Southampton Row (8 page)

“I have no idea,” Pitt replied, straightening up and moving the dead woman’s head back to the exact position it had been before.

Tellman stared at him. “Are you going to let me see it?” he challenged.

That was a decision he had not considered. Now he replied without thinking, stung by the absurdity of it. “Of course I am! I want a great deal more out of it than just the names of the people who were here last night. Short of a miracle, we’ll need to learn all we can about this woman. Speak to the rest of her clients. Learn all you can. What sort of people came to her, and why? What do they pay her? Does it account for this house?” Automatically, he glanced around at the room with its elaborate wallpaper and intricately carved Oriental furniture. He knew enough to estimate the cost of at least some of it.

Tellman frowned. “How does she know what to tell those people?” he said, biting his lip. “What is it? A mixture of finding out first, then building on good guesses?”

“Probably. She might pick her clients very carefully, only those she already knows something about, or is certain she can research with success.”

“I’ve looked all ’round the room.” Tellman stared at the walls, the gas brackets, the tall lacquer cabinet. “I can’t see how she did any tricks. What was she supposed to do? Make ghosts appear? Voices? People floating in the air? What? What made anyone believe it was spirits, not just someone telling them whatever they wanted to hear?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt replied. “Ask her other clients, but tread softly, Tellman. Don’t mock another person’s faith, however ridiculous you think it is. Most of us need more than the moment; we have dreams that won’t come true here, and we need eternity.” Without adding anything or waiting for any answer, he went out, leaving Tellman to go on searching the room for something without knowing what it was.

Pitt went to the small study and opened the door. The desk was immediately inside, a beautiful thing, as Lena Forrest had said, golden brown wood inlaid in exquisite marquetry of darker and lighter shades.

He slipped the key into the lock and turned it. It opened easily to form a flat writing surface inlaid with leather. There were two drawers and half a dozen or so pigeonholes. In one of the drawers he found an engagement book and opened it at the page for the previous day’s date. He saw two names, both of which he recognized immediately, and with a coldness in the bottom of his stomach: Roland Kingsley and Rose Serracold. Now he understood precisely why Narraway had sent him.

He stood still, absorbing the information and all it could mean. Could it be Rose Serracold’s long pale hair on the dead woman’s cuff? He had no idea, and he had never seen her, but he would have to find out. Should he show the hair to Tellman or wait to see if he found it for himself, or if the surgeon found it when he removed the clothes for the autopsy? It might mean anything—or nothing.

It was several seconds before he realized that the third line contained not a name at all but a sort of design, like the small drawings the ancient Egyptians had used to signify a word, a name. He had heard them called cartouches. This one was a circle, with a semicircle inside it arched over the top of a figure like a small
F
, but backwards. It was very simple, and to him at least had no meaning whatsoever.

Why would someone be so secretive that even Maude Lamont herself did this odd drawing rather than write his or her name? There was nothing illegal in consulting a spirit medium. It was not even scandalous, or for that matter a subject of ridicule, except for those who had portrayed themselves as otherwise and were thus branded as hypocrites. People of every walk of life had indulged in it, some as serious investigations, others purely as entertainment. And there were always the lonely, the insecure, the grieving who needed the assurance that those they had loved still existed somewhere and cared about them even beyond the grave. Perhaps Christianity, at least as the church preached it now, no longer did that for them.

He riffled through the pages to see if there were any more cartouches, but he saw none, only the same one half a dozen times previously over the months of May and June. The person appeared to have come every ten days or so, irregularly.

Looking again, Pitt saw also that Roland Kingsley had been seven times before, and Rose Serracold ten times. Only three times had they all come to the same session. He looked at the other names and saw many of them repeated over the months, others were there once or twice, or perhaps for three or four weeks in a row, and then not again. Were they satisfied or disillusioned? Tellman would have to find them and ask, learn what it was that Maude Lamont gave them, what it had to do with the strange substance found in her mouth and throat.

Why had a sophisticated woman like Rose Serracold come here to seek for voices, apparitions—answers to what? Surely there was some connection between her presence and that of Roland Kingsley?

He felt rather than saw Tellman just beyond the doorway. He turned towards him.

The question was in Tellman’s face.

Pitt passed him the book and saw him look down at it, then up again. “What does it mean?” Tellman asked, pointing to the cartouche.

