Half Moon Street (26 page)

What terrible isolation, what loneliness and fear all the time that Caroline had never guessed, horror that had never entered her imagination.

Perhaps some of these things needed to be said, emotions stirred and disturbed, painful questions asked, so a thread of understanding could be woven between people who would never experience for themselves the things that tortured others who sat only a few feet away.

She leaned forward to watch the third and final act of the play.

Afterwards she went backstage to his dressing room, as she always did after a major performance. She was as nervous as if she herself was about to step out in front of the audience and she did not know her lines.

She had rehearsed a dozen times what she was going to say to him, but what if he would not see her? What if he would not listen? She would have to make him . . . insist. She could be as determined as Cecily Antrim or anyone else. She loved Joshua, wholly and completely, and she was not going to lose him without fighting with every skill and strength she possessed.

The dressing room door was closed. She could hear laughter inside. How could he laugh, when he had left her in the morning without speaking?

She knocked. She would not go in uninvited. She might see something she would prefer not to. That thought was like ice inside her. It made her feel sick.

There were footsteps and the door opened. Joshua stood there in a robe, half changed from his costume. He looked startled, then his face softened a little. He pulled the door wide without saying anything. There were two other people inside, a man and a woman.

Relief flooded over Caroline, and guilt. He had not been alone with anyone.

They were actors she knew from other plays, and they welcomed her. She congratulated them all on the performance, quite honestly. She could hardly believe how normal her voice sounded.

They seemed to talk endlessly. Would they never leave? Could she say anything to suggest they did? No . . . that would be unforgivably rude.

Then the words were out. “I’m so glad I came, it was so much richer than I could have guessed,” she said distinctly. “There is something about a first night that can never be repeated exactly. And I nearly didn’t.” She avoided Joshua’s eyes. “My mother-in-law is staying with us at the moment, and she was not at all well today. Something . . . happened . . . which distressed her more than I would have thought possible.”

The others expressed their concern.

“Should you be home early?” the man asked.

Caroline looked at Joshua at last.

“Is she ill?” he said. His voice was unreadable.

The other two excused themselves, graciously, and left.

“Is she?” Joshua repeated.

“No,” Caroline replied. He was tired, and the mood was too fragile between them to play with words. “She did something wicked, and today I discovered it, and when I faced her she told me why.”

He looked puzzled. He did not really want to know. He tolerated the old lady because he felt he should, perhaps for Caroline’s sake.

“Wicked?” he said dubiously.

She must continue. “Yes, I think so. She wrote a very forward letter to Samuel Ellison, inviting him to call yesterday afternoon, and signed it with my name.” Why did he not say something? She hurried on. “When he arrived she deliberately left the room, which she has never done before, then sent Joseph to fetch you.”

“Why?” he said slowly. “I know she disapproves of me because I am an actor and a Jew, but as much as that?”

The tears stung her eyes and she felt her throat ache. “No!” She wanted to touch him, but it would be wrong now. He might see it as pity. “No! It has nothing to do with you. She is afraid that Samuel knows something about his own mother which was true about Mariah also, something dreadful, of which she was so ashamed she could not bear anyone else to know. She worried that he would tell me, and so she wanted you to throw him out so he would never return. Then her secret would be safe. She was so terrified of it she did not care if she ruined my happiness. She would do anything to stop me knowing, and of course the rest of the family as well. She felt she could not live if we did.”

He stared at her in amazement. He was very pale, but it was not anger in his face, it was horror.

“I know what it is,” she said quietly. “And I think I can forgive her for what she has done. If you don’t mind, I would rather not tell you what she suffered, but I will if I must.”

His face relaxed. He was too tired, perhaps too shaken to smile, but there was a gentleness in him she did not mistake.

“No,” he said softly. “No, I don’t want to know. Let her keep her secret.”

The tears spilled down her cheeks and she found herself sniffing and swallowing hard. “I love you,” she whispered, and sniffed again.

He stood up and reached out a little tentatively. Suddenly she realized how much he had been hurt. He had doubted . . . feared.

She put her arms around him and held him so hard she felt him wince. “I’m sorry I didn’t behave so you knew that,” she said into his shoulder.

His arms tightened until he was holding her just as closely as she held him. He did not say anything, just moved his lips over her hair, slowly.

CHAPTER TEN

Pitt and Tellman still pursued the matter of Henri Bonnard and his quarrel with Orlando Antrim. Frankly, Pitt was not certain that they would learn anything useful from it, even if they were to discover the entire truth of the matter. If Bonnard had disappeared of his own volition it might well be worrying, and extremely irritating to the French Embassy, but it was not a police matter. The only real connection with Cathcart’s death was photography. Their resemblance to one another was coincidental and he could see no importance in it. He was perfectly certain that the body found at Horseferry Stairs was Cathcart and that it was Bonnard with whom Orlando Antrim had quarreled.

“Do you think it was really about pictures?” Tellman said dubiously as they rode in a hansom towards Kew, where they had been told the camera club was photographing interesting foliage in the tropical glasshouses. “Would anyone really commit murder over a photograph? I mean,” he added hastily, “a photograph that wasn’t of somebody doing something they shouldn’t.”

“I doubt it,” Pitt admitted. “But I suppose it could have been the start of a quarrel which got out of hand.”

Tellman sat forward morosely. “I think I’m just getting to understand people and know why they do what they do, then I get on a case like this, and I feel as if I know nothing.”

Pitt looked at his angular shoulders and dour, lantern-jawed face and saw the confusion in him. Tellman had such set ideas about society and people, about what was just and what was not. They sprang from the poverty of his youth, the underlying anger that fueled his desire to change things, to see labor rewarded and find some greater equality among people who worked and those who, as far as he could see, did not and yet possessed so much. Investigating the private tragedies of their lives constantly upset his preconceptions and obliged him to feel a pity and an understanding he did not wish to, where it would have been so much easier, and more comfortable, simply to have hated.

