Page 92 of Murder on Cold Street
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Portwine. “It isn’t mine, of course, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to stay here, now that Mr. Sullivan is no more.”
“Were you saddened by his passing?”
The corners of Mrs. Portwine’s lips lifted in an ironic smile. “Ours was a business arrangement. I would say Mrs. Sullivan hasbeen far more affected. She was... interested in her husband in a way I could never be.”
Mrs. Sullivan, so loquacious in her first meeting with Charlotte, said nothing.
“Oh?” said Charlotte. “Would you like to tell me more, Mrs. Sullivan?”
Mrs. Sullivan stared at her own lap. “You might as well ask Mrs. Portwine. This is her drawing room, after all.”
“Temporarily,” said Mrs. Portwine politely. “It was always only mine temporarily.”
Charlotte enjoyed Mrs. Portwine’s wry, cynical, but not unkind presence. “Please, go ahead, tell me more about Mrs. Sullivan’s interest in her husband.”
Mrs. Portwine gave Charlotte a long look, as if wondering what sort of ostensibly respectable woman could be so at ease in the drawing room of a loose female. “Mr. Sullivan bought this house not too long ago. A new mistress seemed an appropriate inauguration for a new house. It so happens that I am good friends with Mrs. Calloway, his previous mistress. Mrs. Calloway wished to part ways from Mr. Sullivan. I was between protectors. She appealed to me for help and I took over from her, so to speak.”
“Mrs. Calloway didn’t want to go anywhere; Mr. Sullivan was the one who tired of her,” claimed Mrs. Sullivan in all seriousness.
Mrs. Portwine smiled slightly, took a sip of her tea, and did not reply to Mrs. Sullivan, but instead said to Charlotte, “When I moved in, Mr. Sullivan told me that I may expect Mrs. Sullivan to call. He said to shut the door in her face, as Mrs. Calloway and his other mistresses had over the years.
“But I was curious about Mrs. Sullivan. She sounded... tenacious, to say the least, and I wanted to see what she was like in person. When I did meet her, I realized that for her, Mr. Sullivan was an obsession. Not an obsession that arose out of too much affection, Idon’t think. More as if—as if she only felt alive when he paid attention to her.”
Mrs. Sullivan swallowed. She opened her mouth, but after a moment, shut it again.
Mrs. Portwine cast a glance in her direction, not a look of scorn, but more as a taxonomist might puzzle before a hitherto unknown subspecies. “Mr. Sullivan by no means returned the same strength of feelings, yet neither was he indifferent to this idée fixe of hers. In fact, a part of himdependedon it. He was not a man who inspired devotion. At work he could make men fall in line because he had Mr. Barnaby Cousins’s ear and he was mean-spirited to those below him. And for women, he could buy the likes of Mrs. Calloway and myself. But I don’t believe he’d ever been terribly successful with ladies.
“So it meant something to him, his wife’s sincere fixation, even if he didn’t like that she was the only one to find him interesting or important.”
Without looking at anyone, Mrs. Sullivan turned her face from one side to the other, as if there was something uncomfortable about the fit of her collar.
“What I’ve said now, Miss Holmes, is essentially what Mrs. Sullivan told me, not long after we met,” Mrs. Portwine went on. “But you know how it is that mothers can complain bitterly about their own progeny, yet bristle with anger the moment anyone else dares to criticize those same darlings? So it was with Mrs. Sullivan, where her husband was concerned. She was allowed to brand him as morally corrupt and sexually degenerate, but I could only listen and never voice similar opinions.”
What did Mrs. Sullivan truly feel for her husband? Or was it something too complex to be described by any single emotion? “It sounds as if you met with Mrs. Sullivan more than once,” said Charlotte.
Mrs. Portwine adjusted her lapels, another ironic smile on her face. “Mrs. Sullivan became a regular caller.”
“You charged me!” cried her regular caller.
“I charged your husband for my time; there was no reason to allot it to you gratis,” said Mrs. Portwine patiently. “Beyond the initial titillation, I wasn’tthatinterested in what passed between the two of you. But you wished for an audience and I was willing to listen for a price.”
This “friendship” between the two women did not particularly surprise Charlotte. After all, while Mr. Sullivan yet lived, to whom else could Mrs. Sullivan speak truthfully about her husband? “Did Mr. Sullivan know of your meetings?”
“Eventually,” answered Mrs. Portwine. “One day when Mrs. Sullivan left, my coachman, Whitmer, happened to see her. The indoor staff I hired, but Whitmer has always been Mr. Sullivan’s man. He informed Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Sullivan was displeased. Not about his wife’s visits—if I could tolerate them then he had no problem—but because I hadn’t told him.
“‘That woman pokes her nose into everything,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep anything important at home because she would get her hands on it. And now you tell me she’s been coming here?’
“It’s true that Mrs. Sullivan is curious. Highly curious. The first time she came she inspected this entire house, including belowstairs. And on each subsequent visit she wanted to see if additions or changes had been made since her previous call.
“I didn’t mind her curiosity so Mr. Sullivan’s reaction seemed disproportionate to me. But he thundered that Mrs. Sullivan always found a way to open locks, whether they were on doors or drawers. He’d thought this house beyond her reach. But now he was not to have any safe haven at all.”
Charlotte turned her little iced cake on its plate and considered Mrs. Portwine’s words. “Did Mr. Sullivan forbid Mrs. Sullivan from calling here again?”
Mrs. Portwine glanced at Mrs. Sullivan. “Perhaps he did speak to her to that purpose, but Mrs. Sullivan is not without her ownpowers of persuasion. All I know is that in the end, she was not only not forbidden to come to this house; she was allowed to watch Mr. Sullivan and me in the bedroom, via a two-way mirror. I imagine that when they reunited afterward, things were... interesting enough that Mr. Sullivan went along with the new arrangement.”
Mrs. Sullivan did not blush, but merely bristled in mutinous silence.
Charlotte felt an uncharacteristic urge to laugh—even she could not have anticipated all the salacious details erupting forth this evening. “How often did this happen?”
