Southampton Row

CHAPTER

FIVE

The day after the murder of Maude Lamont the newspapers gave it sufficient importance to place it on the front page, along with election news and foreign events. There was no question that it had been a crime rather than an accident or natural causes. The police presence confirmed as much, but there had been no statement issued beyond the fact that the housekeeper, Miss Lena Forrest, had summoned them. She had refused to speak, and Inspector Tellman had said only that the matter was being investigated.

Standing by the kitchen table, Pitt poured himself a second cup of tea and offered to do the same for Tellman, who was moving impatiently from one foot to the other. He declined.

“We’ve seen half a dozen of the other clients,” he said, frowning. “They all swear by her. Say she was the most gifted medium they’d ever known. Whatever that means.” He threw it out almost as a challenge, as if he wanted Pitt to explain it. He was deeply unhappy with the whole subject, and yet obviously whatever he had been told since Pitt had last seen him had disturbed the simple contempt he had had before.

“What did she tell them, and how?” Pitt asked.

Tellman glared at him. “Spirits coming out of her mouth,” he said, waiting for the derision he was certain would follow. “Wavering and sort of . . . fuzzy, but they were quite sure it was the head and face of someone they knew.”

“And where was Maude Lamont while this was going on?” Pitt asked.

“Sitting in her chair at the head of the table, or in a special sort of cabinet they had built, so her hands couldn’t escape. She suggested that herself, for their belief.”

“What did she charge for this?” He sipped his tea.

“One said two guineas, another said five,” Tellman answered, biting his lip. “Thing is, if she’s just saying it’s entertainment, and they won’t bring a charge against her, there wouldn’t have been anything we could do anyway. Can’t arrest a conjurer, and they paid willingly. I suppose it’s a bit of comfort . . . isn’t it?”

“It probably comes in the same category as patent medicines,” Pitt thought aloud. “If you believe it will cure a nervous headache, or make you sleep better, maybe it will? And who’s to say you have no right to try it?”

“Because it’s nonsense!” Tellman responded with vehemence. “She’s making a living out of people who don’t know any better. She tells them what they want to hear. Anybody could do that!”

“Could they?” Pitt said quickly. “Send your men back to ask more carefully. We need to know if she was getting real information that wasn’t public knowledge, and we can’t account for how she heard it.”

Tellman’s eyes opened wide in disbelief and then a shadow of real alarm.

“If she’s got an informant, I want to know about it!” Pitt snapped. “And I mean a flesh-and-blood one.”

Tellman’s face was comical with relief, then he blushed hot, dull red.

Pitt grinned. It was the first time he had found anything to laugh at since Cornwallis had told him he was back in Special Branch. “I assume you have already made enquiries about anyone seen in the street near Cosmo Place,” he went on, “that evening, or any other, who might be our anonymous client?”

“Of course I have! That’s what I have sergeants and constables for,” Tellman said tartly. “You can’t have forgotten that so soon! I’m coming with you to see this Major General Kingsley. I’m sure your judgment of him will be very perceptive, but I want to make my own as well.” His jaw tightened. “And he’s one of the only two witnesses we have who were there at the . . . séance.” He invested the word with all the anger and frustration he felt in dealing with people who exercised their rights to make fools of themselves and involve him in the results. He did not want to be sorry for them, still less to understand, and the struggle to maintain his dispassion was clear in his face, and that he had already lost.

Pitt searched for fear or superstition, and saw not even a shadow. He put down his empty cup.

“What is it?” Tellman said sharply.

Pitt smiled at him, not in humor but in an affection which surprised him. “Nothing,” he replied. “Let’s go and speak to Kingsley, and ask him why he went to Miss Lamont, and what she was able to do for him, most especially on the night she died.” He turned and walked along the passage to the front door, and allowing Tellman to pass him, closed it and locked it behind him.

“Morning, sir,” the postman said cheerfully. “Lovely day again.”

“Yes,” Pitt agreed, not recognizing the man. “Good morning. Are you new on this street?”

“Yes, sir. Just two weeks,” the postman replied. “Getting to know people, like. Met your missus a few days ago. Lovely lady.” His eyes widened. “’Aven’t seen her since, though. Not poorly, I ’ope? Colds can be wicked to get rid of this time o’ year, which don’t seem fair, bein’ so warm, an’ all.”

Pitt was about to reply that she was on holiday, but he realized with a sudden chill that the man could be anyone, or pass on gathered information anywhere!

“No, thank you,” he responded briskly. “She is quite well. Good day.”

“Good day, sir.” And whistling through his teeth, the postman moved on.

“I’ll get a cab,” Tellman offered, looking up and down Keppel Street and seeing none available.

“Why not walk?” Pitt asked, dismissing the postman from his mind and swinging into a long, easy stride eastward towards Russell Square. “It’s not more than half a mile or so. Harrison Street, just the other side of the Foundling Hospital.”

Tellman grunted and did a couple of double steps to catch up with him. Pitt smiled to himself. He knew Tellman was wondering exactly how he had discovered where Kingsley lived without the assistance of the police station, which he would know Pitt had not sought. He would be wondering if Special Branch already had an interest in Kingsley.

They walked in silence around Russell Square, across the traf-fic of Woburn Place, and along Berner Street towards Brunswick Square and the huge, old-fashioned mass of the hospital. They turned right, instinctively avoiding the children’s burial ground. Pitt was touched by sadness, as he always was, and glanced sideways to see the same lowered eyes and twist of the lips in Tellman. He realized with a jolt that for all the years they had worked together, he knew very little of Tellman’s past, except the anger at poverty which showed naked so often he almost took it for granted now, not even wondering what real pain lay behind it. Gracie probably knew more of the man within the rigid exterior than Pitt did. But then Gracie was a child of the same narrow alleys and the fight for survival. She would not need to be told anything. She might see it differently, but she understood.

Pitt had grown up the son of the gamekeeper on Sir Arthur Desmond’s country estate. His parents were servants; his father had been accused and found guilty of poaching and deported, wrongly, Pitt believed. The passion of that conviction had never changed. But he had not been hungry for more than a day, nor walked in danger of attack, except by the boys his own age. A few bruises were his worst affliction, and the odd very sore backside from the head gardener, richly deserved.

In silence they passed the infants’ burial place. There was too much to say, and nothing at all.

“He has a telephone,” he said at last as they turned into Harrison Street.

“What?” Tellman had been lost in his own thoughts.

