“Yes, sir?” the man said, his mouth hanging open.
“Inspector Pitt,” Pitt said. “May I speak with Mr. Lagarde, if you please? And then with Miss Lagarde when it is convenient?”
“It ain’t convenient.” In his consternation the footman forgot the grammar the butler had been at pains to instill in him. “They’re going down to the country today. They ain’t—they is not receiving no one. Miss Lagarde aren’t well.”
“I’m very sorry Miss Lagarde is unwell,” Pitt said, refusing to be edged off the step. “But I am from the police, and I am obliged to make inquiries about the death of Mrs. Spencer-Brown, who I believe was known to Mr. and Miss Lagarde quite closely. I am sure they would wish to be of every assistance they could.”
“Oh! Well—” The footman had obviously not foreseen this situation, nor had the butler prepared him for anything of this sort.
“Perhaps it would be less conspicuous for me to wait somewhere other than on the doorstep,” Pitt said, glancing back into the street with the implicit suggestion that the rest of the Place knew his identity, and therefore his business.
“Oh!” The footman realized the impending catastrophe. “Of course, you’d best come into the morning room. There’s no fire there—” Then he recollected that Pitt was the police, and explanations, let alone fires, were unnecessary for such persons. “You just wait in there.” He opened the door and watched Pitt go in. “I’ll tell the master you’re here. Now don’t you go a-wandering around! I’ll come back and tell you what’s what!”
Pitt smiled to himself as the door closed. He bore no rancor. He knew the boy’s job depended on his proper observance of social niceties, and that an irritable butler, ill-served, could cost him very dear. There would be no recourse, no opportunity for explanations, and little tolerance of mistakes. To have the police in the house was most unfortunate, but to keep them at the front door arguing for all the world to see would be unpardonable. Pitt had seen a good deal of life belowstairs, beginning with his own parents’ experience when his father had been gamekeeper on a large country estate. As a boy, Pitt had run through the house with the master’s son, an only child glad of any playmate. Pitt had been quick to learn, to ape the manners and the speech, and to copy the school lessons. He knew the rules on both sides of the green baize door.
Tormod came quickly. Pitt had barely had time to look at the gentle landscape paintings on the walls and the old rosewood desk with its marquetry inlays before he heard the step on the polished floor outside the room.
Tormod was rather what he had expected: broad-shouldered, wearing a beautifully cut coat, his collar a little high. He had dark hair swept back from a broad white brow and a full mouth with a wide lower lip.
“Pitt?” he said formally. “Don’t know what I can tell you. I really haven’t the faintest idea what can have happened to poor Mina—Mrs. Spencer-Brown. If she had any anxiety or fear, unfortunately she did not confide it to either my sister or myself.”
It was a blank wall, and Pitt had no idea how he was going to make the slightest impression on it. Yet this was the only human clue he had.
“But she did call on you that last day, and left within an hour or so of her death?” he said quietly. His mind was racing, searching for something pertinent to ask, anything that might crack the smooth composure and reveal a hint of the passion that must have been there—unless it really had been only a chance and ridiculous accident.
“Oh, yes,” Tormod said with a rueful little shrug. “But even with the wisdom of hindsight, I still cannot think of anything she said which would point to why she should take her own life. She seemed quite composed and in normally good spirits. I have been trying to think what we talked of, but only commonplaces come back to me.” He looked at Pitt with a half smile. “Fashion, menus for the dinner table, some silly Society jokes—all the most ordinary things one talks about when one is passing the time and has nothing real to say. Pleasant, but one only partially listens.”
Pitt knew the type of conversation perfectly well. Life was full of just such pointless exchanges. The fact that one spoke was what mattered; the words were immaterial. Could it really be that Mina had had no idea whatsoever that she had less than an hour left to live? Had accident occurred like lightning out of a still sky? No storm, no rumble of far thunder, no oppression mounting before? Murder was not like that. Even a lunatic had reasons for killing: insanity built its slow heat like spring thawing the long winter snows, till suddenly the one more gallon became too much and the dams burst with wild, destructive violence.
But Pitt had seen death caused by madmen, and they did not use poison—not on a woman alone in her own withdrawing room, neatly laid on the chaise longue.
If this was murder, it was perfectly sane—and there was sane reason behind it.
“I wonder,” he said aloud, reverting back to the subject. “Could Mrs. Spencer-Brown have had some trouble on her mind and desired to confide it to you but, when faced with the necessity of expressing it in words, have found herself unable to? Might she have spoken only of commonplaces for just that reason?”
Tormod appeared to consider the possibility, his eyes blank as he examined his memory.
“I suppose so,” he said at last. “I don’t believe it myself. She did not seem other than her usual self. I mean, she was not agitated, as far as I can recall, or unconcerned with the conversation, as one might be if one were seeking an opportunity to speak of something else.”
“But you said yourself that you were only half listening,” Pitt pointed out.
Tormod smiled, pulling his face into a comic line.
“Well”—he stretched his hands out, palms up—“who listens to every word of women’s conversation? To tell the truth, I had intended to be out, but my plans had been canceled at the last moment, or I should not even have been at home. One has to be civil, but how interested can one be in what color Lady Whoever wore to the ball or what Mrs. So-and-So said at the soirée? It’s women’s concern. I just didn’t feel that it was anything different from usual. I heard no change of tone, caught nothing of anxiety—that’s what I mean.”
Pitt could only sympathize. It must have required hard discipline to remain courteous throughout. Only the rigid doctrine of good manners above all—from nanny’s knee, through tutors and public school—had instilled a pattern of self-control that would allow Tormod to do so with apparent grace. All the same, Pitt took the opportunity it gave him.
“Then perhaps your sister may have observed something, heard some nuance that only a woman would understand?” he asked quickly.
Tormod raised his eyebrows a little, whether at the suggestion or at Pitt’s use of words.
He hesitated. “I would rather you did not trouble her, Inspector,” he said slowly. “The death has been a severe shock to her. In fact, I am taking her away from Rutland Place for a little while, to recover. The associations are most unpleasant. My sister and I are orphans. Death has hit us hard in the past, and I’m afraid Eloise still finds it difficult to bear. I suppose it may be that Mina did confide something to her that day. I was not present all the time. It may be that Eloise feels she should have understood how desperate the poor woman was, and done something, and that grieves her additionally. Although, in truth, if someone is determined to take their own life, one cannot do anything to prevent them—only put off the time of the inevitable.”