Highgate Rise

6

PITT WOKE in the middle of the night to hear a loud, repeated banging which through the unraveling layers of sleep he realized was at the front door. He climbed out of bed, feeling Charlotte stirring beside him.

“Door,” he mumbled, reaching for his clothes. There was no point in hoping it was simply a matter of information he could accept, then go back to the warm oblivion of sleep. Anyone banging so fiercely and repeatedly wanted his presence. He pulled on trousers and socks; his boots were in front of the kitchen stove. He attempted to tuck in his shirt-tails, and lost them. He padded downstairs, turned up the gas on the lamp in the hall, and unbolted the front door.

The chill of the damp night air made him shiver, but it was a small discomfort compared with the sight of Murdo’s ashen face and the bull’s-eye lantern high in his hand, which threw its yellow light on the paving stones and into the mist around him. It picked out the dark shape of a hansom cab waiting at the curb beyond, the horse’s flanks steaming, the cabby shrouded in his cloak.

Before he could ask, Murdo blurted it out, his voice cracking a little.

“There’s another fire!” He forgot the “sir.” He looked very young, the freckles standing out on his fair skin in its unnatural pallor. “Amos Lindsay’s house.”

“Bad?” Pitt asked, although he knew.

“Terrible.” Murdo kept his voice under control with difficulty. “I never saw anything like it—you can feel the heat a hundred yards up the road; fair hurts your eye to look at it. God—how can anyone do that?”

“Come in,” Pitt said quickly. The night air was cold.

Murdo hesitated.

“My boots are in the kitchen.” Pitt turned and left him to do as he pleased. He heard the latch close and Murdo tiptoeing heavily after him.

In the kitchen he put up the gas and sat on the hard-backed chair, reaching for his boots and then lacing them tightly. Murdo came in as far as the stove, relishing the warmth. His eyes went over the clean wood, the china gleaming on the dresser, and he caught the smell of laundry drying on the airing rail winched up towards the ceiling above them. Unconsciously the lines in his young face were already less desperate.

Charlotte appeared in the doorway in her nightgown, her bare feet having made no sound on the linoleum.

Pitt smiled at her bleakly.

“What is it?” she asked, glancing at Murdo and back at Pitt.

“Fire,” he said simply.

“Where?”

“Amos Lindsay’s. Go back to bed,” he said gently. “You’ll get cold.”

She stood white-faced. Her hair was dark over her shoulders, copper where the gaslight caught it.

“Who was in the house?” she asked Murdo.

“I dunno, ma’am. We aren’t sure. They was trying to get the servants out, but the heat was terrible, scorch the hair off—” He stopped, realizing he was speaking to a woman and probably should not be saying such things.

“What?” she demanded.

He looked miserable and guilty for his clumsiness. He stared at Pitt, who was now ready to go.

“Eyebrows, ma’am,” he answered miserably, and she knew he was too shocked to equivocate.

Pitt kissed Charlotte quickly on the cheek and pushed her back. “Go to bed,” he said again. “Standing here catching a chill won’t help anyone.”

“Can you tell me if—” Then she realized what she was asking. To dispatch someone with a message, simply to allay her fears, or confirm them, would be a ridiculous waste of manpower, when there were urgent things to be done, injured and perhaps bereaved people to help. “I’m sorry.”

He smiled, an instant of understanding, then turned and went out with Murdo and pulled the front door closed behind him.

“What about Shaw?” he asked as they climbed up into the cab and it started forward immediately. It was obviously quite unnecessary to tell the cabby where they were going. Within moments the horse had broken from a trot into a canter and its hooves rang on the stones as the cab swayed and turned, throwing them from one wall to the other, and against each other, with some violence.

“I don’t know, sir, impossible to tell. The place is an inferno. We ’aven’t seen ’im—it looks bad.”

“Lindsay?”

“Nor ’im neither.”

“Dear God, what a mess!” Pitt said under his breath as the cab lurched around a corner, the wheels lifting for an instant and landing hard on the cobbles again with a jar that shook his bones.

It was a long, wretched ride to Highgate and they neither of them spoke again. There was nothing to say; each was consumed in his own imagination of the furnace they were racing towards, and the memory of Clemency Shaw’s charred body removed from another ruin so shortly before.

The red glow was visible through the cab window as soon as they turned the last corner of Kentish Town Road onto Highgate Road. In Highgate Rise the horse jerked to a halt and the cabby leaped down and threw the door open. “I can’t take yer no further!”

Pitt climbed out and the heat hit him, enveloping him in stinging, acrid, smut-filled, roaring chaos. The whole sky seemed red with the towering brilliance of it. Showers of sparks exploded in the air, white and yellow, flying hundreds of feet up, then falling in dying cinders. The street was congested with fire engines, horses plunging and crying out in terror as debris fell around them. Men clung onto them, trying to steady them amid the confusion. There were hoses connected up to the Highgate Ponds, and men struggled with leather buckets, passing them from hand to hand, but all they were doing was protecting the nearest other houses. Nothing could save Lindsay’s house now. Even as Pitt and Murdo stood in the road a great section of the top story collapsed, the beams exploded and fell in rapid succession and a huge gout of flame fifty feet high went soaring upwards, the heat of it driving them back to the far pavement and behind the hedge, even as far as they were from the house.

One of the fire engine horses screamed as a length of wood fell across its back and the smell of burning hair and flesh filled the immediate air. It plunged forward, tearing its reins out of the fireman’s hands. Another man, almost too quick for thought, caught up a bucket of water and threw it over the beast, quenching in one act both the heat and the pain.

Pitt ran forward and caught the animal, throwing all his weight against its charge, and it shuddered to a halt. Murdo, who had grown up on a farm, took off his jacket, squashed it into another bucket of water, then slapped it onto the beast’s back and held it.

The chief fireman was coming towards Pitt, his face a mask of smoke stains. Only the eyes showed through, red-rimmed and desperate. His eyebrows were singed and there were angry red weals under the blackened grime. His clothes were torn and soiled almost beyond recognition by water and the charring of heat and debris.

“We’ve got the servants out!” he shouted, then spluttered into coughing and controlled himself with difficulty. He waved them farther back and they followed him to where there was a faint touch of coolness of night air softening the heat and the stench, and the roaring and crashing of masonry and the explosion of wood were less deafening. His face was haggard, not only with sorrow but with his own failure. “But we didn’t get either of the two gentlemen.” It was unnecessary to add that it was now beyond hope, it was apparent to anyone at all. Nothing could be alive in that conflagration.

Pitt had known it, yet to hear it from someone else who spoke from years of such hope and struggle gave him a sudden gaping emptiness inside that took him by surprise. He realized only now how much he had been drawn to Shaw, even though he accepted that he might have murdered Clemency. Or perhaps it was only his brain that accepted it, his inner judgment always denied it. And with Amos Lindsay there had been no suspicion, only interest, and a little blossom of warmth because he had known Nobby Gunne. Now there was only a sense of sharp pain for the destruction. Anger would come later when the wound was less consuming.

He turned to Murdo and saw the shock and misery in his face. He was young and very new to murder and its sudden, violent loss. Pitt took him by the arm.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “We failed to prevent this, but we’ve got to get him before he does any more. Or her,” he added. “It could be a woman.”

Murdo was still stunned. “What woman would ever do that?” He jerked his hand back, but he did not turn.

“Women are just as capable of passion and hatred as men,” Pitt replied. “And of violence, given the means.”

“Oh no, sir—” Murdo began instinctively, the argument born of his own memories. Sharp tongues, yes; and a box on the ears; certainly greed at times, and coldness; nagging, bossiness and a great deal of criticism; and mind-staggering, speech-robbing unfairness. But not violence like this—

Memory returned, crowding in on Pitt, and he spoke with surprise.

