Anne Perry - [Thomas Pitt 10]

by Bethlehem Road

  There was more in from cabdrivers, but nothing that added to what they already knew. No one had any word on anarchists or Fenians, or any other violent group.

  The newspapers were still featuring the story in headlines, with speculations on civil riot and dissolution below.

  The Home Secretary was becoming anxious and had informed them of his profound wish that they bring the case to a speedy conclusion, before public unrest became any more serious.

  The briefest of inquiries ascertained that Florence Ivory lived in Walnut Tree Walk, off the Waterloo Road, a short distance to the east of Paris Road and Royal Street, and the Westminster Bridge. She was acknowledged by the local police station with frowns and slight shrugs. There was no record of any offense against the law. Their attitude seemed to be a mixture of amusement and exasperation. The sergeant answering Pitt’s questions pulled his features into a grimace, but it was good-natured.

  Pitt called in the early afternoon. It was a pleasant house, modest for the area, but well cared for, sills recently painted and chintz curtains in the open windows and a jar of daffodils catching the sun.

  A maid of all work opened the door, the apron round her broad waist obviously for service, not ornamentation, and a mop leaned against the wall where she had rested it to attend to the caller.

  “Yes sir?” she asked, looking surprised.

  “Is Mrs. Ivory at home? I am Inspector Pitt, from the Bow Street Police Station, and I believe Mrs. Ivory may be able to help us.”

  “I can’t see ’ow she could do that! But if you want I’ll go an’ ask ’er.” She turned and left him on the step while she retreated somewhere into the back of the house, leaving her mop behind.

  It was only a moment before Florence Ivory appeared, whisking the mop out of the hallway and into the door of a room to the right, then facing Pitt with a startlingly direct gaze. She was of average height and slender to the point of gauntness. She had no bosom to speak of, and her shoulders were square and a trifle bony; nevertheless she was not un-feminine, and there was a considerable elegance to her, of a quite individual nature. Her face was far from traditionally beautiful: her eyes were large and wide set, her brows too heavy for fashion, her nose long, straight, and much too large; there were deeply marked lines round her mouth. In spite of the fact, Pitt judged her to be thirty-five at the very most. When she spoke her voice was husky, sweet, and completely unique.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Pitt. Mrs. Pacey informs me you are from the Bow Street Police Station and believe that I can help you in some way. I cannot imagine how, but if you care to come in I shall try.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Ivory.” He followed her through the hallway into a wide room at the back of the house, dark-paneled, and yet creating an illusion of light. A polished table held a porcelain dish, cracked but still retaining much of its delicate beauty, and on it was a bowl of spring blossom. The far wall was almost entirely taken up with windows and a French door opening onto a small garden. The curtains were pale cotton, sprigged with some sort of flower design, and the seat beneath the windows was covered with cushions in the same material. It was a room in which he felt immediately comfortable.

  Beyond the windows he could just see the figure of a woman bending in the garden, working the earth. She was not far away, for the garden was small, but through the panes, unless he stared, he could make out no more than a white blouse and the sun on a cloud of auburn hair.

  “Well?” Florence Ivory said briskly. “I would imagine your time is precious, and mine certainly is. What is it you imagine I know that could possibly interest the Bow Street police?”

  He had been turning over in his mind how he could approach the subject with her, both yesterday evening and this morning, and now that he had met her all his preparations seemed inadequate. Her penetrating stare was fixed on him with impatience ready to become dislike; deviousness would be torn apart and would alienate her by insulting her intelligence, an act which he judged she would take very ill.

  “I am investigating a murder, ma’am.”

  “I know no one who has been murdered.”

  “Mr. Vyvyan Etheridge?”

  “Oh.” She had been caught out, not in a lie, in an inaccuracy. And the foolishness of it caused a flush of irritation to rise to her cheeks. “Yes, indeed. Somehow the word ‘murder’ brought to my mind something more—more personal. I think of that as an assassination. I am afraid I do not know anything about anarchists. We live a very quiet life here, very domestic.”

