Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [91]
“Don’t know,” Pitt admitted, looking at the kitten stretching out and curling its claws into the cushion, pulling the threads.
“Hector!” the superintendent said amiably. “Don’t do that.” The kitten disregarded him totally and kept on kneading the cushion. “Taken from ’is mother too early, poor little devil,” the superintendent continued. “Suckles on my shirts till I’m wet through. What’s ’E supposed to ’ave done, Urban, or shouldn’t I ask?”
“Borrowed money from a usurer, maybe,” Pitt replied.
The superintendent pushed out his lip. “Not like ’im,” he said thoughtfully. “Always careful with ’is money, that I know of. Never threw it around. In fact I sometimes wondered what ’E did wif it. Never drank nor spent it on women, like some. Didn’t gamble, so far as I ’eard. What’s ’E got in debt for? Inherited an ’Ouse from ’is uncle, so it in’t that. In fact that’s why ’E moved to Bow Street—’ouse is in Bloomsbury. Are you sure about this debt?”
“No,” Pitt admitted. “His name was on the usurer’s books for a very considerable sum. Urban denies it.”
“I don’t like the way you say ‘was.’ You mean the usurer is dead?”
“Yes.” There was no use trying to deceive the big, good-natured man. He might take in stray kittens, but he was far from naive when it came to judging men. Pitt had seen the clear, clever eyes under the lazy stare.
“Murdered?”
“Yes. I’m following up all the debtors—or those that the lists say are debtors. So far all of them on the first list admit to owing very small amounts. Those on the second list deny it. But he was known to be a blackmailer …” He left the question open, an unfinished sentence.
“And you think he may have been blackmailing Urban?”
“I don’t know—but I need to.”
The kitten stretched, rolled over and curled up in a ball, purring gently.
“Can’t ’elp you,” the superintendent said with a little shake of his head. “ ’E weren’t always a popular man. Too free with ’is opinions, even when they wasn’t asked for, an’ got some airy-fairy tastes what in’t always appreciated by all. But that’s by the way. It’s no crime.”
“May I see the records of his main cases, and speak to a few of his colleagues?”
“O’ course. But I know what goes on in my station. You won’t find anything.”
And so it proved. Pitt spoke to several of the men who had worked with Urban in the six years he had been in Rotherhithe, and found a variety of opinions from affection to outright dislike, but none of them saw in him either dishonesty or any failure of prosecution that was not easily accounted for by the circumstances. Some considered him arrogant and were not afraid to say so, but gave not the slightest indication they thought him corrupt.
Pitt left in the warm, still early evening and came back over the river north again on the long journey home. He felt tired and discouraged, and underneath was a growing unease. The Rotherhithe station had offered nothing about Urban that suggested he was dishonest. Everything Pitt learned created the outline of a diligent, ambitious, somewhat eccentric man respected by his colleagues but not often liked, a man whom no one knew closely, and whom a few conservative, small-visioned men were tacitly pleased to see apparently in trouble.
And Pitt was sure in his own mind that Urban was concealing something to do with Weems’s death, and it was something Pitt had said which had made the connection in his mind. But was it the questions about Weems and his debtors, or could it be as it appeared, the extraordinary case of Horatio Osmar and his unaccountable release by Carswell?
He was obliged to travel on several omnibuses, changing at intervals as each one turned from his route back to Bloomsbury. At one change he saw a tired, grubby-faced little girl selling violets, and on impulse he stopped and bought four bunches, dark purple, nestling in their leaves, damp and sweet smelling.
He strode along his own street rapidly, but with an unfamiliar mixture of emotions. It was habit steeped in years that his home was the sweetest place he knew. All warmth and certainty