“Some of the most gruesome murders I’ve ever worked on were committed by women, Murdo. And some of them I understood very well—when I knew why—and pitied. We know so little about this case—none of the real passions underneath it—”

“We know the Worlinghams have a great deal of money, and so does old Lutterworth.” Murdo struggled to gather everything in his mind. “We know—we know Pascoe and Dalgetty hate each other, although what that has to do with Mrs. Shaw …” He trailed off, searching for something more relevant. “We know Lindsay wrote pro-Fabian essays—although that has nothing to do with Mrs. Shaw either—but the doctor approved it.”

“That’s hardly a passion to kindle a funeral pyre like that,” Pitt said bitterly. “No, Murdo. We don’t know very much. But dear God—we’re going to find out.” He swung around and walked back towards the fire chief, who was now directing his men to saving the houses in the immediate vicinity.

“Have you any idea if it was set the same way?” Pitt shouted.

The fire chief turned a filthy, miserable face to him.

“Probably. It went up very quick. Two people called us—one saw it from the street at the front, towards the town, the other down towards Holly Village and half at the back. That’s at least two places. From the speed of it I daresay there was more.”

“But you got the servants out? How? Why not Lindsay and Shaw? Were the fires all in the main house?”

“Looks like it. Although by the time we got here it was spread pretty well all over. Got one man badly burned and another with a broken leg getting the servants out.”

“Where are they now?”

“Dunno. Some feller in a nightshirt and cassock was running ’round trying to help, and getting in the way. Good-hearted, I suppose—but a damn nuisance. Woman with ’im ’ad more sense. ’Nother couple over off to the side, looked white as ghosts—woman weeping—but they brought blankets. ’Bin too busy to watch ’em when they’re safe out. Now, I’ll answer your questions tomorrer—”

“Did you get the horse out?” Pitt did not know why he asked it, except some dim memory of terrified animals in another fire long ago in his youth.

“Horse?” The fire chief frowned. “What horse?”

“The doctor’s horse—for his trap.”

“Charlie!” the fire chief yelled at a soaked and filthy man who was walking a few yards away, limping badly. “Charlie!”

“Sir?” Charlie stopped and came over towards them, his eyebrows scorched, his eyes red-rimmed and exhausted.

“You were ’round the back—did you get the horse?”

“Weren’t no ’orse, sir. I looked special. Can’t bear a good animal burnt.”

“Yes there was,” Pitt argued. “Dr. Shaw has a trap, for his calls—”

“No trap neither, sir.” Charlie was adamant. “Stable was still standing when I got there. No ’orse and no trap. Either they was kept somewhere else—or they’re out.”

Out! Was it possible Shaw was not here at all, that once again the fire had not caught him? In all this fearful pyre could only Amos Lindsay be dead?

Who would know? Who could he ask? He turned around in the red night, still loud with the crackling of sparks and the roar and boom of flame. He could see, at the far edge of the tangle of engines, horses, water buckets, ladders, and weary and injured men, the two black figures of Josiah and Prudence Hatch, a little apart from each other, huddled in a private and separate misery. The cassocked figure of Clitheridge was striding along, skirts flying, a flask in his outstretched hand, and Lally was rewrapping a blanket around the shoulders of a tiny kitchen girl who was shuddering so violently Pitt could see it even through the smoke and the melee. Lindsay’s manservant with the polished hair stood alone, stupefied, like a person upright in his sleep.

Pitt skirted around the horses and buckets and the men still working, and started towards the far side. He was off the opposite pavement and in the middle of the road when he heard the clatter of hooves and looked automatically up the street towards Highgate center to see who it was. There was no purpose in more fire engines now—and anyway there was no sound of bells.

It was a trap, horse almost at a gallop, wheels racing and jumping in their speed and recklessness. Pitt knew long before he saw him that it was Shaw, and he felt an intense relief, followed the instant after by a new darkness. If Shaw was alive, then it was still possible he had set both fires, first to kill Clemency, now to kill Lindsay. Why Lindsay? Perhaps in the few days he had stayed with Lindsay, Shaw had betrayed himself by a word, an expression, even something unsaid when it should have been? It was a sickening thought, and yet honesty could not dismiss it.

“Pitt!” Shaw almost fell off the step of the trap and took no trouble even to tie the rein, leaving the horse to go where it would. He grabbed Pitt by the arm, almost swinging him offhis feet. “Pitt! For God’s sake, what’s happened? Where’s Amos? Where are the staff?” His face was so gaunt with horror it was impossible not to be moved by it.

Pitt put out his hand to steady him. “The servants are all right, but I’m afraid Lindsay was not brought out. I’m sorry.”

“No! No!” The cry was torn from Shaw and he plunged forward, bumping into people, knocking them aside in his headlong race towards the flames.

After a moment’s stupefaction Pitt ran after him, leaping a water hose and accidentally sending a fireman flying. He caught Shaw so close to the building the heat was immense and the roaring of the flames seemed almost around them. He brought him to the ground, driving the wind out of him.

“You can’t do anything!” he shouted above the din. “You’ll only get killed yourself!”

Shaw coughed and struggled to get up. “Amos is in there!” His voice was close to hysteria. “I’ve got to—” Then he stopped, on his hands and knees facing the blaze, and realization came to him at last that it was utterly futile. Something inside him collapsed and he made no resistance when Pitt pulled him to his feet.

“Come back, or you’ll get burned,” Pitt said gently.

“What?” Shaw was still staring at the violence of the flames. They were so close the heat was hurting their skin, and the brightness made him screw up his eyes, but he seemed only peripherally aware of it.

“Come back!” Pitt shouted as a beam fell in with a crash and an explosion of sparks. Without thinking he took Shaw by the arms and pulled him as if he had been a frightened animal. For a moment he was afraid Shaw was going to fall over, then at last he obeyed, stumbling a little, careless if he hurt himself.

Pitt wanted to say something of comfort, but what was there? Amos Lindsay was dead, the one man who had seemed to understand Shaw and not be offended by his abrasiveness, who saw beyond the words to the mind and its intent. It was Shaw’s second terrible bereavement in less than two weeks. There was nothing to say that would not be fatuous and offensive, only betraying a complete failure to understand anything of his true pain. Silence at least did not intrude, but it left Pitt feeling helpless and inadequate.

Clitheridge was floundering over towards them, a look of dedication and terror on his face. He obviously had not the faintest idea what to say or do, except that he was determined not to flinch from his duty. At the last moment he was saved by events. The horse in the trap took flight as a piece of burning debris shot past it and it reared up and twisted around.

That at least was something Clitheridge understood. He abandoned Shaw, for whom he could do nothing and whose grief appalled and embarrassed him, and reached instead for the horse, holding the rein close to its head and throwing all his considerable weight against the momentum of its lunge.

“Whoa! Steady—steady now. It’s all right—steady, girl. Hold hard!” And miraculously for once he was completely successful. The animal stopped and stood still, shuddering and rolling its eyes. “Steady,” he said again, full of relief, and began to lead it across the road, away from the roar and heat, and away from Shaw.

“The servants.” At last Shaw spoke. He twisted around on one foot and swayed a little. “What about the servants? Where are they? Are they hurt?”

“Not seriously,” Pitt replied. “They’ll be all right.”

Clitheridge was still across the street with the horse and trap, leading it away, but Oliphant the curate was coming towards them, his thin face lit by the glare from the flames, his figure gawky in a coat whose shoulders were too big. He stopped in front of them and his voice was quiet and certain.

