Highgate Rise (11 page)

“Anyone else call?”

Palm up.

“Local person?”

Palm up and raised a little.

“Very local? Mr. Lindsay?”

Burdin’s face relaxed in a smile, the palm remained up.

“Anyone else that you know of?”

Palm down.

He thought of asking if there was any mail that might be unusual or of interest, but what would such a thing be? How could anyone recognize it?

“Did Dr. Shaw seem anxious or disturbed about anything that day?”

The palm was down, but indecisive, hovering above the bed cover.

Pitt took a guess, drawn from what he had observed of Shaw’s temperament. “Angry? Was he angry about something?”

The palm came up quickly.

“Thank you, Mr. Burdin. If you think of anything else, comments, a letter, unusual arrangements, please tell the hospital and write it down for me. I shall come immediately. I hope you recover quickly.”

Burdin smiled and closed his eyes. Even that small effort had tired him.

Pitt left, angry himself at so much physical pain, and helpless
because he could do nothing for it, and he had learned little he felt of use. He imagined Shaw and Hatch probably quarreled fairly regularly, simply because their natures were utterly different. They would almost certainly perceive any issue with opposite views.

The Shaws’ cook was in a far less serious state of health, and he left the hospital and took a hansom for the short ride down Highgate Hill and through Holloway to the Seven Sisters Road and the house of her relatives, which Murdo had given him. It was small, neat and shabby, exactly what he expected, and he was permitted in only with reluctance and after considerable argument.

He found the cook sitting up in bed in the best bedroom, wrapped around more against the indecency of being visited by a strange man than to prevent any chill. She had been burned on one arm and had lost some of her hair, giving her a lopsided, plucked look which had it been less tragic would have been funny. As it was Pitt had difficulty in maintaining a perfectly sober expression.

The niece, bustling with offense, remained obtrusively present every moment of the time.

“Mrs. Babbage?” Pitt began. All cooks were given the courtesy title of “Mrs.” whether they were married or not.

She looked at him with alarm and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a shriek.

“I mean you no harm, Mrs. Babbage—”

“Who are you? What do you want? I don’t know you.” She craned upwards as if his mere presence threatened her with some physical danger.

He sat down quickly on a small bedroom chair just behind him and tried to be disarming. She was obviously still in an extreme state of shock, emotional if not from her injuries which appeared to be relatively slight.

“I am Inspector Pitt,” he said, introducing himself, avoiding the word
police.
He knew how respectable servants hated even an association with crime as tenuous as the presence of the police. “It is my duty to do what I can to discover how the fire started.”

“Not in my kitchen!” she said so loudly it startled her niece, who drew her breath in in a loud gasp. “Don’t you go accusing me, or Doris! I know how to tend a stove. Never had so much as a coal fall out, I ’aven’t; never mind burnin’ down an ’ole ’ouse.”

“We know that, Mrs. Babbage,” he said soothingly. “It did not begin in the kitchen.”

She looked a trifle mollified, but still her eyes were wide and wary and she twisted a rag of a handkerchief around and around in her fingers till the flesh of them was red with the friction. She was afraid to believe him, suspecting a trap.

“It was begun deliberately, in the curtains of four different ground-floor rooms,” he elaborated.

“Nobody would do such a thing,” she whispered, winding the handkerchief even more tightly. “What do you come to me for?”

“Because you might have seen something odd that day, noticed someone unusual hanging around—” Even as he said it he knew it was hopeless. She was too shocked to recall anything, and he himself did not believe it had been a tramp or a casual vagrant. It was too careful; it spoke of a deep hatred, or insatiable greed, or fear of some intolerable loss. It came back to his mind again with renewed force: what did Stephen Shaw know—and about whom?

“I didn’t see nothin’.” She began to weep, dabbing at her eyes, her voice rising again. “I mind me own business. I don’t ask no questions an’ I don’t listen be’ind no doors. An’ I don’t give meself airs to think things about the master nor the mistress—”

“Oh?” Pitt said instantly. “That’s very commendable. I suppose some cooks do?”

“ ’Course they do.”

“Really? Like what, for example?” He endeavored to look puzzled. “If you were that sort, what may you have wondered?”

She drew herself up in virtue and glared at him over the top of her large hand, wrapped around with the sodden handkerchief.

