Highgate Rise Page 9

  “I mean why anyone should set fire to Dr. and Mrs. Shaw’s house!”

  “You want some?” She held up the ladle.

  “Yes please, I would.”

  “Lots o’ reasons.” She began to dish up a generous portion in a large basin. “Revenge, for one. There’s them as says ’e should’a looked after Mr. Theophilus Worlingham better’n ’e did. Although I always thought Mr. Theophilus would wind ’isself up into a fit and die one day. An’ ’e did. But then that don’t mean everyone sees it that way.” She put the bowl down in front of him and handed him a spoon to eat with. It was mostly potatoes, onions, carrots and a little sweet turnip with a few stray ends of meat, but it was hot and full of flavor.

  “Thank you very much,” he said, accepting the bowl.

  “Don’t think it’d ’ave much to do wiv it.” She dismissed the notion. “Mr. Lutterworth was fair furious with Dr. Shaw, on account of ’is daughter, Miss Flora, nippin’ ter see ’im all hours, discreet like, not through the reg’lar surgery. But Mrs. Shaw weren’t worried, so I don’t suppose there were nothin’ in it as there shouldn’t ’a bin. Leastways, not much. I think Dr. Shaw and Mrs. Shaw kept their own ways a lot. Good friends, like, but maybe not a lot more.”

  “That’s very observant of you, Mrs. Colter,” Pitt said doubtfully.

  “Need more salt?” she asked.

  “No thank you; it’s perfect.”

  “Not really.” She shook her head.

  “Yes it is. It doesn’t need a thing added,” he assured her.

  “Don’t take much ter see when people is used ter each other, and respects, but don’t mind if the other gets fond o’ someone else.”

  “And Dr. and Mrs. Shaw were fond of someone else?” Pitt’s spoon stopped in midair, even the stew forgotten.

  “Not as I know of. But Mrs. Shaw went off up to the city day after day, and ’e wished ’er well and never cared nor worried as who she went wiv; or that the vicar’s wife came all over unnecessary every time Dr. Shaw smiled at ’er.”

  This time Pitt could not dismiss his amusement, and bent his head over the dish at least to conceal the worst of it.

  “Indeed?” he said after another mouthful. “Do you think Dr. Shaw was aware of this?”

  “Bless you, no. Blind as a bat, ’e is, to other people’s feelin’s o’ that nature. But Mrs. Shaw, she saw it, an’ I think she were kind o’ sorry for ’er. ’E’s a bit of a poor fish, the Reverend. Means well. But ’e’s no man, compared wi’ the doctor. Still,” she sighed, “that’s ow it is, in’t it?” She regarded his empty bowl. “You want some more?”

  He considered the family she had to feed and pushed the plate away from him.

  “No thank you, Mrs. Colter. That answered the need perfectly. Very fine flavor.”

  She colored a little pink. She was unused to compliments, and pleased and awkward at the same time.

  “It’s nuthin’ but ordinary.” She turned away to give it a fierce stir.

  “Ordinary to you, maybe.” He rose from the table and pushed the chair back in, something he would not have bothered to do at home. “But I’m much obliged to you. Is there anything else you can think of that might have bearing on the fire?”

  She shrugged. “There’s always the Worlingham money, I suppose. Though I don’t see ow. Don’t think the doctor cared that much about it, and they ain’t got no children, poor souls.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Colter. You’ve been most helpful.”

  “Don’t see that I ’ave. Any fool could’a told you as much, but if it pleases you, then I’m glad. I ’ope you catch whoever done it.” She sniffed hard and turned her back to stir the pot again. “She were a fine woman, an’ I grieve sorely that she’s gorn—an’ in such an ’orrible way.”

  “I will, Mrs. Colter,” he said rather recklessly, and then when he was out on the footpath in the sharp evening air, wished he had been more reserved. He had not the faintest idea who had crept around cutting the glass, pouring oil on curtains and lighting those fires.

  In the morning he returned to Highgate immediately, turning the case over and over in his mind on the long journey. He had told Charlotte of the progress he had made, largely negative, because she had asked him. She had taken an interest in the case beyond his expectations, because as yet there was little human drama of the sort which usually engaged her emotions. She gave him no explanation, except that she was sorry for the dead woman. It was a fearful way to die.

