Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [56]
It was too late now. But tomorrow he would have to go to Clerkenwell police station and request at least one other man to help him. Carswell must be watched all the time, day and night.
He turned and put his arms around Charlotte, touching her hair soft over her shoulder, heavy and warm, smelling faintly of the lavender water she liked. He smiled and put his guilt behind him. She stirred slightly and moved a little closer.
Innes continued to investigate the borrowers on Weems’s first list, and in the small room in the Clerkenwell station he told Pitt of seven who were in deep distress with nothing else to pawn, no food and owing rent, no clothes but those they stood in, hollow eyes filled one moment with resignation, the next with a sudden flame of anger and the will to fight. None of these few could find anyone to swear as to their presence somewhere else when Weems was killed. Innes told Pitt their names with a deep unhappiness. He made little effort to hide his own wish that it should be one of the “nobs” who was guilty. He stood in the Clerkenwell station in the room they had lent Pitt, his thin body stiff, his shoulders squared, looking at Pitt a little defiantly.
It would have been clumsy to express understanding in words. The feeling was both too profound and too delicate: a mixture of pity; guilt for not suffering with them, for seeing what should have been private; and fear that in the end they would have to arrest one of them and take him to be tried and hanged, exactly as if they had understood nothing.
“Then we’d better follow Mr. Carswell very thoroughly,” Pitt said with no particular expression in his voice, and looking a little beyond Innes’s stiff face. “We’ll need another man. Can you see to that?”
“Why would a magistrate borrer money from a swine like Weems, sir?” Innes said without relaxing in the slightest. “It don’t make no sense.”
“He probably didn’t,” Pitt agreed. “I expect it was blackmail.”
“Is that wot ’appened to your nob?” Innes asked baldly, his stare unwaveringly in front of him.
“Yes,” Pitt admitted equally baldly. “But there’s no crime involved, only a misjudgment of character. A woman became infatuated with him and took her own life. It would be a scandal, and unpleasant for his family.”
“ ’Ardly compares wiv what I’ve seen.” Innes was still grudging. He stood stiffly beside the table. Pitt was leaning on the only chair.
“No—which is why I don’t think he killed Weems. He didn’t have enough to lose. But maybe Carswell did.”
“I’ll see ter gettin’ ’im followed.” Innes relaxed a little at last. “What times do yer want ter do it yerself, sir? Or would yer like two men so they can do it all?”
“One will do,” Pitt conceded. “I’ll do it during the day. I’ve nothing better to do.”
Innes forgot himself for a moment.
“What about the nob o’ yours, sir? Even though ’e’s not afraid o’ scandal, if ’E were prepared to pay, maybe ’E got tired of it, and decided to get rid o’ Weems. ’Specially if Weems got greedier and upped ’is price?”
“I have thought of that,” Pitt said very levelly, his voice not exactly cold, but very precise. “I will pursue it if I exhaust the other possibilities.”
Innes opened his mouth, about to apologize, then some element of pride intruded—or perhaps it was a sense of dignity and a desire to maintain a certain relationship—and he remained silent.
“Then we’ll look at the other debtors on the second list,” Pitt went on. “Mr. Urban and Mr. Latimer.”
“I could start on them right away, sir,” Innes offered.
“No,” Pitt said rather too quickly, then seeing Innes’s face, felt obliged to explain. “We’ll leave them till we have to—Urban at least. He’s a colleague.”
“Whose colleague?” Innes did not yet understand.