“I’ve no idea,” Pitt admitted. “Someone so desperate to remain unidentified that Maude Lamont would not write their name even in her own diary.”

“Perhaps she didn’t know it?” Tellman said. He took a deep breath. “Maybe that’s why she was killed? She found out.”

“And tried to blackmail him? Over what?”

“Whatever made him keep coming here a secret,” Tellman replied. “Maybe he wasn’t a client? Perhaps he was a lover? That could be worth killing over.” His mouth twisted. “Maybe that’s your Special Branch interest. He’s some politician who can’t afford to be found in an affair at election time.” His eyes were challenging, angry to be included in the case against his will and yet told nothing, used but not informed.

Pitt had been waiting for the hurt to show. He felt the stab of it, yet it was almost a relief to have it open between them at last.

“Possibly, but I doubt it,” he said bluntly. “At least not that I know. I haven’t any idea why Special Branch is involved, but as far as I am aware, Mrs. Serracold is my only interest. And if she turns out to have killed Maude Lamont then I shall have to pursue her as I would anyone else.”

Tellman relaxed a trifle, but he did his best to hide the fact from Pitt. He straightened his shoulders a little. “What are we trying to protect Mrs. Serracold from?” If he was aware of having used the plural to include himself he gave no sign of it.

“Political betrayal,” Pitt replied. “Her husband is standing for Parliament. His opponent may use corrupt or illegal means to discredit him.”

“You mean through his wife?” Tellman looked startled. “Is that what this is . . . a political ambush?”

“Probably not. I expect it has nothing to do with her, except chance.”

Tellman did not believe him, and it showed in his face. Actually, Pitt did not really believe it himself. He had tasted Voisey’s power too fully to credit any stroke in his favor to luck.

“What is she like, this Mrs. Serracold?” Tellman asked, a slight furrow between his brows.

“I’ve no idea,” Pitt admitted. “I am only just beginning to learn something about her husband, and more importantly, his opponent. Serracold is very well off, second son of an old family. He studied art and history at Cambridge, traveled considerably. He has great interest in reform and is a member of the Liberal Party, standing for the seat in South Lambeth.”

Tellman’s face mirrored all his emotions, although he would have been furious to know it. “He’s privileged, rich, never worked a day in his life, and now thinks he’d like to get into government and tell the rest of us what to do and how to do it. Or more likely, what not to do,” he retaliated.

Pitt did not bother to argue. From Tellman’s point of view that was probably close enough to the truth. “More or less.”

Tellman breathed out slowly; not having got the argument he had hoped for, he felt no sense of triumph. “What kind of a person comes to see a woman who says she speaks to ghosts?” he demanded. “Don’t they know it’s all rubbish?”

“People looking for something,” Pitt replied. “Vulnerable, lonely, left behind in the past because the future is unbearable for them without whomever they loved. I don’t know . . . people who can be used and exploited by those who think they have power, or know how to create a good illusion . . . or both.”

Tellman’s face was a mask of disgust, pity struggling inside him. “It ought to be illegal!” he said between stiff lips. “It’s like a mixture of prostitution and the tricks of a fairground shark, but at least they don’t use your griefs to get rich on!”

“We can’t stop people believing whatever they want to, or need to,” Pitt replied. “Or exploring whatever truth they like.”

“Truth?” Tellman said derisively. “Why can’t they just go to the chapel on Sundays?” But it was a question to which he did not expect an answer. He knew there was none; he had none himself. He chose not to ask questions where answers lay in the very private realms of belief. “Well, we’ve got to find out who did it!” he said sharply. “I suppose she’s got a right not to be murdered, just like anyone else, even if maybe she looked into things she’d no business to. I wouldn’t want my dead disturbed!” He looked away from Pitt.

“How do they do the tricks?” Tellman asked. “I searched that room from floor to ceiling and I didn’t find anything, no levers or pedals or wires, anything. And the maid swears she had nothing to do with it . . . but then I suppose she would!” Tellman paused. “How do you make people think you are rising up into the air, for heaven’s sake? Or stretching out and getting longer and longer?”

Pitt chewed his lip. “More important to us, how do you know what they want to hear, so you can tell it to them?”

