Highgate Rise by Anne Perry Page B

surprise, but there was no ill nature in it. “I dunno you, do I?”
    “Mrs. Colter?” Pitt removed his rather worn hat, now a little crooked in the crown.
    “That’s me. It don’t tell me who you are!”
    “Thomas Pitt, from the Metropolitan Police—”
    “Oh—” Her eyes widened. “You’ll be about poor Dr. Shaw’s fire, then. What a terrible thing. She was a good woman, was Mrs. Shaw. I’m real grieved about that. Come in. I daresay you’re cold—an’ ’ungry, mebbe?”
    Pitt stepped in, wiping his feet carefully on the mat before going onto the polished linoleum floor. He almost bent and took his boots off, as he would have done at home. A smell of rich stew assailed him, delicate with onions and the sweetness of fresh carrots and turnips.
    “Yes,” he said with feeling. “Yes I am.”
    “Well I don’t know as I can ’elp you.” She led the way back and he followed after. To sit in a room with that aroma, and not eat, would be very hard. Her generous figure strode ahead of him and into the small, scrubbed kitchen, a huge pot simmering on the back of the stove filling the air with steam and warmth. “But I’ll try,” she added.
    “Thank you.” Pitt sat down on one of the chairs and wished she meant the stew, not information.
    “They say it were deliberate,” she said, taking the lid off the pot and giving its contents a brisk stir with a woodenladle. “Although ’ow anybody could bring theirselves to do such a thing I’m sure I don’t know.”
    “You said ‘how,’ Mrs. Colter, not ‘why,’ ” Pitt observed, inhaling deeply and letting it out in a sigh. “You can think of reasons why?”
    “In’t much meat in it,” she said dubiously. “Just a bit o’ skirt o’ mutton.”
    “You have no ideas why, Mrs. Colter?”
    “ ’Cos I in’t got the money for more, o’ course,” she said, looking at him as if he were simple, but still not unkindly.
    Pitt blushed. He was well used enough to poverty not to have made such an idiotic remark, or one so condescending.
    “I mean why anyone should set fire to Dr. and Mrs. Shaw’s house!”
    “You want some?” She held up the ladle.
    “Yes please, I would.”
    “Lots o’ reasons.” She began to dish up a generous portion in a large basin. “Revenge, for one. There’s them as says ’e should’a looked after Mr. Theophilus Worlingham better’n ’e did. Although I always thought Mr. Theophilus would wind ’isself up into a fit and die one day. An’ ’e did. But then that don’t mean everyone sees it that way.” She put the bowl down in front of him and handed him a spoon to eat with. It was mostly potatoes, onions, carrots and a little sweet turnip with a few stray ends of meat, but it was hot and full of flavor.
    “Thank you very much,” he said, accepting the bowl.
    “Don’t think it’d ’ave much to do wiv it.” She dismissed the notion. “Mr. Lutterworth was fair furious with Dr. Shaw, on account of ’is daughter, Miss Flora, nippin’ ter see ’im all hours, discreet like, not through the reg’lar surgery. But Mrs. Shaw weren’t worried, so I don’t suppose there were nothin’ in it as there shouldn’t ’a bin. Leastways, not much. I think Dr. Shaw and Mrs. Shaw kept their own ways a lot. Good friends, like, but maybe not a lot more.”
    “That’s very observant of you, Mrs. Colter,” Pitt said doubtfully.
    “Need more salt?” she asked.
    “No thank you; it’s perfect.”
    “Not really.” She shook her head.
    “Yes it is. It doesn’t need a thing added,” he assured her.
    “Don’t take much ter see when people is used ter each other, and respects, but don’t mind if the other gets fond o’ someone else.”
    “And Dr. and Mrs. Shaw were fond of someone else?” Pitt’s spoon stopped in midair, even the stew forgotten.
    “Not as I know of. But Mrs. Shaw went off up to the city day after day, and ’e wished ’er well and never cared nor worried as who she went wiv; or that the