by Anne Perry
“Or,” Pitt continued, “I shall presume you have these here for your own pleasure, and since one of them is evidence in a murder, that you are protecting the person who committed it . . .”
Unsworth gasped and waved his hands in denial.
“Or that you committed it yourself,” Pitt finished. “Which is it to be?”
“I . . . eh . . . I . . .” Unsworth ground his teeth. “I’ll give you a list. But you’ll ruin me! You’ll put me in the workhouse!”
“I hope so,” Pitt said.
Unsworth shot him a venomous look, but he went and fetched a piece of paper and a pen and ink, and wrote a long list of names for Pitt, but no addresses.
Pitt read through the names and saw none he recognized. He would get a list of members of the camera club and compare them, but he held little hope that there would be any in common.
“Tell me something about each of these men,” he said grimly to Unsworth.
Unsworth shook his head. “They’re customers. They buy pictures. What do I know about them?”
“A great deal,” Pitt replied without shifting his gaze. “If you didn’t, you’d not risk selling pictures like these to them. And I want a list of the men who supply these pictures as well.” He watched Unsworth’s face. “And before you deny that too, one of these pictures prompted the murder of Cathcart. The murderer saw it, and laid Cathcart’s body in the exact image.” He was satisfied to see Unsworth pale considerably and a sweat break out on his brow. “Coincidence would be unbelievable,” he went on. “Especially since Cathcart took the photograph. I need to know who else saw it. Do you understand me, Mr. Unsworth? You are the key to a murder which I intend to solve. You can tell me now . . . or I can close down your business until you do. Which will it be?”
Unsworth looked at him with hatred, his eyes narrow and dark.
“You tell me which picture it is, I’ll tell yer ’oo brought it an’ ’oo I sold it to,” he said grudgingly.
Pitt indicated the photograph of Cecily Antrim in the punt.
“Oh. Well, like yer said yerself, Cathcart brought me that one.”
“Sole rights?” Pitt asked.
“Wot?” Unsworth hedged.
“Do you have sole rights to the picture?” Pitt snapped.
“Wake up an’ dream! O’ course I don’t!”
It was a lie. Pitt knew it from the fixed steadiness of his eyes.
“I see. And you wouldn’t know the names of the other dealers who have it because you wouldn’t have sold it to them?” Pitt agreed.
Unsworth shifted his weight again. “That’s right.”
“So tell me all you can about those people you did sell to.”
“That’d take all day!” Unsworth protested.
“Probably,” Pitt agreed. “But Sergeant Tellman and I have all day.”
“Maybe you bleedin’ ’ave—but I ’aven’t. I’ve got a livin’ ter make!”
“Then you had better start quickly, hadn’t you, and not waste your valuable time in arguing,” Pitt said reasonably.
But even though they spent several hours in the small upstairs room and the shop was closed for business all the time, they learned nothing that appeared to be of use in guiding them any further in Cathcart’s murder. They left as it was growing dusk and went out onto the gaslit pavements with a heavy feeling of oppression.
Tellman drew in a long breath, as though the foggy air—with its slight damp, the smell of horses, wet roads, soot and chimneys—was still cleaner than the air inside the closed shop.
“That’s poison,” he said quietly, his voice husky with misery and rage. “Why do we let people make things like that?” It was not a rhetorical question. He wanted and needed an answer. “What good are we doing if we can only arrest people after they do things wrong, if we can’t stop them?” He jerked his head back towards the shop. “We could arrest someone if they put poison in a sack of flour.”
“Because people don’t want to buy sacks of flour with poisons in them,” Pitt answered him. “They want to buy these things. That’s the difference.”
They walked in silence for a while, crossing the street amid rumbling drays and wagons, fast-moving carriages, light hansoms, all with lamps gleaming. The sound of hooves was sharp, the hiss of wheels, the smell of fog in the nostrils and an increasing chill as darkness closed in. Wreaths of mist shrouded the lamps, diffusing the light.