  He had assured her that in all probability Clemency Shaw had been overcome by smoke long before any flames reached her. It was even possible she had not woken.

  Charlotte had been much comforted by it, and since he had already told her his progress was minimal, she had asked him no more. Instead she turned to her own business of the day, giving volleys of instructions to Gracie, who stood wide-eyed and fascinated in the kitchen doorway.

  Pitt stopped the hansom at Amos Lindsay’s house, paid him off, and walked up to the front door. It was opened by the black-haired manservant again and Pitt asked if he might speak with Dr. Shaw.

  “Dr. Shaw is out on call”—the briefest of hesitations—“sir.”

  “Is Mr. Lindsay at home?”

  “If you care to come in I shall inquire if he will receive you.” The manservant stood aside. “Who shall I say is calling?”

  Did he really not remember, or was he being deliberately condescending?

  “Inspector Thomas Pitt, of the Metropolitan Police,” he replied a little tartly.

  “Indeed.” The manservant bowed so slightly only the light moving across his glistening head determined it at all. “Will you be so good as to wait here? I shall return forthwith.” And without bothering to see if Pitt would do as he was bidden, he walked rapidly and almost silently towards the back of the house.

  Pitt had time to stare again around the hall with its fierce and exotic mixture of art and mementos. There were no paintings, nothing of the nature of European culture. The statuary was wooden or ivory, the lines alien, looking uneasy in the traditional dimensions of the room with its paneling and squared windows letting in the dull light of an October morning. The spears should have been held in dark hands, the headdresses moving, instead of pinned immobile against the very English oak. Pitt found himself wondering what an unimaginably different life Amos Lindsay had lived in countries so unlike anything Highgate or its residents could envision. What had he seen, and done; whom had he known? Was it something learned there which had prompted his political views which Pascoe so abhorred?

  His speculation was cut short by the manservant reappearing, regarding him with mild disapproval.

  “Mr. Lindsay will see you in his study, if you will come this way.” This time he omitted the “sir” altogether.

  In the study Amos Lindsay stood with his back to a brisk fire, his face pink under his marvelous white hair. He did not look in the least displeased to see Pitt.

  “Come in,” he said, ignoring the manservant, who withdrew soundlessly. “What can I do for you? Shaw’s out. No idea how long, can’t measure the sick. What can I add to your knowledge? I wish I knew something. It’s all very miserable.”

  Pitt glanced back towards the hallway and its relics. “You must have seen a good deal of violence at one time and another.” It was more an observation than a question. He thought of Great-Aunt Vespasia’s friend, Zenobia Gunne, who also had trekked into Africa, and sailed uncharted rivers and lived in strange villages, with people no European had seen before.

  Lindsay was watching him curiously. “I have,” he conceded. “But it never became ordinary to me, nor did I cease to find violent death shocking. When you live in another land, Mr. Pitt, no matter how strange it may seem at first, it is a very short time until its people become your own, and their grief and their laughter touches you as deeply. All the differences on earth are a shadow, compared with the sameness. And to tell you the truth, I have felt more akin to a black man dancing naked but for his paint, under the moon,
or a yellow woman holding her frightened child, than I ever have to Josiah Hatch and his kind pontificating about the place of women and how it is God’s will that they should suffer in childbirth.” He pulled a face and his remarkably mobile features made it the more grotesque. “And a Christian doctor doesn’t interfere with it! Punishment of Eve, and all that. All right, I know he is in the majority here.” He looked straight at Pitt with eyes blue as the sky, and almost hidden by the folds of his lids, as if he were still screwing them up against some tropical sun.

  Pitt smiled. He thought quite possibly he would feel the same, had he ever been out of England.

  “Did you ever meet a lady named Zenobia Gunne on your travels—” He got no further because Lindsay’s face was full of light and incredulity.

  “Nobby Gunne! Of course I know her! Met her in a village in Ashanti once—way back in ’69. Wonderful woman! How on earth do you know her?” The happiness fled from his face and was replaced by alarm. “Dear God! She’s not been—”

  “No! No,” Pitt said hastily. “I met her through a relative of my sister-in-law. At least a few months ago she was in excellent health, and spirits.”

