Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [90]
He stayed a few minutes longer, examining the pictures more closely, seeing the brushwork, the imagination and the skill that had gone into them. Then he went over to the desk and opened it in order to satisfy the waiting housekeeper that he was indeed looking for information of a sort she could understand. He shuffled through a couple of papers, read one, and closed the drawer. Then he swung around to face her. She looked faintly surprised that he should be finished so soon.
“You all done then?” she said with a frown.
“Yes thank you. It was only a small thing, and easily found.”
“Oh—well then you’d best be gone. I got work to do. Mr. Urban’s not the only gennelman as I see after. Mind my step as you go out. Don’t go dragging your feet over it. I just done that, I did.”
Pitt stepped over it carefully and went on down the path and out of the gate. The beauty of the pictures, the courage to back such individual and daring taste should have pleased him. Ordinarily it would have; but this time, knowing Urban’s salary, and that he was lying over something, he found it deeply depressing. Was Urban so wooed by loveliness, so caught by the collector’s fever, that he had borrowed from Weems, and then realized he could never hope to repay? Or was there something even uglier: had he obtained the money in some other way, dishonest, even corrupt, and Weems had learned of it and blackmailed him?
Pitt lengthened his stride along the hot, dusty street, passing an errand boy whistling between his teeth, swinging a bag, then two old women standing in the middle of the footpath, heads together, gossiping. At the end of the street he came into the main thoroughfare and stood waiting for the omnibus, his mind moving from one unhappy thought to another.
He knew what he must do next, and he chose a series of omnibuses because he was in no hurry to get there. Before coming to Bow Street, Urban had worked in Rotherhithe, south of the river. Now Pitt must go to his old station and ask his colleagues about him, what manner of man he was, and try to read between the loyalty of their answers the truth of what they knew, or suspected. He would have to look through his previous cases, such as were distinctly his. It was not so clear-cut with uniformed men. And lastly he would have to find the people on the edge of the criminal underworld who had most dealings with the police and ask them, learn what Urban’s reputation had been, see if he could find there the ends of the threads which would lead him to the money that had bought those wild and lovely pictures.
He stopped and had a brief luncheon at a public house, but his thoughts were too much engrossed in Urban to enjoy it. By two o’clock he was in the Rotherhithe police station, explaining his inquiries to the superintendent, a large man with a lugubrious smile and a hot untidy office full of piles of paper. In a patch of sun on the floor a small ginger-and-white kitten lay stretched out asleep on a cushion, every now and then its body twitching in some ecstatic dream.
The superintendent’s eyes followed Pitt’s.
“Found ’im in the alley,” he said with a smile. “Poor little beggar was starvin’ an’ sickly. Don’t think ’e’d ’ave lasted more’n another day or two. ’ad ter take ’im in. Need a mouser anyway. Can’t ’ave the station overrun wi’ the little beggars. ’e’ll be good fer that when ’e’s a bit bigger. Thinks about it already, by the looks of ’im.”
The kitten gave another twitch and made a little sound in its sleep.
“What can I do for yer?” the superintendent said in a businesslike manner, pushing a pile of papers off a chair to make a place for Pitt to sit down. The cushion remained for the kitten. Pitt had no objection.
“Samuel Urban,” Pitt replied, looking at the little animal.
“Engagin’ little beggar, in’t ’e?” the superintendent said mildly.
“What did you think of him?”
“Sam Urban? Liked ’im. Good policeman.” His face puckered with