Pitt searched for fear or superstition, and saw not even a shadow. He put down his empty cup.
“What is it?” Tellman said sharply.
Pitt smiled at him, not in humor but in an affection which surprised him. “Nothing,” he replied. “Let’s go and speak to Kingsley, and ask him why he went to Miss Lamont, and what she was able to do for him, most especially on the night she died.” He turned and walked along the passage to the front door, and allowing Tellman to pass him, closed it and locked it behind him.
“Morning, sir,” the postman said cheerfully. “Lovely day again.”
“Yes,” Pitt agreed, not recognizing the man. “Good morning. Are you new on this street?”
“Yes, sir. Just two weeks,” the postman replied. “Getting to know people, like. Met your missus a few days ago. Lovely lady.” His eyes widened. “’Aven’t seen her since, though. Not poorly, I ’ope? Colds can be wicked to get rid of this time o’ year, which don’t seem fair, bein’ so warm, an’ all.”
Pitt was about to reply that she was on holiday, but he realized with a sudden chill that the man could be anyone, or pass on gathered information anywhere!
“No, thank you,” he responded briskly. “She is quite well. Good day.”
“Good day, sir.” And whistling through his teeth, the postman moved on.
“I’ll get a cab,” Tellman offered, looking up and down Keppel Street and seeing none available.
“Why not walk?” Pitt asked, dismissing the postman from his mind and swinging into a long, easy stride eastward towards Russell Square. “It’s not more than half a mile or so. Harrison Street, just the other side of the Foundling Hospital.”
Tellman grunted and did a couple of double steps to catch up with him. Pitt smiled to himself. He knew Tellman was wondering exactly how he had discovered where Kingsley lived without the assistance of the police station, which he would know Pitt had not sought. He would be wondering if Special Branch already had an interest in Kingsley.
They walked in silence around Russell Square, across the traf-fic of Woburn Place, and along Berner Street towards Brunswick Square and the huge, old-fashioned mass of the hospital. They turned right, instinctively avoiding the children’s burial ground. Pitt was touched by sadness, as he always was, and glanced sideways to see the same lowered eyes and twist of the lips in Tellman. He realized with a jolt that for all the years they had worked together, he knew very little of Tellman’s past, except the anger at poverty which showed naked so often he almost took it for granted now, not even wondering what real pain lay behind it. Gracie probably knew more of the man within the rigid exterior than Pitt did. But then Gracie was a child of the same narrow alleys and the fight for survival. She would not need to be told anything. She might see it differently, but she understood.
Pitt had grown up the son of the gamekeeper on Sir Arthur Desmond’s country estate. His parents were servants; his father had been accused and found guilty of poaching and deported, wrongly, Pitt believed. The passion of that conviction had never changed. But he had not been hungry for more than a day, nor walked in danger of attack, except by the boys his own age. A few bruises were his worst affliction, and the odd very sore backside from the head gardener, richly deserved.
In silence they passed the infants’ burial place. There was too much to say, and nothing at all.
“He has a telephone,” he said at last as they turned into Harrison Street.
“What?” Tellman had been lost in his own thoughts.
“Kingsley has a telephone,” Pitt repeated.
“You called him?” Tellman was startled.
“No, I looked him up,” Pitt explained.
Tellman blushed hotly. He had never thought of a private person’s owning one, although he knew Pitt did. Perhaps one day he could afford it, and maybe even have to, but not yet. Promotion was still fresh and raw to him, uncomfortable as a new collar. It did not fit—most especially with Pitt dogging his footsteps every day, and taking his first case from him, it abraded the tender skin.
They continued side by side until they reached Kingsley’s house and were admitted. They were shown through a rather dark, oak-paneled hall hung with pictures of battles on three of the walls. There was no time to look at the brass plates beneath them to see which ones they were. At a glance, most of them looked roughly Napoleonic. One appeared to be a burial. It had more emotion than the others, and better interest of light and shadow, a sense of tragedy in the huddled outline of the bodies. Perhaps it was Moore after Corunna.
The morning room was rigidly masculine also, greens and browns, lots of leather and bookcases with heavy, uniform volumes. On the farther wall hung a variety of African weapons, assegais and spears. They were dented and scarred with use. There was a fine but rather stylized bronze of a hussar on the central table. The horse was beautifully wrought.
When the butler had gone Tellman gazed around with interest, but no sense of comfort. The room belonged to a man of a social class and a discipline alien to him and representing all he had been brought up to resent. One experience in particular had forced him to see a retired army officer as human, vulnerable, even to be deeply admired, but he still regarded that as an exception. The man who owned this room and whose life was mirrored in the pictures and furnishings was eccentric to say the least, almost a contradiction in conceptions. How could anyone who had done that most hideously practical of things, leading men in war, have so lost his grasp on reality as to be consulting a woman who claimed she spoke to ghosts?
The door opened and a tall, rather gaunt man came in. His face had an ashen look, as if he were ill. His hair was clipped short and his mustache was little more than a dark smudge over his upper lip. He stood straight, but it was the habit of a lifetime which kept him so, not any inner vitality.
“Good morning, gentlemen. My butler tells me you are from the police. What may I do for you?” There was no surprise in his voice. Possibly he had read of Maude Lamont’s death in the newspapers.
Pitt had already decided not to mention his connection with Special Branch. If he said nothing of it, Kingsley would assume he was with Tellman.
“Good morning, General Kingsley,” he replied. “I am Superintendent Pitt, and this is my colleague Inspector Tellman. I am sorry to tell you that Miss Maude Lamont died two nights ago. She was found yesterday morning, in her home. Because of the circumstances, we are obliged to investigate the matter very thoroughly. I believe you were there at her last séance?”
Tellman stiffened at Pitt’s bluntness.
Kingsley took in a deep breath. He looked distinctly shaken. He invited Pitt and Tellman to be seated, and then sank into one of the large leather chairs himself. He offered nothing, waiting for them to begin.
“Will you tell us what happened, sir, from the time of your arrival at Southampton Row?” Pitt asked.
Kingsley cleared his throat. It seemed to cost him an effort. Pitt thought it odd that a military man who must surely be accustomed to violent death should be so disturbed by murder. Was not war murder on a grand scale? Surely men went into battle with the express intention of killing as many of the enemy as possible? It could hardly be that this time the dead person was a woman. Women were all too often the victims of the violence, looting and destruction that went with war.