  He had no idea from her face whether the word was meant in praise or bitterness. Had she imagined herself in Parliament too? Or was Lady Mary Carfax simply repeating a mixture of gossip and her own prejudices?

  “But you were acquainted with Mr. Etheridge?”

  “Not socially.” There was laughter in her voice now. It was a beautiful instrument, rich and passionate, flexible to a hundred shades of thought and meaning.

  “No, Mrs. Ivory,” he agreed. “But I believe you had some occasion to appeal to him professionally?”

  Her face hardened, the light vanished from it, and something crossed it which was so intense it was frightening, a hatred that threatened to rob her of breath and twist her very body with its violence.

  Pitt instinctively started forward, then caught himself and waited. This woman might have taken an open razor and crept up behind a man and cut his throat from ear to ear. She did not look to have the strength, but certainly she had all the force of emotion.

  The silence hung between them so thickly every other tiny sound was magnified—the clatter of the maid somewhere in the kitchen, a child’s feet running on the pavement beyond the curtained windows, a bird singing.

  “I did,” she agreed finally. Her voice seemed pressed from between her teeth, and her eyes did not move from his. “And if he dealt with others as he did with me, then I am not surprised someone killed him. But it was not I.”

  “What did he do, Mrs. Ivory, that you found so irredeemable?”

  “He elicited trust—and then betrayed it, Mr. Pitt. Do you excuse betrayal? As perhaps you have not experienced it very often? No doubt you have ways to fight, recourse when you are used, wronged—oh don’t look like that!” Her face was suddenly full of scorn mixed with a furious humor, a kind of derision he had never seen before. “I do not mean that he seduced my girlish heart—although, God knows, that has happened to enough women. I had no personal relationship with Mr. Etheridge, I assure you!”

  For an instant there was an element of the absurd in it; then he remembered how unlikely a thing love can be, let alone that hunger that attracts people in the mask of love. She was a woman of character, high individuality; it was not impossible, her wry interest in everything could have drawn Etheridge. His dismissal died before it reached his lips.

  “I understand his connection with you was as a member of Parliament, and I assumed your feeling of injustice was in that regard,” he said instead.

  Her hard laughter came again. “How painfully tactful you are, Mr. Pitt. Whose feelings are you trying to spare? Not mine! Nothing you could say of Mr. Etheridge could be as harsh as what I might say of him myself. Or is it your duty to speak well of your superiors?”

  A dozen answers flashed through Pitt’s mind, most of them sarcastic or critical, and he restrained himself. He would not allow her to dictate how he did his job, or what his manner should be.

  “It is my duty, Mrs. Ivory, to discover who murdered Mr. Etheridge. My opinion of him is immaterial,” he said coolly. “A lot of the people who are murdered are not those I would necessarily like, had I known them. Fortunately the freedom to walk about without fear of being murdered does not depend on one’s friendship with policemen, or the lack of it.”

  For an instant she was furious, then her face relaxed into a sudden smile. “I suppose that is as well, or I should live in terror. You have a sharp tongue, Mr. Pitt. You are quite right, I did appeal to Mr. Etheridge to help me, as a constituent of his, which I was at th
e time. I lived in Lincolnshire.”

  “And I assume he did not help you?”

  Again the hatred twisted her face and made it ugly; her mouth, which had been mobile, soft, and intelligent a moment before became a flat, bitter line.

  “He promised to, and then like all men, he rallied to his own kind in the end. He betrayed me and left me with nothing!” She was shaking, her thin body beneath the cotton of her gown was tense with passion, shoulders rigid. “Nothing!”

  The French doors opened and the other woman came in, obviously having heard the anguish ringing in Florence’s voice. She was several years younger, barely twenty. She was of a completely different build, taller and softer in outline, with a delicate bosom and rounded arms. Rossetti could have used her perfect Pre-Raphaelite face in one of his Arthurian romances; she had all the earthy naiveté and the unconscious strength of his subjects.