“Well, if I were that sort—which I in’t—I might ’ave wondered why we let one of the maids go, when there weren’t nothin’ wrong wiv ’er, and why we ’aven’t ’ad salmon like we used to, nor a good leg o’ pork neither—an’ I might ’ave asked Burdin why we ’aven’t ’ad a decent case o’ claret come inter the ’ouse in six months.”

“But of course you didn’t,” Pitt said judiciously, hiding the shadow of a smile. “Dr. Shaw is very fortunate to have such a discreet cook in his household.”

“Oh, I don’t know as I can cook for ’im anymore!” She started sniffing again violently. “Jenny’s given ’er notice an’ as soon as she’s fit she’ll go back ’ome ter Somerset where she comes from. An’ Doris in’t no more’n a chit of a thing—thirteen mebbe. An’ poor Mr. Burdin’s so bad who can say if ’e’ll ever be the same again? No, I got ter be in a respectable ’ouse, for me nerves.”

There was no purpose in arguing with her, and for the time being Shaw had no need of servants—there was no house for them to live in or to wait upon. And apart from that, Pitt’s mind was racing with the very interesting fact that the Shaws had apparently reduced their standard of living recently, to the degree that the cook had noticed it and it had set her mind wondering.

He stood up, wished her well, thanked the niece, and took his departure. Next he went in search of Jenny and Doris, neither of whom were burned more than superficially and more suffering from shock and fright and some considerable pain, but not in danger of relapse, as might be the case with Burdin.

He found them in the parsonage, in the care of Lally Clitheridge, who needed no explanation of his call.

But even after careful questioning they could tell him nothing of use. They had seen no one unusual in the neighborhood; the house had been exactly as it was at any other time. It had been a very ordinary day until they were roused, Jenny by the smell of smoke as she lay awake, thinking of some matter she blushed to recall and would not name, and Doris by Jenny’s screams.

He thanked them and went out as dusk was falling and walked briskly southwards to Woodsome Road and the home of the woman who came in daily to do the heavy work, a Mrs. Colter. It was a small house but the windows were clean and the step scrubbed so immaculately he avoided putting his boots on it out of respect.

The door was opened by a big, comfortable woman with a broad-cheeked face, an ample bosom, and an apron tied tightly around her waist, the pocket stuffed full of odds and ends and her hair trailing out of a hasty knot on the back of her neck.

“Who are you?” she said in surprise, but there was no ill nature in it. “I dunno you, do I?”

“Mrs. Colter?” Pitt removed his rather worn hat, now a little crooked in the crown.

“That’s me. It don’t tell me who you are!”

“Thomas Pitt, from the Metropolitan Police—”

“Oh—” Her eyes widened. “You’ll be about poor Dr. Shaw’s fire, then. What a terrible thing. She was a good woman, was Mrs. Shaw. I’m real grieved about that. Come in. I daresay you’re cold—an’ ’ungry, mebbe?”

Pitt stepped in, wiping his feet carefully on the mat before going onto the polished linoleum floor. He almost bent and took his boots off, as he would have done at home. A smell of rich stew assailed him, delicate with onions and the sweetness of fresh carrots and turnips.

“Yes,” he said with feeling. “Yes I am.”

“Well I don’t know as I can ’elp you.” She led the way back and he followed after. To sit in a room with that aroma, and not eat, would be very hard. Her generous figure strode ahead of him and into the small, scrubbed kitchen, a huge pot simmering on the back of the stove filling the air with steam and warmth. “But I’ll try,” she added.

“Thank you.” Pitt sat down on one of the chairs and wished she meant the stew, not information.

“They say it were deliberate,” she said, taking the lid off the pot and giving its contents a brisk stir with a wooden
ladle. “Although ’ow anybody could bring theirselves to do such a thing I’m sure I don’t know.”

“You said ‘how,’ Mrs. Colter, not ‘why,’ ” Pitt observed, inhaling deeply and letting it out in a sigh. “You can think of reasons why?”

“In’t much meat in it,” she said dubiously. “Just a bit o’ skirt o’ mutton.”

“You have no ideas why, Mrs. Colter?”

“ ’Cos I in’t got the money for more, o’ course,” she said, looking at him as if he were simple, but still not unkindly.

Pitt blushed. He was well used enough to poverty not to have made such an idiotic remark, or one so condescending.

“I mean why anyone should set fire to Dr. and Mrs. Shaw’s house!”

“You want some?” She held up the ladle.

“Yes please, I would.”

