Buckingham Palace Gardens - Anne Perry [150]
“No, poor stupid cow.” The boot boy shook his head. “’E spoke nice, but that don’t mean nothin’. Don’t even mean ’e got money, let alone sense. Some o’ them up-market toffs is the worst.”
“When did she go?”
“Gawd knows.”
“Didn’t you go after her?” Narraway snapped. “Later, if not then.”
The boot boy gave him a dirty look. “I’m ’ere ter ’elp business, not drive it away!”
Pitt knew that whether the boot boy had followed her or not—and he probably had—he was not about to admit it. He would have known roughly what had happened, and been very willing to keep it secret rather than help the police investigate the establishment. The quality trade they aspired to would take their patronage somewhere else rather than risk visiting a house that was the subject of any kind of police interest. In the service of survival he would have concealed the crime, had there been one. If they could find who had killed her themselves—and they would try—then they would execute their own justice. Pitt realized he should have told Narraway that before they came.
“Of course,” Pitt agreed aloud. “No one wants a Peeping Tom when they’ve taken a girl along the street a little. Who found her? You? Or should we ask someone else?”
“I…er…I dunno.”
Narraway glanced at Pitt, and was silent.
“It would be better,” Pitt began judiciously, “if we didn’t have to discuss this with anyone else. Let us just suppose you were unlucky enough to have been the one who found her. The wisest thing would be to move her somewhere else, wouldn’t it.” He said it as an observation of fact, not a question. “It all comes down to the same thing in the end. She’ll be found by police, if it makes any difference, which it doesn’t really. If it was a toff, they’re never going to find him. She’ll get a decent burial, and your business is safe. Isn’t that right?”
Narraway’s eyes widened very slightly in the lamplight. In the distance a cart rumbled by them, the horses’ hoofs louder on the cobbles in the comparative stillness of the night.
“Yeah,” the boot boy agreed reluctantly.
“So who did you find to take her away for you? I don’t suppose you have any idea what they did with her?”
“I don’t wanter know!” The boot boy’s voice rose indignantly.
“Of course you don’t. Well, she will get a decent burial, I can promise you that.”
The boot boy looked relieved, his sallow face easing a little.
“In return I would like to know exactly what the man looked like who took her away, and how he took her, cart, carriage, wagon, dray?”
“Cart,” the boot boy said immediately.
“What color horse?”
“What?”
“You heard me! What color was the horse?”
The boot boy swore under his breath. “Gawd! I dunno! There was Kate lyin’ in the street wif ’er neck broke. An’ yer think I’m carin’ wot color the bleedin’ carter’s ’orse is? Light color—gray, summink like that. ’Oo cares?”
“And the carter?” Pitt persisted.
“Scruffy old devil. I gave ’im a guinea ter put ’er somewhere else, at least a mile away. Best the other side o’ the river.”
“Can you remember his face?”
“No, I bleedin’ can’t!” He swore again under his breath.
“Try. It’s worth your guinea back.”
“Sharp face, wi’ eyes like coals,” the boy said instantly. “An’ ’e ’ad mittens on ’is ’ands, I remember that.”
“Thank you.” Pitt turned to Narraway. “Have you got a guinea?”
Narraway also swore, rather more fluently, but he produced the guinea.
They returned to the police station and mustered all the men they could, from that station and the two on either side. They spent all night asking, probing, questioning to trace the passage of the cart from Bessborough Street to Buckingham Palace. By dawn they were certain of it.
Pitt and Narraway stood by the magnificent wrought-iron railings, the first light tipping the gold on them, the wind rustling in the leaves across the park. Pitt was so tired his limbs ached, and his eyes felt full of hot grit.
A troop of Horse Guards came out of the Palace yard, uniforms magnificent, harness and spurs gleaming in the broadening light, horses’ hoofs crisp on the road. They looked like