Resurrection Row (24 page)

He began with Gwendoline Cantlay, and this time he came to the point after only the briefest of preliminaries.

“You paid a great deal of money for your portrait by Mr. Jones, Lady Cantlay.”

She was cautious, already sensing something beyond trivial enquiry. “I paid the usual price, Mr. Pitt, as I think you will discover if you look a little further.”

“The usual price for Mr. Jones, ma’am,” he agreed. “But not usual for an artist of his rather indifferent quality.”

Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Are you an art expert, Inspector?” she said heavily.

“No, but I have opportunity to counsel with experts, ma’am, and they seem to be agreed that Godolphin Jones was not worth anything like the prices he received here in the Park.”

She opened her mouth and began a question, then stopped. “Indeed. Perhaps art is only a matter of taste, after all.”

This was a scene he had played put so many times and always disliked. Secrets were almost always a matter of vulnerability, an attempt to hide or reject a hurt of some sort.

But he had no alternative. Plastering over truth was not his job, even though he would like it to have been.

“Are you sure, ma’am, that he was not selling something else with his painting—perhaps discretion?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” It was the standard response, and he could almost have said it for her. She was going to resist as long as possible, make him spell out his knowledge.

“Were you not at one time fonder of Mr. Jones than you would wish known, Lady Cantlay—especially, say, by your husband?”

Her face flushed scarlet, and it was several painful seconds before she could decide what to say to him, whether to continue to deny it, or if anger would help. In the end she recognized the certainty in his face and gave in.

“I was extremely foolish, carried away by the glamour of an artist, I suppose—and flattered—but it is all past, Inspector, some time ago. And yes, you are correct. I did commission the picture before my—relationship—and then paid rather more for it when it was completed, to insure his silence. I would not have accepted it for such an amount, otherwise.” She hesitated, and he waited for her. “I—I would be obliged if you would not discuss it with my husband. He does not know of it.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Oh, yes, of course I am! He would be—” All the color drained from her skin. “Oh! Godolphin was murdered! You cannot think Desmond—I assure you, I give you my most absolute word—that he did not know! He could not have. It was all most discreet—only when I went to sit for my portrait—” She did not know what else to say to convince him, and she cast around for some form of proof.

It was against all his convictions to feel sorry for her, and yet he did. They had nothing in common, and her behavior had been self-indulgent and thoughtless, but he found that he did believe her and had no wish to prolong her fear.

“Thank you, Lady Cantlay. If he did not know of the matter, he would have had no cause to wish Mr. Jones any harm, so far as we know. I appreciate your candor. The subject need not be raised again.” He stood up. “Good day.”

She was too relieved to say anything but a faint, automatic “good day” in return.

Pitt called next on Major Rodney, and here his reception was totally different, wiping away every trace of the rather ebullient feeling with which he had left the Cantlays’. Self-satisfaction disappeared like water down a large sink.

“You are extremely insolent, sir!” the major said furiously. “And I have not the least notion of what you are imagining! This is Gadstone Park, not one of your back streets. I don’t know what kind of behavior you are accustomed to, but we know how to conduct ourselves here! And if you persist in suggesting that my sisters have had some sort of liaison with this wretched artist, I shall sue you for slander, do you understand me, sir?”

Pitt tried with difficulty to keep his patience. The idea of Godolphin Jones in a romantic involvement with either of the two elderly jam-making ladies was ridiculous, and in taking refuge behind it, Major Rodney was obscuring the issue very effectively, whether on purpose or not. Pitt doubted him capable of the strategy, but the result was the same.

“I have not suggested anything of the kind, sir,” he said as calmly as he was able, but the hard, frayed edges of his temper showed. “Indeed, the possibility had not occurred to me. Both because I would not have considered your sisters to be ladies of a temperament or an age to indulge in such things, nor did I know they had purchased the pictures themselves. I had believed it to be you who had commissioned Mr. Jones?”

The major was temporarily thrown off balance. His cause for outrage had vanished just as he was getting into his stride and all ready to demand that Pitt leave the house.