  “Thank heaven!” Lindsay waved at Pitt to sit down. “Now what can we do about Stephen Shaw, poor devil? This is a very ugly situation.” He poked at the fire vigorously, then replaced the fire iron set and sat down in the other chair. “He was extremely fond of Clemency, you know. Not a great passion—if it ever was, it had long passed—but he liked her, liked her deeply. And it is not given to many men to like their wives. She was a woman of rare intelligence, you know?” He raised his eyebrows and his small vivid eyes searched Pitt’s countenance.

  Pitt thought of Charlotte. Immediately her face filled his mind, and he was overwhelmed with how much he also liked his wife. The friendship was in its own way as precious as the love, and perhaps a greater gift, something born of time and sharing, of small jokes well understood, of helping each other through anxiety or sorrow, seeing the weaknesses and the strengths and caring for both.

  But if for Stephen Shaw the passion had gone, and he was a passionate man, then could it have been kindled elsewhere? Would friendship, however deep, survive that whirlwind of hunger? He wanted to believe so; instinctively he had liked Shaw.

  But the woman, whoever she was—she would not feel such constraints. Indeed she might seethe with jealousy, and the fact that Shaw still liked and admired his wife might make that frail outer control snap—and result in murder.

  Lindsay was staring at him, waiting for a reponse more tangible than the thoughtful expression on his face.

  “Indeed,” Pitt said aloud, looking up again. “It would be natural if he found it hard at present to think of who might hold him in such enmity, or feel they had enough to gain from either his death or his wife’s. But since you know him well, you may be able to give more suggestions, unpleasant as it would be. At least we might exclude some people …”

  He left the sentence hanging in the air, hoping it would be unnecessary to press any further.

  Lindsay was too intelligent to need or wish for any more prompting. His eyes wandered over the relics here in the room. Perhaps he was thinking of other lands, other peoples with the same passions, less colored and confused by the masks of civilization.

  “Stephen has certainly made enemies,” he said quietly. “People of strong convictions usually do, especially if they are as articulate about them as he is. I am afraid he has little patience with fools, and even less with hypocrites—of which this society provides a great many, in one form or another.” He shook his head. A coal settled in the fire with a shower of sparks. “The more we think we are sophisticated sometimes the sillier we get—and certainly the more idle people there are with nothing to fill their minds except making moral rules for everyone else, the more hypocrisy there is as to who keeps them and who doesn’t.”

  Pitt envisioned a savage society in the sun on vast plains with the flat-topped trees he had seen in paintings, and grass huts, drum music and imprisoning heat—a culture that had not changed since memory’s record began. What had Lindsay done there, how had he lived? Had he taken an African wife, and loved her? What had brought him back to Highgate on the outskirts of London and the heart of the Empire with its white gloves, carriages, engraved calling cards, gas lamps, maids in starched aprons, little old ladies, portraits of bishops, stained-glass windows—and murder?

  “Whom in particular may he have offended?” He looked at Lindsay curiously.

  Lindsay’s face was suddenly wreathed in smiles. “Good heavens, man—everyone. Celeste and Angeline think he failed to treat Theophilus with proper attention, and that if he had not, the old fool would still be alive—”

  “And would he?”

  Lindsay’s eyebrows shot up. “God knows. I doubt it. What can you do for an apoplectic seizure? He couldn’t sit ’round the clock with him.”

  “Who else?”

  “Alfred Lutterworth thinks Flora is enamored of him—which she may well be. She’s in and out of the house often enough, and sees Stephen on her own, out of normal surgery hours. She may imagine other people don’t know—but they most certainly do. Lutterworth thinks Stephen is seducing her with an eye to the money, of which there is a very great deal.” The bland look of slight amusement on his face made Pitt think that the idea of Shaw murdering his wife because she stood in the way of such a marriage had not crossed his mind. His weathered face, so lined it reflected every expression, was touched with pity and a shadow of something like contempt, without its cruelty—but there was no fear in it.

