Half Moon Street (35 page)

In the meantime he had to follow the steps of Orlando Antrim and find the proof of exactly how he had murdered Cathcart, and then, when he had it, go and arrest him. There was an anger against Cecily Antrim inside him like a stone, heavy and hard. Her arrogant certainty that she knew best how to pursue her cause, without thought for the consequences, had destroyed her son. He was angry with her for what she had done and because she also woke in him a terrible pity. Could Pitt ever, unthinkingly, pursuing what he believed to be justice or truth, do the same to his own children? His emotions were as strong, perhaps their consequences as profound.

He met Tellman in Battersea, at the far end of the bridge, just after nine o’clock. Tellman was there before him, a forlorn figure standing in the early morning river mist, his coat collar turned up, his hat pulled forward and down over his eyes. Pitt wondered if he had had any breakfast.

“I’ve been thinking,” Tellman said as he heard Pitt’s footsteps and looked up. “He didn’t need to ask about where he lived; he knew that already. And he wouldn’t want to be too open in trying to find out about the household.”

“Household?” Pitt asked.

“Yes!” Tellman was impatient, shivering a little. “You don’t go attacking someone if you think there’s a resident manservant that’ll come to his rescue, or even a maid who’ll remember you, maybe scream the place down. First thing, he’d go and see if there are near neighbors, and how he’s going to get there and away again.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Pitt agreed quickly, increasing his pace. He was wondering if Orlando had intended to use the dress and the chains right from the beginning, or if it had been an inspiration only when he realized they were still there, but he did not say so aloud.

“And what weapon did he mean to use?” Tellman went on morosely as they walked together along the road towards the river and Cathcart’s house. “Or did it go too far and turn into murder?”

Pitt had not wanted to face that question, but it was inevitable. “The time he chose the weapon would answer that.”

“We don’t know what it was,” Tellman reminded him. “It’s probably at the bottom of the river by now anyway. That’s what I would have done with it, wouldn’t you?”

“Unless I dropped it by mistake, in the dark,” Pitt replied. “I should have asked Mrs. Geddes if there was anything missing.” He blamed himself. That was an oversight.

“We could still do that. We know where she lives.” Tellman was half offering.

It should be done. Pitt accepted.

“Right!” Tellman squared his shoulders. “I’ll meet you at the Crown and Anchor at one.” He set off at a smart pace, leaving Pitt to pursue the less-clear objective of tracing Orlando’s investigation into Cathcart’s daily life and domestic arrangements.

He turned and went back towards the Battersea Bridge Road, away from the river and the soft mist curling up from it with the smell of the incoming tide. Autumn was in the air, and the smells of turned earth, wood smoke, chrysanthemums, the last mowing of the grass. When Orlando had come this way did he really think only to quarrel with Cathcart and then walk away? Why? He had no threat against him, no way to stop him from doing such a thing again as often as he wished to, until Cecily was no longer worth photographing, if that time ever came.

He would not have trusted to finding a weapon when he got there, he would have obtained it first. Pitt reached the center of the village, the shops and public houses, places where Orlando might have made enquiries or purchased something to use as a weapon.

It must have been something of considerable weight to land a blow sufficiently hard to kill a man. A length of plumbing pipe would do, or perhaps the handle of a garden implement.

He walked past a chemist’s shop with blue glass bottles in the window, and a grocer’s, and crossed the street. There was a small row of houses opposite a milliner and glovemaker. On the near side was a wine merchant. Would Orlando ask there? A bottle was an excellent weapon.

All Orlando had really needed to know was if Cathcart had any resident household staff. Laundry could be done easily enough by a woman who went in every day. Cooking was another matter.

Pitt had an advantage. He knew the answers already. There was only Mrs. Geddes. Orlando might have wasted much time before he had learned that. Also, Pitt did not have to be discreet.

He tried the laundry, the dairy, the greengrocer and the butcher. No one remembered anybody answering Orlando’s description. He might have been there, he might not. They could not say.

He was at the Crown and Anchor before one, and had a glass of cider waiting for Tellman when he arrived.