Pitt pressed home his advantage. “Are the ladies of private property?” he asked. They were both unmarried and could not be heiresses since they had a brother, so it was almost impossible, and he knew it.

The major was growing increasingly redder in the face. “Our financial affairs are not your concern, sir!” he snapped. “I dare say it would seem like wealth to you, but it is merely adequate for us. We do not care to be ostentatious, but we have means, certainly. And that is all I am prepared to say.”

“But you did commission two large and expensive picture from Mr. Jones, costing nine hundred seventy-five pounds in total?” Pitt had added up the columns next to the caterpillars and had the satisfaction of seeing the major’s face pale and his neck tighten with shock.

“I—I demand to know where you gained such information. Who told you?”

Pitt opened his eyes wider, as if the question were foolish.

“Mr. Jones kept records, sir, very precise records; dates and amounts of payments. I had only to add them up to find the total. It was hardly necessary to trouble anyone else.”

The major’s body went slack, and he sat like a well-trained child at table, eyes forward, hands still, but no substance inside him. For a long time he was silent, and Pitt hated the necessity for digging out of him whatever wretched secret it was that Jones had blackmailed him with. But there was no alternative. There was no time of the crime to use to eliminate people, no weapon but hands, the strength of which would almost certainly rule out a woman, certainly any society woman. Possibly a servant used to manual work, wringing heavy, wet laundry, might have had the power? At the moment he could think of no avenue except to learn all the truth he could.

The major was a small man, inarticulate, rigidly stiff within himself both bodily and emotionally, but he had been a soldier; he had seen death before and been taught how to kill, had learned to become familiar with the idea and to accept it as part of himself, to know that at times it could be his duty. Was his secret of sufficient importance to him that he would have strangled Godolphin Jones and then buried him in Albert Wilson’s grave?

“Why did you pay so much for those two pictures, Major Rodney?” Pitt pressed again.

The major focused his eyes and looked at him with dislike.

“Because that was the man’s price,” he said coldly. “I am no expert in art. That was what everyone else paid him. If it was excessive, then I was misled. So were we all! The man was a charlatan, if what you say is true. But you will forgive me if I do not accept your opinion as final?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm, and from the weight of his tone, Pitt guessed it an unfamiliar sentiment.

Major Rodney stood up. “And now, sir, I have said all I have to say to you. I wish you good day.”

There was no point in struggling, and Pitt knew it. He would have to find out the secret some other way and return when he had more ammunition. Perhaps it was only some foolishness, something Jones had discovered from another patron, possibly an indiscretion with a woman, and Rodney’s sense of honor forbade him from saying so. Or maybe it was a genuine matter of shame to him, an incident of cowardice in the Crimea, or some other barrack-room weakness, a gambling debt welched on, or a drunken escapade.

For now he would have to leave it.

In the early afternoon he called on St. Jermyn and found that he was out, at the House of Lords. He was obliged to return in the evening, cold and tired and well past the best of his temper.

His lordship was also irritated at not being able to relax and forget the business of the day over a glass of something from the pick of his cellars before considering dinner. He was civil to Pitt with something of an effort.

“I have already told you everything I know about the man,” he said tartly, moving over to the fire. “He was a fashionable artist. I commissioned a picture from him to please my wife. I expect I have met him socially on one or two occasions; after all, he lived here in the Park, but I meet hundreds of people. I recall he was a trifle odd-looking; rather too much hair.” He gave Pitt a sour look, his eye going to Pitt’s own scruffy head. “But then, one expects artists to be a little affected,” he continued. “It was not enough to be offensive, just rather obvious. I’m sorry the fellow is dead, but I dare say he mixed with a few less salubrious people. Possibly he became over-familiar with one of his models. As well as society, artists frequently paint women of far lower classes who happen to have the coloring or the features they want. I imagine you know that as well as I do. I should look for a jealous lover or husband, if I were you.”

“We haven’t been able to trace any pictures of women other than society portraits,” Pitt replied. “He doesn’t seem to have been prolific at all; in fact, rather reserved, but anything he did do, he sold at greatly inflated prices.”

