smells of leather and snuff filled the air.
“Well. .” the dealer said dubiously. “More the same, others much like these. That’s all.”
There was something in the way he said it, a directness that caught Pitt’s attention. He was not certain it was a lie, but he felt it was.
“I’ll see them,” he said firmly.
Several dozen more cards were produced, and he and Tellman went through them fairly rapidly. They were of a wide variety, some quiet country scenes with pretty girls in the foreground, some almost domestic, some artificial and carefully posed. Many had a kind of innocence about them and were obviously amateur. Pitt recognized the round form and the type of foliage and patterns of light and shade he had seen the young men of the camera club study. He thought he even recognized parts of Hampstead Heath.
There were others more skilled, with subtler uses of light and shade, effects less obviously contrived. These were taken by enthusiasts with more practice and considerably more ability.
“I like the round ones,” Tellman observed, fingering through the cards. “I mean I like the shape of the picture. But it does waste space, and on the whole I’d say the square ones were better, in a way. Sort of different, not like the girl you might meet in the street, more like. . I don’t know-”
“Square ones?” Pitt interrupted.
“Yes, here. There’s half a dozen or so.” Tellman passed over four of them.
Pitt looked. The first was well done but ordinary enough. The second was very good indeed. The girl had dark, curly hair blowing untidily around her face and she was laughing. In the background was a distant scene of the river, with light on the water and figures out of focus, no more than suggestions. She looked happy, and as if she was ready for anything that might be fun, the sort of girl most men would love to spend a day with, or longer. The photographer had caught her at the perfect moment.
The next was equally good but extremely different. This girl was fair, almost ethereal. She gazed away from the camera; the light made an aureole of her hair, and her pale shoulders gleamed like satin where her gown had slipped a little low. It was a brilliant mixture of innocence and eroticism. She was leaning a little on a pedestal, either of stone or plaster, and there was a vine growing around it.
It stirred a memory in Pitt, but he could not place it.
The last picture was of a very formal beauty reclining on a chaise longue. He had seen a photograph of Lillie Langtry in a similar pose. Only this girl was looking directly at the camera and there was a slight smile on her lips, as if she was aware of a hidden irony. The longer he looked at it the more attractive it became, because of the intelligence in her face.
Then he remembered where he had seen the pillars in the photograph before, because the chaise longue came from the same place. They belonged to Delbert Cathcart; Pitt had seen them in his studio.
“These are very good,” he said thoughtfully.
“You like them?” the dealer asked with interest, scenting a possible sale. “I’ll make you a fair price.”
“Did you buy them legitimately?” Pitt said, frowning a little.
The man was indignant. “Of course I did! Do all my business fair and legal.”
“Good. Then you can tell me where you bought these. Was it from Miss Monderell?”
“Never ’eard of ’er. Bought ’em from the artist ’isself.”
“Did you? That would be Mr. Delbert Cathcart.”
“Well. .” He regarded Pitt nervously.
Pitt smiled. “Actually, it is Mr. Cathcart’s murder I am investigating.”
The man blanched visibly and swallowed. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Oh? Yeah?”
Pitt continued to smile. “I’m sure you would be eager to help as much as possible, Mr. Unsworth. I think if you have these pictures of Mr. Cathcart’s then you may have others as well, worth more money, perhaps. And before you make an error by denying that, I must advise you that I can very easily remain here to talk to you about the matter while Sergeant Tellman goes to fetch a warrant to search your premises. Or I could call the local constable to wait, and Sergeant Tellman and I could both go-”
“No. . no!” The thought of a constable in uniform was enough to settle Unsworth’s mind completely. It would be very bad for custom, particularly among those gentlemen who had rather private tastes. “I’ll show you the rest meself. ’Course I will. A bit o’ color in life is one thing, but I draw the line at murder. That’s quite diff ’rent-quite diff ’rent. Come wi’ me, gents. This way!” He led the way up rickety, twisting stairs.
The pictures that he had in the room above were a good deal more explicit than those in the front of the shop. Many women had abandoned gowns altogether and were posed with little more than a few wisps of fabric, a feathered fan or a posy of flowers. They were handsome women in early or middle youth, with firm, high breasts and rich thighs. Some of the poses were more erotic than others.
“All quite harmless, really,” Unsworth said, watching Pitt guardedly.
“Yes, they are,” Pitt agreed, conscious of Tellman at his elbow exuding disapproval. In his opinion women who sold themselves for this kind of picture were of the same general class as those who sold themselves in prostitution, only these girls were young and well fed and far from any outward sign of poverty or despair.
Unsworth relaxed. “Y’see?”
Pitt looked at them more carefully. He saw half a dozen or so which could have been Cathcart’s. The quality was there, the subtlety of light and shade, the more delicate suggestion of something beyond the mere flesh. One woman had a bunch of lilies in her hands half obscuring her breasts. It was a highly evocative mixture of purity and license. Another woman with rich dark hair lay sprawled on a Turkish carpet, a brass hookah behind her, as if she was about to partake of the smoke from some pungent herb. The longer he looked at it, the more certain Pitt became that it was Cathcart’s work. The symbolism was there, the skill of suggestion, as well as the practiced use of the camera itself.
But none of these, good as they were, were worth the price of Lily Monderell’s teapot, let alone the watercolor.
“Yes, I see,” he said aloud. “Now how about the others, the expensive ones? Do you bring them to me, or do I have to look for them myself?”
Unsworth hesitated, clearly torn as to how much he could still hope to get away with.
Pitt turned to Tellman. “Sergeant, go and see if you can find-”
“All right!” Unsworth said loudly, his face dark, his voice edged with anger. “I’ll show ’em to yer meself! Yer an ’ard man! Wot’s the ’arm in a few pictures? Nobody’s ’urt. Nobody’s in it as doesn’t wanter be. It ain’t real!”
“The pictures, Mr. Unsworth,” Pitt said grimly. He would not argue realities of the mind with him.
Ungraciously Unsworth produced the pictures, slamming them down on the table in front of Pitt, then stood back, his arms folded.
These were different. Innocence was gone completely. Pitt heard Tellman’s intake of breath between his teeth and did not need to turn sideways to know the expression on his face, the revulsion, the hurt inside. Some of them still possessed an art, albeit a twisted one. In the first four the women were leering, their bodies in attitudes of half ecstasy already, but vulgar, totally physical. There was no suggestion of tenderness, only appetite.
He flipped through them quickly. He would rather not have looked at all. Each one of these women had not so long ago been a child, searching for love, not lust. They may have been used rather than cared for, they may have been lonely or frightened or bored, but they had still been outside the adult world of selfish, physical use of one person by another merely to relieve a hunger.
Except, of course, for those who long knew abuse from the very people who were supposed to protect them. And looking at some of these sad, worldly eyes, that might have described a few of them. There was already a self-disgust in some that was harsher than any of the physical degradations.
Others were worse again, mimicking pain inflicted for pleasure, with the implication that it held some kind of secret joy reached only by breaching all the barriers. Some were obscene, some blasphemous. Many women were dressed in mockery of those in holy orders, nuns with skirts torn open, hurled to the ground, or over the banisters of stairs, as if rape was on a level with martyrdom and a kind of religious ecstasy was achieved by submission to violence.
Pitt felt a sickness churn in his stomach. The moment he looked he wished he had not seen them. How did one erase from the mind such images? He would not want it to, but the next time he saw a nun this would return to him, and he would be unable to meet her eyes in case she saw what was in his mind. Something was already soiled