“Nothing missing,” Tellman said with a nod of thanks. He drank thirstily, looking towards the open door to the kitchen, from which drifted the smell of steak and kidney pudding. He was very partial to a good suet crust, as was Pitt himself. “Going to get some?” There was no need to specify what he meant.

In the early afternoon they started to consider where Orlando would have found or purchased a suitable weapon.

“Well, it won’t have been something you’d think of as meant for harm,” Tellman said, shaking his head. He looked profoundly unhappy, in spite of his excellent meal. “Who’d have thought people that clever would end up murdering someone?” he said miserably. “They’ve got a kind of . . . magic . . . in their minds. It really had me . . .” He stumbled for words to express the wonder he had felt, the excitement and awe at the world it had allowed him to glimpse and wooed him to enter. He had been more than willing to go. He would certainly not admit it to anyone at the Bow Street station, but he might one day go and watch a whole Shakespeare play, right from beginning to end. There was something about it. In spite of the fact that they were kings and queens and princes, the feelings in them were as real as those in the people he knew from day to day, it was just that they knew how to put them into those wonderful words.

Pitt knew no answer was necessary. He understood Tellman’s feelings. He shared them.

They went first to the ironmonger’s. It seemed the obvious place to start. The entire shop was crammed with every conceivable piece of equipment for the house, from watering cans to jelly molds, carriage foot warmers to chop covers and game ovens. There were gas lanterns, jelly bag stands, corkscrews and table gongs, toast racks, cake baskets, sardine boxes, butter coolers. There were also spades, forks, scythes, baby perambulators and a newly invented torpedo washer, which claimed to launder linens better than ever before. There were tin baths, carpenter’s tools and an array of knives for every purpose imaginable. He saw trussing needles, larding pins, turnip scoops, egg whisks, meat saws and a heavy ceramic rolling pin.

The words were out before he had time to reconsider.

“That’s a nice piece. Have you sold any of those lately?” He picked it up and felt the solidity of it. It was a perfect weapon, round, hard, heavy, and easily handled.

“That’s the last one I got, till more come in,” the ironmonger replied. “You’re right, sir, it’s a good one. That’ll be ninepence to you, sir.”

Pitt was quite sure it would be ninepence to anybody, but he did not say so. He might have bought a new rolling pin for Charlotte, but not this one.

“Did you sell one about two weeks ago?” he persisted.

“Probably. We sell a lot of those. They’re very good quality.” The man was determined to do business.

“I daresay,” Pitt replied with a sudden wave of anger and unhappiness. “But I’m a police officer investigating the murder of Mr. Cathcart, about a mile away from here, and I need an answer to my question. Did you sell one of those exactly two weeks ago to a tall, young man, probably with fair hair?”

The ironmonger paled visibly. “I—I didn’t know there was anything wrong! He seemed . . . very quiet, very nicely spoken. But, no, not fair hair, as I recall, rather more . . . sort of . . .”

“His hair doesn’t matter!” Pitt said impatiently. “Was he tall, slender, young . . . about twenty-five?” Although Orlando could have disguised that too, if he had thought of it.

“I . . . I can’t remember. I sold one that day, though. I know that because I keep very close watch on my stock. Never run out of any household ironmongery if I can help it. If it can be bought, it can be bought here at Foster and Sons.”

“Thank you. You may be required to testify to that, so please keep your records safe.”

“I will! I will!”

Outside on the footpath Tellman stopped and stared at Pitt, his face somber.

“There isn’t much more to do, is there.” It was a statement, almost a surrender. “He could have spent the time till dark in any one of the pubs around here. If you want I’ll go to all of them and ask, but I reckon we don’t need to know, now that we’ve got the rolling pin.”

“No . . . not really,” Pitt agreed. He smiled and straightened his shoulders a little. “We’d better go and see if we can find it, although it’s probably in the river. It would be proof. We’ll go through the crime, see what must have happened.”

Tellman pulled his coat collar up and they set out back to the house on the river, walking silently. They must do it before dark, and there were only a couple of hours left.

Mrs. Geddes had been sent for and was at the house waiting, her face full of mistrust as she watched them enter the hallway and solemnly begin the reenactment of the murder, Pitt taking the part of Orlando, Tellman of Cathcart.

