Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [145]
“Yes sir, of course.”
Lambert was little use. As Drummond had expected, he was still deeply shocked at the death in such a manner of one of his own men. He had questioned everyone in the lodging house, everyone in the street, all the men who had worked with Paterson or known him personally. He was no nearer finding who killed him.
But he did report to Pitt the record of Paterson’s police duties for the last week of his life, and after tedious piecing together of testimony, times, places, Pitt realized there were considerable gaps in the account of his days when no one knew where he had been.
Pitt guessed he had gone to retrace his entire original investigation of the Farriers’ Lane murder.
He began his own pursuit of Paterson by going back to the theater doorman. It was curiously dead at this time of the day; no color, only the gray daylight, no laughter and the shiver of expectancy before a performance, no actors or musicians entertaining the crowds, just women with mops sitting on the steps with the dregs of a cup of tea, reading the leaves.
Pitt found Wimbush in his small room just inside the stage door entrance.
“Yes sir. Mr. Paterson came back again.” Wimbush screwed up his eyes in thought. “That’d be about six days ago, or maybe five.”
“What did he say to you?”
“All about the murder o’ Mr. Blaine, sir. Jus’ like you did. An’ I told ’im just the same as I told you.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothin’. ’e just thanked me, and then went orf.”
“Where to, do you know?”
“No sir, ’e din’t say.”
But Pitt did not need the doorman to tell him. He spoke to Tamar Macaulay’s dresser, who told him the same. Paterson had seen her, and asked all the old questions. She had given him the same replies.
Pitt left the theater and turned north, towards Farriers’ Lane. It was late afternoon on a cold, gray day with the pavements gleaming wet from the rain and the wind chasing rubbish along the gutters.
He passed beggars, street traders, peddlers and those with nothing to do but stand around huddled against the cold, looking for a place to shelter for the night, doorways to sleep in. A brazier with a one-armed man selling roasted chestnuts was a welcome glow in the gloom, and a small island of warmth. There were a dozen men standing around it.
It reminded Pitt of the men who had been idling near Farriers’ Lane on the night Kingsley Blaine was murdered. He knew their names. They were there on the original records he had read in the beginning. He had read it again, to remind himself.
There was little chance of finding any of them now. They could have moved to other areas, found a better way of life, or a worse one. They could be ill, or dead, or in prison. Mortality was high, and five years a long time.
Had Paterson bothered to look for them? Or for the urchin, Joe Slater?
Surely he would have gone to the flower seller first? If she was still there.
And yet as he was within a few hundred yards, Pitt found himself drawn to Farriers’ Lane.
He quickened his pace, striding over the wet cobbles with urgency, as though he might miss something if he hesitated. He turned the last corner and saw ahead of him, far on the left side, the narrow opening of Farriers’ Lane, a black slit in the wall. He slowed his step. He wanted to see it, and at the same time it repelled him. His stomach clenched, his feet were numb.
He stopped opposite it. As Paterson had said, the street lamp was about twenty yards away. The wind was whining in the eaves of the roofs above him and rattling an old newspaper along the road. The half-light was dimming and the gas in the lamps had already been lit. Still Farriers’ Lane was a dark gulf, impenetrable.
He stood roughly where the idlers had been that night and stared across the street. He could have seen a figure quite clearly, the darkness of a man walking would have been unmistakable. But unless he had stopped and faced him, under the light, he could not have seen his face.
He stepped out across the street and with faster beating pulse and a catch in his throat, went into Farriers’ Lane.
It was narrow, smooth