“Kingsley has a telephone,” Pitt repeated.

“You called him?” Tellman was startled.

“No, I looked him up,” Pitt explained.

Tellman blushed hotly. He had never thought of a private person’s owning one, although he knew Pitt did. Perhaps one day he could afford it, and maybe even have to, but not yet. Promotion was still fresh and raw to him, uncomfortable as a new collar. It did not fit—most especially with Pitt dogging his footsteps every day, and taking his first case from him, it abraded the tender skin.

They continued side by side until they reached Kingsley’s house and were admitted. They were shown through a rather dark, oak-paneled hall hung with pictures of battles on three of the walls. There was no time to look at the brass plates beneath them to see which ones they were. At a glance, most of them looked roughly Napoleonic. One appeared to be a burial. It had more emotion than the others, and better interest of light and shadow, a sense of tragedy in the huddled outline of the bodies. Perhaps it was Moore after Corunna.

The morning room was rigidly masculine also, greens and browns, lots of leather and bookcases with heavy, uniform volumes. On the farther wall hung a variety of African weapons, assegais and spears. They were dented and scarred with use. There was a fine but rather stylized bronze of a hussar on the central table. The horse was beautifully wrought.

When the butler had gone Tellman gazed around with interest, but no sense of comfort. The room belonged to a man of a social class and a discipline alien to him and representing all he had been brought up to resent. One experience in particular had forced him to see a retired army officer as human, vulnerable, even to be deeply admired, but he still regarded that as an exception. The man who owned this room and whose life was mirrored in the pictures and furnishings was eccentric to say the least, almost a contradiction in conceptions. How could anyone who had done that most hideously practical of things, leading men in war, have so lost his grasp on reality as to be consulting a woman who claimed she spoke to ghosts?

The door opened and a tall, rather gaunt man came in. His face had an ashen look, as if he were ill. His hair was clipped short and his mustache was little more than a dark smudge over his upper lip. He stood straight, but it was the habit of a lifetime which kept him so, not any inner vitality.

“Good morning, gentlemen. My butler tells me you are from the police. What may I do for you?” There was no surprise in his voice. Possibly he had read of Maude Lamont’s death in the newspapers.

Pitt had already decided not to mention his connection with Special Branch. If he said nothing of it, Kingsley would assume he was with Tellman.

“Good morning, General Kingsley,” he replied. “I am Superintendent Pitt, and this is my colleague Inspector Tellman. I am sorry to tell you that Miss Maude Lamont died two nights ago. She was found yesterday morning, in her home. Because of the circumstances, we are obliged to investigate the matter very thoroughly. I believe you were there at her last séance?”

Tellman stiffened at Pitt’s bluntness.

Kingsley took in a deep breath. He looked distinctly shaken. He invited Pitt and Tellman to be seated, and then sank into one of the large leather chairs himself. He offered nothing, waiting for them to begin.

“Will you tell us what happened, sir, from the time of your arrival at Southampton Row?” Pitt asked.

Kingsley cleared his throat. It seemed to cost him an effort. Pitt thought it odd that a military man who must surely be accustomed to violent death should be so disturbed by murder. Was not war murder on a grand scale? Surely men went into battle with the express intention of killing as many of the enemy as possible? It could hardly be that this time the dead person was a woman. Women were all too often the victims of the violence, looting and destruction that went with war.

“I arrived at a few minutes after half past nine,” Kingsley began. “We were due to begin at a quarter to ten.”

“Were the arrangements long-standing?” Pitt interrupted.

“They were made the previous week,” Kingsley answered. “It was my fourth visit.”

“With the same three people?” Pitt said quickly.

Kingsley hesitated only a moment. “No. It was only the third with exactly the same.”

“Who were they?”

This time there was no hesitation at all. “I don’t know.”

“But you were there together?”

“We were there at the same time,” Kingsley corrected. “In no sense were we together, except that . . . that it helps to have the force of several personalities present.” He added no explanation as to what he meant.

“Can you describe them?”

“If you know I was there, Superintendent, my name and where to find me, do you not also know the same of them?”

A flash of interest crossed Tellman’s face. Pitt saw it in the corner of his vision. Kingsley was at last behaving like the leader of men he was supposed to be. Pitt wondered what shattering thing had happened to him that he had ever thought of turning to a spiritualist. It was painful and repellent intruding into the wounds of people’s lives, but the motives of murder were too often hidden within terrible events in the past, and to understand the core of it he had to read it all. “I know the name of the woman,” he replied to the question. “Not the third person. Miss Lamont designated him in her diary only by a little diagram, a cartouche.”

Kingsley frowned slightly. “I have no idea why. I can’t help you.”

“Can you describe him to me . . . or her?”

“Not with any accuracy,” Kingsley replied. “We did not go there as a social event. I had no desire to be more than civil to anyone else present. It was a man of average height, as far as I recall. He wore an outdoor coat in spite of the season, so I don’t know his build. His hair seemed light rather than dark, possibly gray. He remained in the shadows towards the back of the room, and the lamps were red, so the light distorted. I imagine I might know him if we were to meet again, but I am not certain.”

“Who was the first to arrive?” Tellman cut across.

“I was,” Kingsley replied. “Then the woman.”

“Can you describe the woman?” Pitt interrupted, thinking of the long, pale hair around Maude Lamont’s sleeve button.

“I thought you knew who she was?” Kingsley retorted.

“I have a name,” Pitt explained. “I would like your impression of her appearance also.”

Kingsley resigned himself. “She was tall, taller than most women, very elegant, with pale blond hair dressed in a sort of . . .” He gave up.

Pitt felt a knot tighten almost to suffocation inside himself. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Please continue.”

“The other man was the last to come,” Kingsley resumed obediently. “As far as I can recall, he was last on the other occasions as well. He came in through the garden doors, and left before we did.”

“Who left last?” Pitt asked him.

“The woman,” Kingsley said. “She was still there when I went.” He looked unhappy, as if the answer gave him no satisfaction or sense of escape.

“The other man went out of the garden doors?” Tellman asked for confirmation.

“Yes.”

“Did Miss Lamont go with him and lock the gate to Cosmo Place after him?”

“No, she remained with us.”

“The maid?”

“She left shortly after we arrived. Went out of the kitchen door, I suppose. Saw her walk across the garden just about dusk. She was carrying a lantern, which she left outside the front door.”

