Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [35]
“I don’t know,” Innes said candidly. “It don’t make sense.”
“Only the facts.” The doctor shrugged expansively. “I just find the facts for you, gentlemen. You have to put them together. I can tell you he was shot with a terrible blast, close to his head, not more than four or five feet away—but maybe you know that from the size of the room anyway. And I picked two gold guinea pieces out of his brains—or what was left of them.”
“Thank you,” Pitt answered. “If there’s anything else please let us know immediately.”
“Can’t imagine what else there could be. But of course I’ll tell you.”
“I’m obliged. Good day.” And Pitt turned around and left, Innes close behind him.
Out in the street in the sun Innes sniffed hard and shook his head. “What now, sir? The list?”
“Yes,” Pitt said grimly. “I’m afraid so—poor devils.”
And it was even harder and more painful than he had foreseen. They spent the next three days going from one sparse uncarpeted worn-out house to another where frightened women answered the door, children clinging to their skirts, pale faced and barefooted.
“Yes?” the first woman said nervously. She was frightened of him because she was frightened of everyone who came to the door.
“Mrs. Colley?” he asked quietly, aware of the passersby, already curious, turning to stare.
She hesitated, then saw no way of escape, and she accepted defeat.
“Yes.” Her voice was flat and without hope. She still stood on the step, apparently it was better to her in spite of her neighbors’ stares. To allow him inside would leave her even more vulnerable, and her desperate poverty more exposed.
He did not know how to tell her who he was without frightening her even more.
“I’m Inspector Pitt, from Bow Street. This is Sergeant Innes—”
“I ’aven’t done nuffink!” Her voice shook. “Wot’s ’appened? W’y are you ’ere?”
The quickest answer was the least cruel.
“Someone your husband knows has been killed. You may be able to help us learn something about it…”
“I dunno nuffink.” Her white face and dull eyes held no guilt, no duplicity, only resignation to misery.
A rag and bone man pushed his cart past, his face turned towards her with interest.
“Is your husband in work, Mrs. Colley?” Pitt went on.
Her chin came up. “Yes ’E is. At Billingsgate, at the fish market. ’E don’t know nuffink about anyone bein’ dead.”
Innes glared at the rag and bone man, who increased his pace and disappeared around the corner into an alley.
“What did he do on Tuesday, Mrs. Colley?” Pitt pursued. “All day, please?”
Haltingly she told him, the child at her knees catching the fear in her voice and in her body and beginning to cry.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “If that’s true then there’s no need to concern yourself. I shall not be back.” He wished he could tell her that Weems was dead, and perhaps her debts would be forgotten, but that would be precipitate, and only raise hopes that might not be realized.
The next small, weary woman was different only in trivial ways; her eyes were brown, her hair grayer, her dress the same colorless cloth, washed and rewashed, patched in places, so thin it hung lank about her body. There was a dark bruise on her cheek. She did not know where her husband had been. His pleasures were few, and she thought he had been down the road at the Goat and Compasses public house. He had come home drunk and slept the night on the kitchen floor where he had fallen when he came home around midnight.
And so it went on, the cycle of wretchedness, born in poverty where there was little food, crowded houses with no drains and no water except from a standpipe down the street, sickness, no education and so the meanest work, and more poverty. And for many the only escape was in alcohol, where present pain was drowned into oblivion. And in drunkenness came violence, loss of work, the pawnshop or moneylender, and another slow step downward.
Pitt hated