Southampton Row

by Anne Perry

  “That’s right. About ten minutes after seven,” Tellman responded.

  Pitt was surprised. “Early for a lady to get up, isn’t it? Especially one who didn’t begin work until the evening and frequently stayed late with clients.”

  “I asked her that, too.” Tellman glared. “She said Miss Lamont always got up early and took a nap in the afternoons.” His expression suggested the pointlessness of trying to make sense of any of the habits of someone who thought she spoke to ghosts.

  “Did she touch anything?”

  “She says not, and I can’t see any evidence that she did. She said that she could see straight away that Miss Lamont was dead. She wasn’t breathing, she had this bluish look, and when the maid put a finger on her neck, it was quite cold.”

  Pitt turned enquiringly towards the doctor.

  Snow pursed his lips. “Died sometime yesterday evening,” he said, staring at Pitt with sharp, questioning eyes.

  Pitt looked towards the body again, then took a step closer and peered at the face and the strange sticky mess spilling out of her mouth and down over the side of her chin. At first he had thought it vomit from some ingested poison; on closer examination there was a texture to it, a thickness that looked almost like a very fine gauze.

  He straightened up and turned to the doctor. “Poison?” he said, his imagination racing. “What is it? Can you tell? Her face looks as if she’s been strangled, or suffocated.”

  “Asphyxia.” Snow inclined his head in a very slight nod. “I can’t be sure until I get to my laboratory, but I think that’s white of egg—”

  “What?” Pitt was incredulous. “Why would she swallow white of egg? And what is the—the . . .”

  “Some sort of muslin or cheesecloth.” Snow’s mouth twisted wryly as if he were on the brink of some deeper knowledge of human nature, and afraid of what he would find. “She choked on it. Inhaled it into her lungs. But it wasn’t an accident.” He moved past Pitt and pulled open the lace front of the bodice to the dead woman’s gown. It came away in his hand where it had obviously been torn before in the need to examine her, and closed over again for decency’s sake. On the flesh between the swell of her breasts was the beginning of a wide bruise, only just darkening when death had cut off the flow of blood.

  Pitt met Snow’s eyes. “Force to make her swallow it?”

  Snow nodded. “I’d say a knee,” he agreed. “Someone put that stuff down her throat and held her nose. You can see the very slight scratch of a fingernail on her cheek. They pinned her down with considerable weight until she couldn’t help breathing in, and choking.”

  “Are you certain?” Pitt tried to rid his mind of the picture, the sense of the thick liquid gagging in her throat, the woman fighting for air.

  “As certain as we can be,” Snow answered. “Unless on autopsy I find something completely different. But she died of asphyxia. Can tell that from her expression, and from the tiny blood clots in her eyes.” He did not show them and Pitt was glad. He had seen it before and was content to accept Snow’s word. Instead he picked up one of the cold hands and turned it slightly, looking at the wrist. He found the slight bruises as he had expected. Someone had held her, perhaps only briefly, but with force.

  “I see,” he said softly. “You’d better tell me if it is egg white, but I’ll assume it is. Why would anyone choose such a bizarre, unnecessary way of killing someone?”

  “That’s your job,” Snow said dryly. “I can tell you what happened to her, but not why, or who did it.”

  Pitt turned to Tellman. “You said the maid found her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “Not much, only that she did not see or hear anything after she left Miss Lamont when her clients were due. But then she says she took care not to. One of the reasons they liked Miss Lamont was the privacy she offered them . . . as well as her . . . whatever you call it?” He frowned, searching Pitt’s face. “What is it?” He had steadfastly refused to call him “sir” right from the first difficult days when Pitt himself was newly promoted. Tellman had resented him because he considered him, as a gamekeeper’s son, not to be suitable for command of a station. That was for gentlemen, or returned military or naval men, such as Cornwallis. “What do you call it—a skill, an act, a trick?”