“Dr. Shaw; I lodge with Mrs. Turner up on West Hill. She has other rooms and you’d be welcome to stay there as long as you choose. There is nothing you can do here, and I think a strong cup of tea, some hot water to wash in, and then sleep would help you to face tomorrow.”

Shaw opened his mouth to argue, then realized that Oliphant had not offered facile words of comfort. He had offered practical help and reminded him that there was another day ahead, and regardless of pain or shock, there would be duties, things to do that would be useful and have meaning.

“I—” He struggled for the practical. “I have no-nothing—it is all gone—again—”

“Of course,” Oliphant agreed. “I have an extra nightshirt you are welcome to, and a razor, soap, a clean shirt. Anything I have is yours.”

Shaw tried to cling to the moment, as if something could still be retrieved, some horror undone that would become fixed if he were to leave. It was as though accepting it made it true. Pitt knew the feeling, irrational and yet so strong it held one to the scene of tragedy because to move was to acknowledge it and allow it to be real.

“The servants,” Shaw said again. “What about them? Where are they to sleep? I must—” He turned one way and another, frantic for some action to help, and saw none.

Oliphant nodded, his face red in the flames’ reflection, his voice level. “Mary and Mrs. Wiggins will stay with Mr. and Mrs. Hatch, and Jones will stay with Mr. Clitheridge.”

Shaw stared at him. Two firemen went past supporting a third between them.

“We shall begin to search for new positions for them in the morning.” Oliphant held out his hand. “There are plenty of people who want good, reliable help that has been well trained. Don’t worry about it. They are frightened, but not hurt. They need sleep and the assurance that they will not be put on the street.”

Shaw looked at him incredulously.

“Come,” Oliphant repeated. “You cannot help here—”

“I can’t just—just walk away!” Shaw protested. “My friend is in that—” He stared helplessly at the blaze, now redder and sinking as the last of the wood crumbled away inside and the masonry collapsed inward. He searched for words to explain the tumult of emotions inside him, and failed. There were tears in the grime on his face. His hands clenched at his sides and jerked as if he still longed to move violently, and had no idea where or how.

“Yes you can leave it,” Oliphant insisted. “There is no one left here; but tomorrow there will be people who need you—sick, frightened people who trust you to be there and use the knowledge you have to help them.”

Shaw stared at him, horror in his face turning to a slow amazement. Then finally, without speaking, he followed him obediently, his shoulders sagging, his feet slow, as if he were bruised, and intensely, painfully tired.

Pitt watched him go and felt a racking mixture of emotions inside himself; pity for Shaw’s grief and the stunning pain he obviously felt, fury at the fearful waste of it, and a kind of anger because he did not know who to blame for it all, who to cherish and who to want to hunt and see punished. It was like having a dam pent up inside him and the pressure of confusion ached to burst in some easy and total action, and yet there was none.

The building crashed in sparks again as another wall subsided. Two firemen were shouting at each other.

Finally he left them and retraced his own steps to look for Mundo and begin the miserable task of questioning the closest neighbors to see if any of them had seen or heard anything before the fire, anyone close to Lindsay’s house, any light, any movement.

Murdo was amazed by how tumultuous were his feelings about accompanying Pitt to the Lutterworths’. Away from the immediate heat of the fire his face hurt where the skin was a little scorched, his eyes stung and watered from the smoke, even his throat ached from it, and there was a large and painful blister forming on his hand where he had been struck by a flying cinder. But his body was chilled, and inside the coat Oliphant had found for him, he was shivering and clenched with cold.

He thought of the huge, dark house of the Lutterworths, of the splendor inside it, carpets, pictures, velvet curtains bound with sashes and splayed on the floor like overlong skirts. He had only ever seen such luxury at the Worlinghams’ themselves, and theirs was a lot older, and worn in one or two places. The Lutterworths’ was all new.

But far sharper in his mind, and making him clench his sore hands before he remembered the blister, was the memory of Flora Lutterworth with her wide, dark eyes, so very direct, the proud way she carried her head, chin high. He had noticed her hands especially; he always remarked hands, and hers were the most beautiful he had ever seen, slender, with tapering fingers and perfect nails, not plump and useless like those of so many ladies of quality—like the Misses Worlingham, for example.

The more he thought of Flora the lighter his feet were on the frosty pavement, and the more wildly his stomach lurched at the prospect of Pitt knocking on the front door with its brass lion’s head, until he disturbed the entire household and brought the footman to let them in, furious and full of contempt, so they could stand dripping and filthy on the clean carpet till Lutterworth himself was roused and came down. Then Pitt would ask him a lot of intrusive questions that would all be pointless in the end, and could have waited until morning anyway.

They were actually on the step when he finally spoke.

“Wouldn’t it be better to wait until morning?” he said breathlessly. He was still very wary of Pitt. At times he admired him, at others he was torn by old loyalties, parochial and deep rooted, understanding his colleagues’ resentment and sense of having been undervalued and passed by. But most often he was lost in his own eagerness to solve the case and he thought of nothing but how could he help, what could he contribute to their knowledge. He was gaining a measure of respect for Pitt’s patience and his observation of people. Some of his conclusions had escaped Murdo. He had had no notion how Pitt knew of some of the exchanges between Pascoe and Dalgetty—until Pitt had quite openly recounted how Mrs. Pitt had attended the funeral supper and repeated back: to him all her impressions. In that moment Murdo had ceased to dislike Pitt; it was impossible to dislike a man who was so candid about his deductions. He could easily have pretended a superior ability, and Murdo knew a good many who would have.

Pitt’s reply was unnecessary, both because Murdo knew perfectly well what it would be, and because the front door swung open the moment after Pitt knocked and Alfred Lutterworth himself stood in the lighted hall, hastily but fully dressed. Only his neck without a tie and his ill-matched coat and trousers betrayed that he had already been up. Perhaps he had been one of the many who had crowded around the edge of the fire, anxious, curious, concerned, some offering help—or to see the job done to its bitter conclusion.

“Lindsay’s ’ouse.” He made it a statement rather than a question. “Poor devil. ’E was a good man. What about Shaw—did they get ’im this time?”

“You believe it was Shaw they were after, sir?” Pitt stepped in and Murdo followed him nervously.

Lutterworth closed the door behind them. “Do you take me for a fool, man? Who else would they be after, first ’is own ’ouse, and now Lindsay’s? Don’t stand there. You’d best come in, although there’s nowt I can tell yer.” His northern accent was more pronounced in his emotion. “If I’d seen anyone you’d not ’ave ’ad to come seekin’ me, I’d’a gone seekin’ you.”

Pitt followed him and Murdo came a step behind. The withdrawing room was cold, the ashes of the fire already dark, but Flora was standing beside it. She was also fully dressed, in a gray winter gown, her face pale and her hair tied back with a silk kerchief. Murdo felt himself suddenly excruciatingly awkward, not knowing what to do with his feet, where to put his painful, dirty hands.

“Good evening, Inspector.” She looked at Pitt courteously, then at Murdo with something he thought was a smile. “Good evening, Constable Murdo.”

She had remembered his name. His heart lurched. It had been a smile—hadn’t it?

“Good evening, Miss Lutterworth.” His voice sounded husky and ended in a squeak.

“Can we help, Inspector?” She turned to Pitt again. “Does anyone … need shelter?” Her eyes pleaded with him to tell her the answer to the question she had not asked.

Murdo drew breath to tell her, but Pitt cut across him and he was left openmouthed.

“Your father thinks the fire was deliberately set, in order to kill Dr. Shaw.” Pitt was watching her, waiting for reaction.

