Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [180]
“Good afternoon, Inspector. What may I do for you on this occasion? I hope you have no further disasters to report.” He said it with a smile, but there was no ease in his face, and certainly no humor. He looked tired; the purplish smudges under his eyes and the creases in his face from his nose to the corners of his lips were deeper, his mouth set in harder lines. Pitt remembered how harsh the news of Harrimore’s arrest would be to him. The Godman appeal had been one of the achievements of his career. The dignity and assurance with which he had conducted it had earned him considerable praise both from the general public and, which would be sweeter, from his peers. Now, when it was too late, he was proved tragically wrong.
“No,” Pitt said quietly. “No, there is nothing new, thank God. I am still back with the first crime for which I was called in. I am no further forward in learning who killed Mr. Stafford than I was at the beginning.”
“Frustrating for you,” Livesey remarked, almost without expression. “I have no idea how I can help you. I know nothing more than I did then.”
“No sir, I had not held any hope that you did. But perhaps there are questions I omitted to ask which I might put to you now?”
“Of course.” Livesey sat down heavily in the chair close to the fire, which must have been lit long before he returned from court. He indicated the other chair opposite, not so much in an invitation as a request that Pitt should cease to stand over him. “Please ask what you must. I will try to be of service to you.” He sounded tired and as if the courtesy cost him a considerable effort.
“Thank you, sir.” Pitt reclined less than comfortably. He did not bother to go over Stafford’s visit to Livesey earlier that day, and the proof that the flask was uncontaminated when Stafford left. They had already exhausted that. He started with their meeting at the theater.
“You first saw him in the foyer, you said?”
“That is correct, but I did not speak to him then. There was a considerable crush of people, and a great deal of noise, as I daresay you recall?”
“Yes, indeed.” Pitt remembered vividly the air of excitement and expectation, the raised voices, the constant, jostling movement. Conversation would have been difficult. “Where did you go from there?”
Livesey thought for a moment. “I started off up the stairs towards my box, then in the gallery I saw someone I knew and was about to stop for a word when he was accosted by a woman I find exceedingly tedious, so I changed my mind and went back down again for about five minutes, by which time they were gone. I went up to my box then, and sat down alone from that time until the curtain went up.” He shrugged his heavy shoulders very slightly. “Of course I saw several other people I knew, taking their seats, but I spoke to none of them. One cannot, without making a spectacle of oneself.” He searched Pitt’s face curiously. “Is this really of any service to you, Inspector?”
“Not so far,” Pitt admitted. “But it may be. Anyway, I know nowhere else to look.”
“It will be regrettable if you are obliged to leave the matter unresolved,” Livesey said with a curious, bitter twist to his mouth. “Not, I imagine, what you wish.”
“I have not reached that stage yet.”
There was nothing so crude as disbelief in Livesey’s voice, or in the very gentle arching of his eyebrows. “Well, I shall certainly relate all that I remember of that evening, if you feel it may assist. You were in the box on the far side of him, one or two spaces away, as I recall. No doubt you saw all that I did.”
“I don’t mean anything of what happened in the box,” Pitt said quickly, then as he saw Livesey’s expression, realized his error. “No, that is foolish,” he corrected himself before Livesey could do so. “I do not know what is relevant. If you saw anything at all, please tell me.”
Livesey shrugged, and this time there was definitely humor in his face—dry, entirely intellectual, but very real.
“Of course. Naturally I did not spend the majority of the