  “Probably all three,” Pitt replied. Then he went on thinking aloud. “I suppose if it’s for entertainment it’s harmless enough. But how do you know if someone takes it seriously, whether you mean them to or not?”

  “You don’t!” Tellman snorted. “I like my conjuring to be strictly a deck of cards or rabbits out of a hat. That way nobody gets taken in.”

  “Do you know who yesterday evening’s clients were, and if they came one at a time or all together?”

  “The maid doesn’t know,” Tellman answered. “Or at least that’s what she says, and I’ve no reason to disbelieve her.”

  “Where is she? Is she in a fit state to answer questions?”

  “Oh yes,” Tellman said with assurance. “A little shaken, of course, but seems like a sensible woman. I don’t suppose she’s realized yet what it will mean for her. But once we’ve searched the house completely, and maybe locked off this room, there’s no reason why she can’t stay here for a while, is there? Till she finds another position, anyway.”

  “No,” Pitt agreed. “Better she does. We’ll know where to find her if we have more to ask. I’ll go and see her in the kitchen. Can’t expect her to come in here.” He glanced at the corpse as he crossed the room to the door. Tellman did not follow him. He would have his own men to send on errands, searches, perhaps questions of people in the neighborhood, although it was reasonable to suppose that the crime would have taken place after dark and the chances that anyone had observed anything of use were slight.

  Pitt followed the passage towards the back of the house, past several other doors, to the one at the end which was open, with a pattern of sunlight on a scrubbed wooden floor. He stopped in the entrance. It was a well-kept kitchen, clean and warm. There was a kettle steaming very slightly on the black cooking stove. A tall woman, a little thin, stood at the sink with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows and her hands in soapy water. She was motionless, as if she had forgotten what she was there for.

  “Miss Forrest?” Pitt asked.

  She turned slowly. She seemed in her late forties; her brown hair, graying at the temples, was pinned back off her brow. Her face was unusual, with beautiful bones around her eyes and cheeks, her nose straight but not quite prominent enough, her mouth wide and well-shaped. She was not beautiful; in fact, in a way she was almost ugly.

  “Yes. Are you another policeman?” She spoke with a very slight lisp, although it was not quite an impediment. Slowly she lifted her hands out of the water.

  “Yes, I am,” Pitt replied. “I’m sorry to ask you more questions when you must be distressed, but we cannot afford to wait for a better time.” He felt a trifle foolish as he said it. She looked completely in control of herself, but he knew that shock affected people in different ways. Sometimes when it was very profound, there were no outward signs at all. “My name is Pitt. Would you sit down please, Miss Forrest.”

  Slowly she obeyed, automatically drying her hands on a towel left over a brass rail in front of the stove. She sat down on one of the hard-backed chairs near the table, and he sat on one of the others.

  “What is it you want to know?” she asked, staring not at him but at some space over his right shoulder. The kitchen was orderly: there was clean, plain china stacked on the dresser, and a pile of ironed linen on one of the broad sills, no doubt waiting to be put away. More hung from the airing rail winched up near the ceiling. The coke scuttle was full on the floor by the back door. The stove was polished black. Light winked softly over the sides of the copper pans hanging from the cross beam, and there was a faint aroma of spices. The only thing missing was any sight or smell of food. It was a house no longer with any purpose.
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  “Was Miss Lamont expecting her clients separately or together?” he asked.

  “They came one at a time,” she replied. “And left that way, for all I know. But they would all be together for the séance.” Her voice was expressionless, as if she were trying to mask her feelings. Was that to protect herself, or her mistress, perhaps from ridicule?

  “Did you see them?”

  “No.”

  “So they could have come together?”

  “Miss Lamont had me lift the crossbar on the side door to Cosmo Place, which she did for some people,” she replied. “So I took it that one of the discreet ones came last night.”

  “People who don’t want anyone else to recognize them, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there many like that?”

  “Four or five.”

  “So you made arrangements for them to come in from Cosmo Place, instead of the front door on Southampton Row? Tell me exactly how that worked.”

