Farrier's Lane (40 page)

“Miss Macaulay,” he said aloud, breaking the eerie half silence of their island of unreality. All around them the theater was alive with sounds of preparation. “If it was not Mr. Godman killed Kingsley Blaine, who was it?”

She turned and faced him with a sudden flash of humor. In the half-light it was exaggerated, and oddly without malice.

“I don’t know. I suppose Devlin O’Neil.”

“Over the quarrel about a wager?” Pitt allowed his disbelief to show.

“Over Kathleen Harrimore,” she corrected. “Perhaps the passion sprang from his feeling for her, and the knowledge that Kingsley was betraying her with me.” A shadow of remorse passed over her face and unmistakable pain. “And it may have crossed his mind that Kathleen stood to inherit Prosper Harrimore’s estate, which is very considerable. And of course to have an excellent and assured living in the meantime.” She turned around to meet his eyes. “You think it is vicious of me to accuse him? I don’t think that it is—you asked me who else. I don’t believe it was Aaron. I never will.”

Pitt did not argue. There was nothing else to say. He thanked her and took his leave to seek the urchin who was the one person who had seen the murderer’s face, albeit in the shadows, and had heard his voice.

But although he searched every avenue he could think of, through police records, the general knowledge of the constables in Lambert’s station, his own contacts in the streets and the fringes of the semicriminal underworld, he had no success. There were whispers, false trails, information that turned out to be untrue, or too late. Joe Slater apparently did not wish to be found.

It was on the third day, gray and cold with a knife-edge wind out of the east, before Pitt at last found him in Seven
Dials, next to a stall selling secondhand boots. He was gangling, thin and fair-haired, his face wary and full of suspicion.

“I don’t remember,” he said flatly, his eyes narrow. “I said all I know when yer asked me afore! Now leave me alone! Yer ’anged the poor sod! Wot else d’yer want? I dunno nuffink more!”

And that was all Pitt could get from him. He refused to discuss it again. He was angry, bitterness deep in his face.

Pitt was going up the steps into the police station when he met Lambert coming down, his face white, his eyes hollow with shock. He stopped abruptly, almost bumping into Pitt.

“Paterson’s dead,” he said thickly, stumbling over his tongue. “Hanged! Someone hanged him! Judge Livesey just found him!”

9

P
ITT FOLLOWED LAMBERT
into the hansom and sat cold and shocked beside him while they struggled through the traffic across the Battersea Bridge towards Sleaford Street and the house where Paterson had lodgings.

“Why?” Lambert said more to himself than to Pitt. He was hunched up, his collar high around his neck, half hiding his face, as though there were a bitter wind inside the cab. “Why? It makes no sense! Why kill poor Paterson? Why now?”

Pitt did not reply. The answer he thought of was that Paterson had learned, or remembered, some evidence which changed the verdict of the Farriers’ Lane case. Of course it was possible it was something else, another case, or even something personal, but that was on the edge of his mind, so faint it barely touched his thoughts.

The cab halted abruptly and the sound of shouting intruded, dislocating thought and making speech impossible.

Lambert shifted restlessly. The delay scraped his nerves raw. He leaned forward and demanded to know what it was that held them up, but no one heard him.

The cab swiveled around. A horse squealed. They jerked forward again.

Lambert swore.

Now they were moving at a steady trot.

“Why Paterson?” Lambert demanded again. “Why not me? I was in charge of the case. Paterson only did what he was told, poor devil.” His voice was harsh and his face twisted with an anger he could not control, and a deep tearing pain. He stared in front of him and clenched his fists. “Why now, Pitt? Why after all these years? The case is closed!”

“I don’t think it is,” Pitt replied grimly. “At least for Judge Stafford there was something still to be resolved.”

“Godman was guilty,” Lambert said between his teeth. “He was! Everything pointed to him. He was seen, by the urchin he gave the message to, by the men at the entrance to Farriers’ Lane, and by the flower seller. He had motive, better than anyone else. And he was a Jew. Only a Jew would have done that! It was Godman. The original trial proved it, and the appeal judges upheld it—all of them!”

Pitt did not reply. There was nothing he could say which would answer Lambert’s real question, or ease the travail inside him.

They arrived at Sleaford Street. Lambert threw open the door, almost falling onto the footpath, and leaving Pitt to pay the driver. Pitt caught up with him at the steps. The front door was already half open and there was a white-faced woman standing in the passageway, her hair screwed back in an untidy knot, her sleeves rolled up.

“Wot’s ’appened?” she answered. “Are you the p’lice? The gennelman upstairs sent out Jackie to fetch the p’lice, but “e wouldn’t say wot’s wrong.” She grabbed Lambert’s sleeve as he brushed past her. “ ’Ere! ’As ’e bin robbed? It ain’t none o’ us! We never robbed nobody! This is a decent ’ouse!”

“Where is he?” Lambert shook her off. “Which room? Upstairs?”

Now she was really frightened. “Wot’s ’appened?” she wailed, her voice rising. Somewhere behind her a child began to cry.

“Nobody’s been robbed,” Pitt said quietly, although he was beginning to feel a little sick himself. It was only a few days ago, such a short time, that he had sat in the office
talking to Paterson. “Where is the man who sent for the police?”

