Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [117]
Three days later, he received word from a police station in a little town in Devon that Abigail Winters had gone there to stay with a cousin, and was alive and in every appearance of health. The one girl at the brothel who could write had told him where she was, but he had not accepted her unsubstantiated word. He had telegraphed six police districts himself, and the second reply gave him the answer he wanted. According to the constable whose careful, unaccustomed wording he read, Abigail had retired to the country for her lungs, which suffered from the London fog. She thought the air in Devon would suit her better, being milder and free from the smoke of industry.
Pitt stared at the paper. It was ridiculous. It came from a small country town; there would be little market there for her trade, and she knew no one but a distant relative—a female at that. Doubtless she would be back in London within a year, as soon as the Waybourne case was forgotten.
Why had she gone? What was she afraid of? That she had lied, and if she stayed in London someone would press her until it was discovered? Pitt felt he knew already; the only thing he did not know was how it had come about. Had someone paid her to lie—or had it been a slow process through questioning by Gillivray? Had she realized—by implication, gesture, guess— what he wanted, and, in trade for some future leniency, given it to him? He was young, keen, more than personable. He needed a prostitute who had venereal disease. How hard had he looked, and how easy had he been to satisfy once he had found someone, anyone—who filled that need?
It was a shocking thought, but Gillivray would not have been the first man to seize a chance for evidence to convict someone he sincerely believed to be guilty of an appalling crime, a crime likely to occur again and again if the offender was not imprisoned. There was a deep, natural desire to prevent hideous crime, especially when one has only recently seen the victims. It was easy to understand. Yet it was also inexcusable.
He called Gillivray into the office and told him to sit down.
“I’ve found Abigail Winters,” he announced, watching Gillivray’s face.
Gillivray’s eyes were suddenly bright and blurry. There was a heat inside him that robbed him of words. It was the guilt Pitt might not have found in an hour of interrogation, no matter how many of his suspicions he pressed or how many verbal traps he laid. Surprise and fear were so much more effective, putting the onus of reply on Gillivray before he had time to conceal the guilt in his eyes, to grasp what it was Pitt was saying.
“I see,” Pitt said quietly. “I would rather not believe you openly bribed her. But you did, tacitly, lead her into perjury, didn’t you? You invited her, and she accepted.”
“Mr. Pitt!” Gillivray’s face was scarlet.
Pitt knew what was coming, the rationalizations. He did not want to hear them because he knew them all, and he did not want Gillivray to make them. He had thought he disliked him, but now that it came to the moment, he wanted to save him from self-degradation.
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “I know all the reasons.”
“But, Mr. Pitt—”
Pitt held up a piece of paper. “There’s been a robbery, a lot of good silver taken. This is the address. Go and see them.”
Silently, Gillivray took it, hesitated a moment as though he would argue again, then turned on his heel and left, closing the door hard behind him.
11
PITT STOOD UNDER the new electric lights along the Thames Embankment and stared at the dark water brilliantly dancing in the reflections, then sliding away into obscurity. The round globes along the balustrade were like so many moons hung just above the heads of the elegant and fashionable as they paraded in the wintry