Pitt visualized the garden path from the back of the house on Southampton Row. It led only to the door in the wall and Cosmo Place. “She went out of the side door?” he said aloud.

“Yes,” Kingsley agreed. “Probably why she took the lantern. Left it on the front step. Heard her footsteps on the gravel, and saw the light.”

Tellman finished the meaning for him. “So either the woman killed Miss Lamont, or you or the other man came back through the side gate and killed her. Or someone we know nothing about came for a later meeting of some sort and Miss Lamont herself let them in through the front door. But that was unlikely, and according to the maid, Miss Lamont was usually tired after a séance and retired to her bed when her guests left. There was no one else in the diary. No one else has been seen or heard. What time did you leave, General Kingsley?”

“About quarter to midnight.”

“Late to have a further client,” Pitt remarked.

Kingsley rubbed his hand over his brow as if his head pained him. He looked weary and beaten. “I really have no idea what happened after I left,” he said gently. “She seemed perfectly well then, and not in any state of anxiety or distress, certainly not as if she were afraid of anyone, or indeed expected anyone. She was tired, very tired. Calling upon the spirits of those gone before was always a very exhausting experience. It usually left her with barely the strength to wish us good-night and to see us to the door.” He stopped, staring miserably into emptiness stretching ahead of him.

Tellman glanced at Pitt and away again. The depth of emotion in Kingsley, and the bizarre subject of the discussion, embarrassed him. It was plain in the rigidity of his body and the way his hands fidgeted on his lap.

“Can you describe the evening for us, please, General Kingsley?” Pitt prompted. “What happened after you arrived and were all assembled? Was there a conversation?”

“No. We . . . we were all there for our own reasons. I had no desire to share mine with others, and I believe they felt the same.” Kingsley did not look at him as he said this, as if the matter were still private. “We sat around the table and waited while Miss Lamont concentrated upon . . . summoning the spirits.” He spoke hesitantly. He must have been aware at least of Tellman’s disbelief and a hovering between pity and contempt. He seemed almost to breathe it in the air.

Pitt was uncertain what he felt, not contempt so much as unease, a kind of oppression. He could not have said why, but he believed it was not right to be attempting to reach the spirits of the dead, whether it was possible or not.

“Where did you sit?” he said aloud.

“Miss Lamont at the head of the table in the tall-backed chair,” he replied. “The woman opposite her, the man to her left with his back to the windows, I to her right. We held hands, naturally.”

Tellman fidgeted slightly in his seat.

“Is that usual?” Pitt asked.

“Yes, to prevent suspicion of fraud. Some mediums will even sit inside a cabinet to be doubly restrained, and I believe Miss Lamont did that on occasion, but I have not seen her do it.”

“Why not?” Tellman asked abruptly.

“There was no need,” Kingsley replied with a swift, angry glance at him. “We were all believers. We would not have insulted her with such a . . . a piece of physical nonsense. We were seeking knowledge, a greater truth, not cheap sensations.”

“I see,” Pitt said quietly, without looking at Tellman. “Then what happened?”

“As far as I can recall, Miss Lamont went into a trance,” Kingsley replied. “She seemed to rise in the air several inches above her chair, and after some moments she spoke in a totally different voice. I . . .” He looked down at the floor. “I believe it was her spirit guide speaking to us through her.” The words were so quiet Pitt had to strain to hear them. “He wished to know what we had come to find out. He was a young Russian boy who had died in terrible cold . . . in the far north, up near the Arctic Circle.”

This time Tellman made no movement at all.

“And what did any of you reply?” Pitt asked. He needed to know what Rose Serracold had attended for, but he was afraid that if Kingsley gave that answer first, and saw or sensed Tellman’s response, he would then conceal his own reasons. And perhaps they, too, were relevant. After all, he had written the virulent political attack on Aubrey Serracold, albeit without knowing he was the husband of the woman who sat beside him at Maude Lamont’s table. Or had he?

Kingsley was silent for a moment.

“General Kingsley?” Pitt pressed. “What did you wish to learn through Miss Lamont?”

With great difficulty Kingsley answered, still staring at the floor. “My son Robert served in Africa, in the Zulu Wars. He was killed in action there. I . . .” His voice cracked. “I wanted to assure myself that his death was . . . that his spirit was at rest. There have been . . . different accounts of the action. I needed to know.” He did not look up at Pitt, as if he did not want to see what was in his face, or reveal the raw need inside him.

Pitt felt some acknowledgment at least was required. “I see,” he said softly. “And were you able to obtain such a thing?” He knew even as he asked that Kingsley had not. The fear in him was tangible in the room, and now too the grief was explained. In Maude Lamont’s death he had lost his contact with the only world he believed could give him an answer. Surely he would not willingly have destroyed it?

“Not . . . yet,” Kingsley replied, his words so swallowed in his throat Pitt was not sure for a moment if he had heard them at all. He was aware of Tellman beside him and his acute discomfort. Ordinary grief he was accustomed to, but this confounded and disturbed him. He was unsure of his own responses. He ought to feel ridicule and impatience, that was what all his experience of life had taught him. Looking for a moment at Tellman’s face, it was compassion that Pitt saw.

“What did the woman want?” Pitt asked.

Kingsley was jerked out of his own thoughts. He glanced up, his eyes puzzled. “I’m not sure. She was very eager to contact her mother, but I was not certain why. It must have been a very private matter, because all her questions were too oblique for me to understand.”

“And the answers?” Pitt found himself tense, afraid of what Kingsley might tell him. Why was Rose Serracold risking the expense and possible ridicule at this extraordinarily sensitive time? Had she no perception at all of what it meant? Or was her search so important to her that all other things were subject to it? What could that possibly be?

“Her mother?” Pitt said aloud.

“Yes.”

“And did Miss Lamont contact her?”

“Apparently.”

“What did she ask to know?”

“Nothing specific.” Kingsley looked puzzled as he recalled it. “Just general family information, other relatives who had . . . gone over. Her grandmother, her father. Were they well.”

“When was that?” Pitt pressed. “The night of Miss Lamont’s death? Before that? If you can remember exactly what was said it would be most helpful.”

Kingsley frowned. “I find it very difficult to imagine that she would have hurt Miss Lamont,” he said earnestly. “She seemed an eccentric woman, highly individual, but I saw no anger in her, no unkindness or ill feeling, rather . . .” He stopped.

Tellman leaned forward.

“Yes?” Pitt prompted.