“Upstairs.” She jerked her head. “Number four, on the first landing. Wot’s ’appened, mister?”

“We don’t know yet.” Pitt went after Lambert, who was already striding up the stairs two at a time. At the top he swung around, glanced at the doors, then banged irritably on number four and immediately tried the handle. It opened under his pressure and with Pitt at his heels he burst in.

It was a large, old room, like thousands of other bachelor lodgings, with dull wallpaper, heavy furniture, all a little worn but immaculately clean. There was little of character. It was all chosen for utility and a veneer of comfort, but no personal taste of the man who had lived here.

Ignatius Livesey was sitting in the best armchair. He was very pale, his eyes dark and a little hollow with shock, and when he rose to his feet he was not quite as in control as he had thought. His limbs trembled for a moment and he had to reach twice to grip the chair so he could steady himself.

“I am glad you have come, gentlemen.” His voice was hoarse. “I am ashamed to say that being alone here has not been an experience I have found easy. He is in the bedroom, where I found him.” He took a deep breath. “Beyond ascertaining that he is dead—a fact of which there is little doubt—I have touched nothing.”

Lambert looked at him for only an instant, then walked past and opened the bedroom door. He stopped with an involuntary gasp.

Pitt strode over. Paterson was hanging from the hook which should have supported the small, ugly chandelier now lying skewed sideways on the floor. He was held by a rope, an ordinary piece of hemp about twelve or fourteen feet long, such as any carter would use, except there was a running noose in one end. His body was stiff; his face, when Pitt moved around to see, was purplish, eyes protruding, tongue thick between his open lips.

Lambert stood motionless, swaying a little as if he might faint.

Pitt took him by the arm, having to pull hard to force him from the spot.

“Come,” he ordered sharply. “You can’t do anything for him. Mr. Livesey!”

Livesey suddenly realized he could help and started forward, taking Lambert’s other arm and guiding him to the chair.

“Sit down,” he said grimly. “Get your breath. Nasty shock for you, when you knew the poor man. Sorry I don’t carry brandy, and I doubt Paterson would have had any.”

Lambert shook his head and opened his mouth as if to reply, but no words came.

Pitt left them and went back into the bedroom. All the same questions that had teemed in Lambert’s mind were in his now, but before he addressed any of them, he must see what facts he could observe.

He touched Paterson’s hand. The body swung very slightly. The flesh was cold, the arm rigid. He had been dead several hours. He was dressed in plain dark uniform trousers and tunic, which was torn, his sergeant’s insignia ripped off. He still wore his boots. It was nearly midday now. Presumably it was what he had worn when he came home from the last duty of the day before. If he had slept here, risen in the morning and dressed ready to go out, the body would still have some warmth left, and be limp. He must have died sometime late yesterday evening, or during the night. It would almost certainly be the evening. Why should he be wearing his street clothes all night?

The hook was in the middle of the ceiling, about ten or eleven feet high, where one would expect to find a chandelier. There was no furniture near enough to it for him to have climbed on. It had taken a strong man to lift Paterson up and then let him fall from that height. He must have used the rope as a pulley over the hook. There was no conceivable way Paterson could have done it himself, even supposing he had some cause to, or believed he had.

Pitt glanced around, simply as a matter of course, to see
if there were any letter, although he knew it had to be murder. Physically, suicide was impossible.

There was nothing. It was a plain, tidy, characterless bedroom. A bed with a wooden headboard occupied the far end. A sash window looked out over a narrow alley with a few sheds and what appeared to be a stable.

There was a wardrobe to the right, and some four or five feet from it a chest of drawers. There were three chairs, one padded, the other two hard seated and straight backed. All of them were upright and against the wall. Had Paterson used them to stand on they would have been under the chandelier, and probably fallen over.

He went over to the chairs and examined them one by one. He could see no mark on any of them. But then if the man had taken off his shoes, there would be none.

He heard Livesey’s footsteps at the door and looked around.

“Have you learned anything?” Livesey said very quietly.

“Not a great deal,” Pitt replied, straightening up and glancing around the room again. Its impersonalness hurt him, as if Paterson had lived and died leaving no mark. And yet had he seen books, photographs, letters, handmade articles chosen with meaning and care, perhaps it would have hurt more. Except that there was a sense of futility, a loneliness as if someone had slipped away unnoticed, his loss seen only when it was too late. He could not have been more than thirty-two or thirty-three. He had barely begun. And now there was nothing.

Lambert’s question rang in his head. Why? Who could have done this, and why now?

“I think he was dead a long time before I got here,” Livesey said quietly. “I wish to God I had come when I got his note last night! I could have saved him.”

“He sent you a letter?” Pitt said in amazement, then immediately felt ridiculous. He should have asked Livesey what he was doing here. Appeal court justices did not normally visit police constables in their lodging houses. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I was going to ask you why you were here.”

“He sent me a note yesterday.” Livesey’s voice was still husky, as if his mouth were dry. “He said he had learned something which troubled him deeply, and he wanted to tell me about it.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He passed it over to Pitt.

Pitt read in scribbled writing which even in its haste and emotion showed the form of its copperplate letters.