Anne Perry - Belgrave Square

Waterson proved a dignified man with a dry and individual humor in his face, and Pitt liked him immediately. On Anstiss’s instruction he conducted Pitt to his pantry, where he offered him a cup of tea with biscuits, an unusually civilized concern to a policeman. Then he recalled as well as he was able all the upstairs servants in the country house approximately twenty years previously.

He was tall and lean with a fine head of white hair. Were it not for his deferential and unobtrusive manner, one might have taken him for the aristocratic owner of the house. His features had a refinement Anstiss’s lacked, but neither the strength nor the blazing intelligence. Seeing them side by side one would never have failed to see that Anstiss was the leader designed by nature as well as by society.

“Probably a housemaid or a ladies’ maid,” Pitt prompted, sipping his tea. It was hot and delicately flavored and was served in porcelain cups.

“That would be about the time of Lady Anstiss’s death,” Waterson said slowly, his eyes on the ceiling as he leaned back in his chair. “Not a time easily forgotten. Let me see… we had young Daisy Cotterill then, she’s still with us-head laundress now. And Bessie Markham. She married a footman from somewhere or other. Left us, of course. We’ve got one of her daughters as tweeny now.” He frowned in concentration. “The other one I can recall would be Liza Cobb. Yes, she left shortly after that. Said it was something to do with family. Happens sometimes, of course, but not often a girl can afford to give up a good place just because her family has difficulties.” He looked up at Pitt. “Usually her job is the more important then-a little guaranteed money. Not a particularly satisfactory girl, not got her mind on her duty. Sights set on something better. Yes, Liza Cobb could be your girl.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Waterson. Have you any idea how I might find her?”

Waterson’s blue eyes opened wider. “Now?”

“If you please?” Pitt took the last biscuit. They were remarkably good.

“Well, let me see…” Waterson looked up at the ceiling again and concentrated for several minutes. “I don’t know myself, but it is possible Mrs. Fothergill, the housekeeper at number twenty-five, may know. I believe she was some sort of cousin. If you wish, I will write you a note of introduction.”

“That is very civil of you,” Pitt said with surprise and gratitude. “Really very civil.”

He spent another quarter of an hour sharing a little harmless gossip with Waterson, who seemed to have an ungentlemanly interest in detection, about which he was embarrassed, but it did little to dim his delight. Then Pitt took his leave and visited the house across the street Waterson had indicated. There he found Mrs. Fothergill, who was able with much shaking of her head and tutting to redirect him to yet another possible source of information as to Liza Cobb’s present whereabouts.

Actually it took him till the following noon before he found her behind the counter in an insalubrious fishmonger’s off Billingsgate. She was a large woman with raw hands and a coarse face which might have been handsome twenty years ago, but was now rough-skinned, fleshy and arrogant. He knew instantly that he had the right person. There was a look about her that reminded him sickeningly of the half of Weems’s face which the gold coins had left more or less intact.

He stood in front of the counter between the scales and the wooden slab and knife on which the fish were cut, and wondered how to approach her. If he were too direct she would simply leave. The door to the interior of the shop was behind her, and the counter between her and Pitt.

Perhaps she was as greedy as her relative.

“Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said with a courtesy that came hard to him.

“Arternoon,” she said with slight suspicion. People did not customarily address her so.

“I represent the law,” he said more or less truthfully. Then as he saw the dislike in her pale eyes, “It is a matter of finding the heir, or heiress, to a gentleman recently deceased,” he went on. Yes, it was the eyes that were like Weems. “And if I may say so, ma’am, you bear such a resemblance to the gentleman in question, I think my search ends right here.”

“I ain’t lorst anyone,” she said, but the edge was gone from her voice. “ ’Oo’s dead?”

“A Mr. William Weems, of Clerkenwell.”

Her face hardened again and she glanced angrily at the queue of women beginning to form behind Pitt, faces curious. “ ’E were murdered,” she said accusingly. “ ’ere! ’Oo are yer? I don’t know nuffin’ abaht it. I don’t get nuffin’ ’cause ’e’s dead.”

“There’s his house,” Pitt said truthfully. “It seems you may be his only relative, Miss-er, Miss Cobb?”

She thought for several seconds, then eventually the vision of the house became too strong.

“Yeah, I’m Liza Cobb.”

“Naturally I have one or two questions to ask you,” Pitt continued.

“I don’t know nuffin’ abaht ’is death.” She glared not at him but at the women behind him. “ ’ere-you keep your ears to yerself,” she said loudly.

“I have nothing to ask you about Mr. Weems’s death,” Pitt replied soothingly. “What I want to ask you goes back long before that. May we speak somewhere a little more private?”

“Yeah, we better ’ad. Too many ’round ’ere can’t mind their own business.”

“Well I’m sure I don’t care if you got relations wot was murdered,” the first woman said with a sniff. “But you keep a civil tongue in yer ’ead, Liza Cobb, or I’ll get me fish elsewhere. I will.”

“Yer comes ’ere ’cause I give yer tick when no one else will, Maisie Stillwell, an’ don’t yer ferget it neither!” Liza Cobb spat back at her. She turned and cried out shrilly for someone to come and take her place at the counter, then led him into a hot, stale-smelling back room.

“Well?”

“Twenty years ago you were in service in Lord Anstiss’s country house?”

“Yeah-must’a bin abaht then. Why?”

“You found a letter from Lady Anstiss to Lord Byam, who was a guest there?”

“Not exactly,” she said guardedly. “But what if I ’ad?”

“Then what did happen-exactly?”

“W’en Lady Anstiss died, Rose, ’er ladies’ maid, took some of ’er things, they gave ’em ’er, there weren’t nuffin’ wrong in it,” she answered. “Well w’en Rose died, abaht three year ago, them things passed ter me. All rolled up inside them, like, were this letter. Love letter, summink fierce.” Her broad lip curled in a sneer. “Din’t know decent folk wrote letters like that to each other.”

“How did you come to give it to Weems?”

Her eyes were sharp and clever. “I din’t give it ter ’im. Least not all of it. It were in two pages, like. I sold ’im one, an’ kept the other.”

Pitt felt a prickle of excitement.

“You kept the other one yourself?”

She was watching him closely.

“Yeah-why? Yer want ter see it? It’ll corst yer-yer can take a copy, fer five guineas.”

“Is that what Weems paid you?”

“Why?”

“Curious. It’s a fair price. Let me see it. If I think it’s worth it, I’ll pay you five guineas.”

“Let’s see the color o’ yer money. Yer don’t look like yer got five guineas.”

Pitt had come prepared to buy information, although he had not expected to spend it all on one person. But he was increasingly certain that this letter was at the heart of the case. He fished in his pocket and found a gold guinea, six half guineas and a handful of crowns, shillings and six-pences. He held his hand half open so she could see them but not reach them.