Half Moon Street (33 page)

He had been very patient in enduring her self-centeredness. Or perhaps he had not noticed? That was a far uglier thought. Could she hurt so much, and he be oblivious to it?

Of course! Why not? She had been oblivious to his feelings. Had she for an instant wondered how hard it was for him to be the new-comer in her family, to see her children and grandchildren and know he could never have his own? They might learn to love him, but that was not the same. There was an essence of belonging that . . . that what? Mariah Ellison belonged, and she had lived all her adult life imprisoned in an icy hell of loneliness beyond anything Caroline could imagine. She had glimpsed its horror, but she had no concept of what it would do to her over time. Time was a dimension one could not create in the mind; it was change, exhaustion, the slow dying of hope.

She understood so much more of why the old lady had become the person she was, but what had made Edmund Ellison seek his pleasures in cruelty? What devils had crawled into his soul and warped it out of human shape?

She would never know. The answer was buried with him, and best let go now, left to drift into the darkness of the past and become covered over with other memories.

“He was brilliant, wasn’t he?” Joshua’s voice came softly out of the shadows beside her. Through the weight of her cloak and his coat she could feel his body stiffen.

“Oh yes,” she agreed honestly. “But I wonder if it will make him happy.”

He was silent for several minutes before finally asking her, “What do you mean?”

She must word this exactly as she meant it, no carelessness, no fumbling for the right way and missing it.

“He conveyed a dreadful understanding of Hamlet’s pain,” she began. “As if he had looked at a kind of madness and seen its face. I am not sure if I believe one can portray that simply from imagination. Turn one horror into the image of another, probably, but not call it up without a kind of experience, some taste of its reality. It was still there in him long after the curtain had fallen.”

They were moving faster through the darkness, only occasional lights from other vehicles moving past and disappearing.

“Do you think so?”

There was no denial in his voice.

She moved closer to him, so slightly only she was aware of it.

“What my mother-in-law told me made me see many things I had not understood before. One of them is the kind of damage that cruelty can inflict, especially when it is held secret where it cannot heal. To be clever is a great gift, and certainly the world needs its clever people, but to be kind is what matters. To be clever or gifted will make people laugh, and think, and perhaps grow in certain ways; but to be generous of spirit is what will bring happiness. I would not wish anyone I loved to be a success as an artist if it meant that he was a failure as a human being.”

He reached out his hand and slid it over hers, gently, then tightened it.

The hansom swayed around a street corner and straightened again.

He turned in his seat and leaned forward. Very gently he kissed her lips. She felt his breath warm on her cheek, and put up her gloved hand to touch his hair.

He kissed her again, and she clung tighter to him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Pitt received Caroline’s letter with the address of the second seller of photographs and postcards, also in Half Moon Street, and with a deep anger inside him, he went with Tellman to see the man.

“No!” the man protested indignantly, standing behind his counter and staring at the two policemen who had intruded into his place of business and were already costing him good custom. “No, I don’t sell no pictures except proper, decent ones as yer could show to a lady!”

“I don’t believe you,” Pitt said tersely. “But it will be easy enough to find out. I shall post a constable here at the door and he can examine every one you sell. And if they are as good as you say, then in four or six weeks we’ll know that.”

The man’s face went white, his eyes small and glittering.

“And then I’ll apologize to you,” Pitt finished.

The man swore venomously, but under his breath so the words were barely audible.

“Now,” Pitt said briskly, “if you will take another look at this picture you can tell me when you got it in, how many copies you have sold and to whom, Mr. . . . ?”

“Hadfield. . . . An’ I can’t remember ’oo I sold ’em ter!” His voice rose to a squeal of indignation.

“Yes, you can,” Pitt insisted. “Pictures like that are sold only to people you know. Regular customers. But of course if you can’t remember who likes this sort of thing, then you’ll just have to give me a list of all of them, and I’ll go and question them—”

“All right! All right!” Hadfield’s eyes burned with fury. “Yer a vicious man, Inspector.”

“Superintendent,” Pitt corrected him. “It was a vicious murder. I want all your customers who like this sort of picture. And if you leave any out, I shall presume you are doing it to protect them because you know them to be involved. Do you understand me?”

“ ’O course I understand yer! D’yer take me fer a bleedin’ fool?”

“If I take you at all, Mr. Hadfield, it will be for accessory to murder,” Pitt replied. “While you are making me a list, I shall look through the rest of your stock to see if there is anything else that might tell me who killed Cathcart and who knew about it . . . possibly even why.”

The man flung his arms out angrily. “Well, there y’are! Seein’ as I can’t stop yer. An Englishman’s ’ome not bein’ ’is castle, like, anymore, yer’d best ’elp yerself. Cheap way o’ getting yer ’ands on pictures an’ lookin’ at ’em for nothin’, if yer ask me!”

Pitt ignored him and began to go through the drawers and shelves of pictures, postcards and slim volumes of drawings. Tellman started at the other end.

