Farrier's Lane (25 page)

The best place to begin was with the crime itself, for the time being ignore motive. Someone had placed opium in Stafford’s flask of whiskey after the time he and Livesey had both drunk from it in Livesey’s chambers. Later he had
visited Joshua Fielding, Tamar Macaulay, Devlin O’Neil and Adolphus Pryce, any of whom could have touched the flask before the evening, when he had gone to the theater, drunk from it, and then fallen into a coma and died. The only people with the opportunity were those he had visited and his wife, Juniper Stafford. To consider either the clerks in his office or the servants in his house seemed absurd. No one could suggest the slightest motive for such an act.

The omnibus was stationary again, behind a large brewer’s dray. The traffic was creeping up an incline, horses straining and impatient. A carriage in front somewhere had broken a piece of harness. Footmen were scrambling about, cursing. A costermonger was shouting. Someone was ringing a bell and a carriage dog was barking hysterically. Everyone was cold and short of temper.

“It’s getting worse every day,” the man beside Pitt said angrily. “In another year or two nothing will move at all! London will be one vast jam of carts and carriages without room for a soul to take a step. Half this stuff should be taken away. Made illegal.”

“And where would you put it?” the man opposite demanded, his face creased with anger. “They’ve as much right to travel as you!”

“On the railways,” the first man retorted, straightening his tie with a tweak. “On the canals. What’s wrong with the river? Look at that damned great load there.” He jerked his hand towards the window where a wagon was passing by laden with boxes and bales twenty feet high. “Disgraceful. Send it up the river by barge.”

“Maybe it’s not going anywhere that’s on the river,” the second man suggested.

“Then it should be! Size of it!”

The omnibus moved forward with a jolt and resumed its slow progress, and the conversation was lost. Pitt returned his thoughts to the case. Motive he put aside for the moment Opportunity was obvious. How about means? He had never had occasion to enquire into the availability of opium. Like any other officer, he knew there were opium dens in parts of London, where those addicted to the substance
could obtain it and then lie in tiers of narrow cots and smoke themselves into their own brief, private oblivion. And of course he also knew a little about the opium wars with China which had occurred between 1839 and 1842, and then again between 1856 and 1860. They had been begun by the Chinese attempting to take action against British merchants dealing in the opium trade. It was a black page of British history, but Pitt did not know what bearing it had on the present availability of the drug to the ordinary public in London, except that apparently the opium traders, with the mighty naval power of the Empire behind them, had won the day.

Perhaps the best thing would be to try to purchase opium himself and see how he fared. He would put off going to see Judge Livesey until later. The omnibus had stopped again for traffic, and he rose to his feet, excused himself and picked his way with difficulty past the passengers seated along the benches on both sides of the aisle, trying not to step on feet. Amid grumbles about delay, noise, clumsiness, and people who did not know where they were going, he alighted, dodging a landau driven by an ill-tempered coachman. He leaped over a pile of steaming manure and an overflowing gutter, and strode along the pavement until he should see an apothecary’s shop.

He found one within half a mile, but it was small and dark, and when he went inside the solitary young woman behind the counter, and the piles of jars and packets balanced on it, were of little help. She offered him alternative powders for toothache, the name of a dentist she recommended, or several other patent remedies for pain of one sort or another, but did not seem to know where he might obtain opium. She had a mixture adequate to give a crying baby, in order to lull it to sleep, which she thought might contain opium, but she was not sure since the ingredients were not listed on the bottle.

He thanked her and declined, then went out again to resume his search. He walked as briskly as he could through the swirls of people buying, selling, running errands and gossiping on the footpath and spilling onto the street, jostling
the traffic, shouting at each other amid the clatter of hooves and wheels, the jingle of harness and whinnying of horses.

The second apothecary’s shop he found was a much larger establishment, and when he went inside the counters were clear, the shelves behind stacked with a marvelous array of colored bottles filled with every manner of liquids, crystals, dried leaves and powders, all labeled with their chemical names in Latin. Another shelf was filled with packets, and occasionally along its length there were cupboards set in, their doors ostentatiously locked. The man superintending this alchemist’s glory was small, bald headed, with spectacles halfway down his nose and a general expression of interest on his face.

