Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [132]
“Miss Macaulay,” he said aloud, breaking the eerie half silence of their island of unreality. All around them the theater was alive with sounds of preparation. “If it was not Mr. Godman killed Kingsley Blaine, who was it?”
She turned and faced him with a sudden flash of humor. In the half-light it was exaggerated, and oddly without malice.
“I don’t know. I suppose Devlin O’Neil.”
“Over the quarrel about a wager?” Pitt allowed his disbelief to show.
“Over Kathleen Harrimore,” she corrected. “Perhaps the passion sprang from his feeling for her, and the knowledge that Kingsley was betraying her with me.” A shadow of remorse passed over her face and unmistakable pain. “And it may have crossed his mind that Kathleen stood to inherit Prosper Harrimore’s estate, which is very considerable. And of course to have an excellent and assured living in the meantime.” She turned around to meet his eyes. “You think it is vicious of me to accuse him? I don’t think that it is—you asked me who else. I don’t believe it was Aaron. I never will.”
Pitt did not argue. There was nothing else to say. He thanked her and took his leave to seek the urchin who was the one person who had seen the murderer’s face, albeit in the shadows, and had heard his voice.
But although he searched every avenue he could think of, through police records, the general knowledge of the constables in Lambert’s station, his own contacts in the streets and the fringes of the semicriminal underworld, he had no success. There were whispers, false trails, information that turned out to be untrue, or too late. Joe Slater apparently did not wish to be found.
It was on the third day, gray and cold with a knife-edge wind out of the east, before Pitt at last found him in Seven Dials, next to a stall selling secondhand boots. He was gangling, thin and fair-haired, his face wary and full of suspicion.
“I don’t remember,” he said flatly, his eyes narrow. “I said all I know when yer asked me afore! Now leave me alone! Yer ’anged the poor sod! Wot else d’yer want? I dunno nuffink more!”
And that was all Pitt could get from him. He refused to discuss it again. He was angry, bitterness deep in his face.
Pitt was going up the steps into the police station when he met Lambert coming down, his face white, his eyes hollow with shock. He stopped abruptly, almost bumping into Pitt.
“Paterson’s dead,” he said thickly, stumbling over his tongue. “Hanged! Someone hanged him! Judge Livesey just found him!”
9
PITT FOLLOWED LAMBERT into the hansom and sat cold and shocked beside him while they struggled through the traffic across the Battersea Bridge towards Sleaford Street and the house where Paterson had lodgings.
“Why?” Lambert said more to himself than to Pitt. He was hunched up, his collar high around his neck, half hiding his face, as though there were a bitter wind inside the cab. “Why? It makes no sense! Why kill poor Paterson? Why now?”
Pitt did not reply. The answer he thought of was that Paterson had learned, or remembered, some evidence which changed the verdict of the Farriers’ Lane case. Of course it was possible it was something else, another case, or even something personal, but that was on the edge of his mind, so faint it barely touched his thoughts.
The cab halted abruptly and the sound of shouting intruded, dislocating thought and making speech impossible.
Lambert shifted restlessly. The delay scraped his nerves raw. He leaned forward and demanded to know what it was that held them up, but no one heard him.
The cab swiveled around. A horse squealed. They jerked forward again.
Lambert swore.
Now they were moving at a steady trot.
“Why Paterson?” Lambert demanded again. “Why not me? I was in charge of