“Lots o’ reasons.” She began to dish up a generous portion in a large basin. “Revenge, for one. There’s them as says ’e should’a looked after Mr. Theophilus Worlingham better’n ’e did. Although I always thought Mr. Theophilus would wind ’isself up into a fit and die one day. An’ ’e did. But then that don’t mean everyone sees it that way.” She put the bowl down in front of him and handed him a spoon to eat with. It was mostly potatoes, onions, carrots and a little sweet turnip with a few stray ends of meat, but it was hot and full of flavor.

“Thank you very much,” he said, accepting the bowl.

“Don’t think it’d ’ave much to do wiv it.” She dismissed the notion. “Mr. Lutterworth was fair furious with Dr. Shaw, on account of ’is daughter, Miss Flora, nippin’ ter see ’im all hours, discreet like, not through the reg’lar surgery. But Mrs. Shaw weren’t worried, so I don’t suppose there were nothin’ in it as there shouldn’t ’a bin. Leastways, not much. I think Dr. Shaw and Mrs. Shaw kept their own ways a lot. Good friends, like, but maybe not a lot more.”

“That’s very observant of you, Mrs. Colter,” Pitt said doubtfully.

“Need more salt?” she asked.

“No thank you; it’s perfect.”

“Not really.” She shook her head.

“Yes it is. It doesn’t need a thing added,” he assured her.

“Don’t take much ter see when people is used ter each other, and respects, but don’t mind if the other gets fond o’ someone else.”

“And Dr. and Mrs. Shaw were fond of someone else?” Pitt’s spoon stopped in midair, even the stew forgotten.

“Not as I know of. But Mrs. Shaw went off up to the city day after day, and ’e wished ’er well and never cared nor worried as who she went wiv; or that the vicar’s wife came all over unnecessary every time Dr. Shaw smiled at ’er.”

This time Pitt could not dismiss his amusement, and bent his head over the dish at least to conceal the worst of it.

“Indeed?” he said after another mouthful. “Do you think Dr. Shaw was aware of this?”

“Bless you, no. Blind as a bat, ’e is, to other people’s feelin’s o’ that nature. But Mrs. Shaw, she saw it, an’ I think she were kind o’ sorry for ’er. ’E’s a bit of a poor fish, the Reverend. Means well. But ’e’s no man, compared wi’ the doctor. Still,” she sighed, “that’s ow it is, in’t it?” She regarded his empty bowl. “You want some more?”

He considered the family she had to feed and pushed the plate away from him.

“No thank you, Mrs. Colter. That answered the need perfectly. Very fine flavor.”

She colored a little pink. She was unused to compliments, and pleased and awkward at the same time.

“It’s nuthin’ but ordinary.” She turned away to give it a fierce stir.

“Ordinary to you, maybe.” He rose from the table and pushed the chair back in, something he would not have bothered to do at home. “But I’m much obliged to you. Is there anything else you can think of that might have bearing on the fire?”

She shrugged. “There’s always the Worlingham money, I suppose. Though I don’t see ow. Don’t think the doctor
cared that much about it, and they ain’t got no children, poor souls.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Colter. You’ve been most helpful.”

“Don’t see that I ’ave. Any fool could’a told you as much, but if it pleases you, then I’m glad. I ’ope you catch whoever done it.” She sniffed hard and turned her back to stir the pot again. “She were a fine woman, an’ I grieve sorely that she’s gorn—an’ in such an ’orrible way.”

“I will, Mrs. Colter,” he said rather recklessly, and then when he was out on the footpath in the sharp evening air, wished he had been more reserved. He had not the faintest idea who had crept around cutting the glass, pouring oil on curtains and lighting those fires.

In the morning he returned to Highgate immediately, turning the case over and over in his mind on the long journey. He had told Charlotte of the progress he had made, largely negative, because she had asked him. She had taken an interest in the case beyond his expectations, because as yet there was little human drama of the sort which usually engaged her emotions. She gave him no explanation, except that she was sorry for the dead woman. It was a fearful way to die.

He had assured her that in all probability Clemency Shaw had been overcome by smoke long before any flames reached her. It was even possible she had not woken.

Charlotte had been much comforted by it, and since he had already told her his progress was minimal, she had asked him no more. Instead she turned to her own business of the day, giving volleys of instructions to Gracie, who stood wide-eyed and fascinated in the kitchen doorway.

Pitt stopped the hansom at Amos Lindsay’s house, paid him off, and walked up to the front door. It was opened by the black-haired manservant again and Pitt asked if he might speak with Dr. Shaw.