Kingsley was silent for a moment.
“General Kingsley?” Pitt pressed. “What did you wish to learn through Miss Lamont?”
With great difficulty Kingsley answered, still staring at the floor. “My son Robert served in Africa, in the Zulu Wars. He was killed in action there. I . . .” His voice cracked. “I wanted to assure myself that his death was . . . that his spirit was at rest. There have been . . . different accounts of the action. I needed to know.” He did not look up at Pitt, as if he did not want to see what was in his face, or reveal the raw need inside him.
Pitt felt some acknowledgment at least was required. “I see,” he said softly. “And were you able to obtain such a thing?” He knew even as he asked that Kingsley had not. The fear in him was tangible in the room, and now too the grief was explained. In Maude Lamont’s death he had lost his contact with the only world he believed could give him an answer. Surely he would not willingly have destroyed it?
“Not . . . yet,” Kingsley replied, his words so swallowed in his throat Pitt was not sure for a moment if he had heard them at all. He was aware of Tellman beside him and his acute discomfort. Ordinary grief he was accustomed to, but this confounded and disturbed him. He was unsure of his own responses. He ought to feel ridicule and impatience, that was what all his experience of life had taught him. Looking for a moment at Tellman’s face, it was compassion that Pitt saw.
“What did the woman want?” Pitt asked.
Kingsley was jerked out of his own thoughts. He glanced up, his eyes puzzled. “I’m not sure. She was very eager to contact her mother, but I was not certain why. It must have been a very private matter, because all her questions were too oblique for me to understand.”
“And the answers?” Pitt found himself tense, afraid of what Kingsley might tell him. Why was Rose Serracold risking the expense and possible ridicule at this extraordinarily sensitive time? Had she no perception at all of what it meant? Or was her search so important to her that all other things were subject to it? What could that possibly be?
“Her mother?” Pitt said aloud.
“Yes.”
“And did Miss Lamont contact her?”
“Apparently.”
“What did she ask to know?”
“Nothing specific.” Kingsley looked puzzled as he recalled it. “Just general family information, other relatives who had . . . gone over. Her grandmother, her father. Were they well.”
“When was that?” Pitt pressed. “The night of Miss Lamont’s death? Before that? If you can remember exactly what was said it would be most helpful.”
Kingsley frowned. “I find it very difficult to imagine that she would have hurt Miss Lamont,” he said earnestly. “She seemed an eccentric woman, highly individual, but I saw no anger in her, no unkindness or ill feeling, rather . . .” He stopped.
Tellman leaned forward.
“Yes?” Pitt prompted.
“Fear,” Kingsley said quietly, as if it were an emotion with which he had long intimacy. “But there is no point in your asking me of what, because I have no idea. She seemed concerned if her father were happy, if he were restored to health. It was an odd question, I thought, as if disability could be carried beyond the grave. But perhaps when one has loved somebody such concerns are understandable. Love does not always go by the rules of reason.” Still he kept his eyes averted, as if it were his only privacy.
“And the other man, who was he seeking?” Pitt asked.
“I don’t recall anyone in particular.” Kingsley frowned as he said it, as if realizing only now how it puzzled him.
“But he came at least three times that you know of?” Pitt insisted.
“Yes. He was deeply in earnest,” Kingsley assured him, looking up now, no more emotion to guard. The man had stirred nothing in him, no specific compassion. “He asked some very telling questions and would not rest until they were answered,” he explained. “I did ask Miss Lamont on one occasion if she thought he were a skeptic, a doubter, but she appeared to know his reasons and was quite undisturbed by them. I . . . I find that . . .” He stopped.
“Odd?” Tellman supplied.
“I was going to say ‘comforting,’ ” Kingsley answered.
He did not explain himself, but Pitt understood. Maude Lamont must have been very confident in her skill, whatever its nature, to be unthreatened by the presence of a skeptic at her séances. But then she had apparently not been aware of the hatred which had ended in her death.
“This man did not ask to contact anyone by name?” he persisted.
“Several,” Kingsley contradicted him. “But none with particular eagerness. It seemed almost as if he were picking names at random.”
“Any subject that he sought?” Pitt would not give up so easily.
“None that I was aware.”
Pitt looked at him gravely. “We don’t know who he is, General Kingsley. He may be the one who murdered Maude Lamont.” He saw Kingsley wince and the lost look return to his eyes. “What did you gather from his voice, his manner, anything at all? His clothes, his deportment! Was he a well-educated man? What were his beliefs in anything, or his opinions? What would you guess his background to be, his income, his place in society? If he has an occupation, what is it? Did he ever mention any family, wife, or where he lives? Did he come far to attend the séances? Anything at all?”
Again, Kingsley waited for so long in thought that Pitt was afraid he was not going to reply. Then he began to speak slowly. “His accent suggested an excellent education. The little he said inclined more towards the humanities than any science. His clothes, so much as I could see them or thought to look, were discreet, dark. His manner was nervous, but I attributed that to the occasion. I cannot remember any specific opinions, but I had the feeling that he was more conservative than I.”
Pitt thought of the newspaper article. “Are you not conservative, General Kingsley?”
“No, sir.” Now Kingsley looked up directly at Pitt, meeting his eyes. “I have served in the army with all manner of men, and I would dearly like to see a fairer treatment of the ranks than exists at the present moment. I think when one has faced hardship and even death side by side with a man, one sees the worth of him far more clearly than his worldly opportunities may make apparent.”
From the candor in his face disbelief was impossible. And yet what he said was deeply at odds with what he had written to four separate newspapers. Pitt was more convinced than ever that Kingsley was involved with Voisey and the election, but whether willingly or not he had no idea. Nor did he know if with sufficient pressure he might have contributed to Maude Lamont’s death.
He considered mentioning the articles against Serracold, and telling him that the woman at the séances was Serracold’s wife. But he could think of nothing to gain by it now, and once told he could never achieve that possible advantage of surprise.
So he thanked Kingsley and rose to take his leave with Tellman behind him, morose and unsatisfied.
“What do you make of that?” Tellman demanded as soon as they were out on the footpath in the sun. “What makes a man like that go to a . . . a . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know how she did it, but it’s got to be a trick. How does anybody with education not see through it in moments? If the leaders of our army believe in that sort of . . . of fairy tale . . .”
“Education doesn’t stop loneliness or grief,” Pitt replied. There was still a certain innocence in Tellman, in spite of the harsh realism of so many of his views. It irritated Pitt, and yet perversely he liked Tellman the better for it. He was not unwilling to learn. “We all find our own way of easing those wounds,” he went on. “We do what we can.”