“Yes sir, and what may I do for you?” he enquired as soon as Pitt was inside. “Is it for yourself, sir, or your family? You are a family man, yes?”

“Yes,” Pitt agreed, smiling without knowing why, except that there was something about being seen to belong to a family which pleased him. But the admission rather altered what he had intended saying regarding opium.

“Thought so,” the apothecary said with satisfaction. “Fancy I can judge a man pretty well by his appearance. Begging your pardon for the familiarity, sir, but it takes a good wife to turn a collar like that.”

“Oh.” Pitt had no idea anyone could tell his collar and cuffs had been taken off and turned so the worn bits were on the inside, thus prolonging the life of the garment. He put his hand up to it unconsciously, and realized his tie was crooked and thus Charlotte’s neat stitching showed. He straightened it with a faint blush.

“Now, sir, what can I do for you?” the apothecary said cheerfully.

There was little point in anything but honesty now. The sharp-eyed little man would be insulted by deviousness, and probably be aware of a lie.

“I’m a police officer,” Pitt explained, producing his identification.

“Indeed?” the apothecary said with interest. There was no shadow of anxiety in his open expression.

“I should like to know more about the availability of opium,” Pitt replied. “Not to smoke, that I know already. I am looking into the liquid form. Do you have any information you could give me?”

“Good gracious, sir, of course I have.” The apothecary looked surprised. “Easy to get as you like. Mothers use it to quieten a fractious baby. Poor souls need a little sleep, and give the child enough to keep it from crying half the night, keeping the whole house awake.” He pointed to a row of bottles on one of the shelves behind him. “Godfrey’s Cordial, sell a great deal of that. Made up of treacle, water, spices—and opium. Works very well, they say. And then there’s also Steedman’s powder. And Atkinson’s Royal Infants’ Preservative is very popular.” He shook his head. “Don’t know if it’s the name, or the mixture, but people like it. Of course in East Anglia and the fen country you can buy opium in penny sticks or in pills from just about any little corner shop you like.”

“Legally?” Pitt asked with surprise.

“Of course! Prescribed for all manner of ills.” The apothecary ticked of his fingers. “Rheumatism, diabetes, consumption, syphilis, cholera, diarrhea, constipation or insomnia.”

“And does it work?” Pitt asked incredulously.

“It kills pain,” the apothecary replied sadly. “That’s not a cure, but when a person is suffering, it’s something. I don’t approve of it, but I wouldn’t deny a suffering person a little ease—especially if there’s no cure for what’s wrong with them. And God knows, there’s enough of that. No one gets better from consumption or cholera—or syphilis for that matter, although it takes longer.”

“And doesn’t the opium kill?”

“Babes, yes, as like as not.” The apothecary’s face pinched and his eyes were weary. “Not the opium itself, you understand? They get so they’re half asleep all the time, and they don’t eat, poor little mites. Die of starvation.”

Pitt felt suddenly sick. He thought of Jemima and Daniel, remembering them as tiny, desperately helpless creatures, so fiercely alive, and he found his throat tight and a pain inside him so he could not speak.

The apothecary was looking at him with sadness creasing his face.

“There’s no use prosecuting them,” he said quietly. “They don’t know any different. Sickly, worked to their wits’ end, and don’t know what way to turn, most of them. Have a child just about every year, counting the ones that miscarry—no way to stop it except tell their husbands no—if they’ll take no for an answer. And what man will? He has few enough pleasures, and he reckons that one’s his by right.” He shook his head. “Not enough food, not enough room, not enough anything, poor devils.”

“I wasn’t going to prosecute them,” Pitt said, swallowing hard. “I am looking for someone who poisoned an adult man by putting opium in his whiskey.”

“Some poor woman couldn’t take any more?” the apothecary guessed, biting his lip and looking at Pitt as if he knew the answer already.

“No,” Pitt said more loudly than he had intended. “A woman well past childbearing age, and a perfectly sober husband. She had a lover …”

“Oh—oh dear.” The apothecary was taken aback. He shook his head slowly. “Oh dear. And you want to know if she could have obtained the opium with which he was poisoned? I am afraid so. Anyone could. It is not in the least difficult, nor is it necessary to register one’s name for the purchase. You will be extremely fortunate to find anybody who recalls selling it to her—or to her lover, should he be the guilty party.”