Murdo was furious. He saw the last trace of color leave her face and he would have rushed forward to save her from collapsing, had he dared. In that instant he loathed Pitt for his brutality, and Lutterworth himself for not having protected her, he whose duty and privilege it was.

She bit her lip to stop it trembling and her eyes filled with tears. She turned away to hide them.

“No need to cry for ’im, girl,” Lutterworth said gently. “ ’E was no use to you, nor to ’is poor wife neither. ’E was a greedy man, with no sense o’ right nor wrong. Save your tears for poor Amos Lindsay. ’E was a good-enough chap, in ’is own way. A bit blunt, but none the worse for that. Don’t take on.” Then he swung around to Pitt. “Mind you could’a chosen your time and your words better! Clumsy great fool!”

Murdo was in an agony of indecision. Should he offer her his handkerchief? It had been clean this morning, as it was every morning, but it must smell terrible with smoke now; and anyway, wouldn’t she think him impertinent, overfamiliar?

Her shoulders were trembling and she sobbed without sound. She looked so hurt, like a woman and a child at once.

He could bear it no longer. He pulled the handkerchief out of his pocket, dropping keys and a pencil along with it, and went forward to give it to her, arm outstretched. He no longer cared what Pitt thought, or what detective strategy he might be using. He also hated Shaw, with an utterly new emotion that had never touched him before, because Flora wept for him with such heartbreak.

“He in’t dead, miss,” he said bluntly. “He was out on a call somewhere an’ ’e’s terrible upset—but he in’t even hurt. Mr. Oliphant, the curate, took him back to his lodgings for the night. Please don’t cry like that—”

Lutterworth’s face was dark. “You said he was dead.” He swung around, accusing Pitt.

“No, Mr. Lutterworth,” Pitt contradicted. “You assumed it. I am deeply sorry to say that Mr. Lindsay is dead. But Dr. Shaw is perfectly well.”

“Out again?” Lutterworth was staring at Flora now, his brows drawn down, his mouth tight. “I’ll lay odds that bounder struck the match ’imself.”

Flora jerked up, her face tearstained, Murdo’s handkerchief clasped in her fingers, but now her eyes were wide with fury.

“That’s a terrible thing to say, and you have no right even to think it, let alone to put it into words! It is completely irresponsible!”

“Oh, and you know all about responsibility, of course, girl,” Lutterworth retorted, by now regardless of Pitt or Murdo. His face was suffused with color and his voice thick in his emotion. “Creepin’ in and out at all hours to see ’im— imagining I don’t know. For heaven’s sake, ’alf Highgate knows! And talk about it over the teacups, like you were some common whore—”

Murdo gasped as if the word had struck him physically. He would rather have sustained a dozen blows from a thief or a drunkard than have such a term used of Flora. Were it any other man he would have knocked him to the ground—but he was helpless.

“—and I’ve nothing with which to call them liars!” Lutterworth was anguished with impotent fury himself, and anyone but Murdo would have pitied him. “Dear God—if your mother were alive she’d weep ’erself sick to see you. First time since she died I ’aven’t grieved she weren’t ’ere with me—the very first time …”

Flora stared at him and stood even straighter. She drew a breath to defend herself, her cheeks scarlet, her eyes burning. Then her face filled with misery and she remained silent.

“Nothing to say?” he demanded. “No excuses? No—what a fine man he is, if only I knew ’im like you do, eh?”

“You do me an injustice, Papa,” she said stiffly. “And yourself also. I am sorry you think so ill of me, but you must believe what you will.”

“Don’t you come high and mighty with me, girl.” Lutterworth’s face was torn between anger and pain. Had she been looking at him more closely she might have seen the pride as he gazed at her, and the shattered hope. But his words were unfortunate. “I’m your father, not some tomfool lad following after you. You’re not too big to send to your room, if I have to. An’ I’ll approve any man that sets ’is cap at you, or you’ll not so much as give ’im the time o’ day. Do you hear me, girl?”

She was trembling. “I’m sure everyone in the house hears you, Papa, including the tweeny in the attic—”

His face flushed purple with anger.

“—but if anyone does me the honor of courting me,” she went on before he had mustered the words, “I shall most certainly seek your approval. But if I love him, I’ll marry him whether you like him or not.” She turned to Murdo, and with a barely shaking voice thanked him for informing her that Dr. Shaw was alive and well. Then, still clutching his handkerchief, she swept out and they heard her footsteps go across the hall and up the stairs.

Lutterworth was too wretched and too embarrassed to apologize or seek polite excuses for such a scene.

“I can’t tell you anything you don’t know for yourselves,” he said brusquely when the silence returned. “I ’eard the alarm and went out to see, same as ’alf the street, but I didn’t see nor ’ear anything before that. Now I’ll be going back to my bed and you’d best get about your business. Good night to you.”

“Good night sir,” they replied quietly, and found their own way to the door.

It was not the only quarrel they witnessed that night.

Pascoe was too distressed to see them, and his servant refused on his behalf. They trudged in silence and little expectation of learning anything useful, first to the Hatches’ house: to question Lindsay’s maid, who was bundled up in blankets and shaking so violently she could not hold a cup steady in her hand. She could tell them nothing except that she had woken to the sound of fire bells and had been so terrified she did not know what to do. A fireman had come to the window and carried her out, across the roof of the house and down a long ladder to the garden, where she had been soaked with water from a hose, no doubt by accident.

At this point her teeth were chattering on the edge of the cup and Pitt recognized that she was unlikely to know anything useful, and was beyond being able to tell him anyway. Not even the prospect of a clue towards who had burned two houses to the ground, with their occupants inside, prompted him to press her any further.

When she had been escorted upstairs to bed, he turned to Josiah Hatch, who was gaunt faced, eyes fixed in horror at the vision within his mind.

Pitt watched him anxiously, he seemed so close to retreating into himself with shock. Perhaps to be forced to speak and think of and answer questions of fact would be less of a torture than one might suppose. It would draw him from the contemplation of the enormity of destruction, and from the flicker in the muscles in his eyelids and the corners of his mouth, the fear of the evil which now was so obviously still in their midst.

“What time did you retire this evening, Mr. Hatch?” he began.

“Ugh?” Hatch recalled himself to the present with difficulty. “Oh—late—I did not look at the clock. I was in deep contemplation of what I had been reading.”

“I heard you come up the stairs at about quarter to two,” Prudence put in very quietly, looking first at her husband and then at Pitt.

He turned a blank face towards her. “I disturbed you? I’m sorry, that was the last thing I intended.”

“Oh no, my dear! I had been roused by one of the children. Elizabeth had a nightmare. I had merely not yet gone back to sleep.”

“Is she well this morning?”

Prudence’s face relaxed into the ghost of a smile. “Of course. It was simply an ill dream. Children do have them, you know—quite often. All she required was a little reassurance.”

“Could not one of the older children have given her that without disturbing you?” He frowned, seizing on the matter as if it were important. “Nan is fifteen! In another few years she may have children of her own.”

“There is a world of difference between fifteen and twenty, Josiah. I can remember when I was fifteen.” The tiny smile returned again, soft and sad. “I knew nothing—and I imagined I knew everything. There were entire regions—continents of experience of which I had not the faintest conception.”

Pitt wondered what particular ignorances were in her mind. He thought perhaps those of marriage, the responsibility after the romance had cooled, the obedience, and perhaps the bearing of children—but he could have been wrong. It might have been worldly things, quite outside the home, other struggles or tragedies she had seen and coped with.

Hatch apparently did not know what she referred to either. He frowned at her in incomprehension for a few moments longer, then turned to Pitt again.