Tellman stared at him, wonder in his face, then slowly comprehension. “You find out about them,” he breathed. “The maid told us that this morning. Said she was very choosy about her clients. You only accept those you can learn about. You pick someone you know, then you listen, you ask questions, you add up what you hear, maybe you have someone go through their pockets or their bags.” He warmed to the subject and his eyes glittered with anger. “Maybe you have someone talk to their servants. Maybe you burgle their houses and read letters, papers, look at their clothes! Ask around the tradespeople, see what they spend, who they owe.”

Pitt sighed. “And when you have enough about one or two, perhaps try a little carefully chosen blackmail,” he added. “We might have a very ugly case here, Tellman, very ugly indeed.”

A flicker of pity softened Tellman’s mouth and deliberately he pulled his lips tight to hide it. “Which of those three people did she push too far?” he said quietly. “And over what? I hope it isn’t your Mrs. Serracold. . . .” He lifted his chin a trifle, as if his collar were too tight. “But if it is, I’m not looking the other way to please Special Branch!”

“It wouldn’t make any difference if you did,” Pitt replied. “Because I won’t.”

Very slowly Tellman relaxed. He nodded fractionally, and for the first time he smiled.

CHAPTER
FOUR

Isadora Underhill sat at the opulently laid out dinner table and toyed with her food, pushing it around her plate with practiced elegance, occasionally eating a mouthful. It was not that it was unpleasant, simply bland, and almost exactly what she had eaten the last time she had been here in this magnificent, mirrored chamber with its Louis Quinze sideboards and enormous gilded chandeliers. Indeed, as far as she could recall it was also the same people, as nearly as made no difference. At the head of the table was her husband, the Bishop. He looked slightly dyspeptic, she thought, a little puffy around the eyes, pale, as if he had slept badly and eaten too much. And yet she saw his plate was still largely untouched. Perhaps he was convinced he was unwell again, or more likely he was, as usual, too busy talking.

He and the archdeacon were extolling the virtues of some long-dead saint she had never heard of. How could anyone speak of true goodness, even holiness, the conquering of fear, and of excuses for the petty vanities and deceits of daily life, the generosity of spirit to forgive the offenses of spite and judgment, kindly laughter and the love of all things living, and yet still manage to make it sound so dull? It should have been wonderful!

“Did she ever laugh?” she said suddenly.

There was silence around the table. Everyone, all fifteen of them, turned and stared at her as if she had knocked over her wineglass or made a rude noise.

“Did she?” she repeated.

“She was a saint,” the archdeacon’s wife said patiently.

“How can you possibly manage to be a saint with no sense of humor?” Isadora asked.

“Sanctity is a very serious matter,” the archdeacon tried to explain, staring at her earnestly. He was a large man with a very pink face. “She was a woman close to God.”

“One cannot be close to God without loving one’s fellow men,” Isadora said stubbornly, her eyes wide. “And how could one possibly love other people without an acute sense of the absurd?”

The archdeacon blinked. “I don’t know what you mean.”

She looked at his small brown eyes and careful mouth. “No,” she agreed, quite sure that he knew very little. But then she was far from holy, by her own estimation. She could not imagine how anyone, even a saint, could love the archdeacon. She wondered, absently, what his wife really felt. Why had she married him? Had he been different then? Or was it a matter of convenience, or even desperation?

Poor woman.

Isadora looked at the Bishop. She tried to remember why she had married him and if they had both really been so different thirty years ago. She had wanted children, and it had not happened. He had been an honest young man with a good future ahead of him. He treated her with courtesy and respect. But what was it she had imagined she saw in him, his face, his hands that she should let him touch her, his speech that she was prepared to listen to him for the rest of her life? What were his dreams that she had wanted to share them?

If she had ever known, she had forgotten.

They were talking about politics now, rambling on and on, the strengths of this one, the weaknesses of that, how Home Rule for Ireland would be the beginning of the rot which would finally split the Empire, and with that stop the missionary effort to bring the light of Christian virtue to the rest of the world.

She looked around at them and wondered how many of the women were actually listening to the words. They were all dressed in full dinner gowns: puff-shouldered, tight-waisted, high-necked, as was the fashion. Surely at least some of them were staring at the white linen tablecloth, the plates, the cruet sets, the orderly bunches of glasshouse flowers, and seeing moonlight on breaking surf, tumultuous seas with white water racing in and curling under with a ceaseless roar, or the pale sands of some burning desert where horsemen moved black against the horizon, their robes billowing in the wind.