“Fear,” Kingsley said quietly, as if it were an emotion with which he had long intimacy. “But there is no point in your asking me of what, because I have no idea. She seemed concerned if her father were happy, if he were restored to health. It was an odd question, I thought, as if disability could be carried beyond the grave. But perhaps when one has loved somebody such concerns are understandable. Love does not always go by the rules of reason.” Still he kept his eyes averted, as if it were his only privacy.

“And the other man, who was he seeking?” Pitt asked.

“I don’t recall anyone in particular.” Kingsley frowned as he said it, as if realizing only now how it puzzled him.

“But he came at least three times that you know of?” Pitt insisted.

“Yes. He was deeply in earnest,” Kingsley assured him, looking up now, no more emotion to guard. The man had stirred nothing in him, no specific compassion. “He asked some very telling questions and would not rest until they were answered,” he explained. “I did ask Miss Lamont on one occasion if she thought he were a skeptic, a doubter, but she appeared to know his reasons and was quite undisturbed by them. I . . . I find that . . .” He stopped.

“Odd?” Tellman supplied.

“I was going to say ‘comforting,’ ” Kingsley answered.

He did not explain himself, but Pitt understood. Maude Lamont must have been very confident in her skill, whatever its nature, to be unthreatened by the presence of a skeptic at her séances. But then she had apparently not been aware of the hatred which had ended in her death.

“This man did not ask to contact anyone by name?” he persisted.

“Several,” Kingsley contradicted him. “But none with particular eagerness. It seemed almost as if he were picking names at random.”

“Any subject that he sought?” Pitt would not give up so easily.

“None that I was aware.”

Pitt looked at him gravely. “We don’t know who he is, General Kingsley. He may be the one who murdered Maude Lamont.” He saw Kingsley wince and the lost look return to his eyes. “What did you gather from his voice, his manner, anything at all? His clothes, his deportment! Was he a well-educated man? What were his beliefs in anything, or his opinions? What would you guess his background to be, his income, his place in society? If he has an occupation, what is it? Did he ever mention any family, wife, or where he lives? Did he come far to attend the séances? Anything at all?”

Again, Kingsley waited for so long in thought that Pitt was afraid he was not going to reply. Then he began to speak slowly. “His accent suggested an excellent education. The little he said inclined more towards the humanities than any science. His clothes, so much as I could see them or thought to look, were discreet, dark. His manner was nervous, but I attributed that to the occasion. I cannot remember any specific opinions, but I had the feeling that he was more conservative than I.”

Pitt thought of the newspaper article. “Are you not conservative, General Kingsley?”

“No, sir.” Now Kingsley looked up directly at Pitt, meeting his eyes. “I have served in the army with all manner of men, and I would dearly like to see a fairer treatment of the ranks than exists at the present moment. I think when one has faced hardship and even death side by side with a man, one sees the worth of him far more clearly than his worldly opportunities may make apparent.”

From the candor in his face disbelief was impossible. And yet what he said was deeply at odds with what he had written to four separate newspapers. Pitt was more convinced than ever that Kingsley was involved with Voisey and the election, but whether willingly or not he had no idea. Nor did he know if with sufficient pressure he might have contributed to Maude Lamont’s death.

He considered mentioning the articles against Serracold, and telling him that the woman at the séances was Serracold’s wife. But he could think of nothing to gain by it now, and once told he could never achieve that possible advantage of surprise.

So he thanked Kingsley and rose to take his leave with Tellman behind him, morose and unsatisfied.

“What do you make of that?” Tellman demanded as soon as they were out on the footpath in the sun. “What makes a man like that go to a . . . a . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know how she did it, but it’s got to be a trick. How does anybody with education not see through it in moments? If the leaders of our army believe in that sort of . . . of fairy tale . . .”

“Education doesn’t stop loneliness or grief,” Pitt replied. There was still a certain innocence in Tellman, in spite of the harsh realism of so many of his views. It irritated Pitt, and yet perversely he liked Tellman the better for it. He was not unwilling to learn. “We all find our own way of easing those wounds,” he went on. “We do what we can.”

“If I lost someone and tried that way of comforting myself,” Tellman said thoughtfully, glancing down at the pavement, “and if I found someone had tricked me, I can’t say I wouldn’t lose my head and try to choke them. If . . . if someone thought that white stuff was part of a ghost, or whatever it’s supposed to be, and they pushed it back into her mouth, is that murder, or would it be accident?”

Pitt smiled in spite of himself. “If that had happened, there were three of them there and at least two of them would have called a doctor, or the police. If all three of them were party to it, then it would be a conspiracy, intended or not.”

Tellman grunted and kicked at a small stone in front of him, sending it into the gutter. “I suppose we’re going to see Mrs. Serracold now?”

“Yes, if she’s in. If not, we’ll wait for her.”

“I suppose you want to conduct that interview yourself, too?”

“No, but I will. Her husband is standing for Parliament.”

“Are the Irish bombers after him?” There was a touch of sarcasm in Tellman’s voice, but it was still a question.

“Not so far as I know,” Pitt said dryly. “I should doubt it; he’s for Home Rule.”

Tellman grunted again, and muttered something under his breath.

Pitt did not bother to ask him what it was.

They had to wait nearly an hour for Rose Serracold to come in. They were left in a deep red morning room with a crystal bowl of pink roses on the table in the center. Pitt smiled to himself as he saw Tellman wince. It was an unusual room, almost overpowering at first, with its lush, delicate paintings on the walls and its simple white fireplace. But as he was in the room over a space of time he found it increasingly pleasing. He looked at the scrapbooks set out on the low table. They were beautifully made, put there to while away the time of callers. The first was of botanical specimens, and beside each in neat, rather eccentric handwriting was a short history of the plant, its native habitat, when it was introduced into Britain and by whom, and the meaning of its name. Fond of his own garden, when he had the time, Pitt found it totally absorbing. His imagination was fired by the extraordinary courage of the men who had scaled mountains in India and Nepal, China and Tibet, in search of yet one more perfect bloom, and lovingly brought them back to England.