“I saw nothing of any import.” He answered the question before it was asked. “I was in my study, reading from the work of St. Augustine.” The muscles in his jaw and neck tightened and some inner dream took hold of him. “The words of men who have sought after God in other ages are a great enlightenment to us—and comfort. There has always been powerful evil in the world, and will be as long as the soul of man is as weak and beset by temptations as it is.” He looked at Pitt again. “But I am afraid I can be of no assistance to you. My mind and my senses were totally absorbed in contemplation and study.”

“How terrible,” Prudence said to no one in particular, “that you were awake in your study, reading of the very essence of the conflict between good and evil.” She shivered and held her arms close around herself. “And only a few hundred yards away, someone was setting a fire that murdered poor Mr. Lindsay—and but for a stroke of good fortune, would have murdered poor Stephen as well.”

“There are mighty forces of evil here in Highgate.” He stared straight ahead of him again, as if he could see the pattern in the space between the jardiniere with its gold chrysanthemums and the stitched sampler on the wall with the words of the Twenty-third Psalm, “Wickedness has been entertained, and invited to take up its abode with us,” he went on.

“Do you know by whom, Mr. Hatch?” It was surely a futile question, and yet Pitt felt impelled to ask it. Murdo behind him, silent until now, shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

Hatch looked around in surprise. “God forgive him and give him peace, by Lindsay himself. He spread dark ideas of revolution and anarchy, overthrow of the order of things as they are. He wanted some new society where individual ownership of property was done away and men were no longer rewarded according to their ability and effort but given a common wage regardless. It would do away with self-reliance, diligence, industry and responsibility—all the virtues which have made the Empire great and the nation the envy of all the Christian world.” His face was pinched with anger at the distortion, and grief for all that would be lost. “And John Dalgetty published them—to his dishonor—but he is a foolish man forever pursuing what he imagines is justice and a kind of freedom of the mind that has become all important to him, consuming all his better judgment. In his frenzy he deludes others.”

He looked at Pitt. “Poor Pascoe has done all he can to dissuade him, and then to prevent him by public opinion, and even the law; but he is puny against the tide of inquisitiveness and disobedience in mankind and the passion for novelty—always novelty.” His body was clenched under his clothes, aching with tension. “Novelty at any price! New sciences, a new social order, new art—we are insatiable. The minute we have seen a thing, we want to cast it aside and find something else. We worship freedom as if it were some infinite good. But you cannot escape morality—freedom from the consequence of your acts is the great delusion at the core of all this”—he flung his hand out—“this frenzy for newness—and for irresponsibility. We have been from the first a race that hungers for forbidden knowledge and would eat the fruit of sin and death. God commanded our first parents to abstain, and they would not. What chance has poor Quinton Pascoe?”

His face tightened and a look of defeat washed his whole countenance with pain. “And Stephen in his arrogance upheld Dalgetty and made mock of Pascoe and his attempts to protect the weak and the sensitive from the cruder expressions of ideas that could only injure and frighten at bestand at worst deprave. Mockery of the truth, of all man’s past aspirations to higher good, is one of the Evil One’s most fearsome weapons, and God help him, Stephen has been more than willing to use it.”

“Josiah—I think you speak too harshly,” Prudence protested. “I know Stephen speaks foolishly at times, but there is no cruelty in him—”

He turned around to her, his face grim, his eyes burning. “You know him very little, my dear. You see only the best. That is to your credit—and it is what I intend shall continue, but be counseled by me: I have heard him say much that I shall never repeat to you, which has been both cruel and degraded. He has a contempt for the virtues which you most admire.”

“Oh, Josiah, are you sure? Could you not perhaps have misunderstood him? He has an unfortunate sense of humor at times—and—”

“I could not!” He was absolute. “I am perfectly capable of telling when he is attempting to be amusing and when he means what he says, however superficially he covers it with lightness. The essence of mockery, Prudence, is that it should make good people laugh at what they would otherwise have taken seriously and loved—to make moral purity, labor, hope, and belief in people, seem ridiculous to them—things of jest to be derided.”

Prudence opened her mouth to refute what he was saying; then recalling some other knowledge, some fact until then secondary, she colored with embarrassment and looked down at the floor. Pitt was aware of her misery as if she had touched him, but he had no idea what caused it. She wanted to defend Shaw, but why? Affection, simple compassion because she believed his suffering to be genuine, or some other reason unguessed by him yet? And what held her back?

“I regret we cannot help you,” Hatch said civilly, but he could not mask the exhaustion in his voice, nor the shock in his eyes. He was on the point of collapse, and it was nearly four in the morning.

Pitt gave up. “Thank you for your time now, and your courtesy. We will not keep you up longer. Good night, sir—Mrs. Hatch.”

Outside the night was black and the wind whined in the darkness, glaring red over towards the ruins of Amos Lindsay’s house. The street was still full of fire engines, and firemen were walking the horses up and down to keep them from chilling.

“Go home,” Pitt said to Murdo, stamping his feet on the ice around the pavement. “Get a few hours’ sleep and I’ll see you at the station at ten.”

“Yes sir. Do you think Shaw did it himself, sir? To cover the murder of his wife?”

Pitt looked at Murdo’s scorched and miserable face. He knew what he was thinking.

“Over Flora Lutterworth? Possibly. She’s a handsome girl, and can expect a lot of money. But I doubt Flora had any part in it. Now go home and sleep—and get that hand attended to. If that blister breaks and you get it dirty, God knows what infection you could get. Good night, Murdo.”

“Good night, sir.” And Murdo turned and made his way hastily across the road and past the firemen up towards Highgate.

It took Pitt nearly half an hour to find a cab, and then he only succeeded because some late-night junketer had failed to pay his fare and the cabby was standing on the pavement calling after him instead of making a hasty return to his own bed. He grumbled, and asked for extra, but since Bloomsbury was more or less on his way, he weighed exhaustion against profit and came out on the side of profit.

Charlotte came flying down the stairs almost before Pitt had the door shut, a shawl caught half around her shoulders and no slippers on. She stared at him, waiting for the answer.

“Amos Lindsay’s dead,” he said, taking off his boots and moving frozen toes inside his socks. Really he ought to put his socks in the kitchen to dry out. “Shaw was out on a call again. He got back soon after we arrived.” His coat fell off the hook behind him and landed in a heap on the floor. He was too tired to care. “The servants are all right.”

She hesitated only a moment, absorbing the knowledge. Then she came down the rest of the stairs and put her arms around him, her head against his shoulder. There was no need to talk now; all she could think of was relief, and how cold he was, and dirty, and tired. She wanted to hold him and ease out the horror, make him warm again and let him sleep, as if he had been a child.

“The bed’s warm,” she said at last.

“I’m covered in smut and the smell of smoke,” he answered, stroking her hair.

“I’ll wash the sheets,” she said without moving.

“You’ll have to soak them,” he warned.

“I know. What time do you have to go back?”

“I told Murdo ten o’clock.”

“Then don’t stand here shivering.” She stood back and held out her hand.

Silently he followed her upstairs and as soon as his outer clothes were off, fell gratefully into the warm sheets and held her close to him. Within minutes he was asleep.

Pitt slept late and when he woke Charlotte was already up. He dressed quickly and was downstairs for hot water to shave within five minutes and at the breakfast table in ten to share the meal with his children. This was a rare pleasure, since he was too often gone when they ate.

“Good morning, Jemima,” he said formally. “Good morning, Daniel.”

“Good morning, Papa,” they replied as he sat down. Daniel stopped eating his porridge, spoon in the air, a drop of milk on his chin. His face was soft and the features still barely formed. His baby teeth were even and perfectly formed. He had Pitt’s dark curls—unlike Jemima, two years older, who had her mother’s auburn coloring, but her hair had to be tied in rags all night if it were to curl.

