Death in the Devil's Acre - Anne Perry [81]
He was short of breath. The pain in his side was sharper. It seemed a mile to the lighted street and traffic. The ghostly rings of the gas lamps were always ahead. They never drew level.
“Now then! Were you goin’ in such an almighty ’urry then?” An arm came out and caught hold of him.
In a moment of panic, he tried to raise his hand and strike the man, but the arm was leaden. “What?”
It was a constable—a constable on the beat.
“Oh, thank God!” he exclaimed. The man’s face grew enormous and vacant, shining in the mist like the gas lamps.
“’Ere, guv, you look rough, wot’s the matter wiv yer? Eh? ’Ere! You got blood all over yer side! I think as I’d better get yer to an ’orspital right quick! Don’t want yer passin’ out on me. ’Ere! ’Old up a bit longer. Cabbie! Cabbie!”
Through a haze of swinging lights and numbing cold Pitt felt himself bundled into a hansom and jolted through the streets, then helped gingerly down and through a labyrinth of bright rooms. He was stripped of his clothes, examined, swabbed with something that stung abominably, stitched through flesh that was mercifully still anesthetized by the original blow, bandaged and dressed, then given a fiery drink that scorched his throat and made his head muzzy. At last he was courteously accompanied home. It was midnight.
The following morning, he woke up so sore he could barely move, and it was a moment before he could remember why. Charlotte was standing over him, her hair pulled back untidily, her face pale.
“Thomas?” she said anxiously.
He groaned.
“You were stabbed,” she said. “They told me it isn’t very deep, but you’ve lost quite a lot of blood. Your jacket and shirt are ruined!”
He smiled in spite of himself. She was very pale indeed. “That’s terrible. Are you sure they’re completely ruined?”
She sniffed furiously, but the tears ran down her face and she put her hands up to cover them. “I will not cry! It’s your own stupid fault. You’re a perfect idiot! You sit there as pompous as a churchwarden and tell me what I must and must not do, and then you go into the Acre all by yourself asking dangerous questions and get stabbed.” She took one of his big handkerchiefs from the dresser and blew her nose hard. “I don’t suppose for a moment you even saw the slasher after all that—did you!”
He hitched himself up a little, wincing at the pain in his side. Actually, he was not at all sure it was the Acre slasher who had attacked him. It could have been any group of cutpurses prepared for a fight.
“And I expect you’re hungry,” she said, stuffing the handkerchief into her apron pocket. “Well, the doctor said a day in bed and you’ll be a lot better.”
“I’ll get up—”
“You’ll do as you’re told!” she shouted. “You’ll not get out of that bed till I tell you you may! And don’t you argue with me! Just don’t you dare!”
It was three days before he was strong enough to return to the police station, tightly bandaged and fortified with a flask of rather expensive port wine. The wound was healing, and although it was still painful, he was able to move about. Meanwhile the threads of the Devil’s Acre murders had drawn closer in his mind, and he felt compelled to return to the case.
“I’ve put other men on it,” Athelstan assured him, with a worried gesture. “All I can spare.”
“And what have they come up with?” Pitt asked, for once permitted—even pleaded with—to sit in the big padded chair instead of standing. He enjoyed the sensation and leaned back, spreading his legs. It might never happen again.
“Nothing much,” Athelstan admitted. “Still don’t know what tied those four men together. Don’t know why Pinchin went to the Acre, for that matter. Are you sure it’s not a lunatic, Pitt?”
“No, I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. A doctor could find a dozen occupations in the Acre if he wasn’t particularly scrupulous.”
Athelstan winced with distaste. “I presume so. But which of them did Pinchin practice, and for whom? Do you think he procured these well-bred women for Max that you insist he had?