Tellman paced the floor. He dipped into the other scrapbook, of watercolors of various seaside towns in Britain; very pretty but less interesting to him. Perhaps if it had included the hamlet in Dartmoor where Gracie and Charlotte were staying it would have been a different matter. But Pitt had not told him the name of it anyway. He let his mind wander, trying to picture what they might be doing now, as he was standing here in this alien room. Would Gracie be having to work much, or would she be free to enjoy herself, walk over the hills in the sun? In his mind’s eye he saw her, small, very straight, her hair pulled back from her sharp, bright little face, gazing at everything with interest. She would never have seen such a place before, a hundred miles from the narrow city streets in which she had grown up, crowded, noisy, smelling of old cooking, drains, wood rot, smoke. He imagined the countryside around the hamlet would be wide open, almost like a nakedness of the land.

Come to think of it, he had never been in a place like that himself, except in dreams, and while looking at pictures like this.

Would she even think of him while she was there? Probably not . . . or not often. He was still not certain what she felt about him. During the Whitechapel affair it had seemed as if at last she had softened. They still disagreed about a hundred things, important things like justice and society and what it was appropriate for a man or a woman to do. All his teaching and his experience said she was wrong, but he could not put into words any specific instance of precisely in what way. He certainly could not explain it to her. She just looked at him with that withering, impatient air, as if he were an obstreperous child, and went on with whatever she was doing, cooking or ironing, immensely practical—as if women kept the world going while men just argued about it.

Should he write to her while she was away?

That was a difficult question. Charlotte had taught her to read, but only fairly recently. Might the necessity of replying be an embarrassment to her? Worse, if there were something she could not read, might she show his letter to Charlotte? The thought made him cringe with embarrassment. No! Definitely he would not write. Better not to take the risk. And perhaps better not to have her address written anywhere—just in case.

He still had the scrapbook open when Rose Serracold came in at last and both he and Pitt stood to attention. Tellman did not know what kind of a person he had been expecting, but not the striking woman who stood in the doorway dressed in lilac and navy stripes with huge sleeves and a tiny waist. Her ash-fair hair was dressed in an unusually straight style, swirled around on her head rather than piled in curls, her azure-blue eyes very pale, staring at them both in surprise.

“Good morning, Mrs. Serracold,” Pitt said after the first moment’s silence. “I am sorry to intrude upon you without notice, but the tragic circumstances of Miss Maude Lamont’s death didn’t allow me the time to seek an appointment. I realize you must be very busy during the parliamentary election, but this will not wait.” There was a steel in his tone which cut off argument.

She stood strangely motionless, not even turning to notice Tellman, although she could not have been unaware of him only a few feet from her. She stared at Pitt. It was impossible to tell if she had already known of Maude Lamont’s death. When she spoke at last it was very softly.

“Indeed. And exactly what is it you think I can say that will help, Mr. . . . Pitt?” She was obviously remembering his name from what the butler had told her, but with an effort. It was not intended as rudeness, simply that he was not part of her world.

“You were one of the last people to see her alive, Mrs. Serracold,” Pitt replied. “And you also saw the others who were present at the séance, and must know what took place.”

If she wondered how Pitt was aware of that, she did not say so.

Tellman was curious to see how Pitt was going to speak to this woman to draw everything of use from her. They had not discussed it and he knew it was because Pitt was uncertain himself. She was part of his new role in Special Branch. Her husband was standing for Parliament. Pitt would not share with Tellman exactly what his task was, but Tellman guessed it was to keep her out of scandal, or if that proved to be impossible, then to deal with it discreetly, and perhaps rapidly. He did not envy him. Solving a murder was simple by comparison.

She raised elegant eyebrows very slightly. “I don’t know how she died, Mr. Pitt, or if anyone was responsible, or could have acted to prevent it.” Her voice was perfectly level but she was very pale and so still that the mastery of emotion in her could be judged simply by the absence of any sign. She dared not allow it to be seen.

Tellman was aware of a very slight air of perfume from her, and that were she to move he would hear the rustle of silks, as he had when she came in. She was a kind of woman who alarmed and disturbed him. He was acutely conscious of her presence, and he understood nothing of her life at all, her feelings or her beliefs.

“Someone was responsible.” Pitt’s voice cut across his thoughts.

She made no gesture to indicate that they should be seated.

“She was murdered,” Pitt finished.

She took a very long, slow breath and let it out in a barely audible sigh. “Did someone break in?” She hesitated a second. “Perhaps she forgot to lock the side door to Cosmo Place? The last person to arrive came in that way, not through the front door.”

“She was not robbed,” Pitt replied. “No one had broken anything.” He was watching her intently. His eyes never moved from hers. “And the manner in which she was killed seemed to be peculiarly personal.”

She brushed past him and sank into one of the dark red chairs, her skirts billowing around her in a soft swish of silk on silk. She was so white Tellman thought that she had at last realized the meaning of what Pitt had told her.

Did it startle her? Or was it that she already knew, and this was remembrance, and the moment of grasping the fact that others knew also, specifically the police?

Or could it be that the knowledge that it had been personal betrayed to her who was responsible?

“I don’t think I wish to know about it, Mr. Pitt,” she said quickly. She seemed to be completely in command of herself again. “I can tell you only what I observed. It appeared to me a perfectly ordinary evening. There were no quarrels, no ill feeling of any kind that I saw, and I believe I would have seen it had it been there. In spite of what you say, I can’t believe it was one of us. It was certainly not I . . .” Now her voice cracked a little. “I . . . I was most indebted to her skill. And I . . . liked her.” She seemed about to add something, then changed her mind and stared at Pitt, waiting for him to continue.

He did not wait any longer to be invited, but sat down opposite her, leaving Tellman free to do the same. “Can you describe the evening for me, Mrs. Serracold?”

“I suppose so. I arrived a short while before ten. The soldier was already in the room. I know nothing about him, you understand, but he is most concerned about battles. All his questions are about Africa and war, so I assume he is a soldier, or was.” Her face registered momentary pity. “I formed the opinion that he had lost someone he loved.”

“And the third person?” Pitt prompted.

“Oh.” She shrugged. “The grave robber? He came last.”

Pitt looked startled. “I beg your pardon?”

She pulled a little face, an expression of dislike. “I call him that in my mind because I think he is a skeptic, trying to take from us the belief in a resurrection of the spirit. His questions were . . . academic, in a cruel way, as if he were probing a wound. . . .” She searched Pitt’s eyes, trying to gauge with what exactness he understood, if he were capable of grasping at least an idea of what she was describing, or if she were laying herself open to unnecessary embarrassment.