“Eat your porridge,” Jemima ordered him, taking another spoonful of her own. She was inquisitive, bossy, fiercely protective of him, and seldom stopped talking. “You’ll get cold in school if you don’t!”

Pitt hid a smile, wondering where she had picked up that piece of information.

Daniel obeyed. He had learned in his four years of life that it was a lot easier in the long run than arguing, and his nature was not quarrelsome or assertive, except over issues that mattered, like who had how much pudding, or that the wooden fire engine was his, not hers, and that since he was the boy he had the right to walk on the outside. And the hoop was also his—and the stick that went with it.

She was agreeable to most of these, except walking on the outside—she was older, and taller, and therefore it only made sense that she should.

“Are you working on a very important case, Papa?” Jemima asked, her eyes wide. She was very proud of her father, and everything he did was important.

He smiled at her. Sometimes she looked so like Charlotte must have at the same age, the same soft little mouth, stubborn chin and demanding eyes.

“Yes—away up in Highgate.”

“Somebody dead?” she asked. She had very little idea what “dead” meant, but she had heard the word many times, and she and Charlotte and Daniel had buried several dead birds in the garden. But she could not remember all that Charlotte had told her, except it was all right and something to do with heaven.

Pitt met Charlotte’s eyes over Jemima’s head. She nodded.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Are you going to solve it?” Jemima continued.

“I hope so.”

“I’m going to be a detective when I grow up,” she said, taking another spoonful of her porridge. “I shall solve cases as well.”

“So shall I,” Daniel added.

Charlotte passed Pitt his porridge and they continued in gentle conversation until it was time for him to leave. He kissed the children—Daniel was still just young enough not to object—kissed Charlotte, who definitely did not object, and put on his boots, which she had remembered to bring in this morning to warm, and took his leave.

Outside it was one of those crisp autumn mornings when the air is cold, tingling in the nostrils, but the sky is blue and the crackle of frost under the feet is a sharp, pleasing sound.

He went first to Bow Street to report to Micah Drummond.

“Another fire?” Drummond frowned, standing by his window looking over the wet rooftops towards the river. The morning sunlight made everything gleam in gray and silver and there was mist only over the water itself. “Still they didn’t get Shaw?” He turned back and met Pitt’s eyes.

“Makes one think.”

“He was very distressed.” Pitt remembered the night before with an ache of pity.

Drummond did not answer that. He knew Pitt felt it un-arguably and they both knew all the possibilities that rose from it.

“I suppose the Highgate police are looking into all the known arsonists in the area, methods and patterns and so on? Made a note of all the people who turned out to watch, in case it’s a pyromaniac who just lights them for the love of it?”

“Very keen,” Pitt said ruefully.

“But you think it’s a deliberate murder?” Drummond eyed him curiously.

“I think so.”

“Bit of pressure to get this cleared up.” Drummond was at his desk now, and his long fingers played idly with the copper-handled paper knife. “Need you back here. They’ve taken half a dozen men for this Whitechapel business. I suppose you’ve seen the newspapers?”

“I saw the letter to Mr. Lusk,” Pitt said grimly. “With the human kidney in it, and purported to come ’from hell.’ I should think he may be right. Anyone who can kill and mutilate repeatedly like this must live in hell, and carry it with him.”

“Pity aside,” Drummond said very seriously, “people are beginning to panic Whitechapel is deserted as soon as it’s dusk, people are calling for the commissioner to resign, the newspapers are getting more and more sensational. One woman died from a heart attack with the latest edition in her hand.” Drummond sighed in a twisted unhappiness, his eyes on Pitt’s. “They don’t joke about it in the music halls, you know. People usually make jokes about what frightens them most—it’s a way of defusing it. But this is too bad even for that.”

“Don’t they?” Curiously, that meant more to Pitt than all the sensational press and posters. It was an indication of the depth of fear in the ordinary people. He smiled lopsidedly. “Haven’t had much time to go to the halls lately.”

Drummond acknowledged the jibe with the good nature with which it was intended.

“Do what you can with this Highgate business, Pitt, and keep me informed.”

“Yes sir.”

This time instead of taking a hansom, Pitt walked briskly down to the Embankment and caught a train. He got off at the Highgate Road station, putting the few pence difference aside towards Charlotte’s holiday. It was a beginning. He walked up Highgate Rise to the police station.

He was greeted with very guarded civility.

“Mornin’ sir.” Their faces were grave and resentful, and yet there was a certain satisfaction in them.

“Good morning,” he replied, waiting for the explanation. “Discovered something?”

“Yes sir. We got an arsonist who done this kind o’ thing before. Never killed anyone, but reckon that was more luck than anything. Method’s the same—fuel oil. Done it over Kentish Town way up ’til now, but that’s only a step away. Got too ’ot for ’im there an’ ’e moved north, I reckon.”

Pitt was startled and he tried without success to keep the disbelief out of his face. “Have you arrested him?”

“Not yet, but we will. We know ’is name an’ where ’e lodges. Only a matter of time.” The man smiled and met Pitt’s eyes. “Seems like they didn’t need to send a top officer from Bow Street to ’elp us. We done it ourselves: just solid police work—checkin’ an’ knowin’ our area. Mebbe you’d best go an’ give them an ’and in Whitechapel—seems this Jack the Ripper’s got the ’ole city in a state o’ terror.”

“Takin’ photographs o’ the dead women’s eyes,” another constable added unhelpfully. “ ’Cause they reckon that the last thing a person sees is there at the back o’ their eyes, if you can just get it. But we got no corpses worth mentioning—poor devils.”

“And we’ve got no murderer worth mentioning yet either,” Pitt added. He remembered to exercise some tact just in time. He still had to work with these men. “I expect you are already looking into who owned the other property this arsonist burned? In case there is insurance fraud.”

The officer blushed and lied. “Yes sir, seein’ into that today.”

“I thought so.” Pitt looked back at him without a flicker. “Arsonists sometimes have a reason beyond just watching the flames and feeling their own power. Meanwhile I’ll get on with the other possibilities. Where’s Murdo?”

“In the duty room, sir.”

“Thank you.”

Pitt found Murdo waiting for him just inside the door of the duty room. He looked tired and had his hand bandaged and held stiffly at his side. He still looked uncertain whether to like Pitt or resent him, and he had not forgotten Pitt’s treatment of Flora Lutterworth, nor his own inability to prevent it. All his emotions were bare in his face, and Pitt was reminded again how young he was.

“Anything new, apart from the arsonist?” he asked automatically.

“No sir, except the fire chief says this was just like the last one—but I reckon you know that.”

“Fuel oil?”

“Yes sir, most likely—and started in at least three places.”

“Then we’ll go and see if Pascoe is fit to talk to this morning.”

“Yes sir.”

Quinton Pascoe was up and dressed, sitting beside a roaring fire in his withdrawing room, but he still looked cold, possibly from tiredness. There were dark circles under his eyes and his hands were knotted in his lap. He seemed older than Pitt had thought when they last met, and for all his stocky body, less robust.

“Come in, Inspector, Constable,” he said without rising. “I am sorry I was not able to see you last night, but I really cannot tell you anything anyway. I took a little laudanum—I have been most distressed over the turn of events lately, and I wished to get a good night of rest.” He looked at Pitt hopefully, searching to see if he understood. “So much ugliness,” he said with a shake of his head. “I seem to be losing all the time. It puts me in mind of the end of King Arthur’s table, when the knights go out one by one to seek the Holy Grail, and all the honor and companionship begins to crumble apart. Loyalties were ended. It seems to me that a certain kind of nobility died with the end of chivalry, and courage for its own sake, the idealism that believes in true virtue and is prepared to fight and to die to preserve it, and counts the privilege of battle the only reward.”

