Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [182]
“You are too hard on them, Pitt. Everyone believed him guilty. The evidence was overwhelming.”
“Why?” Pitt asked, his eyes meeting Pryce’s with challenge.
Pryce blinked. “I don’t understand you. What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Why was it overwhelming? What came first, the evidence or the belief? I begin to think perhaps it was the belief.”
Pryce sat down wearily. “Perhaps it was. We were all horrified, and a little frightened. You know the public is a savage animal when you disturb its deeper beliefs and awaken its fears. There is no purpose whatever in trying to reason with it, explain what you can do, and what you cannot, tell them how difficult it is. All they want is results. They do not care how you obtain them, they don’t want to know the details or the cost. But you are a policeman, you must know that. I don’t imagine they have left you uncriticized or harried over poor Stafford.”
“No,” Pitt said ruefully. “Although there hasn’t been a public outcry. It was a quieter crime. It lacked the horror. I suppose people feel that a judge is somehow different from themselves, and so the fear is a step removed, not personal. There is no unreasoning monster out there in the shadows crucifying people. Though certainly the Home Secretary has been down to chivvy us once or twice.”
Pryce crossed his legs and a faint flicker of amusement touched his mouth.
“You sound bitter, Pitt. What can I help you with? I really have no idea who killed Stafford, or why.”
“Neither have I,” Pitt said sourly. “I am reduced to going over the facts again—and again. Did you see him during the interval that evening?”
Pryce looked vaguely surprised, as if he had been expecting some difficult question.
“Yes. He was in the smoking room, talking to various people. I don’t think I can remember who. I spoke to him myself, but only briefly. Something of no meaning at all—the weather, or the latest cricket disaster, I think. I didn’t see him drink from the flask, if that is what you are hoping.”
“Did he have a glass in his hand?”
Pryce’s eyes widened. “Come to think of it, yes, he did. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Why does a man drink from a flask if he has a glass of whiskey in his hand?”
“A second one, I suppose,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “He did drink from the flask, because he drank the poison. It was in the flask when we tested it. That is about the only fact which is incontrovertible.”
“Well, there must be a limited number of people who could have put it there, by the mere physical facts,” Pryce said logically. “One can reduce their number, surely? Disregard motive, for the time being. It has to be someone who had access to the flask after he left Livesey, because both Livesey and his companion were seen to drink from it then, and they are both in perfect health. And yet it was in the flask when Stafford drank from it later, presumably in the theater. It could be someone in the interval, I suppose.”
“Who else was in the smoking room?”
“A couple of hundred people.”
“They didn’t all speak to Stafford. Can you recall the names of anyone who might have been close enough to him to have spoken to him, or seen what happened?”
Pryce sat silent for a moment or two, looking bleakly at Pitt.
“I remember the Honorable Gerald Thompson,” he said at last. “He has a voice that would break glass, and never stops talking. He was close to Stafford, and facing him. And Molesworth was there, from Chancery. Do you know him? No, I don’t suppose you do. Big man, bald, with a white beard.”
“Is that all you remember?” Pitt asked.
“There was a tremendous crush in there,” Pryce protested. “Everyone elbowing their way through, trying not to spill drinks, vying for attention, all talking at once. And there was a bit of a commotion going on because Oscar Wilde was there, and at least a dozen people wanted to speak to him. I can’t think why. He was close to Stafford.” Pryce’s face lit with malicious