Tellman felt a sudden stab of knowledge, as if he saw her in an ordinary dress such as his mother or Gracie would wear, the rustling silks obscured by a clearer sight. She needed to believe in Maude Lamont’s powers. There was something she was seeking that had driven her there, compelled her, and now that Maude was dead, she was lost. Behind those bright, pale eyes there was desperation.

Then she spoke again, and shattered the moment. He heard her perfect diction and the brittleness of it, and they were a world apart once more.

“Or perhaps it was my imagination,” she said with a smile. “I really hardly saw his face. He might have been afraid of the truth, mightn’t he?” Her lips curved as if it were only the inappropriateness of the situation which kept her from actually laughing. “He came and went through the garden door. Perhaps he is a highly important personage who committed a terrible crime and wants to know if the dead will betray him?” Her voice lifted at the fancy. “There’s an idea for you, Mr. Pitt.” She looked at Pitt steadily, ignoring Tellman, her face calm, vivid, almost challenging.

“It had occurred to me, Mrs. Serracold,” Pitt replied, his own face expressionless. “But I am interested that it also came to your mind. Was Maude Lamont a person who was likely to have used such knowledge?”

Her eyelids flickered. The muscles in her throat and jaw tightened.

Pitt waited.

“Used it?” Her voice was a little rough. “Do you mean some sort of . . . of blackmail?” There was surprise in her face, perhaps a little too much.

Pitt smiled very slightly, still polite, as if he thought far more than he could say. “She was murdered, Mrs. Serracold. She had made at least one desperate and very personal enemy.”

The blood drained out of her skin. Tellman thought she might even faint. He knew with absolute certainty now that she was the one Pitt was concerned with. It was her presence at the séance which had brought Special Branch into the case and taken it from the police, from him. Did Pitt have some secret reason for believing her guilty? Tellman looked at him, but in spite of all the time they had worked together, the passion and the tragedies they had been involved with, he could not read Pitt’s emotions now.

Rose moved her position in the chair. In the silence of the room, even a faint creak of whalebone and taut fabric in her bodice was audible.

“I appreciate that it is terrible, Mr. Pitt,” she said quietly. “But I cannot think of anything which will help you. I was aware that one of the men cared intensely about his son and needed to know something of the manner of his death, which occurred in a battle somewhere in Africa.” She swallowed, lifting her chin a trifle as if her throat were constricted, although her gown was not high. “The other man I cannot say, except that he gave the impression that he had come to mock or disprove. I don’t know why such people bother!” Her delicate eyebrows rose. “If you disbelieve, why not simply leave it alone and allow those who care to pursue knowledge do so in peace? It is surely a decency, a compassion one should allow. Only a complete boor would disturb someone else’s religious rites. It is an unnecessary intrusion, a piece of gratuitous cruelty.”

“Can you describe what in his manner, or his words, gave you that impression?” Pitt asked, leaning forward a little. “As much as you can remember please, Mrs. Serracold.”

She sat without answering for several moments, as if clarifying it in her mind before beginning. “I have a feeling he was trying to catch her in a trick,” she said at last. “He moved his head from side to side, always watching just on the edge of his vision, as if not to miss anything. He would not allow his attention to be directed.” She smiled. “But there was never anything. I could feel his emotion, but I don’t know what it was. I only looked at him now and then because I was naturally far more concerned with Miss Lamont.”

“What was there to watch?” Pitt asked, his face perfectly serious.

She seemed uncertain how to reply, or perhaps whether to trust him. “Her hands,” she said slowly. “When the spirits spoke through her, she would look quite different. Sometimes she seemed to change shape, her features, her hair. There was a light in her face.” Her expression dared him to mock. There was irony in her, as if she would rob his charge of its power by making it first herself. Yet her body was rigid and her hands, on the edge of the chair, were white-knuckled. “A glowing breath came from her mouth, and her voice was utterly unlike her own.”

He felt an odd sensation well up inside him, a mixture of fear, almost a desire to believe, and at the same time an impulse to laugh. It was terribly human and vulnerable, so transparent, and yet so easy to understand.

“What did he ask her, as clearly as you can remember?” he said.

“To describe the afterlife, to tell us what there was to see, to do, how it looked and felt,” she replied. “He asked if certain people were there and what they were like now. If . . . if his Aunt Geor-gina were there or not, but I felt as if it were a question intended as a trick. I thought perhaps he didn’t even have such an aunt.”

“And what was the answer?”

She smiled. “No.”

“How did he react?”

“That was the odd thing.” She shrugged. “I think he was pleased. It was after that he asked all the questions as to what it was like, what people did, especially if there were any kind of penance.”

Pitt was puzzled.

“What were the answers?”

There was a flash of humor in her eyes. “That he was asking things that it was not yet his time to know. That is what I would have answered him had I been the spirit!”

“You disliked him?” he asked. She was sharp in her observation, critical, opinionated, and yet there was a vitality in her that was extraordinarily attractive and her humor appealed to him.

“Frankly, yes.” She looked down at the rich silk of her skirt. “He was a frightened man. But we are all frightened of something, if you have any imagination at all, or anything you care about.” She raised her eyes and met his. “That does not give you a reason or an excuse to mock the needs of others.” A shadow crossed her eyes, as if instantly she had regretted being too candid with him. She stood up and in a graceful movement turned away, keeping her back half towards Pitt and completely towards Tellman. It obliged them both to stand also.

“Unfortunately, I cannot tell you who he was or where to find him,” she said quietly. “I regret very much now that I ever went there. It seemed harmless at the time, an exploration of knowledge, a little daring. I believe passionately in freedom of the mind, Mr. Pitt. I despise censorship, the curtailment of learning . . . for anyone at all!” Her voice had a completely different tone; there was no banter in it now, no guard. “I would have absolute freedom of religion built into the law, if I could. We have to behave in a civilized fashion, respect each other’s safety—and property, too, I suppose. But no one should set bounds to the mind, above all to the spirit!” She swiveled around, staring at Pitt with color back in her face at last, her chin high and her marvelous eyes blazing.

“And was this third man trying to do that, Mrs. Serracold?” Pitt asked.

“Don’t be naive!” she said tartly. “We spend half the energy in our lives trying to dictate what other people will think! That is mostly what the church is about. Don’t you listen?”

Pitt smiled. “Are you trying to destroy my belief in it, Mrs. Serracold?” he enquired innocently.

The color glowed up her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It is just that one person’s freedom so easily tramples upon another’s. Why did you go to Miss Lamont? Whom did you wish to contact?”