The plates were removed and a fresh course brought. She did not even look to see what it was.

How much of her life had she spent dreaming of somewhere else, even wishing she were there?

The Bishop had declined the course. He must have indigestion again, but it did not stop him from declaiming on the weaknesses, specifically the lack of religious faith, in the Liberal Party’s parliamentary candidate for Lambeth South. It seemed the unfortunate man’s wife met with his particular disfavor, although he admitted freely that so far as he was aware, he had never met her. But reports had it that she admired a most regrettable kind of person, some of those extraordinary Socialists who called themselves the Bloomsbury set, and had radical and absurd notions of reform.

“Isn’t Sidney Webb one of that group?” the archdeacon enquired with a twitch of distaste.

“Indeed he is, if not the leading member,” another man replied, hunching his shoulders a little. “He was the man who encouraged those wretched women to go on strike!”

“And the candidate for Lambeth South admires this?” the archdeacon’s wife asked incredulously. “But it is the beginning of civil disorder and complete chaos! He is inviting disaster.”

“Actually, I believe it was Mrs. Serracold who expressed the opinion,” the Bishop corrected. “But of course were he a man of substance and judgment he would not have permitted it.”

“Quite. Absolutely.” The archdeacon nodded with vigor.

Listening to them, seeing their faces, Isadora warmed to Mrs. Serracold instinctively, although she had never met her, either. If she had had a vote, she would have cast it for the woman’s husband, who apparently was standing for Lambeth South. It was no sillier reason than most men had for voting as they did. It was usually based upon whatever their fathers had done before them.

Now the Bishop was talking about the sanctity of women’s role as protectors of the home, keepers of a special place of peace and innocence where the men who fought the world’s battles could retreat to heal their souls and restore their minds, ready to rejoin the fray the following morning.

“You make us sound like a cross between a hot bath and a glass of warm milk,” she said into a moment’s silence while the archdeacon drew in his breath to answer.

The Bishop stared at her. “Excellently put, my dear,” he said. “Both cleansing and refreshing, a balm to the inner man and to the outer.”

How could he so misunderstand her? He had known her for more than a quarter of a century, and he thought she was agreeing with him! Did he not recognize sarcasm when he heard it? Or was he clever enough to turn it against her, disarm her by seeming to take it at face value?

She met his eyes across the table, almost hoping that he was mocking her. It would at least be a communication, an intelligence. But he was not. He looked back at her blankly, and turned to the archdeacon’s wife and began wittering on about memories of his blessed mother, who, as Isadora remembered her, had been actually quite fun, and certainly not the characterless creature he was painting with his words.

But how many people she knew tended not to see their parents as the rest of the world did, but rather as stereotypes of mother and father as they held them to be, good or bad? Perhaps she had not known her own parents so very well?

The women at the table said very little. It would be considered rude for them to speak across the men’s conversation, and they were not equipped to join in. They believed women to be good by nature—at least the best of them; the worst were at the very roots of damnation. There were not so many in between. But being good and knowing anything about goodness were not the same thing. It was for women to do it, and men to talk about it and, when necessary, to tell women how it should be done.

Since she was neither required nor permitted to contribute to the discussion, other than by a pleasant and interested expression, she allowed her mind to wander. Curious how many of her mental images involved faraway places, especially over the sea. She thought of the vast spaces of the ocean with a level horizon on every side, trying to imagine what it would feel like to have only a deck beneath your feet, constantly moving, the wind and sun on your face, to know that you must have in the tiny wholeness of that ship all that you needed to survive and to find your way across the trackless waste which could rise up in terrible storms to batter you, even to hold and crush you like a mighty hand. Or it could lie so still there was not enough breath across its face to fill your sails.

What lived beneath it? Beautiful things? Fearful things? Unimaginable things? And the only guidance was in the stars above, or of course the sun and a perfect clock, if you had the skill.

“. . . really have to speak to someone about it,” a woman in tan and tobacco-brown lace was saying. “We look to you, Bishop.”

“Of course, Mrs. Howarth.” He nodded sagely, touching his napkin to his lips. “Of course.”

Isadora averted her eyes. She did not want to be drawn into the conversation. Why didn’t they talk about the ocean? It was the ideal analogy of how alone each person is on the voyage of life, how you have to carry within you everything you need, and only by the understanding of the heavens could you ever know in which direction to steer.