  She went to Florence Ivory and put an arm round her defensively, facing Pitt with anger.

  Florence put one hand on the girl’s. “It is all right, Africa. Mr. Pitt is from the police. He is inquiring into the murder of Vyvyan Etheridge. I was telling him what kind of a person Mr. Etheridge was. Naturally that involved my own experiences with him.” Her eyes met Pitt’s again. “Mr. Pitt, my friend and companion, Miss Africa Dowell, whose house this is, and who has been generous enough to take me in and give me a home when I would otherwise have nothing.”

  “How do you do, Miss Dowell,” Pitt said gravely.

  “How do you do,” she answered guardedly. “What do you want from us? We despised Mr. Etheridge, but we did not kill him, nor do we know who did.”

  “I did not suppose you knew who did,” Pitt agreed. “At least, not that you were aware. But you may well know something that helps when it is put together with what I know or may yet learn.”

  “We don’t know any anarchists.” There was something in the lift of her chin, her frank-eyed defiance, that made Pitt think it was at least in part a lie.

  “You believe it was anarchists? Why, Miss Dowell?”

  She swallowed, confused. It was not the reply she had expected.

  Florence stepped in. “Well, if there were a personal motive, a matter of inheritance, or passion, you would hardly imagine that we should know anything of help to you. And as far as I know we are also acquainted with no lunatics.”

  Only part of Pitt was irritated by them, standing close together, defensively; they had been hurt and they were protecting themselves against being hurt again.

  “But possibly some people disliked Mr. Etheridge for political reasons?” he continued.

  “Dislike is far too mild a term, Mr. Pitt,” Florence said, the bitterness returning. “I hated him.” Her hand tightened on Africa’s arm. “I daresay there were others he treated similarly, but I do not know of them, nor would I tell you if I did.”

  “People who might have been sufficiently angered to behave violently, Mrs. Ivory?”

  “I’ve told you, I have no idea. But sometimes all the pleading and protestations in the world do no good, when the people who have power are comfortable themselves, when they have warmth, food, safety, social rank, families around them, and the position to see that everything remains that way. They cannot and do not want to believe that other people are suffering any pain or injustice, that things should be changed—most especially if the changes involve questioning an order which they find so satisfactory.”

  He saw the passion in her face, the vehemence with which she spoke, and he knew this was no instant response to his words, it was a conviction boiling under the surface, awaiting the right moment to burst out with all the strength of years of suffering, however occasioned.

  He must keep his emotions quiet. This was no time to give his own answers, to speak of the injustices that made his own anger burn or the complacency he would have scalded with his contempt. Nor was it time to philosophize. He was here to learn if this woman could have abandoned pleading and argument and the consent to law that kept the community from barbarism, if she had put her own sense of right and equity before all others and cut the throats of two men.

  “All you seem to be saying, Mrs. Ivory, is that the satisfied do not often seek change; it is the dissatisfied who press for improvement, or merely for their turn to have the power and the rewards.”

  Again her face tightened with anger, which was now directed at him.

  “For a moment, Mr. Pitt, I thought you had imagination, pity even. Now I see you are as complacent, insensitive, and frightened for your own miserable little niche in society as the rest of your kind!”

  His voice dropped. “Who are my kind, Mrs. Ivory?”

  “The people with power, Mr. Pitt!” She almost spat the words. “Men—almost all men! Women are born into life and must take our father’s name, his rank in life. He decides where and how we will live. In the house, his word is law—he decides whether we shall be educated or not, what we will do, if we shall marry, when, and to whom. Then our husbands decide what we shall say, do, even think! They decide what faith we shall profess, what friends we may or may not meet, what shall happen to our children. And we have to defer to them, whatever we actually think, to pretend they are cleverer than we are, subtler, wiser, have more imagination—even if they are so stupid it is painful!” She was breathing hard, her whole body shaking.

  “Men make the laws and administer them; the police are men; judges are men—everywhere I turn my life is dictated by men! Nowhere can I appeal to a woman, who might understand what I really feel!

