Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [93]
He arrived at Bow Street station later in the morning than usual to find an atmosphere of uncharacteristic tension. The desk sergeant looked harassed, his face was pink and he kept moving papers from one place to another without adding anything to them, or apparently reading them. His top tunic button was undone but still he looked as if the neck were too tight. Two constables glanced at each other nervously and shifted from one foot to another, until the sergeant barked at them to get out and find something to do. An errand boy came in with a newspaper and as soon as he was paid, fled out past Pitt, bumping into him and forgetting to apologize.
“What is it?” Pitt said curiously. “What’s happened?”
“Questions in the ’Ouse,” the desk sergeant replied with a tight lip. “ ’E’s ’oppin’ mad.”
“Who’s hopping mad?” Pitt asked, still with more curiosity than apprehension. “What’s happened, Dilkes?”
“Mr. Urban called the solicitors to bring up the case against Mr. Osmar again, and ’E got wind of it and complained to ’is friends in the ’Ouse o’ Commons.” Awe mixed with disgust in his face. “Now they’re askin’ questions about it, and some of ’em is sayin’ as Crombie and Allardyce lied ’emselves sick in court, an’ the police is corrupt.” He shook his head and his voice became anxious. “There’s some awful things being said, Mr. Pitt. There’s enough folk undecided as to if we’re a good thing or not as it is. an’ then all that bad business in Whitechapel last autumn, an’ we never got the madman what done it, an’ folks sayin’ as if we were any good we’d ’ave got ’im. an’ all the trouble over the commissioner too. an’ now this. We don’t need trouble like this, Mr. Pitt.” He screwed up his face. “What I don’t understand is how it all came up over summat so, beggin’ yer pardon, damn silly.”
“Neither do I,” Pitt agreed.
“So ’E was ’avin’ a bit o’ ’anky-panky in the park. ’E should ’a known better than to do it in public, like. But ’e’s a gennelman, and gennelmen is like that. Who cares, if ’e’d just said yes, ’E was a bit naughty, sorry, an’ it won’t ’appen again, me lud. Only now we got questions asked in the ’ouses o’ Parliament, an’ next thing the ’ome secretary ’isself will want ter know wot we bin doing.”
“I don’t understand it myself,” Pitt agreed. But he was thinking more of Addison Carswell, and becoming uncomfortably aware of the general feeling against the police, especially as the desk sergeant had said, since the riots in Trafalgar Square known as Bloody Sunday, and then last autumn the failure to catch the Whitechapel murderer, followed almost immediately by the hasty resignation of the commissioner of police after a very short term of office and amid some unpleasantness. The thought kept intruding into his mind that Carswell and Urban were both on Weems’s list for very good reasons, which only too probably spoke of blackmail. And he still had to find Latimer, the third name.
“Is Mr. Urban in?” he asked aloud.
“Yessir, but—”
Before the desk sergeant could add his caveat, Pitt thanked him and strode along the passage to Urban’s door and knocked.
“Come!” Urban said absently.
Pitt went in and found him sitting behind his desk staring at the polished and empty surface. He was surprised to see Pitt.
“Hello. Got your murderer yet?”
“No,” Pitt said, disconcerted that with his very first words Urban had made it impossible for him to be subtle or indirect. “No I haven’t.”
“Well what can I do for you?” Urban’s face was totally innocent. He regarded Pitt out of clear blue eyes, waiting for an answer.
Pitt had no alternative but to be completely frank, or else retreat altogether, and the whole exercise would become pointless if he were to do that.
“Where were you on Tuesday two weeks ago?” he asked. “Late evening.”
“Me?” If Urban were feigning amazement he was doing it supremely well. “You think I killed your usurer?”
Pitt sat down in the chair. “No,” he said honestly. “But your name was on his list, and the only way I can eliminate you