Captain Cornwallis would have understood. Then she blushed at how easily his name had come to her mind, and with what a lurch of pleasure. She felt as if she were transparent. Had anyone else seen her face? Of course she and Cornwallis had never spoken of such things, not directly, but she knew he felt it more completely than any speech. He could say so much in a sentence or two, whereas these men around her were drowning the evening in words, and saying almost nothing.

The Bishop was still talking, and she looked at his complacent, unlistening face, and realized with a horror that rippled right through her, like insects crawling, that she actually disliked him. How long had she felt like that? Since meeting John Cornwallis, or before?

What had her whole life been, spent in the daily presence—she could not say company—of a man she did not even truly like, much less love? A duty? A discipline of the spirit? A waste?

What would it have been like if she could only have met Cornwallis thirty-one years ago?

She might not have loved him then, or he her. They had both been such different people, the lessons of time and loneliness unlearned. Anyway, it was pointless to think of it. No past can ever be undone.

But she could not dismiss the future in the same way. What if she escaped this charade, just walked away? Would it be possible? Go to Cornwallis? Of course they had neither of them ever said as much—it would be unthinkable—but she knew he loved her, as she had slowly realized she loved him. He had the honesty, the courage, the simplicity of mind that was like clear water to her inner thirst. She had to search for his humor, wait for it, but it was there, and without unkindness. It hurt to think of him. It made this ridiculous evening, and her presence in it, even more painful. Had any of them even the remotest idea of where her imagination was? Her face flamed at the thought.

They were still talking about politics, the same subject of how dangerous the extreme Liberal ideas were, already they undermined the values of Christianity. They threatened sobriety, church attendance, the keeping of the Sabbath, the general obedience and respect appropriate, even the very sanctity of the home, safeguarded by the modesty of women.

What would she and Cornwallis have been talking about? Certainly not what other people ought to be doing, saying, or thinking! They would speak of wonderful places, ancient cities on the shores of other seas, cities like Istanbul, Athens, Alexandria, places of ancient legend and adventure. In her mind the sun shone on warm stones, the sky was blue, too bright to look at for more than a moment, and the air was warm. It would be enough even to talk about it with him; she would not ever have to go there, just listen and dream. Even to sit in silence knowing his thoughts were the same would be good enough.

What would happen if she left here and went to him? What would she lose? Her reputation, of course. The condemnation would be deafening! Men would be scandalized, and of course terrified their own wives might be given the idea and the example to do the same thing! Women would be even more furious, because they would envy her and hate her for it. Those who stayed at the call of duty, which would be almost all of them, would positively bristle with virtue.

She would never be able to speak to any of them again. They would cut her dead in the street. She would become invisible. Funny how a scarlet woman was not seen. You would think she would be the most highly visible of all! Isadora smiled at the thought, and saw a look of puzzlement in the face of the woman across the table from her. The conversation was hardly humorous!

Reality came back. It was only a daydream, a sweet and painful way of escaping a tedious evening. Even if she were wild enough to go to Cornwallis, he would never accept her offer. It would be utterly dishonorable to take another man’s wife. Would he even be tempted? Perhaps not. He would be embarrassed by her, ashamed of her forwardness, or that she should even think that he might accept such an offer.

Would that hurt intolerably?

No. If he were a man who would have accepted, then she would not have wanted him.

The conversation babbled on around her, getting heated over some difference of theological opinion now.

But if Cornwallis would have accepted her, would she have gone? The answer hovered only a moment on her mind, undecided, then she was afraid that at this instant, hearing the suffocating pomposity around her at this stiff, unhappy table, yes . . . yes! She would have seized the chance and escaped!

But it would not happen. She knew that absolutely; it was more real than the lights of the chandeliers or the hard edge of the table under her hands. The voices ebbed and flowed around her. Nobody noticed that she had said nothing for a while, not even the polite murmuring of agreement.

Going to Cornwallis was a daydream she would never follow through, but suddenly it was intensely important that she know if he would have wished her to, were it possible; if in some way it could have been all right. Nothing else mattered quite as much. She needed to see him again, just to talk, about anything or nothing, but to know that he still cared. He would not say so, he never had. Maybe she would never hear him say the words “I love you.” She would have to make do with silence, awkwardness, the look in his eyes and the sudden color in his face.