  She looked up at him, meeting his eyes. “There’s a door in the wall that leads into the Place. It has a lock on it, a big iron one, and they lock it behind them when they leave.”

  “What is the bar you spoke of?”

  “That falls across on the inside. It means even with a key you can’t get in. We keep it barred except when there is a special client coming.”

  “And she sees such clients alone?”

  “No, usually with one or two others.”

  “Are there many like that?”

  “I don’t think so. Mostly she went to clients’ houses, or parties. She only had special ones here once a week or so.”

  Pitt tried to picture it in his mind: a handful of nervous, excited people sitting in the half-light around a table, all filled with their own terrors and dreams, hoping to hear the voice of someone they had loved, transfigured by death, telling them . . . what? That they still existed? That they were happy? Some secrets of passion or money taken with them to the grave? Or perhaps some forgiveness needed for a wrong now beyond recall?

  “So these people were special last night?” he said aloud.

  “They must have been,” she replied with a very slight movement of her shoulders.

  “But you saw none of them?”

  “No. As I said, they keep it very private. Anyway, yesterday was my evening off. I left the house just after they came.”

  “Where did you go?” he asked.

  “To see a friend, a Mrs. Lightfoot, down in Newington, over the river.”

  “Her address?”

  “Number 4 Lion Street, off the New Kent Road,” she replied without hesitation.

  “Thank you.” He returned to the issue of the visitors. Someone would check her story, just as a matter of routine. “But Miss Lamont’s visitors must have seen each other, so they were acquainted at least.”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “The room was always dimly lit; I know how that works from setting up before they come. And putting the chairs right. They sat around the table. It’s perfectly easy to stay in the shadows if you want to. I always set the candles at one end only, red candles, and leave the gas off. Unless you knew someone already, you wouldn’t see who they were.”

  “And there was one of these discreet people last night?”

  “I think so, otherwise she wouldn’t have asked me to lift the bar on the gate.”

  “Was it back on this morning?”

  Her eyes widened a little, grasping his meaning immediately. “I don’t know. I never looked.”

  “I’ll do it. But first tell me more about yesterday evening. Anything you can remember. For example, was Miss Lamont nervous, anxious about anything? Do you know if she has ever received threats or had to deal with a client who was angry or unhappy about the séances?”

  “If she did, she didn’t tell me,” Lena replied. “But then she never talked about these things. She must’ve known hundreds of secrets about people.” For a moment her expression changed. A profound emotion filled her and she struggled to hide it. It could have been fear or loss, or the horror of sudden and violent death. Or something else he could not even guess at. Did she believe in spirits, perhaps vengeful or disturbed ones?

  “She treated it confidential,” she said aloud, and her face was blank again, merely concerned to answer his questions.

  He wondered how much she knew of her mistress’s trade. She was resident in the house. Had she no curiosity at all?

  “Do you clean the parlor where the séances are held?” he asked.

  Her hand jerked a tiny fraction; it was not much more than the stiffening of muscles. “Yes. The daily woman does the rest, but Miss Lamont always had me do that.”

  “The thought of apparitions of the supernatural doesn’t frighten you?”

  A flash of contempt burned in her eyes, then vanished. When she answered her voice was soft again. “Leave such things alone, and they’ll leave you.”

  “Did you believe in Miss Lamont’s . . . gift?”

  She hesitated, her face unreadable. Was it a habit of loyalty fighting with the truth?

  “What can you tell me about it?” Suddenly that was urgent. The manner of Maude Lamont’s death surely sprang from her art, real or sham. It was no chance killing by a burglar surprised in the act, or even the greed of a relative. It was acutely personal, driven by a passion of rage or envy, a will to destroy not only the woman but something of the skills she professed as well.

  “I . . . I don’t really know,” Lena said awkwardly. “I’m a servant here. I wasn’t part of her life. I knew there were people who really believed. There were more than the ones she had here. She once said that here was where she did her best work. The things at other people’s houses was more like entertainment.”

