Anne Perry - Half Moon Street

“A young actor?” Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Don’t see him as a pastry cook, do you?”

“A gift?”

“For whom? A young lady? His mother? Do you see Cecily Antrim rolling pastry?”

Tellman gave him a sour look. “Then he must have had it disguised somehow. Maybe rolled in papers, like a sheaf of pictures or something?”

“That sounds more probable. So if Cathcart were standing where you are, and Orlando here”-Pitt gestured-“then Cathcart unquestionably had his attention on something else, or he would have noticed Orlando unwrap his pictures and take out a rolling pin, and he would have been alarmed. . it’s an act without reasonable explanation.”

“Then he didn’t see,” Tellman said decisively. “He was going somewhere, leading the way. Orlando was following. He hit Cathcart from behind. . we know that anyway.”

Pitt went through the motion of raising his arm as if to strike Tellman. Tellman crumpled to his knees, rather carefully, to avoid banging himself on the now-bare wooden floor. He lay down, more or less as Cathcart might have fallen.

“Now what?” he asked.

Pitt had been considering that. They had little idea how long Orlando had been there, but knowing what he had done, he had had no time to hesitate for more than a few minutes.

“If you think you’re going to put me in any dress. .” Tellman began.

“Be quiet!” Pitt snapped.

“I. .” Tellman started to get up.

“Lie down!” Pitt ordered. “Privilege of rank,” he added ironically. “Would you rather change places?”

Tellman lay down again.

“Where were the green dress and the chains kept?” Pitt said thoughtfully. “Certainly not down here!”

“Up in the studio, most likely,” Tellman replied, his face to the floor. “With all the other stuff he used in his pictures. What I want to know is, how did Orlando know that the punt was here and not somewhere else? It could have been anywhere, any lake or river. Could have been miles away-in another county, for that matter.”

Pitt did not answer. His mind was beginning to reach for a new, extraordinary thought.

“Do you suppose he went upstairs first?” Tellman went on. “Maybe saw the chains and the dress in the studio?” He did not say it as if he believed that himself.

“And then came down, and Cathcart was going up again, ahead of him, and Orlando killed him?” Pitt said almost absentmindedly.

Tellman rolled over and sat up, scowling. “Then what do you think?”

“I think he certainly didn’t wander down the garden, in the dark, to see if there was a boat moored in the river,” Pitt replied. “I think he had been here before, often enough to know that these things existed, and exactly where to find them. .”

“But he hadn’t,” Tellman said decisively. “He had to ask where it was. . from the pub landlord. We know that.”

“Or there was someone else here as well,” Pitt answered. “Someone who did know. . someone who finished the job that Orlando only started.”

“But he came alone!” Tellman climbed to his feet. “You think there was someone else here the same night. . also bent on murdering Cathcart?” His tone of voice conveyed what he thought of that possibility.

“I don’t know what I think,” Pitt confessed. “But I don’t think Orlando Antrim murdered Cathcart in a passion of fury over the way Cathcart used Cecily, then set about searching the house to see if he could find the clothes and the chains, and the boat, to make it a mockery of the photograph. For one thing, there was no sign of a struggle when Mrs. Geddes came in in the morning, which means that if he searched, he put everything back where he found it. . exactly. Does that sound like a man in a murderous rage to you?”

“No. But Cathcart’s dead,” Tellman said reasonably. “And someone put him in that dress and chained him in the punt, then scattered all the flowers. . and I’d swear anything you like it was someone who hated him. . and hated him because of Cecily Antrim.”

Pitt said nothing. He had no argument.

“And we know Orlando was here, and he bought the pin,” Tellman went on.

“We’d better go and look for it,” Pitt said miserably. “Before it gets dark. We’ve only got just over an hour.”

Together they trudged down the path towards the river, watched from the side door by Mrs. Geddes.

They were sodden wet, covered in mud, and it was beginning to grow dusk when Tellman slipped on it at the edge of the bank, swore, and pulled it out, washing it in river water and holding it up in angry triumph. “So he didn’t throw it after all,” he said with surprise. “Maybe he meant to and dropped it.”

They were obliged to get the ironmonger from his dinner to identify it. He came to the door with his napkin tucked into the tip of his waistcoat and a considerable reluctance in his manner. He eyed the rolling pin with disgust.

“Yes, that’s one o’ mine. Put my mark on ’em, in blue, I do. See?” He pointed to a tiny blue device on the end of the pin near the handle. “Is that the one what. .” He would not say it.

“Yes, it is. You sold it to a tall, young man on the afternoon of Cathcart’s death?”

“Yes.”

“Are you certain?”

“ ’Course I am. Wouldn’t say so if I weren’t. My books’ll show it.”

“Thank you. Sorry to have disturbed your supper.”

“Now what?” Tellman asked when they were outside in the dark again. “Is it enough to arrest him?” He sounded tired and doubtful.

Pitt was doubtful himself. He had no uncertainty that Orlando Antrim had seen the photograph of his mother and reacted with extreme distress. He had searched for the photographs and gone to the house and found Cathcart. He had purchased the rolling pin. But the dressing of the corpse in green velvet, and chaining him on the punt with the flowers strewn around, did not follow so easily.

Could there have been two people there other than Cathcart? If so, then who? He knew coincidences happened, but he did not like them. Most things had a cause, a line of circumstances connected to each other in a way which could be understood, if you knew them all and considered them long enough.

“Can we arrest him?” Tellman pressed.

“I don’t know.” Pitt shook himself a little.

“Well, it had to be him,” Tellman said pointedly. “He was here, we know that. He had plenty of reason to kill Cathcart. He bought the weapon and we’ve got it. What else is there-apart from working out how he knew where to find the dress and the chains?”

“And the boat,” Pitt added.

“Well, somebody did.” Tellman was exasperated. “You can’t argue with that! If it wasn’t him, who could it have been? And why? Why would anybody else do all that with the boat and the flowers? Wouldn’t they want to get away as quickly as possible? Just leave him where he was. Why dress up a dead man. . that somebody else killed. . and risk getting caught?”

“Not a lot of risk,” Pitt argued. “Bottom of a garden by the river in the middle of a foggy night. Still, he must have cared passionately about something to have bothered.”

They crossed the road, still walking slowly, heading back towards the bridge.

“Maybe it was someone he blackmailed, after all?” Tellman suggested. “Or more like, someone who hated that kind of picture and the way it makes people think.”

Pitt thought of Ralph Marchand. It was believable, very easily, but another idea was also forming in his mind, uncertain, perhaps foolish, but becoming clearer with each step.

As soon as he saw a hansom he hailed it, and to Tellman’s sharp stare of astonishment, he gave not the address of the theatre but that of the medical examiner.