  “And of course Lally Clitheridge is appalled by his opinions,” Lindsay went on, his smile broadening. “And fascinated by his vitality. He is ten times the man poor old Hector is, or ever will be. Prudence Hatch is fond of him—and frightened of him—for some reason I haven’t discovered. Josiah can’t abide him for a dozen reasons that are inherent in his nature—and Stephen’s. Quinton Pascoe, who sells beautiful and romantic books, reviews them, and quite genuinely loves them, thinks Stephen is an irresponsible iconoclast—because he supports John Dalgetty and his avant-garde views of literature, or at least he supports his freedom to express them, regardless of whom they offend.”

  “Do they offend people?” Pitt asked, curious for himself as well as for any importance it might have. Surely no literary disapproval could be powerful enough to motivate murder? Ill temper, dislike, contempt, but surely only a madman kills over a matter of taste?

  “Grossly.” Lindsay noted Pitt’s skepticism and there was a light of irony in his own eyes. “You have to understand Pascoe and Dalgetty. Ideals, the expression of thought and the arts of creation and communication are their lives.” He shrugged. “But you asked me who hated Stephen from time to time—not who I thought would actually set fire to his house with the intent of burning him to death. If I knew anyone I thought would do that I should have told you long before you came to the door asking.”

  Pitt acknowledged it with a grimace, and was about to pursue the matter when the manservant reappeared to announce that Mr. Dalgetty had called to ask if Lindsay would receive him. Lindsay glanced at Pitt with a flash of amusement, then indicated his agreement.

  A moment later John Dalgetty came in, obviously having assumed Lindsay was alone. He launched into speech immediately, his voice ringing with enthusiasm. He was a dark man of medium stature and high, almost vertical forehead, fine eyes, and a shock of hair which was now receding a little. He was very casually dressed with a loose black cravat tied in what had probably been a bow when he set out that morning. Now it was merely a bundle. His jacket was overlong and loose, and the whole effect was extremely untidy, but had a certain panache.

  “Quite brilliant!” He waved his hands. “Just what Highgate needs—indeed the whole of London! Shake up some of these tired old ideas, make people think. That’s what matters, you know—freedom from the rigid, the orthodox that ossifies the faculties of invention and discovery.” He fro
wned, leaning a little forward in his urgency. “Man is a creature full of the power of the mind, if only we free it from the shackles of fear. Terrified of the new, quaking at the prospect of making a mistake. What do a few mistakes matter?” He hunched his shoulders high. “If in the end we discover and name some new truth? Cowards—that’s what we’re fast becoming. A nation of intellectual cowards—too timorous to undertake an adventure into unknown regions of thought or knowledge.” He swung one arm wide towards an Ashanti spear on the wall. “How would our Empire be if all our voyagers of the seas or explorers of the lands had been too afraid of anything new to circumnavigate the earth, or venture into the dark continents of Africa and India?” He poked his fingers at the floor. “Right here in England, that’s where! And the world”—he flung out his hand dramatically—“would belong to the French, or the Spanish, or God knows whom. And here we are leaving all the voyages of the mind to the Germans, or whomever, because we are afraid of treading on a few toes. Have you seen Pascoe? He’s practically foaming at the mouth because of your monograph on the wrongs of the ownership of the means of production! Of course it’s brilliant. Full of new ideas, new concepts of community and the proper division of wealth. I shall review it as widely as—oh—” Suddenly he noticed Pitt and his face fell with amazement, then as quickly filled with curiosity. “I beg your pardon, sir, I was unaware Mr. Lindsay had company. John Dalgetty.” He bowed very slightly. “Seller of rare books and reviewer of literature, and I hope, disseminator of ideas.”

  “Thomas Pitt,” Pitt replied. “Inspector of police, and I hope discoverer of truth, or at least a measurable portion of it—we will never know it all, but sometimes enough to assist what serves as justice.”

  “Good gracious me.” Dalgetty laughed aloud, but there was considerable nervousness in it as well as humor. “A policeman with an extraordinary turn of phrase. Are you making fun of me, sir?”

  “Not at all,” Pitt replied sincerely. “The truth of a crime, its causes and its effects, are far beyond us to reach. But we may, if we are diligent and lucky, discover who committed it, and at least some portion of why.”