“Why is it your business, Mr. Pitt?” She gestured for him to sit down again.

“Because she was murdered either while you were there or shortly after you left,” he answered, relaxing back into the chair and seeing Tellman do the same.

Her body stiffened. “I have no idea who was responsible for that,” she said almost under her breath. “Except that it was not I.”

“I have been told that you wanted to contact your mother. Is that not true?”

“Who told you?” she demanded. “The soldier?”

“Why should he not? You told me he wished to contact his son, to learn how he died.”

“Yes,” she conceded.

“What was it you wished to learn from your mother?”

“Nothing!” she said instantly. “I simply wanted to speak with her. Surely that is natural enough?”

Tellman did not believe her, and he knew by the way Pitt’s hands stayed motionless and stiff on his knees that he did not, either. But he did not challenge her.

“Yes, of course it is,” Pitt agreed. “Have you visited other spirit mediums?”

She waited so long that her hesitation was obvious, and she gave a slight gesture of capitulation. “No. I admit that, Mr. Pitt. I didn’t trust anyone until I met Miss Lamont.”

“How did you meet her, Mrs. Serracold?”

“She was recommended to me,” she said, as if surprised that he should ask.

His interest quickened. He hoped it did not show in his face. “By whom?”

“Do you imagine it matters?” she parried.

“Will you tell me, Mrs. Serracold, or do I have to enquire?”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

“That would be embarrassing! And unnecessary.” She was angry. There were two spots of color high on her smooth cheekbones. “As far as I can recall, it was Eleanor Mountford. I don’t remember how she heard of her. She was really very famous, you know—Miss Lamont, I mean.”

“She had a lot of clients from society?” Pitt’s voice was expressionless.

“Surely you know that.” She raised her brows slightly.

“I know what her appointment book says,” he agreed. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Serracold.” He rose to his feet again.

“Mr. Pitt . . . Mr. Pitt, my husband is standing for Parliament. I . . .”

“I know that,” he said softly. “And I am aware of what capital the Tory press may make of your visits to Miss Lamont, if they become known.”

She blushed, but her face was defiant and she made no immediate answer.

“Was Mr. Serracold aware you were seeing Miss Lamont?” he asked.

Her look wavered. “No.” It was little more than a murmur. “I went in the evenings he spent at his club. They were regular. It was quite easy.”

“You took a very great risk,” he pointed out. “Did you go alone?”

“Of course! It is a . . . personal thing.” She spoke with great difficulty. It cost her a very visible effort to ask him. “Mr. Pitt, if you could . . .”

“I shall be discreet for as long as possible,” he promised. “But anything you remember may be of help.”

“Yes . . . of course. I wish I could think of something. Apart from the question of justice . . . I shall miss her. Good day, Mr. Pitt . . . Inspector.” She hesitated only an instant, forgetting Tellman’s name. But it was not of importance. She did not bother to wait for him to supply it, but sailed out of the room, leaving the maid to show them out.

Neither Pitt nor Tellman commented on leaving the Serracold house. Pitt could sense Tellman’s confusion and it matched his own. She was nothing that he could have foreseen in the wife of a man who was running for potentially one of the highest public offices in the country. She was eccentric, arrogant enough to be offensive, and yet there was an honesty about her he admired. Her views were naive, but they were idealistic, born of a desire for a tolerance she herself could not achieve.

Above all she was vulnerable, because there was something she had wanted from Maude Lamont so intensely that she had gone to her séances time after time, even though she was aware of the potential political cost if it became known. And her hair was long and pale silver-gold. He could not forget the hair on Maude’s sleeve, which might mean anything, or nothing.

“Find out more about how Maude Lamont acquires her clients,” he said to Tellman as they lengthened their pace down the footpath. “What does she charge? Is it the same for all clients? And does it account for her income?”

“Blackmail?” Tellman said with his disgust unconcealed. “It’s pathetic to be taken in by that . . . that nonsense. But plenty of people are! Is it worth paying to keep silent about?”

“That depends what she’s found out,” Pitt replied, stepping off the curb and dodging a pile of horse manure. “Most of us have something we’d prefer to keep private. It doesn’t have to be a crime, just an indiscretion, or a weakness we fear having exploited. No one likes to look a fool.”

Tellman stared straight ahead of him. “Anyone who goes to a woman who spits up egg white and says it’s a message from the spirit world, and believes it, is a fool,” he said with a viciousness that sprang from a pity he did not want to feel. “But I’ll find out everything about her that I can. Mostly I’d like to know how she did it!”

They stepped up onto the pavement at the far side of the street just as a four-wheeled growler passed by within a yard of them.

“Mixtures of mechanical trickery, sleight of hand, and power of suggestion, I should think,” Pitt answered, stopping at the curb to allow a coach and four to pass by. “I assume you know it was egg white from the autopsy?” he said a little caustically.

Tellman grunted. “And cheesecloth,” he elaborated. “She choked on it. It was in her throat and lungs, poor creature.”

“Anything else you didn’t mention?”

Tellman glanced at him with venom. “No! She was a healthy woman of about thirty-seven or eight. She died of asphyxia. You already saw the bruises. That’s all there is.” He grunted. “And I meant find out the things people don’t want known. Was she clever enough to guess from the bits and pieces people asked, like where did Great-uncle Ernie hide his will? Or did my father really have an affair with the girl in the house opposite? Or anything at all!”

“I expect with a lot of listening at parties,” Pitt replied, “watching people, asking a few questions, exerting a little pressure now and then, she could piece together enough to make some very good guesses. And people’s own conclusions for what she gave them probably supplied the rest. Guilt runs from imaginary threats, as well as real ones. How many times have you seen people betray themselves because they thought we knew, when we didn’t?”

“Lots,” Tellman said, dodging around a costermonger’s cart of vegetables. “But what if she pushed too hard and somebody turned on her? That’d be the end of it all for her.”

“Seems as if it was.” Pitt shot him a sideways glance.

“Then what’s it to do with Special Branch?” Tellman demanded, anger quick in his voice. “Just because Serracold’s running for Parliament? Does Special Branch play party politics? Is that it?”

“No, that’s not it!” Pitt snapped, wounded and angry that Tellman should think it a possibility. “I don’t care that much”—he snapped his fingers—“who gets in. I care that the fight is fair. I think most of the ideas I’ve heard from Aubrey Serracold are totally daft. He hasn’t got the faintest idea of reality. But if he’s beaten I want it done by people who disagree with him, not people who think his wife committed a crime, if she didn’t.”