“So you implied before,” St. Jermyn said drily. “I don’t have any comment on that. I would have thought portraits needed only to please the sitter. One seldom would wish to resell them. They usually get relegated to a back hallway or stair if one loses one’s taste for them; otherwise, they remain wherever they were hung in the first place.”

“You paid a considerable amount for the portrait of Lady St. Jermyn,” Pitt tried again.

St. Jermyn’s eyebrows rose. “You also remarked on that the last time you were here. She seemed to like the picture, which was all that concerned me. If I did pay too much, then I was duped. I’m really not very concerned about it. I don’t see why you should be.”

Pitt had already racked his brain to think of some reason, any at all, why Jones should have been able to put pressure on St. Jermyn to buy a picture he did not like, or at a price he thought unfair, but he had come up with nothing. To press Lady Cantlay in return for discretion would be easy, and recalling the stiff, nervous figure of the major, that was certainly believable, although he did not yet know the reason. A middle-aged, socially inarticulate man living with two maiden sisters—the probability was obvious—another indiscretion. Pride would force the major to pay for silence.

But St. Jermyn was a totally different man. There was no fear in him. He would cover his indiscretions, if there were any and he cared about them, which again was doubtful. And there was no other crime that Pitt knew of. Lord Augustus had died normally, or if he had not it was unprovable, and of no interest he knew of to St. Jermyn either way. All the others—Arthur Wilson, Porteous, and Horrie Snipe—had also died naturally and again, as far as Pitt knew, had no connection with St. Jermyn.

“If it was a jealous lover or husband,” Pitt said slowly, “why was he found in another man’s grave?”

“To hide him, I presume!” St. Jermyn said impatiently “I would have thought that was obvious. A fresh-dug grave anywhere in London except in a graveyard would excite attention pretty quickly. You can’t go digging up parks, and if you put it in your own garden it would be damning if it were found. In someone else’s freshly turned grave, it would invite no remark at all.”

“But why put the corpse of Albert Wilson on a cab box?”

“I really don’t know, Inspector! It is your job to find that out, not mine! Possibly there was no reason at all. It sounds the bizarre kind of thing an artist might do. More likely the grave was already robbed, and he merely took an excellent opportunity when it was presented to him.”

Pitt had already thought of that for himself, but he was still hoping for a new thread, some error of control, a slip of the tongue that would give him another line to follow.

“Did Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond know Mr. Jones?” he asked as innocently as he could.

St. Jermyn looked at him coldly. “Not so far as I am aware. And if you are suggesting he might have had some sort of
affaire
with one of Jones’s models, I think it highly unlikely.”

Pitt had to admit to himself it would also be too much of a coincidence if Augustus had first killed Jones and taken advantage of the grave robber’s activities to hide him, and then immediately afterwards died himself and become a victim of the same robber. He looked across at St. Jermyn and fancied he saw a perception of the unlikelihood in his face also, and a barely concealed and rapidly growing impatience.

Pitt tried to think of something else to ask, anything that might draw more information, but St. Jermyn was not a man who could be manipulated, and Pitt gave in, at least for the time being.

“Thank you, my lord,” he said stiffly. “I appreciate your time.”

“A matter of duty,” St. Jermyn acknowledged drily. “The footman will see you out.”

There was nothing to do but accept it with as much grace as possible, and he left the bright room and accompanied the liveried footman to the step and out into the thick, obliterating fog.

Dominic had seldom been so enveloped and excited by anything as he was by St. Jermyn’s bill. Now that he had ceased to fight it in his mind and given himself over to it, he found more and more pleasure in Carlisle’s company. He was literate, intelligent, and, above all, an enthusiast. He had the rare gift of being able to pursue even the most appalling facts about workhouse conditions without losing his optimism that something could be done to alleviate them, or his ability to find humor, however wry, in the midst of what would otherwise have been despair.

Dominic found it hard to emulate. He had sought out Lord Fleetwood with trepidation and some self-consciousness. The friendship had increased more easily than he had expected; his natural charm was something he always underrated. But he never managed to guide the conversation successfully into the reality of workhouse tragedy. Every time it was acknowledged in words, they rang hollow, like one reciting with perfect pronunciation a language he does not understand.