Anne Perry - Rutland Place

"Not if they wanted to silence her," Charlotte pointed out. "If you are afraid of someone, you want them dead before they speak, which means as soon as possible. Thomas, I really do believe she was a Peeping Tom. The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. She peeped once too often and saw some shy;thing that cost her her life." She stared down into her tea, watching the vapor curl off it and rise gently. "I wonder if people who get murdered are usually unpleasant, if they have some flaw in them that invites murder? I mean people that aren't killed for money, of course. Like Shakespearean tragic heroes- one fatal deformity of soul that mars all the rest that might have been good." She stirred her tea, although there was no sugar in it. The steam curled thicker. "Curiosity killed the cat. If Mina had not wanted to know so much about everybody. . I wonder if she knew about Monsieur Alaric, and Mama's locket?" Oddly enough, she was not afraid. Caroline was foolish, but there was neither the viciousness nor the fear in her to make her kill. And Paul Alaric had no reason to.

He looked up sharply, and too late she realized she had not mentioned Alaric's name before. Of course Pitt could not have forgotten him from Paragon Walk. At one time they had sus shy;pected him of murder … or worse!

"Alaric?" he said slowly, searching her face.

She felt herself flush, and was furious. It was Caroline who was behaving foolishly; she, Charlotte, had done nothing indiscreet.

"Monsieur Alaric is the man whose picture Mama has in the locjket," she said defensively, looking straight back at him. And then because his eyes were too clear, too wise, she turned away and stirred her sugarless tea vigorously once again. She tried to sound casual. "Did I not mention that?"

"No." She knew he was still watching her, "No-you didn't."

"Oh." She kept her eyes on the swirling tea. "Well, he is."

There were several moments of silence.

"Indeed?" he said at last. "Well, I'm afraid we didn't find the locket-or any of the other stolen things, for that matter. And if Mina was a Peeping Tom, stealing for the sake of a sick need to know about other people, to possess something of them-" He saw her shudder, and he gave a sigh. "Isn't that what you are saying? That she was abnormal, perverted?"

"I suppose so."

He tried his tea again. "And of course there is the other possibility," he added. "Maybe she knew who the thief was."

"How tragic, and ridiculous!" she said with sudden anger. ' 'Someone dying over a few silly things like a locket and a buttonhook!"

"Lots of people have died for less." The rookeries came to his mind with their teeming misery and need. "Some for a shilling, some by accident for something they didn't have, or in mistake for somebody else.''

She sipped her tea. "Are you going to investigate it?" she said at last.

"There's no choice. I'll see what I can find out about Ottilie Charrington. Poor soul! I hate digging through other people's wretched tragedies. It must be bad enough to lose a daughter, without the police unburying every indiscretion, putting every love or hate under a magnifying glass. No one wants to be seen so clearly!"

But the following morning the necessity was just as plain. If Charlotte was right and Mina had been inquiring, peeping at other people, then it was more than probable that some knowl shy;edge gained that way had been the cause of her death. He had heard before of people, outwardly normal people, often respectable, who were diseased with a compulsion to watch others, to pry into intimate things, to follow, to lift curtains aside, even to open letters and listen at doors. This compulsion always led to dislike and fear, often to imprisonment. It was inevitable that one day it would bring about murder also.

He could hardly start by going directly to the Charringtons. There was no excuse for him to question them about their daughter's death so long after the event unless he were to tell them of his suspicions, and that was obviously impossible at this point. It might be slander, at best. And on so tenuous a thread they would have no obligation to answer him even so.

Instead he went back to Mulgrew. The doctor had attended most of the families of Rutland Place, and if he had not known Ottilie himself, he would almost certainly be able to tell Pitt who had.

"Filthy day!" Mulgrew greeted him cheerfully. "Owe you a couple of handkerchiefs. Obliged to you. Act of a gentleman. How are you? Come in and dry yourself." He waved his arms to conduct Pitt along the hallway. "Street's like a river, or perhaps I should say a gutter! What's wrong now? Not sick, are you? Can't cure a cold, you know. Or backache. No one can! At least if someone can, I've not met him!" He led the way back to an overcrowded room full of photographs and mementos, bookcases on every wall, cascades of papers and folios sliding off tables and stools. A large Labrador lay asleep in front of the fire.

"No, I'm not sick." Pitt followed him with a feeling of relief, even elation. Suddenly the ugly things became more bearable, the darkness he must probe less full of shapeless fear, but rather known things, things that could be endured.

"Sit down." Mulgrew waved an arm widely. "Oh, tip the cat off. She always gets on there the moment my back is turned. Pity she has so much white in her-damn white hairs stick to my pants. Don't mind, do you?"

Pitt eased the little animal off the chair and sat down smiling.

"Not at all. Thank you."

Mulgrew sat opposite him.

"Well, if you're not sick, what is it? Not Mina Spencer-Brown again? Thought we proved she died of belladonna?"

The little cat curled itself around Pitt's legs, purring gently, then hopped up onto his knees and wound itself into a knot, face hidden, and fell asleep instantly.

Pitt touched it with pleasure. Charlotte had wanted a cat. He must get her one, one like this.

"Are you physician to the Charringtons as well?" he asked.

Mulgrew's eyes opened wide in surprise.

"Throw her off if you want," he said, pointing to the cat. "Yes, I am. Why? Nothing wrong with any of them, is there?"

"Not so far as I know. Except that their daughter died. Did you know her?"

"Ottilie? Yes, lovely girl." His face retreated quite suddenly into lines of heavy sorrow. "One of the saddest things I know, her death. Miss her. Lovely girl."

Pitt was aware of a genuine grief, not the professional sadness of a doctor who loses a patient, but a sense of personal bereavement, of some happiness that no longer existed. He was embarrassed to have to continue. He had not expected emotion; he had been prepared only for thought, academic investigation. The mystery of murder was ephemeral, even paltry; it was the emotions, the fire of pain, and the long wastelands afterward that were real.

His hands found the cat's warm little body again, and he stroked it softly, comforting himself as much as pleasing the animal.

"What caused her death?" he asked.

Mulgrew looked up. "I don't know. She didn't die here. Somewhere in the country-Hertfordshire."

"But you were the family physician. Didn't they tell you what it was?"

"No. They said very little. Didn't seem to want to talk about it. Natural, I suppose. Shock. Grief takes people differently."

"It was very sudden, I understand?"

Mulgrew was looking into the fire, his eyes away from Pitt's, seeing something he could not share.

"Yes. No warning at all."

"And they didn't tell you what it was?"

"No."

"Didn't you ask?"

"I suppose I must have. All I can really remember was the shock, and how nobody spoke of it, almost as if by not putting it into words they could undo it, stop it from being real. I didn't press them. How could I?"

"But as far as you know she was perfectly well at the time she left Rutland Place?" Pitt inquired.