Anne Perry - Resurrection Row

He was looking at her now, waiting.

“I don’t suppose it has anything to do with us,” she said at last. “If Mr. Pitt comes here I shall see him, of course, but I cannot tell him anything of value.” She smiled, the nervousness all gone. Her stomach was as calm as sleep. They both knew what had happened, and it was a kind of release, like silence after a crescendo of music, too long and too loud-now she was back to reality again. “Thank you for coming. It was kind of you to tell me. It is always easier to learn of bad news from a friend than a stranger.”

He stood up very slowly. For a moment she thought he was going to argue, to try to pull back the threads; but he smiled, and for the first time they looked at each other without pretense or the delusionary quickening of the heart, the flutter, the urgent breath.

“Of course,” he said quietly. “Perhaps it will be solved before it needs to trouble us. Now I must go and see Fleetwood. The bill comes up very soon now.”

“I know several people I might approach,” she said quickly.

“Do you?” His face was keen, Jones forgotten. “Would you ask them? Anything you want to know, call on Carlisle; he’ll be terribly grateful.”

“I have already written a few letters-”

“That’s marvelous! You know, I think we really have a chance!”

After he had gone she felt a loneliness, but it was not a painful, anxious thing as it used to be, a longing to know when he would return, worrying about all she had said and done, whether she had been foolish, or too cold, or too forward, wondering what he felt, or thought of her. This was more like the emptiness of a summer morning when the whole sky is clear with the day before you, and you have no obligations and no idea what you intend to do.

The morning after he had spoken to Maizie Snipe, Pitt was back in Resurrection Row with a constable and a warrant to search the premises of number forty-seven.

It was what he had expected, a photographic studio complete with all the props necessary for rather glossy pornography: colored lights, animal skins, a few lengths of fabric of various vivid dyes, headdresses of feathers, strings of beads, and an enormous bed. The walls were covered with very skilled and very varied photographs, all of them highly erotic.

“Cor!” The constable breathed out tremulously, not sure what emotion he dare express. His eyes were as round as boiled sweets, and twice as glazed.

“Precisely,” Pitt agreed. “A flourishing business, I should say. Before you disturb anything, look at everything very carefully and see if you can see any marks of blood, or evidence of violence. He may well have been killed here. I should think there are a couple of hundred motives hanging on these walls or stuffed in the drawers.”

“Oh!” The constable stood motionless, appalled by the thought.

“Get on with it,” Pitt urged. “We’ve a lot to do. When you’ve searched everything, start putting those photographs in order; see how many different faces we’ve got.”

“Oh, Mr. Pitt, sir! We’re never going to try and identify all them lot! It’ll take years! And who’s going to admit to it, anyway? Can you see any young girl saying ‘Yes, that’s me’? I ask you!”

“If it’s her face in the picture, she can’t very well argue, can she?” Pitt pointed to the far corner and jerked his head expressively. “Get on with it!”

“My wife’d have a fit if she knew I was doing this!”

“Then don’t tell her,” Pitt said sharply. “But I’ll have one if you don’t, and I’m much more of a force to be reckoned with than she is!”

The constable pulled a face and squinted at the photographs with one eye.

“Don’t you believe it, sir,” he said, but he obeyed and within a few minutes had discovered marks of blood on the floor and on an overturned stool. “This is where ’e was killed, I reckin,” he said decisively, pleased with himself. “See it plain, if you know where to look. Reckin ’e was likely ’it with this.” He touched the stool.

It was after the examination and the measuring that Pitt left the constable to begin the immense task of sorting the photographs to identify the girls. It was for Pitt to consider the other half of the trade-the clients. Naturally, Jones was more discreet than to write down names of those who might be sensitive, even violent, about their association, but Pitt thought he knew at least where he might begin: with the book of numbers and insects from Jones’s desk in his house. He had seen four of those elegant little hieroglyphics on pictures in Gadstone Park. Now he would go and question their owners, Perhaps they held an explanation to at least one mystery: why anyone should pay so highly for the work of an artist that was at best of very moderate talent.

He began with Gwendoline Cantlay, and this time he came to the point after only the briefest of preliminaries.

“You paid a great deal of money for your portrait by Mr. Jones, Lady Cantlay.”

She was cautious, already sensing something beyond trivial enquiry. “I paid the usual price, Mr. Pitt, as I think you will discover if you look a little further.”

“The usual price for Mr. Jones, ma’am,” he agreed. “But not usual for an artist of his rather indifferent quality.”

Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Are you an art expert, Inspector?” she said heavily.

“No, but I have opportunity to counsel with experts, ma’am, and they seem to be agreed that Godolphin Jones was not worth anything like the prices he received here in the Park.”

She opened her mouth and began a question, then stopped. “Indeed. Perhaps art is only a matter of taste, after all.”

This was a scene he had played put so many times and always disliked. Secrets were almost always a matter of vulnerability, an attempt to hide or reject a hurt of some sort.

But he had no alternative. Plastering over truth was not his job, even though he would like it to have been.

“Are you sure, ma’am, that he was not selling something else with his painting-perhaps discretion?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” It was the standard response, and he could almost have said it for her. She was going to resist as long as possible, make him spell out his knowledge.

“Were you not at one time fonder of Mr. Jones than you would wish known, Lady Cantlay-especially, say, by your husband?”

Her face flushed scarlet, and it was several painful seconds before she could decide what to say to him, whether to continue to deny it, or if anger would help. In the end she recognized the certainty in his face and gave in.

“I was extremely foolish, carried away by the glamour of an artist, I suppose-and flattered-but it is all past, Inspector, some time ago. And yes, you are correct. I did commission the picture before my-relationship-and then paid rather more for it when it was completed, to insure his silence. I would not have accepted it for such an amount, otherwise.” She hesitated, and he waited for her. “I–I would be obliged if you would not discuss it with my husband. He does not know of it.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Oh, yes, of course I am! He would be-” All the color drained from her skin. “Oh! Godolphin was murdered! You cannot think Desmond-I assure you, I give you my most absolute word-that he did not know! He could not have. It was all most discreet-only when I went to sit for my portrait-” She did not know what else to say to convince him, and she cast around for some form of proof.

It was against all his convictions to feel sorry for her, and yet he did. They had nothing in common, and her behavior had been self-indulgent and thoughtless, but he found that he did believe her and had no wish to prolong her fear.