Bedford Square - Anne Perry [53]
Tellman left thoroughly angry and confused. The conflicting views of Cole made no sense. He presented two faces: one honest, ordinary, a man like ten thousand others, who had served his country and now lived in a boardinghouse and sold bootlaces on a street corner, patronized by the well-to-do of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, drinking at the Bull and Gate among friends. The other was a thief who sold his takings to a pawnshop, presumably broke into houses in places like Bedford Square, and was murdered for his pains.
And he had had the snuffbox in his pocket.
But if he was killed because he was trying to rob someone, what was he doing outside the house, not inside it?
Could he have been struck somewhere else and left for dead, and then crawled away? Was he attempting to get help when he dragged himself up General Balantyne’s step?
Tellman walked smartly east along High Holborn and turned north up Southampton Row towards Theobald’s Road. He would make more enquiries.
But they elicited nothing that clarified the situation. A running patterer, chanting the latest news and gossip for the entertainment of the public, recounted Cole’s death in doggerel verse. Tellman paid him handsomely and learned that Cole was an ordinary man, a trifle sober but a good enough seller of bootlaces, and well liked by the people of the area. He was known for the odd kindness, a hot cup of soup for the flower seller, bootlaces for nothing as a present to an old man, always a cheerful word.
A constable at the local police station who had seen his sketched picture in the newspaper said he recognized him as a petty thief of a particularly quarrelsome nature who lived around Shoreditch, to the east of there, where he had last been posted. The man had an odd gap in his left eyebrow where a childhood scar ran across it. He was vicious, given to sudden outbursts of temper, and had running feuds with at least one of the local fencers of stolen goods in Shoreditch and Clerkenwell.
A prostitute said he was funny and extravagant, and she was sorry he was dead.
By the time Tellman left the neighborhood of Lincoln’s Inn Fields and High Holborn, it was too late to go to Bow Street, but the contradictions in Albert Cole’s character weighed too heavily on him not to report them to Pitt as soon as possible.
He thought about it for several minutes. It was still light, but it was nearly eight o’clock. The sandwich in the Bull and Gate was a long time ago. He was thirsty and tired. His legs ached. A really hot, fresh cup of tea would be marvelous, and time to sit down—for at least half an hour, if not an hour.
But duty must prevail!
He would go and report all this at Keppel Street. That was the proper answer. He could walk it in twenty minutes, easily.
But when he got there, his feet hot, his legs aching, Pitt was not at home; neither was Mrs. Pitt. Gracie answered the door looking cool and fresh in a starched apron.
He was dismayed.
“Oh …” he said, his heart racing as he stood on the front step. “That’s a shame, because I really should tell him what I’ve learned today.”
“Well, if it’s important yer’d better come in,” she answered, pulling the door wider and staring at him with a mixture of satisfaction and defiance. She must really want to know about Albert Cole very much.
“Thank you,” he said stiffly, following her inside and waiting while she closed the door, then walking behind her along the passage back to the kitchen. It had the same warm comfortable smell it always did: scrubbed boards, clean linen, steam.
“Well, sit down then,” she ordered. “I can’t be getting’ on wif anything wif you standin’ in the middle o’ the floor. Spec’ me ter walk ’round yer?”
He sat down obediently. His mouth felt as dry as the pavements he had been walking.
Gracie surveyed him critically from his slicked-back hair to his dusty boots.
“Look like a fourpenny rabbit, you do. I s’pose you in’t ’ad nuffink ter eat in hours? I got some good