Obediently, Pitt started to creep along the wall, as much as possible keeping concealed behind the various bushes and shrubs until they were fifteen yards away from the door in the wall, and only four yards from the scullery windows and the back door. They could see the shadowy figure of Lena Forrest moving about in the kitchen. Presumably she was getting herself breakfast and perhaps beginning whatever chores she had for the day. It must be a long, drawn-out, boring time for her with no mistress in the house to care for. They could not expect her to remain here much longer.
“Why were you looking for rope marks?” Narraway said insistently.
“Did you see any?” Pitt countered.
“Yes, very slight, a mark more like twine than rope. What was on it? Something to do with Cartouche?”
“No.”
They heard the sound at the same instant, the scraping of a key in the lock of the garden door. As one they shrank back behind the heavy leaves, and Pitt found himself holding his breath.
There was no sound until the key scraped again and then the slight clunk of the bar being dropped back. There were no footfalls across the grass.
They waited. Seconds ticked by. Was the visitor waiting also, or had he passed by soundlessly and might already be inside?
Narraway moved very carefully until he could see the side of the house. “He’s gone in through the French windows,” he said softly. “I can see him in the parlor.” He straightened up. “There’s no cover outside here. We’d better go around the back. If we run into the woman we’ll have to tell her.” And without waiting for Pitt to argue, he sprinted across the open space towards the scullery door and stopped just outside.
Pitt wondered for an instant if perhaps they should have left a constable at the front door, just in case Cartouche tried to escape that way. But then if he had seen anyone in the street he might not have risked coming in at all, and the whole exercise would have been useless.
Another alternative was for one of them to wait in the garden now, but then if Cartouche said anything, or Lena did, there needed to be more than one witness to it. He ran across the open lawn and joined Narraway at the scullery door.
Narraway looked cautiously in through the window. “There’s no one there,” he said, pushing the door. Inside was a small, tidy room with vegetable racks, rubbish bins, a sack of potatoes and several pots and pans, as well as the usual sink and low tub for laundry.
They went up the step into the kitchen, and still there was no one in sight. Lena must have heard the intruder and gone through to the parlor. On tiptoe, Pitt and Narraway crept along the passage and stopped just short of the doorway. It was ajar. They could hear the voices inside. The first was male, rich and melodious, only slightly sharpened by emotion. His diction was still perfect.
“I know that there are other papers, Miss Forrest. Don’t try to mislead me.”
Then Lena’s voice in reply, surprised and a trifle edgy. “The police already took everything that has to do with her appointments. There’s nothing here now but household bills and accounts outstanding, and that’s just the ones that have come in through the last week. The lawyers have all the old ones. It’s part of her estate.”
Now there was fear in his voice, and anger. “If you imagine you can continue where Miss Lamont was obliged to desist, and that you can blackmail me, Miss Forrest, you are most deeply mistaken. I will not permit it. I will do not another thing by coercion, do you hear me? Not one more word, written or spoken.”
There was a moment of silence. Narraway was standing in front of Pitt, blocking his view through the crack between the door and the jamb. His eye was about level with the top of the hinge.
“She was blackmailing you!” Lena said with consuming disgust. “You were so afraid of what she knew about you that you’d rather remove her papers for good or ill than have people know about you.”
“I no longer care, Miss Forrest!” There was a wild note in him now, as if he would overbalance out of control any moment.
Pitt stiffened. Was she in possible danger? Had Cartouche murdered Maude Lamont over this blackmail, and if Lena pressed him too far, would he kill again, once he knew where the papers were? And of course she could not tell him because they did not exist.
“Then why are you here?” Lena asked. “You’ve come for something!”
“Only her notes that would tell who I am,” he replied. “She’s dead. She can’t say anything further now, and it’s my word against yours.” There was an element of confidence creeping in. “There’s no question which of us they would believe, so don’t be foolish enough to try blackmail of your own. Just give me the papers and I’ll not trouble you again.”
“You aren’t troubling me now,” she pointed out. “And I never blackmailed anyone in my life.”
“A sophistry!” he sneered. “You were helping her. I don’t know if there’s a legal difference, but morally there isn’t.”
There was real anger in her voice; it shook with something close to fury. “I believed her! I worked in this house for five years before I had any idea she was a fraud! I thought she was honest.” She choked on a sob and caught her breath painfully. Her voice sank so low Pitt leaned forward to hear her. “It was only after someone else made her blackmail certain people that I found her out in tricks . . . with the magnesium powder on the wires of the light bulbs . . . and that table. She never used them before . . . that I know of.”
Another moment’s silence. This time it was he who was urgent, choked with feeling. “Wasn’t it all . . . tricks?” It was a cry of the heart, desperate.
She must have heard it. She hesitated.
Pitt could hear Narraway’s breath and felt the tension in him when they stood almost touching each other.
“There are real powers,” Lena said very softly. “I discovered that myself.”
Silence again, as if he could not bear to put it to the test.
“How?” he said at last. “How would you know? You said she used tricks! You discovered it. Don’t lie to me! I saw it in your face. It shattered you!” That was almost an accusation, as if somehow it were her fault. “Why? Why do you care?”
Her voice was almost unrecognizable, except that it could be no one else. “Because my sister had a baby out of wedlock. He died. Because he was illegitimate they wouldn’t baptize him. . . .” She was gasping for breath, choking on her pain. “So they wouldn’t bury him in hallowed ground. She went to a spirit medium . . . to know what happened to him after . . . after death. That medium was a fake as well. It was more than she could bear. She killed herself.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “The child, at least, was innocent. It would have done no harm to . . .” He tailed off, knowing it was all too late, and a lie anyway. The church’s rules on illegitimacy and suicide were beyond his power to break, but there was pity in his voice, and contempt for those who built rules without compassion. He obviously saw no kind of God in it.
Narraway turned and stared at Pitt.
Pitt nodded.
There was a rustle inside the room.
Narraway swiveled back.
“You weren’t here the night she was killed,” the man said. “I saw you go myself.”
She snorted. “You saw the lantern and the coat!” she retorted. “You think I learned nothing the weeks I worked here after I knew she was a fraud? I watched. I listened. It’s not very hard with ropes.”
“I heard you replace the lantern outside the front door when you got ’round to the street!” He made it an accusation.
“A few stones dropped on the ground,” she said with scorn. “I let another lantern down on a string. I went out afterwards . . . to see a friend who has no clock. The police checked. I knew they would.”
“And you killed her . . . after we’d gone? Leaving us to take the blame!” Now he was angry again, and frightened.
She heard it. “No one’s been blamed yet.”