  “Do you know, Mr. Pitt, it is only four years ago that I ceased to be in law a chattel to my husband? A thing, an object belonging to him like his other household goods, a chair or a table, or a bale of linen. Then the law—man’s law—at last recognized that I am actually a person, a human being, independent of anyone else, with my own heart and my own brain. When I am hurt it is not my husband who bleeds, it is I!”

  Pitt had not known it. The women in his own family were so mightily independent it had never occurred to him to consider their legal standing. He did know that married women had been entitled to retain and administer their own property only six years ago; in fact when he had first met Charlotte in 1881, he would in law have been the owner of her money, such as it was, even her clothes, upon their marriage. He had not thought of it until someone had made a vicious remark as to his change in fortune.

  “And you find protestations and pleadings are no use?” he said fatuously, hating having to be so false to the understanding, even the empathy he felt. He had grown up the son of servants on a country estate; he knew about obedience and ownership.

  Her disgust stung. “You are either a fool, Mr. Pitt, or else you are deliberately patronizing me in a fashion both contemptible and completely pointless. If you are trying to make me say that I consider there are occasions when violence is the only means left to someone suffering intolerable wrongs, then consider me to have said it.” She glared at him, defying him to make the next, inevitable charge.

  “I am not a fool, Mrs. Ivory,” he said instead, meeting her blazing eyes. “Nor do I imagine you are. Whatever you pleaded for to Mr. Etheridge, it was not that he should change the whole order of society and give to women an equality they have never enjoyed in all our two thousand years. You may be marvelously ambitious, but you will have started with something more specific, and I think more personal. What was it?”

  The rage died away again suddenly, like a force that has been so violent it has consumed all its fuel, and only the pain was left. She sat down on a cushioned wood settle and stared not at him but at the garden through the open window.

  “I imagine if I do not tell you, then you will only go and dig it up elsewhere, perhaps less accurately. I was married fifteen years ago, to William Ivory. My property was not great, but it would have been more than enough for me to live on in some comfort. Of course, on my wedding day it became his. I have never seen it since.”

  Her hands were completely c
alm in her lap; she held a lace handkerchief, which she had pulled from her pocket, but she did not twist it. Only the whiteness of her knuckles betrayed the straining muscles.

  “But that is not my complaint—although I find it monstrous. It was an institutionalized way for men to steal women’s money and do whatever they pleased with it, on the grounds that we were too feeble-witted and too ignorant of financial affairs to manage it ourselves. We must watch our husbands squander it, and never speak a word, even if we had a hundred times more sense! And if we did not know how to manage affairs, whose fault is that? Who forbade our education in anything but the most trivial matters?”

  Pitt waited for her to return to her grievance. All this time Africa Dowell stood at the far end of the settle, a figure of startling immobility, as if she had indeed been one of the romantic paintings she resembled, and like them all manner of passion and dreams were in her face; she might well just this instant have seen the mirror of Shalott crack from side to side, sealing her doom. Whatever Florence Ivory was recounting, it was well known to her, and she felt the same unhealed wound.

  “We had two children,” Florence continued. “A boy, and then a girl. William Ivory became more and more dictatorial. Our laughter offended him. He thought me light-minded if I enjoyed my children’s company, told them stories or played games, and yet if I wished to talk of politics, or of changes in the laws which might help the poor and the oppressed, he said I meddled in things that were too weighty for me and were not my concern, and I had no idea what I was talking about. My place was in the parlor, the kitchen, or the bedroom; nowhere else.

  “Finally I could bear it no longer, and I left. I knew from the outset that I could not have my son, but my daughter, Pansy, who was then six years old”—even speaking the name seemed to wrench her—“I took with me. It was very hard for us. We had little money, and few means of earning any. At first I was given shelter by a friend here in London who had some understanding of my plight, and some pity for me. But her own circumstances became severely reduced, and I was obliged by honor not to burden her with our care any longer.