Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [10]
Innes shivered but kept his face stoically expressionless.
“There you are,” the attendant said cheerfully. “The late Mr. William Weems, as was. Of all the citizens of Clerkenwell, he’ll be one of the least missed.” He sniffed. “Sorry, gentlemen, p’r’aps I spoke out of turn. Shouldn’t cast aspersions at the dead—not decent, is it.” He sniffed again.
Pitt found the smell of death catching at his stomach, the wet stone, the carbolic, the sweet odor of blood. He wished to get it over with as quickly as possible.
He lifted the sheet off the body and looked at what remained of William Weems. He was a large man, flaccid in death now that the rigor had worn off and the muscles of his abdomen were relaxed and his limbs lay slack, but in life Pitt guessed him to have been quite imposing.
The manner of death was hideously apparent. The left half of his head had been blasted at close range by some sort of multiple missile, a gun with a very large barrel and loose bullets or even scrap metal. There was nothing left to judge what his appearance might have been, no ear or cheek or hairline, no eye. Pitt had seen many a constable sicken and faint at less. His own stomach tightened and beside him he heard Innes suck in his breath, but he forced himself to remember that death would have been instant, and what was left here on this table was simply the clay that used to be a man, nothing more; no pain, no fear inhabited it now.
He looked at the right side of the head. Here the features were intact. He could see what the large broad nose had been like, the wide mouth he could guess at, the heavy-lidded, greenish hazel eye was still open, but somehow inhuman now. It did not strike him as having been a pleasing face, although he knew it was unfair to judge in any manner of death, least of all this. He was ashamed of himself for feeling so little grief.
“A shotgun of some sort,” Innes said grimly. “Or one of them old-fashioned things they load at the muzzle, with all sorts o’ stuff, bits of iron fillings an’ the like. Very nasty.”
Pitt turned away from the body and back to Innes.
“I take it you didn’t find the gun?”
“No sir. At least I don’t think so. There’s an old-fashioned hackbut on the wall. I suppose ’E could ’ave used that, and ’ung it back up again.”
“Which means he didn’t bring it with him,” Pitt said doubtfully. “What does the doctor say?”
“Not a lot. ’E died some time yesterday evening, between eight an’ midnight ’E reckons. As you can see, it must ’a bin straightaway. Yer don’t ’ang around with a wound like that. No tellin’ at this time what distance away, but can’t ’a bin far, ’Cos the room in’t that big.”
“I suppose no one heard anything?” Pitt asked ruefully.
“Not a soul.” Innes smiled very slightly. “I doubt we’ll get a great deal o’ help from the locals. ’E weren’t a popular man.”
“I never knew a usurer who was.” Pitt took a last look at the pallid face, then allowed the attendant to cover it with the sheet again. “I suppose they’ll do a postmortem?”
“Yeah, but I dunno what for.” Innes pulled a face. “Plain enough what killed ’im.”
“Who found him?” Pitt asked.
“Feller what runs errands for ’im an’ does some clerking.” Innes wrinkled up his nose at the odor in the room. “If you don’t want anything more in ’ere, can we get on to Cyrus Street, sir?”
“Of course.” Pitt moved from the wet stone, carbolic and death with a sense of release. They thanked the morgue attendant and escaped out into the heat, dirt, noise, the gutters and horse