“Why do they do it?” Tellman demanded suddenly, striding out to keep up with Pitt, who, in his own anger, had unconsciously been going faster and faster. “I mean, why does a woman like Miss Antrim let anyone take pictures like that? She doesn’t need the money. She isn’t starving, desperate, can’t pay the rent. She must make hundreds as it is. Why?” He waved his arms in a wild gesture of incomprehension. “She’s quality! She knows better than that!”
Pitt heard the confusion in him, and more than that, the disappointment. He understood it sharply. He felt it also. What perversity led a beautiful and brilliant woman to such degradation?
“Was she blackmailed into it, do you supposed?” Tellman asked, swerving to avoid banging into a lamppost.
“Maybe.” He would have to ask. He half hoped that was the answer. The weight of disillusion inside him was heavier than he would have imagined. A dream had been broken, a brightness was gone.
“Must be,” Tellman said, trying to convince himself. “Only answer.”
For Caroline it was not quite the end of the matter with Samuel Ellison. She had liked him very much, not for his resemblance to Edward, or because he liked her or found her attractive, but for his enthusiasm and for the gentleness and the complexity with which he saw his own country. She did not wish to part from him with anger remembered.
She looked across the breakfast table. She and Joshua were alone. The old lady had remained in her room.
“May I write to Samuel and tell him that we have solved the mystery of the letters, and we apologize for the mischief caused? I cannot quite see how to do it without telling him the reasons, and I would prefer not to do that.”
“No,” he said clearly, but his eyes were soft, and he was smiling. “He still behaved a trifle improperly. He admires you, which shows excellent taste, but he was too forward about it. . . .”
“Oh . . .”
“I shall write to him,” he continued. “I shall tell him what happened, as much as I know. I cannot tell him the old lady’s reason because I don’t know it. And I shall apologize for her appalling behavior, and invite him out to dinner . . .”
She smiled, delight flooding through her.
“. . . at my club,” he finished, looking amused and a trifle smug. “Then I shall take him to the theatre, if he accepts, and introduce him to Oscar Wilde. I know him passably well, and he is a very agreeable fellow. I am not having him here. Mrs. Ellison may be a mischief-making woman, but Samuel is still too fond of my wife for my peace of mind.”
Caroline felt the color burn up her cheeks, but this time it was pleasure, sharp and delicious. “What an excellent idea,” she said, looking down at the toast on her plate. “I am sure he will enjoy that enormously. Please give him my best wishes.”
“Certainly,” he replied, reaching for the teapot. “I shall be happy to.”
After Joshua left, Caroline went upstairs and asked if Mrs. Ellison was well. She was told by Mabel that so far she had not arisen, and it seemed she had no desire to get up today. Mabel was concerned that perhaps the doctor should be called.
“Not yet,” Caroline replied firmly. “I daresay it is no more than a headache and will pass without treatment—except what you can give, of course.”
“Are you sure, ma’am?” Mabel asked anxiously.
“I think so. I shall go and see her.”
“She didn’t want to be disturbed, ma’am!”
“I shall tell her you said so,” Caroline assured her. “Please don’t worry.” And without arguing the point any further, she went along the landing to the old lady’
s room and knocked briskly on the door.
There was no answer.
She knocked again, then opened it and went in.
Mrs. Ellison was sitting propped up against the pillows, her gray-white hair spread around her, her face pale, with dark shadows under her eyes, making the sockets look enormous.
“I did not give you permission to come in,” she said tartly. “Please have the decency to leave. Do I not even have the privilege of being alone in the house?”
“No, you don’t.” Caroline closed the door behind her and walked over to the bed. “I came to tell you that I spoke with Joshua yesterday evening . . .”
Mariah stared at her, misery draining her face of all life.
Caroline wanted to be furious with her, but pity overtook justified anger and every shred of the satisfaction in revenge that she had expected.
“I told him you had written the latter to Samuel. . . .”
Mariah winced as if Caroline had struck her. She seemed to grow smaller, huddled into herself.