Of course they had no idea of what conversation there might have been between the two men, or what reason Orlando had given for his visit. They began from a point which was incontestable.

“He must have stood here,” Tellman said, thin-lipped, placing himself near the pedestal where the vase had been smashed and the alternative set in its stead.

“I wonder why?” Pitt said thoughtfully. “He had his back to Orlando when he was struck, which makes me wonder how Orlando disguised the pin. No one goes to visit carrying a rolling pin, even wrapped in brown paper.”

“Say he’d just bought it . . . on his way?” Tellman suggested, frowning with dislike of the thought even as he said it.

“A young actor?” Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Don’t see him as a pastry cook, do you?”

“A gift?”

“For whom? A young lady? His mother? Do you see Cecily Antrim rolling pastry?”

Tellman gave him a sour look. “Then he must have had it disguised somehow. Maybe rolled in papers, like a sheaf of pictures or something?”

“That sounds more probable. So if Cathcart were standing where you are, and Orlando here”—Pitt gestured—“then Cathcart unquestionably had his attention on something else, or he would have noticed Orlando unwrap his pictures and take out a rolling pin, and he would have been alarmed . . . it’s an act without reasonable explanation.”

“Then he didn’t see,” Tellman said decisively. “He was going somewhere, leading the way. Orlando was following. He hit Cathcart from behind . . . we know that anyway.”

Pitt went through the motion of raising his arm as if to strike Tellman. Tellman crumpled to his knees, rather carefully, to avoid banging himself on the now-bare wooden floor. He lay down, more or less as Cathcart might have fallen.

“Now what?” he asked.

Pitt had been considering that. They had little idea how long Orlando had been there, but knowing what he had done, he had had no time to hesitate for more than a few minutes.

“If you think you’re going to put me in any dress . . .” Tellman began.

“Be quiet!” Pitt snapped.

“I . . .” Tellman started to get up.

“Lie down!” Pitt ordered. “Privilege of rank,” he added ironically. “Would you rather change places?”

Tellman lay down again.

“Where were the green dress and the chains kept?” Pitt said thoughtfully. “Certainly not down here!”

“Up in the studio, most likely,” Tellman replied, his face to the floor. “With all the other stuff he used in his pictures. What I want to know is, how did Orlando know that the punt was here and not somewhere else? It could have been anywhere, any lake or river. Could have been miles away—in another county, for that matter.”

Pitt did not answer. His mind was beginning to reach for a new, extraordinary thought.

“Do you suppose he went upstairs first?” Tellman went on. “Maybe saw the chains and the dress in the studio?” He did not say it as if he believed that himself.

“And then came down, and Cathcart was going up again, ahead of him, and Orlando killed him?” Pitt said almost absentmindedly.

Tellman rolled over and sat up, scowling. “Then what do you think?”

“I think he certainly didn’t wander down the garden, in the dark, to see if there was a boat moored in the river,” Pitt replied. “I think he had been here before, often enough to know that these things existed, and exactly where to find them . . .”

“But he hadn’t,” Tellman said decisively. “He had to ask where it was . . . from the pub landlord. We know that.”

“Or there was someone else here as well,” Pitt answered. “Someone who did know . . . someone who finished the job that Orlando only started.”

“But he came alone!” Tellman climbed to his feet. “You think there was someone else here the same night . . . also bent on murdering Cathcart?” His tone of voice conveyed what he thought of that possibility.

“I don’t know what I think,” Pitt confessed. “But I don’t think Orlando Antrim murdered Cathcart in a passion of fury over the way Cathcart used Cecily, then set about searching the house to see if he could find the clothes and the chains, and the boat, to make it a mockery of the photograph. For one thing, there was no sign of a struggle when Mrs. Geddes came in in the morning, which means that if he searched, he put everything back where he found it . . . exactly. Does that sound like a man in a murderous rage to you?”

“No. But Cathcart’s dead,” Tellman said reasonably. “And someone put him in that dress and chained him in the punt, then scattered all the flowers . . . and I’d swear anything you like it was someone who hated him . . . and hated him because of Cecily Antrim.”