Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [147]
“Have you seen Paterson in the last few days?” he said again.
“Yeah. ’e came ’ere day afore yesterday,” she replied. “Asked me all the same questions again, ’e did. An’ I answered ’em the same. Then the clock struck.” She jerked her head backwards towards the building behind her. “An’ ’e asked me about that.”
“What about it? Wasn’t that the clock that told you he was here at a quarter to one?”
“That’s what Mr. Paterson said to me. ’e were positive it were. Couldn’t shake ’im. In the end I could see as it must ’ave bin. But first off I said as it were quarter past midnight, as that’s wot I thought it were! Yer see …” She squinted at him, making sure he was giving her his full attention. “Yer see, it’s a funny kind o’ clock, that. It don’t ring once fer the quarter past, twice fer the ’alf, an’ then three times for the quarter to, like most, but only once at the quarter to as well. ’e said it must ’a bin quarter past, cos of ’ow much I’d sold. But I first thought it were quarter to one, cos w’en that clock’s bin cleaned, like it ’as now, it rings funny. Makes a kind o’ whirring sound on the quarter to. Didn’t do it that night.” She opened her eyes very wide and suddenly frightened. “That means it were a quarter past midnight, don’t it?”
“Yes …” Pitt said very slowly, a strange almost choking feeling welling up inside him, excitement, horror and amazement at once. “Yes, it does mean that, if you are sure. Quite sure? Did you see him take the hansom?”
“Yeah—from that corner there.” She pointed.
“You sure?”
“ ’Course I’m sure! I told Mr. Paterson that an’ ’e looked sick. I thought ’e were goin’ ter pass right out in front o’ me. Poor bastard looked fit to drop dead ’isself.”
“Yes.” Pitt took out the rest of the change from his pocket and offered it to her, about two shillings and nine-pence halfpenny.
She stared at it incredulously, then put out her hand and grabbed it, pushing it deep into her pocket, holding her hand there.
“Yes, he would,” Pitt said quietly. “If Aaron Godman bought flowers from you at quarter past midnight, and took a hansom cab straight home to Pimlico, then he could not have been the one who murdered Kingsley Blaine in Farriers’ Lane at half past.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head fractionally. “Come ter that, I don’t suppose ’e could, poor little swine! Still, ’e’s ’anged now—can’t bring ’im back. God rest ’im.”
10
PITT ARRIVED HOME a little before eleven o’clock, wet through from the steady rain, his face white, hair plastered over his brow. He took off his outer clothes in the hall and hung them on the hook, but the weight of the water in them pulled them off, and they lay in a sodden heap on the linoleum. He ignored them and went down the corridor towards the kitchen and the warmth of the stove where he could take off his soaking boots and thaw out his feet.
Charlotte met him at the kitchen door, her face startled and her hair loose around her shoulders. She had obviously been asleep in the rocking chair waiting for him.
“Thomas? Oh, you’re wet through! What on earth have you been doing? Come in! Come—” Then she saw his face, the expression in his eyes. “What is it? What’s happened? Is—is somebody else dead?”
“In a way.” He slumped down in the chair beside the stove and began to unlace his boots.
She knelt in front of him and started on the other one.
“What do you mean, ‘in a way’?”
“Aaron Godman. He didn’t kill Blaine,” he replied.
She stopped, her fingers curled around the wet laces, staring up at him.
“Who did?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t him. The flower seller was wrong about the time, and Paterson discovered it the day he died. Maybe he knew who it was, and that was why he was killed.”
“How can she have been wrong about the time? Didn’t they question her properly?”
He told her about the clock, and the malfunction when it was cleaned. She finished undoing his boots, took them off and put them close to the stove to dry out, then his socks, and rubbed his frozen feet with a warm towel. He wriggled his toes in exquisite