“But I did not tell him why,” Caroline went on. “I said it was something that had hurt you greatly, and he did not ask what it was.”
There was total silence in the room. Slowly Mrs. Ellison let out her breath and her shoulders sagged. “He didn’t . . .” she whispered with disbelief.
“No.”
Again there was silence. Caroline searched for words to tell her that the wound would heal, the damage was not irreparable after all, but perhaps it was unnecessary.
Mrs. Ellison started to say something, then stopped. Her eyes did not move from Caroline’s face. She was grateful, it was there somewhere in the depths, but to put it into words would make it real, a solid thing between them, and she was not ready to yield that yet.
Caroline smiled briefly, then stood up and left.
She did not see the old lady again that day.
In the evening, when Joshua had left for the theatre after a very brief supper, the maid announced Inspector Pitt, and Caroline was delighted to see him. The pleasure of having Joshua at home during parts of the day was paid for in far too many lonely evenings.
“Thomas! Come in,” she said with pleasure. “How are you? My dear, you look awfully tired. Sit down.” She gestured to the big armchair near the fire. “Have you eaten?” She was very aware that with Charlotte in Paris he too was alone. He looked even more crumpled than usual and had a forlorn air about him. It was not until he had done as he was bidden and the gaslight caught his face more closely that she realized he was also deeply unhappy.
“Thomas, what it is? What has happened?”
He gave a very small smile, rueful and a trifle self-conscious.
“Can I be so easily read?”
It had been a day of honesty. “Yes.”
He relaxed into the chair, letting the warmth seep into him.
“I suppose it’s Joshua I really wanted to speak to. I should have realized he wouldn’t be here at this hour.” He stopped.
She could see he wanted to talk about something. Whatever it was that had distressed him, he needed to speak of it, and Charlotte was not there.
“I can tell Joshua when he comes home,” she said almost casually. “What is it about? The theatre, I presume. Is it to do with the murder of the photographer?”
“Yes. It is really not something to discuss with a woman.”
“Whyever not? Are you embarrassed?”
“No.” He hesitated. “Well . . .”
She thought bitterly of what her mother-in-law had told her. Whatever Pitt had to say, it could hardly be more obscene than that, or more intimately degrading.
“Thomas, I do not need to be protected from life. If you are afraid I cannot keep a confidence, then—”
“That is not it at all!” he protested, running his hand through his hair and leaving it even more rumpled. “It is simply . . . intensely unpleasant.”
“I can see that much in your face. Do you believe that Cathcart’s murder has something to do with the theatre?”
“I think it may. He certainly knew Cecily Antrim . . . very well.”
“You mean they were lovers?” She was amused at his delicacy.
“Not necessarily. That would hardly matter.” He stretched out his legs a little more comfortably. His face was contorted. It was obviously still difficult for him to say to her what it was that filled his mind. She thought of herself this morning trying to find words to tell Samuel about Mrs. Ellison, and she waited.
The fire flickered pleasantly in the grate. There was no other noise in the room except the clock.
“I found photographs of Cecily Antrim in a postcard shop,” he said at last. “We didn’t tell the newspapers how Cathcart was found, except that it was in a boat.” He avoided her eyes and there was a faint color in his cheeks. “Actually, he was wearing a green velvet dress . . . pretty badly torn . . . and he was manacled by the wrists and ankles . . . into a sort of obscene parody of Millais’s painting of Ophelia. Flowers thrown around . . . artificial ones.” He stopped.
She controlled her amazement with difficulty, and an idiotic desire to laugh.
“What has that to do with Cecily Antrim?”
“There were several obscene or blasphemous pictures of her in the shop,” he replied. “One of them was almost exactly like that. It couldn’t be a coincidence. It was the same dress, the same garlands of flowers. It looked to be even the same boat. He was killed, and then placed in exactly that pose. Whoever did it had to have seen the photograph.”
A cold prickle ran through her. “You think she was involved?” She thought how it would hurt Joshua. He admired her so much, her courage, her passion, her integrity. How could such a woman lend herself to pornography? It could not be for something as paltry as more money. Surely it had to be a willingness in the mind?