Tellman walked in silence. He did not apologize, although he opened his mouth and drew in his breath as if to speak a couple of times. When they came to the main thoroughfare he said good-bye and strode off in the opposite direction, back stiff, head high, while Pitt went to find a hansom to report to Victor Narraway.

“Well?” Narraway demanded, leaning back in his chair and staring up at Pitt unblinkingly.

Pitt sat down without being asked. “So far it seems to have been one of her three clients that evening,” he answered. “Major General Roland Kingsley, Mrs. Serracold, or a man whose identity none of them knew, except possibly Maude Lamont herself.”

“What do you mean ‘none’? You mean neither?”

“No I don’t. Apparently, the maid also didn’t know who he was. She says she never even saw him. He came in and left through the French doors and the door in the garden wall.”

“Why? Was the door in the wall left open? Then anyone could have come or gone.”

“The door in the garden wall to Cosmo Place was locked but not barred,” Pitt explained. “Other clients had keys. We don’t know who. There’s no record of it. The French doors were self-closing, so there’s no way of knowing if anyone left that way after she was dead. As to why, that’s obvious—he didn’t wish anyone at all to know he was there.”

“Why was he there?”

“I don’t know. Mrs. Serracold thinks he was a skeptic, trying to prove Maude Lamont a fraud.”

“Why? Academic interest, or personal? Find out, Pitt.”

“I intend to!” Pitt retorted. “But first I’d like to know who he is!”

Narraway frowned. “You said ‘Roland Kingsley’? Is he the same man who wrote that damning piece about Serracold?”

“Yes . . .”

“Yes, what?” Narraway’s clear, dark eyes bored into Pitt’s. “There’s something more.”

“He’s afraid,” Pitt said tentatively. “Some pain to do with his son’s death.”

“Find out about it!”

Pitt had been going to say that Kingsley’s personal opinions did not seem as virulent as those he had expressed in his letter to the newspapers, but he was not sure enough of it. He had nothing but an impression, and he did not trust Narraway, did not know him well enough to venture something so nebulous. He was uncomfortable working for a man of whom he knew so little. He had no sense of Narraway’s personal beliefs; his passions or needs, his weaknesses, even his background before their first meeting, were all shrouded in mystery to him.

“What about Mrs. Serracold?” Narraway went on. “I don’t like Serracold’s socialism, but anything is better than Voisey with his foot on the ladder. I need answers, Pitt.” He sat forward suddenly. “This is the Inner Circle we are fighting. If you doubt what they can do, think back to Whitechapel. Think of the sugar factory, remember Fetters lying dead on his own library floor. Think how close they came to winning! Think of your family!”

Pitt was cold. “I am doing that,” he said between his teeth. It cost him an effort precisely because he was thinking of Charlotte and the children and he hated Narraway for reminding him of it. “But if Rose Serracold murdered Maude Lamont, I’m not hiding it. If we do that, then we’re no better than Voisey is, and he’ll know that as well as we do.”

Narraway’s face was dark. “Don’t lecture me, Pitt!” he spat. “You are not a constable on the beat blowing his whistle if somebody picks a pocket! There’s more than a silk handkerchief or a gold watch at stake, there’s the government of the nation. If you want simple answers, go back to arresting cutpurses!”

“And precisely what did you say was the difference between us and the Inner Circle, sir?” Pitt exaggerated the last word, and his voice was sharp and brittle as ice.

Narraway’s lips tightened, and there was anger deep in his face, but there was a flash of admiration also.

“I haven’t asked you to protect Rose Serracold if she’s guilty, Pitt. Don’t be so damned pompous! Although it sounds as if you think she might be. What did she go to this wretched woman for anyway?”

“I don’t know yet.” Pitt relaxed into the chair again. “To contact her mother, she admits that, and Kingsley said that was the reason she gave Maude Lamont, but she hasn’t told me why, or how it can matter so much she’s prepared to deceive her husband and risk his career if some Tory journalist wants to make a fool of her.”

“And did she contact her mother?” Narraway asked.

Pitt looked at him with a sudden tingle of shock. Narraway’s eyes were clear, without irony. For an instant it was as if he had believed either answer were possible.

“Not to her satisfaction,” Pitt replied with certainty. “She is still searching for something, an answer she needs . . . and fears.”

“She believed in Maude Lamont’s powers.” That was a statement.

“Yes.”

Narraway breathed in and out silently, very slowly. “Did she describe what happened?”

“Apparently, Maude Lamont’s appearance changed, her face shone and her breath seemed luminous. She spoke with a different voice.” He swallowed. “She also seemed to rise in the air, and her hands to elongate.”

The tension eased out of Narraway’s body. “Hardly conclusive. Many of them do that. Vocal tricks, oil of phosphorus. Still . . . I suppose we believe what we want to believe . . . or what we dread to.” He looked away. “And some of us feel compelled to find out, however much it hurts. Others leave it forever hanging unknown . . . can’t bear to take away the last hope.” He straightened up sharply. “Don’t underestimate Voisey, Pitt. He won’t let desire for revenge get in the way of his ambition. You aren’t that important to him. But he won’t ever forget it was you who beat him in Whitechapel. He won’t forget, and he certainly won’t forgive. He will wait for his time, and it will be when you can’t defend yourself. He won’t be precipitated, but one day he’ll strike. I’ll watch your back for you as I can, but I’m not infallible.”

“I met him . . . in the House of Commons, three days ago,” Pitt replied, shivering inside in spite of himself. “I know he hasn’t forgotten. But if I walk in fear, then he’s won already. My family is out of London, but I can’t stop him. I admit, if I thought there were any escape, I might be tempted to take it . . . but there isn’t.”

“You’re more of a realist than I gave you credit for,” Narraway said, and there was a grudging respect in his voice. “I resented Cornwallis for wishing you onto me. Took you as a favor to him, but perhaps it wasn’t after all.”

“Why do you owe Cornwallis any favors?” The words slipped out before he thought about it.

“None of your business, Pitt!” Narraway said tartly. “Go and find out what the devil that woman was doing . . . and prove it!”

“Yes, sir.”

It was only when he was outside again in the street in the late sunlight and the roar and rattle of traffic that Pitt stopped to wonder whether Narraway had meant Rose Serracold—or Maude Lamont!