Now the photographs, which these privileged young men obviously cared about so much, seemed to him both beautiful and trivial, but not a comprehensible motive for murder.

Pitt was inclined to agree with him. But at the moment they had little better to pursue. No one in the area where Cathcart lived had observed anything helpful, and Lily Monderell was telling nothing more about the photographs she had removed and sold almost immediately at such an excellent profit. Once again they were back to photographs. It seemed the motive lay somewhere within them.

They traveled the rest of the way to Kew Gardens and went in to find the tropical house, a magnificent tower of glass containing giant palm trees with fronds more than a yard across, exotic ferns, trailing vines with flowers, and bromeliads blooming in pale, lustrous colors.

Tellman drew in his breath deeply, smelling the heat and the damp, the rich humus. He had never experienced anything like it before.

Pitt saw the photographers first, balancing their tripods carefully on the uneven surfaces of the earth, angling cameras up to tangled vines or intricate patterns of branches, trying to catch the light on the surface of a leaf. He knew they would be furious to be interrupted. He also knew that unless he forced his way into their attention he would stand waiting until the light faded at the end of the day.

He approached a fair-haired young man with a keen face, at that moment shading his eyes as he stared at the crown of a soaring palm.

Pitt craned his neck upward and saw a tracery of vines across the roof, erratic circles and curves against the geometry of the paned glass. It was a pity to interrupt, but necessary. Beauty and imagination would have to wait.

“Excuse me!”

The young man waved his other hand to ward off the disturbance.

“Later, sir, you may have my entire attention. Come back in half an hour, if you would be so good.”

“I’m sorry, I have not half an hour to spare,” Pitt apologized. He meant it. “I am Superintendent Pitt of the Bow Street station, and I am investigating the murder of a photographer.”

That captured the young man’s concentration. He abandoned the palm and stared at Pitt with wide blue eyes. “One of our club? Murdered? My God . . . who?”

“Not one of your club, Mr. . . .”

“McKellar, David McKellar. You said a photographer?”

“Delbert Cathcart.”

“Oh!” He seemed vaguely relieved. “Oh yes, of course. I read about that. Robbed and thrown into the river, so it seems. I’m terribly sorry. He was brilliant.” He colored faintly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound callous. Of course a death is terrible, whoever’s it is. From his point of view, I daresay his talent is irrelevant. But I know nothing about it. What could I tell you?”

“On the morning Mr. Cathcart was killed there was a quarrel between Orlando Antrim, the actor, and Mr. Henri Bonnard of the French Embassy,” Pitt explained.

McKellar looked startled.

“Do you know anything about it?” Pitt pressed. “It was apparently on the subject of photographs.”

“Was it?” McKellar seemed perplexed but not entirely at a loss, as he might have been were the subject to make no sense to him at all.

“Do people quarrel over photographs?” Pitt asked.

“Well . . . I suppose so. What has that to do with poor Cathcart?”

“Do you sell your pictures?” Tellman said suddenly. “I mean, is there money in it?” He glanced around at the cameras and their tripods.

McKellar colored a little more deeply. “Well, sometimes. It—it helps funds, you know. Costs a bit, all this stuff. Not that . . .” He trailed off and stopped, standing a little uncomfortably.

Pitt waited.

“I mean . . .” McKellar fidgeted. “Look, I think I may be speaking a trifle out of turn, you know? I’ve just sold the odd picture here and there, that’s all.”

“Of vines and leaves?” Tellman said incredulously. “People pay for that?”

McKellar avoided his eyes. “No . . . no, I shouldn’t think so. Mostly a nice picture of a young lady, perhaps a few flowers . . . more . . . more personal, more charm, that sort of thing.”

“A young lady with perhaps a few flowers,” Pitt repeated, raising his eyebrows a little. “And a gown, or not?”

McKellar looked wretched. “Well, I daresay. Sometimes . . . not.” He met Pitt’s eyes and this time he was quite vehement. “Just a bit— artistic. Not vulgar!”

Pitt smiled. He carefully avoided Tellman’s glance. “I see. And these sales supplement your funds for the expense of films and so on?”

“Yes.”

“And do the young ladies in question receive part of this profit?”

“They get copies of . . . of one or two of the pictures.”

“And are they aware that the rest are sold—to be bought, I presume, by the general public?” Pitt enquired.

McKellar was silent for a moment. “I . . . I think so,” he said unhappily. “I mean . . . the reason’s clear, isn’t it?”

“Perfectly,” Pitt agreed. “You wish to make some money in order to finance your hobby.” His voice was colder than he had meant it to be.

McKellar flushed bright pink.

“And where are these photographs sold?” Pitt pressed. “Sergeant Tellman will take down the names and addresses of all the dealers you have business with.”

“Well . . . I . . .”

“If you can’t remember them then we’ll accompany you to wherever you have the information, and take it from there.”

McKellar gave up. He swallowed convulsively. “It’s all quite innocent, you know!” he protested. “Just . . . just pictures!”

In the afternoon Pitt and Tellman began visiting the dealers in postcards.

To begin with, all they saw were pretty pictures of a variety of young women in fairly conventional poses, their gentle faces looking out at the camera, some awkwardly self-conscious, others boldly, with a smile, even a challenge. There was nothing to be offended by, except the possibility that they had been denied a share of the profits. But then, considering the cost of cameras, film, development and so on, the profits were probably extremely small. The postcards themselves sold for a few pence, and they were of a good quality. The greatest gain from them was the pleasure in the creation and the possession.

“Is that all you have?” Pitt asked, without hope of learning anything further that was of value; it was a matter 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.