Free Rutland Place by Anne Perry Page B

“At least in theory. Don’t know of any reason, but then one usually doesn’t. God only understands what private agonies go on behind the polite faces people show. So help me, I don’t!”
    There was nothing for Pitt to say; silence was the only decent answer. He must remember to send Harris to find Mr. Spencer-Brown’s medicine box and see precisely how much was gone.
    “Do you want to see her?” Mulgrew asked after a moment.
    “I suppose I had better,” Pitt said.
    Mulgrew walked slowly to the door, and Pitt and Harris followed him out into the hall, past the footman standing gravely to attention, and into the withdrawing room, curtains drawn in acknowledgment of death.
    It was a large room, with elegant, pale-covered chairs and sofas in a French style, bowed legs and lots of carved wood. There was much petit-point embroidery in evidence, artificial flowers made of silk in profuse arrangements, and some pleasant pastoral watercolors. In other circumstances, it would have been a charming, if rather overcrowded, room.
    Wilhelmina Spencer-Brown was on the chaise longue, her head back, eyes wide, mouth open. There was none of the peace of sleep about her.
    Pitt walked over and looked, without touching. There was no spirit left, no privacy to invade, no feelings to hurt, but still he regarded the woman as if there were. He knew nothing about her, whether she had been kind or cruel, generous or mean, brave or a coward; but for himself as much as for her, he wished to accord her some dignity.
    “Have you seen all you wish?” he asked Mulgrew without turning around.
    “Yes,” Mulgrew replied.
    Pitt eased her forward a little so she appeared to have been relaxing, folded her hands although he could not unclench them, and closed her eyes.
    “She was here only fifteen or twenty minutes before the maid found her like this?” he asked.
    “So she says.”
    “So whatever it was, it acted quickly.” He turned and looked around; there was no glass or cup to be seen. “What did she eat or drink?” He frowned. “It doesn’t seem to be here now. Did the maid remove anything?”
    “Asked her.” Mulgrew shook his head. “She says not. Doesn’t seem like a flighty girl. Don’t see why she should lie. Too shocked when she found her mistress dead to think of tidying up, I would imagine.”
    “So she didn’t take it here,” Pitt concluded. “Pity. That would have made it easier. Well, you’ll have to do a postmortem and tell me what it was, and if possible how much, and when.”
    “Naturally.”
    Pitt looked at the body once more. There was nothing else to learn from it. There were no signs of force, but then since she had been alone he would not have expected any. She had taken the poison willingly; whether or not she had known what it was remained to be discovered.
    “Let’s go back to the morning room,” he suggested. “I can’t see anything here to help us.”
    Gratefully, they returned to the fire. The house was not cold, but there was a chill in the mind that communicated itself to the flesh.
    “What sort of woman was she?” Pitt asked when the door was closed. “And don’t hide behind professional confidences. I want to know if this was suicide, accident, or murder, and the sooner I do, with the fewest questions of the family, the easier it will be for them. And they’ll have enough to bear.”
    Mulgrew pulled an unhappy face and blew his nose on Pitt’s handkerchief.
    “I can’t imagine an accident,” he said, staring at the floor. “Not a silly woman—very capable, in her own way, very quick, noticed things. Least absentminded woman I ever knew.”
    Pitt did not like the sort of question he had to ask, but there was no way to avoid it, or to make it sound any better.
    “Do you know of any reason why she might have taken her own life?”
    “No, or I’d have said so.”
    “She looks as if she was an attractive woman, feminine, delicate. Could she have had a lover?”
    “I daresay, if