Bedford Square - Anne Perry [147]
“Where did you go after you had fought with Slingsby?” Pitt began, almost conversationally.
If Wallace was surprised he hid it well. “Don’ remember,” he answered. “Wot’s it matter nah?”
“What did you fight about?”
“I told yer, least I told the other rozzer, ’baht summink wot ’e took orff me as e’d no right ter. I tried ter get it back orff ’im, an ’e laid inter me. I fought ’im … natural. I’ve a right ter save me own life.” He said that with some satisfaction, meeting Pitt’s eyes squarely.
Pitt had thought he expected the blackmailer to influence the trial and get him acquitted, at least of murder. Now, in the fetid room with its smell of despair, he was certain of it.
“And when you saw that you had killed him, you just fled?” Pitt said aloud.
“Wot?”
“You ran away.”
“Yeah. Well, I didn’t think as any rozzer’d believe me. An’ I were right, weren’t I? Or I wouldn’t be here now, lookin’ at a charge o’ murder.” He said it with considerable self-justification. “Yer’d a’ seen as I were defendin’ meself from a geezer wot were bigger’n me, an’ got a right temper on ’im.” He almost smiled.
“Is Albert Cole dead too?” Pitt said suddenly.
Wallace kept his face straight, but he could not prevent the ebb of color from his skin, and his hands twitched involuntarily where he had laid them with a deliberate show of ease on the tabletop.
“Oo?”
“Albert Cole.” Pitt smiled. “The man Slingsby looked like and was mistaken for when we found him. He had a receipt belonging to Cole in his pocket.”
Wallace grinned. “Oh, yeah! Yer made a right mess o’ that, din’t yer.”
“It was the receipt that did it,” Pitt explained. “And the lawyer from Lincoln’s Inn who identified him. And of course Cole is missing.”
Wallace affected surprise. “Is ’e? Well, I never. Life’s full o’ funny little things like that … i’n’t it?” He was enjoying himself, and he wanted Pitt to know it.
Pitt waited patiently.
“Yes, it is,” he agreed. “You see, I think you can’t tell me where you went after you killed Slingsby because you came back, within minutes, and loaded his body into a vegetable cart you’d ’borrowed’ after dark. You took it to Bedford Square and left it on General Balantyne’s doorstep, exactly as you were told to do.”
Wallace was tense, his shoulder muscles locked, the sinews in his thin neck standing out, but his eyes did not waver from Pitt’s.
“Do yer? Well, yer can’t prove it, so it don’ make no difference. I says as I killed ’im ’cos ’e came at me, an’ scarpered arterwards ’cos I were scared as no rozzer’d believe me.” His voice descended into mockery. “An’ I’m real sorry abaht that, me lud. I won’t never make a mistake like that again.”
“Talking about judges,” Pitt observed steadily, “Mr. Dunraithe White has resigned from the bench.”
Wallace looked mystified.
“Am I supposed ter know wot yer talkin’ abaht?”
Pitt was shaken, but he concealed it. “Perhaps not. I thought you might come up before him.”
“Well if ’e i’n’t a judge no more, I won’t, will I? Stands ter reason.”
Pitt dropped the blow he had been waiting for.
“And another thing you might not have heard, being in here … Leo Cadell is dead.”
Wallace sat motionless.
“Committed suicide,” Pitt added, “after confessing to blackmail.”
Wallace’s eyes widened. “Blackmail?” he said with what Pitt would have sworn was surprise.
“Yes. He’s dead.”
“Yeah … yer said. So is that all?” He looked at Pitt with wide eyes, untroubled, his lips still smiling, not the fixed and awful grin of a man whose last hope has slipped away, but the satisfaction of someone supremely confident, even if he had heard