  “So the people who came here last night were seeking some real contact with the dead, for some urgent, personal reason.” It was more a statement than a question.

  “I don’t know, but that’s the way she said it was.” She was tense, her body straight-backed, away from the chair, her hands clenched on the table in front of her.

  “Have you ever attended a séance, Miss Forrest?”

  “No!” The answer was instant and vehement. There was harsh emotion in her. Then she looked down, away from him. Her voice dropped even lower. “Let the dead rest in peace.”

  With sudden, overwhelming pity he saw the tears fill her eyes and slide down her cheeks. She made no apology nor did her face move. It was as if for a few moments she were oblivious of him, locked in her own loss. Surely it was for someone dear to her, not for Maude Lamont, lying stiff and grotesque in the next room? He wanted someone who could comfort her, reach across the grief of unfamiliarity and touch her.

  “Have you family, Miss Forrest? Someone we could notify for you?”

  She shook her head. “I had only one sister, and Nell’s long dead, God rest her,” she answered, taking a deep breath and straightening up. She made an intense effort to control herself, and succeeded. “You’ll be wanting to know who they were that came last night. I can’t tell you ’cos I don’t know, but she kept a book with all that sort of thing in it. It’s in her desk, and no doubt it’ll be locked, but she wears the key on a chain around her neck. Or if you don’t want to get that, a knife’ll break it, but that’d be a shame; it’s a handsome piece, all inlaid and the like.”

  “I’ll get the key.” He stood up. “I’ll need to talk to you again, Miss Forrest, but for the meanwhile, tell me where the desk is, and then perhaps make a cup of tea, for yourself at least. Maybe Inspector Tellman and his men would appreciate it, too.”

  “Yes sir.” She hesitated. “Thank you.”

  “The desk?” he reminded her.

  “Oh! Yes. It’s in the small study, second door on the left.” She gestured with her hand to indicate where it was.

  He thanked her, then went back to the parlor, where the body was, and Tellman standing staring out of the window. The police surgeon had left, but there was a const
able standing in the small garden, banked around by camellia and a long-legged yellow rose in full bloom.

  “Was the garden door barred on the inside?” Pitt asked.

  Tellman nodded. “And you can’t get from the French doors to the street. It had to be one of them already in here,” he said miserably. “Must have left through the front door, which closes itself. And the maid said she had no idea, when I first asked her.”

  “No, but she said Maude Lamont kept an engagement diary, and it’s in the desk in the small study, and the key is around her neck.” Pitt nodded towards the dead woman. “That might tell us quite a bit, even why they came here. Presumably she knew.”

  Tellman frowned. “Poor devils,” he said savagely. “What kind of need draws someone to come to a woman like this and look for the kind of answers you should get from your church, or common sense? I mean . . . what do they ask?” He frowned, making his long face look forbidding. “‘Where are you?’ ‘What is it like there?’ She could tell them anything . . . and how would they know? It’s wicked to take money to play on people’s grief.” He turned away. “And it’s daft of them to give it.”

  It took Pitt a moment to adjust from one subject to the other, but he realized that Tellman was struggling with an inner anger and confusion, and had been trying to evade the conclusion that one of those he pitied, against his will, had to have killed the woman sitting silently in the chair only a few feet away, having put a knee in her chest as she struggled to breathe, choking on the strange substance clogging her throat. He was trying to imagine the fury that had driven the murderer to it. He was a single man, unused to women in other than a formal, police setting. He was waiting for Pitt to touch the body, reach for the key where he would be clumsy and embarrassed to look.

  Pitt walked over and gently lifted up the lace front of the gown, and felt under the sides of the plunging fabric of the bodice. He found the fine gold chain and pulled it until he had the key in his fingers. He lifted the chain over her head carefully, trying not to disarrange her hair, which was absurd! What could it matter now? But only a few hours ago she had been alive, lit by intelligence and emotion. Then it would have been unthinkable to have touched her throat and her bosom in such a way.