Many of them were fairly ordinary, the sort of poses he had seen a hundred times before in the last week, pretty girls in a variety of flattering clothes.

He glanced at Tellman and saw the concentration in his face, and now and again a slight smile. Those were the sort of girls he would like. He might well be too shy to approach them, but he would admire them from a distance, think them attractive and decent enough.

He bent back to the task, and pulled out a new drawer with small books in it. He opened the first one, more out of curiosity than the belief that it would be relevant to Cathcart’s death. They were drawings in black and white. There was a kind of lush, imaginative beauty about them, and the draftsmanship was superb. They were also obscene, figures with leering faces, and both male and female organs exposed.

He closed it again quickly. Had they been more crudely drawn, they would have been less powerful and less disturbing. He had heard that nature could become so distorted as to do this to people, but this was not the representation of the tragedy of deformity, it was a salacious artistic comment on appetite, and he felt soiled by it. He understood why men like Marchand crusaded so passionately against pornography, not for the offense to themselves but the strange erotic disturbance to others as well, the degrading of all emotional value. In some way it robbed all people of a certain dignity because it touched upon humanity itself.

He did not bother to open the other books of drawings. Cathcart dealt only in photographs. He moved to the next drawer of cards.

Tellman grunted and slammed a drawer shut.

Pitt looked up and saw the distress in the sergeant’s face. His eyes were narrowed and his lips drawn back a little as if he felt an inward pain. In spite of all his experience, this confused him. He expected something higher of artists. Like many of little learning, he admired education. He believed it lifted men above the lowest in them and offered a path out of the trap of ignorance and all the ugliness that went with it. This was a disillusionment he did not expect or understand.

There was nothing for Pitt to say. It was a private distress, at least for the moment better not put into words. In fact Tellman would find it easier to deal with if he did not even realize Pitt was aware of it.

The next drawer of pictures was much the same as the last, pleasant, a few rather risqué, but nothing more than the art of young men seeing how far they dare go in putting their fantasies into expression. Some were the usual rectangular professional plates, slick, showing the same, rather repetitive use of light and shade, angle or exposure.

There were also several of the round pictures which held considerably more individuality, although they were also less skilled. Sometimes the form was not as sharp, the balance less well disposed. These were the amateur ones, taken by the likes of the camera club members he had interviewed.

One or two of them were good, if a trifle theatrical. He recognized poses that seemed to be taken directly from the stage. There was a fairly obvious Ophelia, not like Cecily Antrim but alive and disturbingly frantic, on the borders of madness. And yet it was a fascinating picture. She looked no more than twenty at the most, with dark hair and wide eyes. Her lips were parted and faintly erotic.

A few more were rather Arthurian, reminding him of the pre-Raphaelite painters, definitely romantic. Something in the background of one of them caught his attention, a use of lighting rather than a specific article. In the center was a young girl kneeling in vigil. On the altar were a chalice and a knight’s sword. It made him think of Joan of Arc.

In another a woman in despair leapt to her feet as if fleeing from a mirror, presumably intended as the Lady of Shalott.

A third came from the classical Greek theatre, a young girl about to be sacrificed. The same length of carved wood was used in all three, very cleverly. It gave them a richness of texture as the light and shade accentuated the repeated pattern.

Pitt had seen it before, but it took him a moment or two to remember where. Then it came to him. He had passed by it as he had gone from Cecily Antrim’s dressing room to the back door.

“Where did you buy these pictures?” he said aloud.

Hadfield did not even look up from the list he was writing. “What’s the matter now?” he said wearily. “What crime are you trying to tie them up with?”

“Where did you get them?” Pitt repeated. “Who brought them to you?”

Hadfield put down his pen, splattering ink over the page, and swore. He came over to Pitt irritably and stared over his shoulder at the photographs.

“I dunno. Some young photographer who thinks he can make a few bob. Why?” His voice was laden with sarcasm. “What terrible offense ter ’umanity and civilization can yer see in these? Got a dirty mind, you ’ave. Looks as innocent as a cup o’ tea ter me.”

“Who brought them to you?” Pitt repeated, a steel edge of anger to his voice, although it was misery he was feeling inside. He did not want the answer he was almost certain would come.

“I dunno! Do you think I ask the name and address of every young amateur who comes here with an ’andful o’ pictures? They’re good pictures. Nothin’ wrong wif ’em. I bought ’em. Fair sale. Nothin’ more ter say.”

“Describe him!”

“Describe ’im! Yer crazy, or summink?” He was thoroughly aggrieved. “ ’E was a young man wot fancies ’isself as a photographer, an’ ’e in’t bad.”

“Tall or short? Dark or fair? Describe him!” Pitt said between closed teeth.

“Tall! Fair! But there’s nothin’ wrong wif ’em! You can find pictures like this all over London . . . all over England. Wot’s the matter wif yer?”

“Did he see your other pictures? Like the one of Ophelia chained up in the boat?”

