Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [111]
“So you do not believe it is anarchists suddenly burst into open violence?”
“No, Sir Garnet, everything points away from it.” Drummond looked down at his sodden boots, then up again. “But what it is, I don’t know.”
“Dear God, this is terrible.” Royce closed his eyes in a moment of deep distress. “Here are we, you and I, the government and the law of the land, and we cannot protect ordinary people going about their lawful business at the heart of our city! Who will be next?” He looked up and stared at Drummond with brilliant eyes, almost silver in the light, now the rain had stopped outside. “You? Me? I tell you, nothing on earth would persuade me to walk home alone across Westminster Bridge after dark! And I feel a guilt, Mr. Drummond! All my life I have striven to make wise decisions, to develop strength of will and judgment, so that I might protect those weaker than myself, those it is given me both by God and by nature to care for. And here I am, incapable of exercising my own privileges and obligations because some lunatic is loose committing murder, apparently whenever he pleases!”
Drummond looked as if he had been struck, but he did not flinch. He opened his mouth to speak, but Royce cut in before he could find words.
“Good heavens, man, I’m not blaming you! How on earth does one find a random madman? It could be anybody! I daresay by daylight he looks the same as you or I. Or he may be any half clad beggar hunched in any doorway from here to Mile End or Woolwich or anywhere else. There are nearly four million people in the city. But we’ve got to find him! Do you know anything? Anything at all?”
Drummond let out his breath softly. “We know that he chooses his time with great care, because in spite of all the people around the Embankment and the entrance to the Houses of Parliament, the street vendors, prostitutes, and cabdrivers, no one has seen him.”
“Or someone is lying!” Royce said quickly. “Perhaps he has an accomplice.”
Drummond looked at him thoughtfully. “That supposes a kind of sanity—at least, on the part of one of them. Why should anyone aid in such a grotesque and profitless act unless they were paid?”
“I don’t know,” Royce admitted. “Perhaps the accomplice is really the instigator? He keeps a madman to commit his crimes for him?”
Drummond shivered. “It is grotesque, but I suppose it is possible. Someone driving a cab across the bridge, by night, with a madman inside, whom he lets loose just long enough to commit murder, then removes him from the scene before the body is discovered? At a good pace he could be along the Embankment, or going south up the Waterloo Road, and indistinguishable from a thousand others in a matter of moments—before the body is discovered or crime known. It’s hideous.”
“Indeed it is,” Royce said huskily.
They stood in silence for a moment or two. Outside, the eaves dripped steadily and the shadows of mourners leaving passed across the doorway.
“If there is anything I can do,” Royce said at last, “anything at all that will help, call on me. I mean it, Drummond—I will go to any lengths to catch this monster before he kills again.”
“Thank you,” Drummond accepted quietly. “If there is any way, I shall call on you.”
11
PITT LEFT THE FUNERAL and walked in the rain all the way down to the Albert Embankment. He was halfway across the Lambeth Bridge before he finally caught a cab back to the police station at Bow Street. It gave him time to think before he should see Micah Drummond again. What Garnet Royce had said was fearful—but it could not be discarded. It was possible some conspiracy existed, some person was using a madman to achieve his ends, taking him to the bridge, directing him to his victim, and then driving him away again afterwards. They had long ago questioned every cabby with a license to drive a carriage of any sort in London, and learned nothing of value. In the beginning it was conceivable one might have lied, for bribe or out of fear, but with three murders it was no longer a serious thought.
Every effort to discover a sane motive for all