Anne Perry - Death in the Devil's Acre

“Did I understand you earlier to say that he did a certain amount of charity work?”

“He did a great deal of unprofitable work!” she replied with a sudden welling-up of resentment. “He wasted most of his time on people who were-yes-unworthy of him. If you are looking for rivals in his profession, Mr. Pitt, you are wasting your time. My husband had great abilities, but he did not ever realize them as he should have.” Her voice held years of disappointment, of opportunities glimpsed and lost.

“Nevertheless he was well respected, I believe.” Pitt was torn between his instinctive dislike of her and a sense of pity for her frustration. She had been tied to a man who had failed her and there had been no escape for her. Her dreams had been within his reach, and he had refused to pluck them.

She sighed. “Oh, yes, in a certain fashion. He was very entertaining, you know. People liked him.” Her voice lifted a trifle in surprise; it was a fact that she did not understand, and perhaps did not consciously share. Her own disappointment was too deep to find his peccadilloes amusing. “And occasionally he would make a brilliant diagnosis. That was his specialty, you know-diagnosis.”

Pitt reverted to the obvious. “Can you think of anything at all, ma’am, that might help us-anyone who might have borne a grudge? An old patient, perhaps-someone who could not accept the death of a relative and blamed the doctor? Was there anything unusual in Dr. Pinchin’s behavior lately, or any new acquaintance who was out of the ordinary?”

“My husband did not bring his less reputable friends to this house, Mr. Pitt.” Her mouth tightened. “There were certain persons he entertained elsewhere, as I am sure you will understand. And I noticed nothing odd in his behavior-it was just as usual.” A look of unhappiness crossed her face, a mixture of disapproval of the dead man’s habits and a sudden loneliness that he was gone. With all his failings and irritating ways, she had still grown used to him; he had been there for thirty years of her life. Now there was nothing,

For a moment Pitt felt unclouded pity for her, but he knew the gulf between them was too wide to bridge. His understanding would not ease her pain at all; on the contrary, to her it would be presumptuous.

He stood up. “Thank you, ma’am, for your help. I hope I shall not have to disturb you again. I am sure Mr. Mullen can see to everything else I need to know.”

“Good day, Mr. Pitt.” She regarded him bleakly until he had reached the door. She then lifted the pot and poured herself another cup of tea, dabbing her napkin first to her mouth, then up to catch the tears running down her cheeks.

Pitt went out and closed the door with a faint click.

Mullen was waiting for him in the hallway. “Is there anything else, sir?”

Pitt sighed. “Yes, please. I would like you to show me the household accounts, and your cellar. I presume you have approved all the staff before they were hired, and checked their references?”

Mullen stiffened and his expression became chilly. “Most certainly I have. May I ask what you expect to find, Mr. Pitt? They are entirely in order, I assure you. And the staff are all above question in honesty and morals or they would not remain here! And as for any one of them being out at night, that is impossible.”

Pitt was sorry to have offended him. Actually, he had no suspicions of any of the servants. What he was looking for was evidence of Pinchin’s standard of living, to judge his expenditures. Normally a man of his class would not go to the Acre, even for cheap entertainment. Was he a good deal less well-off than he appeared, or more well-off than his medical practice would account for? Was he spending money in brothels or gambling houses? Or was he earning it? He would not be the first outwardly respectable man to have a source of income in slum property.

“It is merely routine, Mr. Mullen,” he said with a smile. “Just as you check references, even though you believe them.”

Mullen relaxed a little. He respected professional thoroughness. “Quite so, Mr. Pitt. I am familiar with police procedure. If you will come this way …”

After his visit to the Pinchin household, Pitt spent the afternoon checking the Highgate medical practice and talking with shocked and extremely reticent colleagues. By the time he got home, at five past seven, he was tired, cold, and only a little wiser. If Pinchin owned property in the Devil’s Acre, he had hidden all record of it-or any other business transactions outside those of his Highgate practice. His standard of living, however, did suggest he was enjoying an income rather larger than his medical abilities would account for. Inherited money? Savings? Gifts? Even a little juggling of the books? Or perhaps blackmail of patients with indiscretions that required medical help: social diseases, an unwanted child-the possibilities were legion.

Gracie met Pitt at the door and took his coat through to the scullery to dry out. “’Orrible wet night, sir,” she said, shaking the big coat like a blanket and nearly overbalancing with it. She scurried ahead of him, muttering to herself about the hours he was obliged to keep in all weathers. Not once did she meet his eyes. She was sorry for him, for some reason, and her rigid little back was full of disapproval.

It did not take him long to put two and two together when Charlotte was also sweetly attentive, and full of conversation. “Have you been out?” he asked Charlotte.

“Only for a short while,” she said quite casually. “I was home before it began to rain. It was really not unpleasant.”

“And no doubt you came back in the carriage,” he added.

She looked up quickly, a faint color in her cheeks. “Carriage?”

“Didn’t you go to see Emily?”

There was reluctant admiration in her face. “How did you know?”

“Grade’s back.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Grade’s back. It is rigid with disapproval. Since I have only just come home, it cannot be anything I have done. It must be you. I imagine it was a visit to Emily to recount to her everything you know about the murders in the Devil’s Acre-especially since one of them concerns the footman of a previous acquaintance. Now tell me, am I mistaken?”

“I-”

He waited.

“Of course we discussed it!” Her eyes were bright, the blood warm in her cheeks. “But that is all-I swear! Anyway, what more could we do? We can hardly go to such a place. But we did wonder what on earth Dr. Pinchin was doing there. There are much better places for picking up loose women, if that is what he wanted, you know?”

“Yes, I do know, thank you.”

Her eyes met his in a flash, then slid away into a professed candor again. “Have you thought that perhaps he put up the money for Max, Thomas? You know, some unlikely-seeming people go into partnership with-”

“Yes, thank you,” he replied with a smile bubbling up inside him. “I thought of that, too.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed.

He took her hand and pulled her toward him. “Charlotte,” he said gently.

“What?”

“Mind your own business!”

The following day, Pitt pursued the investigation in the next most obvious course. He took his oldest coat and a rather battered hat that normally not even he would have worn and set out in a drizzling rain for the Devil’s Acre, to find Max’s establishments-or at least one of them.

It was an area like many of the older slums of London, a curious mixture of societies that lived quite literally on top of each other. In the highest, handsomest houses with frontages on lighted thoroughfares lived successful merchants and men of private means. Below them, in smaller houses on lesser streets, were lodging-rooms for clerks and tradesmen. Beneath even these, squat and grimy, were the sagging tenements and cellars of the very poor, sometimes packed so full of humanity that two or three families shared one room. The stench of refuse and bodily waste was choking. Rats teemed everywhere, so that an untended baby might well be eaten alive. And more children died of starvation or disease than ever reached an age of six or seven years, when they might profitably join one of the schools for pickpockets and apprentice thieves.