Murdo looked nonplussed.

Pitt struggled with memory of Morte d’Arthur and Idylls of the King, and thought perhaps he saw a shred of what Pascoe meant.

“Was your distress due to Mrs. Shaw’s death?” Pitt asked. “Or other concerns as well? You spoke of evil—a general sense—”

“That was quite appalling.” Pascoe’s face looked drained, as if he were totally contused and overcome by events. “But there are other things as well.” He shook his head a little and frowned. “I know I keep returning to John Dalgetty, but his attitude towards deriding the old values and breaking them down in order to build new …” He looked at Pitt. “I don’t condemn all new ideas, not at all. But so many of the things he advocates are destructive.”

Pitt did not reply, knowing there was no good response and choosing to listen.

Pascoe’s eyes wrinkled up. “He questions all the foundations we have built up over centuries, he casts doubt on the very origin of man and God, he makes the young believe they are invulnerable to the evil of false ideals, the corrosion of cynicism and irresponsibility—and at the same time strips them of the armor of faith. They want to break up and change things without thought. They think they can have things without laboring for them.” He bit his lip and scowled. “What can we do, Mr. Pitt? I have lain awake in the night and wrestled with it, and I know less now than when I started.”

He stood up and walked towards the window, then swung around and came back again.

“I have been to him, of course, pleaded with him to withhold some of the publications he sells, asked him not to praise some of the works he does, especially this Fabian political philosophy. But to no avail.” He waved his hands. “All he says is that information is sacred and all men must have the right to hear and judge for themselves what they believe—and similarly, everyone must be free to put forward any ideas they please, be they true or false, good or evil, creative or destructive. And nothing I say dissuades him. And of course Shaw encourages him with his ideas of what is humorous, when it is really at other people’s expense.”

Murdo was unused to such passion over ideas. He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

“The thing is,” Pascoe continued intently, “people do not always know when he is joking. Take that wretched business of Lindsay. I am profoundly grieved he is dead—and I did not dislike him personally, you understand—but I felt he was deeply wrong to have written that monograph. There are foolish people, you know”—he searched Pitt’s face—“who believe this new nonsense about a political order which promises justice by taking away private property and paying everyone the same, regardless of how clever or how diligent they are. I don’t suppose you’ve read this miserable Irishman, George Bernard Shaw? He writes so divisively, as if he were trying to stir up contention and make people dissatisfied. He talks of people with large appetites and no dinner at one end, and at the other, people with large dinners and no appetites. And of course he is all for freedom of speech.” He laughed sharply. “He would be, wouldn’t he? He wants to be able to say anything he pleases himself. And Lindsay reported him.”

He stopped suddenly. “I’m sorry. I know nothing that can be of help to you, and I do not wish to speak ill of others when such an issue is at stake, especially the dead. I slept deeply until I was awoken by the fire bells, and poor Lindsay’s house was a bonfire in the sky.”

Pitt and Murdo left, each in his own thoughts as they stepped out of the shelter of the porch into the icy wind. All through an unfruitful visit to the Clitheridges they said nothing to each other. Lindsay’s manservant could give them no help as to the origin of the fire, only that he had woken when the smell of smoke had penetrated his quarters, at the back of the house, by which time the main building was burning fiercely and his attempts to rescue his master were hopeless. He had opened the connecting door to be met by a wall of flame, and even as he sat hunched in Clitheridge’s armchair, his face bore mute witness to the dedication of his efforts. His skin was red and wealed with blisters, his hands were bound in thin gauze and linen, and were useless to him.

“Dr. Shaw was ’round here early this morning to put balm on them and bind them for him,” Lally said with shining admiration in her eyes. “I don’t know how he can find the strength, after this new tragedy. He was so fond of Amos Lindsay, you know, apart from the sheer horror of it. I think he must be the strongest man I know.”

There had been a bleak look of defeat in Clitheridge’s face for an instant as she spoke, and Pitt had imagined a world of frustration, petty inadequacies and fear of other people’s raw emotion that must have been the vicar’s lot. He was not a man to whom passion came easily; rather the slow-burning, inner turmoil of repressed feelings, too much thought and too much uncertainty. In that instant he felt an overwhelming pity for him; and then turning and seeing Lally’s eager, self-critical face, for her also. She was drawn to Shaw in spite of herself, trying to explain it in acceptable terms of admiration for his virtues, and knowing it was immeasurably deeper than that and quite different.

They left having learned nothing that seemed of use, except Oliphant’s address, where they discovered that Shaw was out on a call.

At the Red Lion public house they ate hot steak and kidney pudding with a rich suet crust which was light as foam, and green vegetables, then a thick fruit pie and a glass of cider.

Murdo leaned back in his chair, his face flushed with physical well-being.

Pitt rose to his feet, to Murdo’s chagrin.

“The Misses Worlingham,” he announced. “By the way, do we know who reported the fire? It seems no one we know saw it till the engines were here, except Lindsay’s manservant, and he was too busy trying to get Lindsay out.”

“Yes sir, a man over in Holly Village was away from home in Holloway.” He flushed faintly as he searched for the right word. “An assignation. He saw the glow, and being in mind of the first fire he knew what it was and called the engine.” Reluctantly he followed Pitt out into the wind again. “Sir, what do you expect to learn from the Misses Worlingham?”

“I don’t know. Something about Shaw and Clemency, perhaps; or Theophilus’s death.”

“Do you think Theophilus was murdered?” Murdo’s voice changed and he faltered in his stride as the thought occurred to him. “Do you think Shaw killed him so his wife would inherit sooner? Then he killed his wife? That’s dreadful. But why Lindsay, sir? What had he to gain from that? Surely he wouldn’t have done it as a blind, just because it was—pointless.” The enormity of it made him shudder and nearly miss his footstep on the path.

“I doubt it,” Pitt replied, stretching his pace to keep warm and pulling his muffler tighter around his neck. It was cold enough to snow. “But he’s stayed with Lindsay for several days. Lindsay’s no fool. If Shaw made a mistake, betrayed himself in some way by a word, or an omission, Lindsay would have seen it and understood what it meant. He may have said nothing at the time, but Shaw, knowing his own guilt and fearing discovery, may have been frightened by the smallest thing, and acted immediately to protect himself.”

Murdo hunched his shoulders and his face tightened as the ugliness of the thought caught hold of his mind. He looked cold and miserable in spite of his burned face.

“Do you think so, sir?”

“I don’t know, but it’s possible. We can’t ignore it.”

“It’s brutal.”

“Burning people to death is brutal.” Pitt clenched his teeth against the wind stinging the flesh and creeping into every ill-covered corner of neck and wrist and ankle. “We’re not looking for a moderate or squeamish man—or woman.”

Murdo looked away, refusing to meet Pitt’s eyes or even guess his thoughts when he spoke of women and these crimes. “There must be other motives,” he said doggedly. “Shaw’s a doctor. He could have treated all kinds of diseases, deaths that someone wants hidden—or at least the way of it. What if someone else murdered Theophilus Worlingham?”

“Who?” Pitt asked.

“Mrs. Shaw? She would inherit.”

“And then burned herself to death—and Lindsay?” Pitt said sarcastically.

Murdo restrained an angry answer with difficulty. Pitt was his superior and he dared not be openly rude, but the unhappiness inside him wanted to lash out. Every time Pitt mentioned motive Flora’s face came back to his mind, flushed with anger, lovely, full of fire to defend Shaw.

