Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [112]
Yet with Etheridge dead, what reason had she to kill Sheridan? Except precisely that reason—that there was none—and perhaps by that means to establish her innocence. Could she have killed Hamilton by mistake, believing him to be Etheridge, and then killed Sheridan simply because it was senseless, to remove herself from suspicion? She would have to be a woman not only of passion but of terrifying coldness. He did not want to think so. In his mind sharp and unfeigned, unmarked by pretense or guilt, was an understanding of the pain of a woman who had lost all she valued, her last child.
There was nothing to do but return to the most basic, prosaic police work, rechecking everything, looking for the inconsistency, for the person who had seen something, recalled something.
Micah Drummond was already in his office when Pitt came up the stairs and knocked.
“Come in,” Drummond said quietly. He was standing by the fire waiting, warming himself and drying his wet clothes. His boots were dark with water and his trousers steamed gently. He moved sideways so Pitt might receive some of the fire’s warmth. It was a small gesture, but Pitt was touched by the graciousness of it more than by any words of praise or sympathy Drummond might have offered.
“Well?” Drummond asked.
“Back to the beginning,” Pitt replied. “Interview the witnesses again, the constables on the beat closest to the bridge, find the cabbies again, everyone who crossed the bridge or passed along either embankment within an hour of the crime, before or after. I’ll speak to all the M.P.s in the House on any of the three nights. We’ll question all the street vendors again.”
Drummond looked at him with a flicker of hope in his eyes. “You think we might still find something?”
“I don’t know.” Pitt would not patronize him with groundless optimism. “But it’s the best we have.”
“You’ll need at least six more constables—that’s all the men I can spare. Where do you want them?”
“They can question the cabbies, beat constables, and witnesses, and help with the M.P.s. I’ll start this afternoon, find the street vendors tonight.”
“I’ll see some of the M.P.s myself.” Reluctantly Drummond moved away from the fire and took his wet overcoat off the hook where he had hung it. “Where shall we begin?”
The long, chill afternoon’s work yielded nothing new. The following day Pitt began again, the only difference being that Charlotte had told him in a few sad words that the feeling between Barclay Hamilton and his father’s wife was not the jealousy or the loathing they had supposed, but a profound and hopeless love. It brought him no satisfaction, only a respect for the honor which had kept them apart over so many years, and a sharp and painful pity.
He was so suddenly grateful for his own good fortune that it was like a bursting inside him, a flowering so riotous there was barely room for all the blooms.
He found the flower seller near the bridge, a woman with broad hips and a weathered face. It was impossible to guess her age, it might have been a healthy fifty or a weary thirty. She had a tray of fresh violets, blue, purple, and white, and she looked at him hopefully when she saw his purposeful approach. Then she recognized him as the policeman who had questioned her before, and the light faded from her face.
“I can’t tell yer nuffin’ more,” she said before he spoke. “I sell flars ter them as wants ’em, an’ ’as the odd word wiv gennelmen as is civil, n’ more. I didn’t see nuffin’ w’en them men was murdered, poor souls, ’cept the same as I always sees, nor no cabbies stop, nor any workin’ girls, ’ceptin’ those I already told yer abaht. An’ Freddie wot sells ’ot pies an’ Bert as sells