Farrier's Lane (15 page)

She was sitting looking at him, waiting, her face quick
with interest. Between them the low fire burned with just sufficient coal to keep it alight.

He found he was talking about himself, and that was not what he had wanted to do, apart from the ill manners of it. It was she he cared about, not himself, but he had to fill the silence and he was so afraid of appearing to condescend. He wanted to talk about music, or walking in the rain, the smell of wet leaves, the evening light across the sky, but then she would find him too pressing—too forward when she was so vulnerable.

So he told her about Judge Stafford, and what Aubrey Winton had told him of the Blaine/Godman case.

It was silent outside, and raining in the dark; the hall clock had struck eight, when he suddenly realized how long he had been there, and that it was past time he left. He had outstayed a social call. Now it had become difficult to return to politeness and excuse himself. The outside world intruded again.

He rose to his feet.

“I have kept you too long, because for a while I forgot my manners and simply enjoyed myself. Please forgive me.”

She rose also, gracefully, but the shadows of reality returned to her face.

“There is nothing to forgive,” she replied. It was the obvious thing to say, yet he felt she really meant it. For all the stilted words there was an ease of understanding between them. It was on the edge of his tongue to ask if he might call again, then he changed his mind. If she refused, and she might feel she should, then he had closed the door to himself. Better simply to come.

“Thank you for receiving me,” he said with a smile. “Good night.”

“Good night, Micah.”

He hesitated only a moment, then picked up his hat and his stick and went out into the main hallway and back to the wet, lamplit street, the loneliness within him warmed and illuminated, and yet also sharper.

4

T
HERE WAS NOTHING
Pitt could do on Sunday. There were no places of business open, and he was quite certain that none of the private persons he wished to speak to would be available and agreeable even to receiving him, let alone giving him the time and attention he would need in order to gain the information, or even the impressions, he desired.

So he had a thoroughly enjoyable day at home with Charlotte, Jemima and Daniel. It was the loveliest of autumn weather, utterly windless with hazy sunshine and a soft golden light, a sense of height in the sky that made it possible to forget all London around them and imagine that beyond the wall there were trees and harvest fields.

Pitt had little time to spend in his garden, but what there was was rare and precious, and he loved it fiercely. From the moment he laid down his knife and fork from breakfast, he went out and started to dig, dressed in old trousers and with his sleeves rolled up. He lifted the dark earth and turned it with intense satisfaction, breaking the clumps, parting the tangled roots of perennials now over, and dividing them into new plants for the spring. The Michaelmas daisies were blooming in blue-and-purple towers and the asters and chrysanthemums raised shaggy heads of cerise and lilac, gold, red, white and pink. The last roses were
spare and precious. It was the final cutting of the grass, and the air was filled with the smell of it, and of earth mold, and sun on damp leaves.

Seven-year-old Jemima was dressed in last year’s pinafore and was half squatting on the ground beside him, her face smeared with mud, deep in happy concentration, her fingers busy with untangling roots and getting out the weeds. A couple of yards away, Daniel, two years younger, was kneeling down listening to Charlotte trying to explain to him which leaves were chickweed and which flowers.

Pitt turned and looked over Jemima’s head and caught Charlotte’s eye. She smiled at him, hair across her brows, a smear of earth on her cheek, and he felt more totally happy than he could ever recall. There were some moments so precious the ache to hold on to them was a physical thing. He had to force himself to have faith that others as good would come, and the letting go must be easy, or they would be crushed in the very act of clinging.

By five o’clock the sun was slanting low; there were already deep shadows under the walls, and the dark earth was smooth and full of freshly planted clumps. They were all tired, filthy, and extraordinarily satisfied with everything.

Daniel fell asleep over tea, and Jemima’s head sank lower and lower as Pitt read her a bedtime story afterwards. By half past six the house was quiet, the fire lit with Pitt dozing beside it, his feet propped up on the fender, and Charlotte was absentmindedly sewing buttons on a shirt. Monday morning seemed like another world.

    But duty returned sharply enough with daylight, and nine o’clock found Pitt alighting from a hansom cab in Markham Square, Chelsea, with the intention of seeking the other witness Stafford had spoken to the day he had died, and whom Pitt had not yet met, Devlin O’Neil.

He had obtained the address from Stafford’s chambers, and now paid the cabby and climbed the steps to the front door of a very substantial terraced house with wide porticoes and a brass doorknob in the shape of a griffon’s head, and a fanlight above of stained glass. The house seemed to
be at least three windows wide on either side of the door, and was four stories high. If Devlin O’Neil owned this establishment then he was indeed doing very well, and had no reason to have quarreled with his friend Kingsley Blaine over a few guineas’ wager.

The door was opened by a smart maid in a dark dress and very crisp lace-trimmed cap and apron. She was cheerful and full of confidence.

“Yes sir?”

“Good morning. My name is Thomas Pitt.” He handed her his card. “I apologize if I call inconveniently early, but I would very much like to see Mr. O’Neil before he leaves on the business of the day. The matter is connected with the death of an acquaintance of his, and is somewhat urgent.”