“Or anyone else, I suppose,” Pitt said ruefully.

“Oh dear—the poor man had others who wished him ill?”

“It is possible. He was a man with much knowledge and authority.” Since he had voiced his suspicions of the widow, and of her intimate affairs, he chose not to name Judge Stafford. If it were Juniper, it would be public knowledge
soon enough, and if it were not, she had more than sufficient grief to bear as it was.

The apothecary shook his head sadly. “Dangerous stuff, opium. Once you begin with it, there’s little stopping, and few that can manage to do without ever greater doses.” A flicker of anger crossed his mild, intelligent features. “Misguided doctors gave it to their patients in the Civil War in America, thinking it would be less addicting than ether or chloroform, especially if given by the then new invention of hypodermic syringe, into the vein rather than the stomach. Of course, they were wrong. And now they have four hundred thousand poor devils slave to it.” He sighed. “That’s one war where we both won and lost, I think. Perhaps we lost the more.”

“The American Civil War?” Pitt was confused.

“No sir, the opium war with China. Perhaps I did not make myself plain.”

“No, you didn’t,” Pitt said agreeably. “But you are perfectly correct. Thank you for your assistance.”

“Not at all. Sorry it is so little use to you. But I am afraid anyone with a few pence to spare could purchase sufficient sticks of opium to dissolve and put in the poor man’s drink, and there would be no record of it, and nothing illegal in the mere buying of it anyway.” He looked at Pitt discouragingly. “You could waste a year in going to every apothecary and corner shop within forty miles of London—or farther if the lady you suspect has the means and the opportunity to travel. As I said, opium is available with great ease all over East Anglia and the fen country, which is a mere hundred or hundred and fifty miles from London.”

“Then I shall have to return to other means of learning the truth,” Pitt conceded. “Thank you, and good day.”

“Good day, sir, and good luck in your search.”

    It was not until mid-afternoon that Pitt obtained an appointment with Judge Ignatius Livesey and was shown into his chambers. It had turned colder outside and he was pleased to go into the warmth of the room with its well-stoked
fire and rich carpets, the velvet curtains richly draped against the outside world, the ornate mantel speaking of solidarity, the leatherbound books, the bronze figures and Meissen china dishes adding touches of grace and luxury.

“Good afternoon, Pitt,” Livesey said courteously. “How are you proceeding in the matter of poor Stafford’s death?”

“Good afternoon, sir,” Pitt replied. “Not very fruitfully so far. It seems opium is very readily obtainable by anyone with a few pence to spare. Indeed it is much purchased by the poorest people, I am informed, in order to ease their wakeful children, and treat a number of extremely diverse illnesses, sometimes even mutually contradictory ones.”

“Is it indeed?” Livesey raised his eyebrows. “How very tragic. Public health is one of our greatest problems, coupled with ignorance and poverty. So endeavoring to trace the opium has profited you little?”

“Nothing,” Pitt corrected.

“Please sit down, make yourself comfortable,” Livesey invited. “It has turned cold outside, so my clerk informs me. It is a trifle early, but would you care for tea?”

“Yes, very much,” Pitt accepted, sitting in the large leather-cushioned chair opposite Livesey, who was at his desk.

Livesey reached out and pressed a bell on the wall near him, and a moment later a clerk appeared, enquiring what he wished. Livesey requested tea for two, and then leaned back and regarded Pitt curiously.

“And what brings you to me again, Mr. Pitt? I appreciate the civility of your telling me of your progress, or lack of it. But I imagine that is not all you came for.”

“I would like you to tell me all you can recall of the evening Judge Stafford died, sir,” Pitt asked him. “From the time you met him in the theater.”

“Of course, although I am not sure it will be helpful.” Livesey sat back in his chair and rested his hands across his stomach, his heavy face calm. “I reached the theater about twenty minutes before the performance was due to begin. It was extremely crowded, naturally. These places usually are,
if the play is any good at all, and this was a popular work, and performed by a fine cast.” He smiled, an expression of indulgence and very slight contempt. “Of course there were the usual prostitutes of one degree or another, parading in the balconies and the gallery at the back, attired in a wonderful array of colors. Gorgeous, at a distance. And the men ogled them, and a good many did far more. But that is all quite customary, and no doubt you observed it yourself.”