Bedford Square - Anne Perry [73]
“I think he was the body found in Bedford Square, not Albert Cole.”
This time she actually turned to look at him. There was an expression in her face which Tellman thought was hope.
“Perhaps you would come and take a look at him?” he asked. “See if it is. You’d know.” He understood the cost of wasting time for her. “It would be a service to the police which naturally you would be paid for … say, a shilling?”
She looked interested, but not yet certain.
“Cold work, identifying corpses,” he added. “We’d need a good hot dinner afterwards, and a glass of porter.”
“Yeah, I suppose we would at that.” She nodded, setting her ringlets turning. “Well then, we’d best be about it. W’ere is this corpse that’s mebbe Joe Slingsby?”
The following day Tellman went straight to see Pitt at Bow Street, to catch him before he should go out and to inform him that the body was definitely not that of Albert Cole but of Josiah Slingsby, petty thief and brawler.
Pitt looked nonplussed.
“Slingsby? How do you know?”
Tellman stood in front of the desk as Pitt stared up at him over the scattered papers on its surface.
“Identified by someone who knew him,” he replied. “I don’t think she was mistaken or lying. She described the gap in his eyebrow and she knew about the knife wound in his chest. Remembered when it happened a couple of years ago. It certainly isn’t Albert Cole; military records make that plain, because of the shot. Cole was invalided out of the army with his leg wound. The corpse had none. Sorry, sir.” He did not elaborate. Pitt deserved an apology, but not a long story, and certainly not an excuse.
Pitt leaned back in his chair and pushed his hands into his pockets. “I suppose the barrister who identified him did his best. I daresay he wasn’t used to corpses. Most people aren’t. And we rather assumed it was Cole because of the socks. Which brings us to the interesting question of why he had Albert Cole’s receipt in his pocket. Or was it his own?”
“Don’t think so. He didn’t live anywhere near Red Lion Square; lived miles away, in Shoreditch. I checked yesterday afternoon. Nobody around Holborn had ever seen or heard of him—not on the streets, not in the pub. Far as I can see, he never met Albert Cole or had anything to do with him. The more I think of it, the less sense it makes. Slingsby was a thief, but why would anybody steal a receipt for socks? They’re only worth a few pence. Nobody keeps that sort of thing more than a day or two, if that.”
Pitt chewed his lip. “So what was Slingsby doing in Bedford Square? Thieving?”
Tellman pulled the other chair over and sat down. “Probably. But the funny thing is, nobody’s seen Cole either. He’s disappeared as well. His things were left in his room and his rent is paid up, but nobody’s seen him on his patch or in the Bull and Gate. But he was there on Monday, when Slingsby was in his usual haunts as well. We are definitely dealing with two different men who only happen to look alike.”
“And Slingsby was found dead with Cole’s receipt in his pocket,” Pitt added. “Did he take it from Cole for some reason we haven’t thought of? Or did someone else, some third party we don’t know about, take it from Cole and give it to Slingsby? And if so, why?”
“Maybe there’s some stupid little reason we haven’t thought of,” Tellman said without meaning it. He was just casting around hopefully. “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with why Slingsby was killed.”
“And why he had General Balantyne’s snuffbox in his pocket,” Pitt added. “General Balantyne was being blackmailed ….”
Tellman was startled. His opinion of Balantyne was poor, as it was of all privileged men like him, but it was a contempt for those who took from society more than they put in and who assumed an authority they had not earned. It was something most people accepted, and it was certainly not a crime.
“What did he do?” he asked, tilting his chair back a little.
A quick flare of anger crossed Pitt’s face, and suddenly