Anne Perry - Resurrection Row

“Thank you, Lady Cantlay. If he did not know of the matter, he would have had no cause to wish Mr. Jones any harm, so far as we know. I appreciate your candor. The subject need not be raised again.” He stood up. “Good day.”

She was too relieved to say anything but a faint, automatic “good day” in return.

Pitt called next on Major Rodney, and here his reception was totally different, wiping away every trace of the rather ebullient feeling with which he had left the Cantlays’. Self-satisfaction disappeared like water down a large sink.

“You are extremely insolent, sir!” the major said furiously. “And I have not the least notion of what you are imagining! This is Gadstone Park, not one of your back streets. I don’t know what kind of behavior you are accustomed to, but we know how to conduct ourselves here! And if you persist in suggesting that my sisters have had some sort of liaison with this wretched artist, I shall sue you for slander, do you understand me, sir?”

Pitt tried with difficulty to keep his patience. The idea of Godolphin Jones in a romantic involvement with either of the two elderly jam-making ladies was ridiculous, and in taking refuge behind it, Major Rodney was obscuring the issue very effectively, whether on purpose or not. Pitt doubted him capable of the strategy, but the result was the same.

“I have not suggested anything of the kind, sir,” he said as calmly as he was able, but the hard, frayed edges of his temper showed. “Indeed, the possibility had not occurred to me. Both because I would not have considered your sisters to be ladies of a temperament or an age to indulge in such things, nor did I know they had purchased the pictures themselves. I had believed it to be you who had commissioned Mr. Jones?”

The major was temporarily thrown off balance. His cause for outrage had vanished just as he was getting into his stride and all ready to demand that Pitt leave the house.

Pitt pressed home his advantage. “Are the ladies of private property?” he asked. They were both unmarried and could not be heiresses since they had a brother, so it was almost impossible, and he knew it.

The major was growing increasingly redder in the face. “Our financial affairs are not your concern, sir!” he snapped. “I dare say it would seem like wealth to you, but it is merely adequate for us. We do not care to be ostentatious, but we have means, certainly. And that is all I am prepared to say.”

“But you did commission two large and expensive picture from Mr. Jones, costing nine hundred seventy-five pounds in total?” Pitt had added up the columns next to the caterpillars and had the satisfaction of seeing the major’s face pale and his neck tighten with shock.

“I–I demand to know where you gained such information. Who told you?”

Pitt opened his eyes wider, as if the question were foolish.

“Mr. Jones kept records, sir, very precise records; dates and amounts of payments. I had only to add them up to find the total. It was hardly necessary to trouble anyone else.”

The major’s body went slack, and he sat like a well-trained child at table, eyes forward, hands still, but no substance inside him. For a long time he was silent, and Pitt hated the necessity for digging out of him whatever wretched secret it was that Jones had blackmailed him with. But there was no alternative. There was no time of the crime to use to eliminate people, no weapon but hands, the strength of which would almost certainly rule out a woman, certainly any society woman. Possibly a servant used to manual work, wringing heavy, wet laundry, might have had the power? At the moment he could think of no avenue except to learn all the truth he could.

The major was a small man, inarticulate, rigidly stiff within himself both bodily and emotionally, but he had been a soldier; he had seen death before and been taught how to kill, had learned to become familiar with the idea and to accept it as part of himself, to know that at times it could be his duty. Was his secret of sufficient importance to him that he would have strangled Godolphin Jones and then buried him in Albert Wilson’s grave?

“Why did you pay so much for those two pictures, Major Rodney?” Pitt pressed again.

The major focused his eyes and looked at him with dislike.

“Because that was the man’s price,” he said coldly. “I am no expert in art. That was what everyone else paid him. If it was excessive, then I was misled. So were we all! The man was a charlatan, if what you say is true. But you will forgive me if I do not accept your opinion as final?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm, and from the weight of his tone, Pitt guessed it an unfamiliar sentiment.

Major Rodney stood up. “And now, sir, I have said all I have to say to you. I wish you good day.”

There was no point in struggling, and Pitt knew it. He would have to find out the secret some other way and return when he had more ammunition. Perhaps it was only some foolishness, something Jones had discovered from another patron, possibly an indiscretion with a woman, and Rodney’s sense of honor forbade him from saying so. Or maybe it was a genuine matter of shame to him, an incident of cowardice in the Crimea, or some other barrack-room weakness, a gambling debt welched on, or a drunken escapade.

For now he would have to leave it.

In the early afternoon he called on St. Jermyn and found that he was out, at the House of Lords. He was obliged to return in the evening, cold and tired and well past the best of his temper.

His lordship was also irritated at not being able to relax and forget the business of the day over a glass of something from the pick of his cellars before considering dinner. He was civil to Pitt with something of an effort.

“I have already told you everything I know about the man,” he said tartly, moving over to the fire. “He was a fashionable artist. I commissioned a picture from him to please my wife. I expect I have met him socially on one or two occasions; after all, he lived here in the Park, but I meet hundreds of people. I recall he was a trifle odd-looking; rather too much hair.” He gave Pitt a sour look, his eye going to Pitt’s own scruffy head. “But then, one expects artists to be a little affected,” he continued. “It was not enough to be offensive, just rather obvious. I’m sorry the fellow is dead, but I dare say he mixed with a few less salubrious people. Possibly he became over-familiar with one of his models. As well as society, artists frequently paint women of far lower classes who happen to have the coloring or the features they want. I imagine you know that as well as I do. I should look for a jealous lover or husband, if I were you.”

“We haven’t been able to trace any pictures of women other than society portraits,” Pitt replied. “He doesn’t seem to have been prolific at all; in fact, rather reserved, but anything he did do, he sold at greatly inflated prices.”

“So you implied before,” St. Jermyn said drily. “I don’t have any comment on that. I would have thought portraits needed only to please the sitter. One seldom would wish to resell them. They usually get relegated to a back hallway or stair if one loses one’s taste for them; otherwise, they remain wherever they were hung in the first place.”

“You paid a considerable amount for the portrait of Lady St. Jermyn,” Pitt tried again.

St. Jermyn’s eyebrows rose. “You also remarked on that the last time you were here. She seemed to like the picture, which was all that concerned me. If I did pay too much, then I was duped. I’m really not very concerned about it. I don’t see why you should be.”

Pitt had already racked his brain to think of some reason, any at all, why Jones should have been able to put pressure on St. Jermyn to buy a picture he did not like, or at a price he thought unfair, but he had come up with nothing. To press Lady Cantlay in return for discretion would be easy, and recalling the stiff, nervous figure of the major, that was certainly believable, although he did not yet know the reason. A middle-aged, socially inarticulate man living with two maiden sisters-the probability was obvious-another indiscretion. Pride would force the major to pay for silence.