Pitt was looking at her, watching her face, her eyes, the hands now closed tightly in her lap.
“Were there a lot of these pictures?” she asked. “I mean, could they have been sold to many people or used for blackmail?”
“Some of the activities portrayed were . . . illegal.” He did not elaborate, but she guessed his meaning.
“The shop’s owner gave me a list of his customers,” he went on. “But there is nothing to say it is a complete list. We’ll investigate it.” His face was sad and tired in the gaslight. “Some of them will be dealers who sell them on. God knows where they’ll end.”
She felt tired herself, a little beaten by the cruelty and the squalor that she had quite suddenly encountered, invading her warm, bright world with dirt she could not dismiss. Most of all it was in the old lady’s wounds, so deep they had become woven into her nature. But this that Pitt told her of was part of the same thing, the same sickness of the mind and heart that took pleasure in pain.
“The trouble is,” Pitt went on quietly, “they could end up in anyone’s hands—young people, boys keen to learn a little about women . . . knowing nothing . . .”
Caroline could see in his eyes that he was thinking of himself long ago, remembering his own first stirrings of curiosity and excitement, and crippling ignorance. How appalling it would be for a boy to see something like the brutality Mrs. Ellison had described, or the pictures Cecily Antrim had posed for. Young men would grow up seeing women like that . . . willingly chained—just as young Lewis Marchand would have thought of her, twisted and repellent in her desire for pain, her acceptance of humiliation.
Was that blush in his face for anything he had conjured out of Hamlet, the taunting of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s text . . . or from Delbert Cathcart’s photograph? She had no moral choice but to go to the Marchands and warn them. The misery that could follow did not allow her the luxury of evading it, however embarrassing it might be.
“You must stop it, if you can,” she said aloud. “Thomas, you really must!”
“I know,” he replied. “We’ve taken all the pictures, of course. But that won’t prevent him from buying more. You can’t e
ver prevent it. A man with a camera can photograph anything he pleases. A man with a pencil or a paintbrush can draw whatever he likes.” His voice was dark, his lips delicate with revulsion. “Almost all we can do is see he doesn’t display them publicly. Unless the people photographed are abused, then of course we could act on that.” There was no lift in his voice, and she knew he felt beaten.
She thought of Daniel and Jemima, their innocent faces still looking at the world with no idea of cruelty, no knowledge of the ravages of physical appetite or how it could become so depraved that it consumed all honor or pity, or in the end even preservation of self.
She thought of Edmund Ellison, and Mariah in her youth, terrified, crouching in the dark, waiting for the pain which would come, if not tonight, then tomorrow or the next night, and the next, as long as he was alive.
If anyone had done that to one of her own daughters she would have killed him. If someone did it to Jemima, or Daniel, she would now, and answer even to God, without regret.
She did not know what connection the pictures had to the act, whether they prompted it, excused it, excited it—or replaced it. She was confused and tired, and uncertain how to help. She was sure only that, above all things, she needed to help.
She sat in the silence with Pitt. There was no sound in the room but the fire and the clock, and neither of them felt compelled to break the understanding with words that were unnecessary. It was a long time before they at last spoke of Charlotte in Paris, her ecstatic account of her visit to the Latin Quarter, breakfast at Saint-Germain, poets in pink shirts and another day of a leisurely walk under the horse chestnut trees along the Champs-Élysées.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The old lady did not come down to breakfast the following morning either. Caroline lost her taste for toast and preserves, even though the apricots were delicious.
Joshua looked up. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
She had told him nothing so far. He was absorbed in his own work. She knew by now how exhausting the first few nights of a new play were. Everyone worried how it would be received, how the audience would react, what the critics would say, whether the theatre bookings would remain good, even what others in the profession would think. And if all those things went well, then they worried about their own performances, and always about health, most especially the voice. A sore throat, which was merely unpleasant to most people, to an actor was ruinous. His voice was the instrument of his art.