“Oh dear! I’m sure as I don’t know who’s dead. You’d better come in, and I’ll tell Mr. O’Neil as you’re here.” She opened the door wide for him, put the card on the silver card tray, and conducted him to the morning room. It was somber, fireless, but immaculately clean, and decorated in a highly conservative and traditional style. The furniture was large, mostly carved oak, and covered with every conceivable kind of picture and ornament, trophies of every visit, relative and family event for at least four decades. The chair backs were protected by embroidered antimacassars edged with very worn crochetwork. The high ceiling was coffered in deep squares, giving the room a classical appearance belied by the ornate brass light brackets. There were no flowers on the side table, but a stuffed weasel under a glass dome. It was a very common sort of domestic decoration, but looking into its bright, artificial eyes, Pitt found it both repulsive and sad. He had grown up on a large country estate, where his father had been gamekeeper, and he could so easily visualize the creature in the wild, savagely alive. This motionless and rather dusty relic of its being was horribly offensive.

The door opened while he was still looking at the weasel, and he turned around to see the maid’s polite face.

“If you would like to come this way, sir, Mr. O’Neil will see you.”

“Thank you.” Pitt followed her back across the hallway and into a high-ceilinged square room looking onto an extremely neat garden where autumn flowers grew in paradelike rows.

The furniture inside the room was large and heavy, one sideboard reaching above eight feet high and decked with all manner of dishes, tureens and gravy boats. The curtains were swathed and looped in a wealth of fabric in wines and golds. Family photographs in silver frames covered the tops of other tables and bureaus, and there were several framed samplers on the walls.

Devlin O’Neil stood by the window and turned to face Pitt as soon as he heard the door. He was slender, perhaps a fraction over average height, and casually but most expensively dressed in a check jacket of fine wool, and a fresh Egyptian cotton shirt. The price of his boots would have fed a poor family for a week. He was dark haired and dark eyed, with a face full of humor and undisciplined imagination, although at the moment his expression was concerned.

“Pitt, is it? Gwyneth said you’ve called about someone’s death. Is that so?”

“Yes, Mr. O’Neil,” Pitt replied. “Mr. Justice Stafford. He died very suddenly in the theater last week. I daresay you are already aware of that.”

“Ah—I cannot say that I am. I suppose I may have read it in the newspapers. Of course I’m very sorry, but I didn’t know the man.” He had a very slight accent, little more than a music in his voice which Pitt struggled to place.

“But you met with him the day he died,” he pointed out.

O’Neil looked uncomfortable, but his dark eyes did not leave Pitt’s face.

“Indeed I did, but he called on me over a matter of … I suppose you would call it business. I had never seen him before, and I never saw him again.” He smiled fleetingly. “Not what you would call a friend, Mr. Pitt.”

Pitt placed the accent. It was County Antrim.

“I apologize if I gave the wrong impression to your
maid.” He smiled back. “I meant only that he was someone about whom you might have relevant information.”

O’Neil’s eyebrows shot up, high and arched. “He didn’t discuss his health with me! And I have to say, he looked very well. Not a young man, of course, and I daresay a pound or two heavy, but none the worse for that.”

“What did he discuss with you, Mr. O’Neil?”

O’Neil hesitated, then slowly his expression eased and the amusement in it was undisguised. He turned from the window and regarded Pitt curiously.

“I imagine you may know that already, Mr. Pitt, or you would not be here at all. It seems he was still interested in the death of poor Kingsley Blaine five years ago. I cannot think why, except that that unfortunate woman, Miss Macaulay, won’t let go of it. And I daresay Mr. Stafford wanted to end the talk and the questions about it once and for all. Let the dead bury the dead, and all that—don’t you agree?”

“Is that what he said?”

“Well, now, he didn’t tell me in so many words, you understand.” O’Neil walked across the room, his confidence apparent in the ease of his bearing. He sat sideways on the arm of one of the big chairs. He looked at Pitt with courteous interest. “He asked me about it all, of course. And I told him the same as I told the police, and the courts, at the time. There isn’t anything else I can say.” He waved at Pitt to sit in one of the chairs. “He was all very civil, very pleasant,” he went on. “But he didn’t say why he was asking. But then I don’t suppose it’s the way of gentlemen of his sort of position to confide in the likes of us, who are just the poor general public.” He said it all with a smile, but Pitt could imagine he was disturbed by having the matter raised again, and not knowing for what reason. It can only have been painful. If Stafford was trying to lay the matter to rest, it would not have hurt him to have said so to O’Neil. On the other hand, if Stafford had been planning to reopen the case, he might well not wish to mention that.

“Do you mind telling me what he said to you, Mr. O’Neil?” Pitt sat down at last, specifically invited.

“Well, certainly I have no objection to your knowing, sir,” O’Neil replied, watching Pitt’s face closely in spite of his casual attitude. “But it would be a courtesy, you understand, if you were to tell me why. I would surely take it kindly.”

“Of course.” Pitt crossed his legs and smiled, looking directly at him. “Mr. Stafford was murdered that evening.”

“Good God! You don’t say so!” If O’Neil was not surprised he was a superlative actor.

“Very regrettable,” Pitt answered. “At the theater.”

“Indeed. And him a supreme court judge, and all. What kind of a blackguard would kill a judge, and him an old man too—or at least an old man from where you and I stand.” O’Neil pulled a face. “Was it robbery, then?”

“No—he was poisoned.”

“Poisoned!” There was a widening of surprise in his dark eyes. “Well, by all the saints—what an extraordinary thing to do. And why was he poisoned? Was it a case he was on, do you think?”