The man hesitated. In that instant Pitt knew that it was Orlando who had brought the photographs, and that he had seen Cathcart’s picture of his mother. Until then Pitt had been clinging to the hope that it had been Bellmaine, or even, by some obscure chance, Ralph Marchand, pursuing his crusade against pornography.

“Sergeant Tellman!” Pitt turned sideways, his voice sharp.

Tellman stood up, letting the postcards fall onto the floor.

“Yes sir?”

“Go and find the nearest constable to stand guard here. I think we should continue this discussion at Bow Street.”

“All right!” Hadfield snapped. “ ’E could ’ave! I dunno!”

What was his name?”

“I’ll ’ave ter look at me records.”

“Then do it!”

Muttering under his breath, Hadfield went back to his desk, and it was several silent, painful minutes before he returned, waving a piece of paper. There was no name on it, simply the amount of money, a brief description of the photograph, and the date—two days before Cathcart’s death.

“Thank you,” Pitt said quietly.

Hadfield’s face conveyed the words he did not dare to say.

Pitt wrote him a receipt in exchange for the photographs he was sure were taken by Orlando Antrim, also the sales receipt with its date.

Outside the air seemed cold.

Tellman looked at him questioningly.

“Orlando Antrim,” Pitt answered. “He was here two days before Cathcart’s death. If he saw that picture of his mother, and perhaps some of the others, how do you suppose he felt?”

Tellman’s face was pinched with misery, and there was an emotional conflict in him that was painfully apparent. “I don’t know,” he said, stumbling a little as he stepped off the pavement onto the road to cross. “I don’t know.”

Pitt tried to imagine himself in Orlando’s place. Cecily was an actress. It was her profession to portray emotion in public and behave in such a way as to stir any of a score of passions. He must be used to it. But could anything make this acceptable to him?

Pitt could see the grotesque picture of Ophelia in his mind’s eye so clearly there was no need to pull it out of his pocket to remind himself. It was a woman bound by literal, physical chains, but appearing to be in a paroxysm of sexual ecstasy, as if the bondage she experienced excited her as no freedom could. It suggested that she hungered to be overpowered, forced into submission. It was lust that lit her face as she lay there, knees apart, skirts raised. There was nothing of tenderness in it, certainly nothing that could be thought of as love.

If Pitt had seen his own mother like that, for any reason at all, it would have revolted him beyond measure. Even now, striding along the footpath at an increasing speed, he could not allow his mind to touch such an idea. It polluted the very wellspring of his own life. His mother was not that kind of woman. His intelligence told him she had loved his father. He had heard them laughing together often enough, long ago, and seen them kiss, seen the way they looked at each other. He knew the nature and the acts of love.

But that picture had nothing to do with love, or the things men and women do in private in generosity, hunger and intimacy. It was a mockery of them all.

Of course the world was full of people whose ideas were different, whose acts he would have found offensive if he had considered them. But within one’s own family it was different.

Had he seen Charlotte portrayed that way . . . he felt the blood rise in his face and his muscles lock, his fists clench. If any man were ever to speak coarsely to her he would be tempted to violence. If anyone actually touched her Pitt would probably strike him and consider the consequences afterwards.

For anyone to think of Jemima in that way, and then use her so, would break his heart.

Cecily Antrim had such profound understanding of so many different kinds and conditions of people, how could she fail to grasp the distress any man must feel to see his own mother in such a way? Had she no conception of the grief and the confusion that had to follow?

He thought of Orlando. If he had seen that picture, or any of them, he would have walked away from the shop like a blind man; the world of footpath and stones and sky, soot in the air, clatter of people, smell of smoke and drains and horses would make no mark on him at all. He would be consumed by the inner pain, and perhaps hatred.

And above all, he would be asking the same question Pitt was— Why? Was any cause worth fighting in such a way? Pitt could ask it, and still be hurt by the disillusion over a woman whose glorious talent he had admired, who had made him think, and above all, care about her on the stage. How infinitely more must Orlando have felt?

Pitt had been convinced from the beginning that Cathcart’s death was a crime of passion, not simply escape, even from the life-draining clutches of blackmail. That would induce hatred and fear, but there was more than either of those in the way Cathcart had been laid in the mockery of Millais, the exact replica, a soul-deep injury that could not be undone.

“D’you think he knew who took that picture?” Tellman’s voice, which cut across Pitt’s thoughts, was harsh, yet so quiet he barely heard it.

“No,” Pitt replied as they both stopped at the next curb while a heavy wagon rolled past, horses leaning forward into the harness, the wheels rumbling over the cobbles. “No. He saw it two days before Cathcart’s death. I think it took him that long to find out.” He started forward across the street. He did not even know where he was going; at the moment he simply needed to put in a physical effort because he could not bear to keep still.

“How could he do that?” Tellman asked, running a couple of steps to keep up. “Where would he begin? He can’t have asked her. In fact, if I were in his place I couldn’t even have spoken to her.”