Pitt’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“But you are right; there is a whole area of motive we haven’t even begun to uncover. God knows what ugly or tragic secrets. We’ve got to get Shaw to tell us.”

They were almost at the Worlinghams’ house and nothing more was said until they were in the morning room by the fire. Angeline was sitting upright in the large armchair and Celeste was standing behind her.

“I’m sure I don’t know what we can tell you, Mr. Pitt,” Celeste said quietly. She looked older than the last time he had seen her; there were lines of strain around her eyes and mouth and her hair was pulled back more severely in an unflattering fashion. But it made the strength of her face more apparent. Angeline, on the other hand, looked pale and puffy, and the softer shape of her jaw, sagging a little, showed her irresolution. There were signs of weeping in the redness of her eyelids, and she looked tremulous enough to weep again now.

“We were asleep,” Angeline added. “This is terrible! What is happening to us? Who would do these things?”

“Perhaps if we learn why, we will also know who.” Pitt guided them towards the subject he wanted.

“Why?” Angeline blinked. “We don’t know!”

“You may, Miss Worlingham—without realizing it. There is money involved, inheritances …”

“Our money?” Celeste said the word unconsciously.

“Your brother Theophilus’s money, to be exact,” Pitt corrected her. “But yes, Worlingham money. I know it is intrusive, but it is necessary that we know; can you tell us all you remember of your brother’s death, Miss Worlingham?” He looked from one to the other of them, making sure they knew he included them both.

“It was very sudden,” Celeste’s features hardened, her mouth forming a thin, judgmental line. “I am afraid I agree with Angeline: Stephen did not care for him as we would have wished. Theophilus was in the most excellent health.”

“If you had known him,” Angeline added, “you would have been as shocked as we were. He was such a—” She searched her memory for the vision of him as he had been. “He was so vigorous.” She smiled tearfully. “He was so alive. He always knew what to do. He was so decisive, you know, a natural leader, like Papa. He believed in health in the mind and a lot of exercise and fresh air for the body—for men, of course. Not ladies. Theophilus always knew the right answer, and what one should believe. He was not Papa’s equal, of course, but still I never knew him when he was mistaken about anything that mattered.” She sniffed hard and reached for a wholly inadequate wisp of a handkerchief. “We always doubted the manner of his death, one may as well say so now. It was not natural, not for Theophilus.”

“What was the cause, Miss Worlingham?”

“Stephen said it was apoplexy,” Celeste answered coldly. “But of course we have only his word for that.”

“Who found him?” Pitt pressed, although he already knew.

“Clemency.” Celeste’s eyes opened wide. “Do you believe Stephen killed him, and then when he realized that Clemency knew what he had done, he killed her also? And then poor Mr. Lindsay. Dear heaven.” She shivered convulsively. “How evil—how monstrously evil. He shall not come into this house again—not set foot over the step!”

“Of course not, dear.” Angeline sniffed noisily. “Mr. Pitt will arrest him, and he will be put in prison.”

“Hanged,” Celeste corrected grimly.

“Oh dear.” Angeline was horrified. “How dreadful—thank heaven Papa did not live to see it. Someone in our family hanged.” She began to weep, her shoulders bent, her body huddled in frightened misery.

“Stephen Shaw is not in our family!” Celeste snapped. “He is not and never was a Worlingham. It is Clemency’s misfortune that she married him, but she became a Shaw—he is not one of us.”

“It is still dreadful. We have never had such shame anywhere near us, even by marriage,” Angeline protested. “The name of Worlingham has been synonymous with honor and dignity of the highest order. Just imagine what poor Papa would have felt if the slightest spot of dishonor had touched his name. He never did anything in his entire life to merit an ugly word. And now his son has been murdered—and his granddaughter—and her husband will be hanged. He would have died of shame.”

Pitt let her continue because he was curious to see how easily and completely they both accepted that Shaw was guilty. Now he must impress on them that it was only one of several possibilities.

“There is no need to distress yourself yet, Miss Worlingham. Your brother’s death may well have been apoplexy, just as Dr. Shaw said, and we do not know that he is guilty of anything yet. It may have nothing to do with money. It may well be that he has treated some medical case which he realized involved a crime, or some disease that the sufferer would kill to keep secret.”

Angeline looked up sharply. “You mean insanity? Someone is mad, and Stephen knows about it? Then why doesn’t he say? They ought to be locked up in Bedlam, with other lunatics. He shouldn’t allow them to go around free—where they can burn people to death.”

Pitt opened his mouth to explain to her that perhaps the person only thought Shaw knew. Then he looked at the mounting hysteria in her, and at Celeste’s tense eyes, and decided it would be a waste of time.

“It is only a possibility,” he said levelly. “It may be someone’s death was not natural, and Dr. Shaw knew of it, or suspected it. There are many other motives, perhaps even some we have not yet thought of.”

“You are frightening me,” Angeline said in a small, shaky voice. “I am very confused. Did Stephen kill anyone, or not?”

“No one knows,” Celeste answered her. “It is the police’s job to find out.”

Pitt asked them several more questions, indirectly about Shaw or Theophilus, but learned nothing more. When they left, the sky had cleared and the wind was even colder. Pitt and Murdo walked side by side in silence till they reached Oliphant’s lodging house and at last found Shaw sitting in the front parlor by the fire writing up notes at a rolltop desk. He looked tired, his eyes ringed around with dark hollows and his skin pale, almost papery in quality. There was grief in the sag of his shoulders and the nervous energy in him was transmuted into tension, and jumpiness of his hands.

“There is no point in asking me who I treated or for what ailment,” he said tersely as soon as he saw Pitt. “Even if I knew of some disease that would prompt someone to kill me, there is certainly nothing that would cause anyone to harm poor Amos. But then I suppose he died because I was in his house.” His voice broke; he found the words so hard to say. “First Clemency—and now Amos. Yes, I suppose you are right; if I really knew who it was, I would do something about it—I don’t know what. Perhaps not tell you—but something.”

Pitt sat down in the chair nearest him without being asked, and Murdo stood discreetly by the door.

“Think, Dr. Shaw,” he said quietly, looking at the exhausted figure opposite him and hating the need to remind him of his role in the tragedy. “Please think of anything you and Amos Lindsay discussed while you were in his house. It is possible that you were aware of some fact that, had you understood it, would have told you who set the first fire.”

Shaw looked up, a spark of interest in his eyes for the first time since they had entered the room. “And you think perhaps Amos understood it—and the murderer knew?”

“It’s possible,” Pitt replied carefully. “You knew him well, didn’t you? Was he the sort of man who might have gone to them himself—perhaps seeking proof?”

Suddenly Shaw’s eyes brimmed with tears and he turned away, his voice thick with emotion. “Yes,” he said so quietly Pitt barely heard him. “Yes—he was. And God help me, I’ve no idea who he saw or where he went when I was there. I was so wrapped up in my own grief and anger I didn’t see and I didn’t ask.”

“Then please think now, Dr. Shaw.” Pitt rose to his feet, moved more by pity not to intrude on a very obvious distress than the sort of impersonal curiosity his profession dictated. “And if you remember anything at all, come and tell me—no one else.”

“I will.” Shaw seemed sunk within himself again, almost as if Pitt and Murdo had already left.

Outside in the late-afternoon sun, pale and already touched with the dying fire of autumn, Murdo looked at Pitt, his eyes narrowed against the cold.

“Do you think that’s what happened, sir: Mr. Lindsay realized who did it—and went looking for proof?”

“God knows,” Pitt replied. “What did he see that we haven’t?”

Murdo shook his head and together, hands deep in pockets, they trudged back along the footpath towards the Highgate police station.