Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [125]
“And the Home Secretary has been down as well,” Drummond went on, looking at Pitt and chewing his lip. “He doesn’t want a lot of scandal.”
Pitt thought of the Inner Circle, but he said nothing. Drummond was as helpless as he was to fight against that. They might guess who belonged; they would not know unless favors were called for, and then it was too late.
“For God’s sake be careful, Pitt,” Drummond said urgently. “Be sure you are right!”
“Yes sir,” Pitt agreed obediently, rising to his feet. “Thank you.”
Pitt found Lambert early in the morning, still looking a little sleepy and far from pleased to see him.
“I can’t tell you anything more,” he said before Pitt asked.
“I assumed if you knew anything you would have said so at the time,” Pitt replied. He hoped he sounded casual, not condescending, but the thought flickered through his mind to wonder if Lambert were of the Inner Circle as well. But regardless, he hated checking another man’s work as if he expected to find an error of such magnitude, but he felt no alternative. He looked at Lambert’s rumpled, angry face. In his place he would have resented it, but as he had told Drummond, he would also have wanted to know. The uncertainty would have been worse, the lying awake at night turning it over and over in his mind till every mistake possible seemed real and guilt marred everything, confidence waned, all other decisions seemed flawed.
He looked at Lambert again, sitting uncomfortably in his chair. “Don’t you need to know?” he said frankly.
“I do know.” Lambert avoided his eyes. “The evidence was conclusive. I have enough present-day cases without investigating past ones that are closed.” He looked up, guilt and anger in his face. “We were a trifle hasty in the way we handled it, I give you that. I wouldn’t say every decision is the one I would make if I had it to do again, with more time for judgments, and nobody hounding me day and night for an arrest. But then I daresay you’d conduct a few of your cases differently if you had a second chance. Beginning with the Highgate case.”
“I would,” Pitt said quietly, remembering the second death with a sick unhappiness. “But I still intend to go over the Farriers’ Lane case. I don’t want to do it without you, but I will if you force me.” He met Lambert’s unhappy eyes. “If you are certain you were essentially correct, all I can do is prove that.” He leaned forward. “For heaven’s sake, man, I’m not trying to find fault with your procedure! All I want is to make sure of the facts. I know what it is like to work under pressure with the newspapers demanding an arrest in every issue, people shouting at you in the streets, the assistant commissioner breathing heavily and sending for reports every day, and the Home Secretary facing questions in the House of Commons.”
“Not like this case, you don’t,” Lambert said bitterly, but he looked slightly mollified.
“May I see the files and ask Paterson to help me find the witnesses again?” Pitt asked.
“You can speak to Paterson, but I can’t spare him to go ’round with you. He’ll tell you what he remembers. You’ll get the names from the files, and where they are now you’ll just have to find out. Not that it will do you any good,” he added, rising to his feet. “You’ll never find the layabouts who saw him come out of the lane. They’re probably half of them dead by now. The doorman’ll just say the same, and the urchin, who is the only one who really saw him, is totally unreliable, even if you can get hold of him. Still, the flower seller’s all right, and I’ll get Paterson for you.”
“Thank you,” Pitt accepted.
Lambert went to the door and pulled it open. He called for a sergeant and told him to fetch the files on the Farriers’ Lane case, then he came back into the room, looking at Pitt with a frown.
“If you find anything—I’d like you to tell me.”
“Of course.”
The sergeant came in before any further speech was necessary, and Pitt thanked him and took the files away to read in the small room Lambert