Anne Perry - Half Moon Street

Pitt received Caroline’s letter with the address of the second seller of photographs and postcards, also in Half Moon Street, and with a deep anger inside him, he went with Tellman to see the man.

“No!” the man protested indignantly, standing behind his counter and staring at the two policemen who had intruded into his place of business and were already costing him good custom. “No, I don’t sell no pictures except proper, decent ones as yer could show to a lady!”

“I don’t believe you,” Pitt said tersely. “But it will be easy enough to find out. I shall post a constable here at the door and he can examine every one you sell. And if they are as good as you say, then in four or six weeks we’ll know that.”

The man’s face went white, his eyes small and glittering.

“And then I’ll apologize to you,” Pitt finished.

The man swore venomously, but under his breath so the words were barely audible.

“Now,” Pitt said briskly, “if you will take another look at this picture you can tell me when you got it in, how many copies you have sold and to whom, Mr. . ?”

“Hadfield. . An’ I can’t remember ’oo I sold ’em ter!” His voice rose to a squeal of indignation.

“Yes, you can,” Pitt insisted. “Pictures like that are sold only to people you know. Regular customers. But of course if you can’t remember who likes this sort of thing, then you’ll just have to give me a list of all of them, and I’ll go and question them-”

“All right! All right!” Hadfield’s eyes burned with fury. “Yer a vicious man, Inspector.”

“Superintendent,” Pitt corrected him. “It was a vicious murder. I want all your customers who like this sort of picture. And if you leave any out, I shall presume you are doing it to protect them because you know them to be involved. Do you understand me?”

“ ’O course I understand yer! D’yer take me fer a bleedin’ fool?”

“If I take you at all, Mr. Hadfield, it will be for accessory to murder,” Pitt replied. “While you are making me a list, I shall look through the rest of your stock to see if there is anything else that might tell me who killed Cathcart and who knew about it. . possibly even why.”

The man flung his arms out angrily. “Well, there y’are! Seein’ as I can’t stop yer. An Englishman’s ’ome not bein’ ’is castle, like, anymore, yer’d best ’elp yerself. Cheap way o’ getting yer ’ands on pictures an’ lookin’ at ’em for nothin’, if yer ask me!”

Pitt ignored him and began to go through the drawers and shelves of pictures, postcards and slim volumes of drawings. Tellman started at the other end.

Many of them were fairly ordinary, the sort of poses he had seen a hundred times before in the last week, pretty girls in a variety of flattering clothes.

He glanced at Tellman and saw the concentration in his face, and now and again a slight smile. Those were the sort of girls he would like. He might well be too shy to approach them, but he would admire them from a distance, think them attractive and decent enough.

He bent back to the task, and pulled out a new drawer with small books in it. He opened the first one, more out of curiosity than the belief that it would be relevant to Cathcart’s death. They were drawings in black and white. There was a kind of lush, imaginative beauty about them, and the draftsmanship was superb. They were also obscene, figures with leering faces, and both male and female organs exposed.

He closed it again quickly. Had they been more crudely drawn, they would have been less powerful and less disturbing. He had heard that nature could become so distorted as to do this to people, but this was not the representation of the tragedy of deformity, it was a salacious artistic comment on appetite, and he felt soiled by it. He understood why men like Marchand crusaded so passionately against pornography, not for the offense to themselves but the strange erotic disturbance to others as well, the degrading of all emotional value. In some way it robbed all people of a certain dignity because it touched upon humanity itself.

He did not bother to open the other books of drawings. Cathcart dealt only in photographs. He moved to the next drawer of cards.

Tellman grunted and slammed a drawer shut.

Pitt looked up and saw the distress in the sergeant’s face. His eyes were narrowed and his lips drawn back a little as if he felt an inward pain. In spite of all his experience, this confused him. He expected something higher of artists. Like many of little learning, he admired education. He believed it lifted men above the lowest in them and offered a path out of the trap of ignorance and all the ugliness that went with it. This was a disillusionment he did not expect or understand.

There was nothing for Pitt to say. It was a private distress, at least for the moment better not put into words. In fact Tellman would find it easier to deal with if he did not even realize Pitt was aware of it.

The next drawer of pictures was much the same as the last, pleasant, a few rather risque, but nothing more than the art of young men seeing how far they dare go in putting their fantasies into expression. Some were the usual rectangular professional plates, slick, showing the same, rather repetitive use of light and shade, angle or exposure.

There were also several of the round pictures which held considerably more individuality, although they were also less skilled. Sometimes the form was not as sharp, the balance less well disposed. These were the amateur ones, taken by the likes of the camera club members he had interviewed.

One or two of them were good, if a trifle theatrical. He recognized poses that seemed to be taken directly from the stage. There was a fairly obvious Ophelia, not like Cecily Antrim but alive and disturbingly frantic, on the borders of madness. And yet it was a fascinating picture. She looked no more than twenty at the most, with dark hair and wide eyes. Her lips were parted and faintly erotic.

A few more were rather Arthurian, reminding him of the pre-Raphaelite painters, definitely romantic. Something in the background of one of them caught his attention, a use of lighting rather than a specific article. In the center was a young girl kneeling in vigil. On the altar were a chalice and a knight’s sword. It made him think of Joan of Arc.

In another a woman in despair leapt to her feet as if fleeing from a mirror, presumably intended as the Lady of Shalott.

A third came from the classical Greek theatre, a young girl about to be sacrificed. The same length of carved wood was used in all three, very cleverly. It gave them a richness of texture as the light and shade accentuated the repeated pattern.

Pitt had seen it before, but it took him a moment or two to remember where. Then it came to him. He had passed by it as he had gone from Cecily Antrim’s dressing room to the back door.

“Where did you buy these pictures?” he said aloud.

Hadfield did not even look up from the list he was writing. “What’s the matter now?” he said wearily. “What crime are you trying to tie them up with?”

“Where did you get them?” Pitt repeated. “Who brought them to you?”

Hadfield put down his pen, splattering ink over the page, and swore. He came over to Pitt irritably and stared over his shoulder at the photographs.

“I dunno. Some young photographer who thinks he can make a few bob. Why?” His voice was laden with sarcasm. “What terrible offense ter ’umanity and civilization can yer see in these? Got a dirty mind, you ’ave. Looks as innocent as a cup o’ tea ter me.”

“Who brought them to you?” Pitt repeated, a steel edge of anger to his voice, although it was misery he was feeling inside. He did not want the answer he was almost certain would come.