Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [44]
“Seen leaving Farriers’ Lane?” Drummond interrupted incredulously. If that were true, how could Tamar Macaulay possibly doubt his guilt? Surely even family love could not be so blind? “By whom?”
“A group of men lounging around,” Winton replied.
Drummond caught some inflection in his voice, some lack of force which made him uncertain.
“Saw Godman—or saw someone?” he asked.
Winton looked fractionally less confident. “They did not identify him with any surety,” he replied. “But the flower seller did. That was a couple of streets away, but she had no doubt whatever. There was no shadow there, and he actually stopped and spoke to her just after the clock had struck, joked with her, she said! So she not only saw his face and heard his voice, she also knew the time.”
“Going away from Farriers’ Lane or towards it?” Drummond asked.
“Away.”
“So it was after the murder. And he stopped to talk to a flower seller? How extraordinary! Didn’t she notice the blood on him? If it was visible to the layabouts in the street, it must have been very obvious to her.”
Winton hesitated, anger flickering in his expressive eyes. “Well—no, she didn’t see it. But that is easily explainable. When he came out of Farriers’ Lane he was wearing an overcoat. He had disposed of it by the time he reached the flower seller. Which is natural! He could not afford to be seen in a coat covered with blood. And there must have been a hell of a lot of it from a murder like that.”
“Why did he not leave it in Farriers’ Lane, rather than come out still wearing it and risk being seen at all?” Drummond asked the obvious question.
“God knows!” Winton said savagely. “Perhaps it was being seen by the layabouts that made him aware of it. He may not even have noticed it himself until then. He was a man in an insane rage, demented enough to kill a man and crucify him, for God’s sake! Don’t expect logical thought from him.”
“And yet he behaved like a perfectly normal man a couple of streets away, joking with a flower seller. Did you find the coat? There cannot have been much ground to look.”
“No, we didn’t!” Winton snapped. “But then that’s hardly surprising, is it! A good winter coat doesn’t lie around long, bloodstained or not, on a cold evening on the London streets. Wouldn’t expect to find it, days after the event.”
“Where did he go after the flower seller saw him?”
“Home. We got the cabby who took him. Picked him up in Soho Square and set him down in Pimlico. Not that it makes much difference. The murder was already committed by then.”
There was little more for Drummond to say. He could sympathize with Winton and indeed with all the men who worked on the case. The pressures must have been constant and intense, newspapers screaming headlines of horror and outrage, the public in the street full of criticism and demand that the police do the job for which they were paid, grudgingly, and from taxes. And certainly the hardest to resist, the most powerful and most uncomfortable, would be from their own superiors, giving orders, demanding that solutions be found and proved within days, even hours.
And then there was the other pressure, which was between them in a silent understanding, not needing speech, certainly not explanation. Drummond was a member of the Inner Circle, that secret brotherhood dedicated to works of beneficence, discreet gifts to help charitable organizations, and the furtherance of the careers of individual members so that they should gain influence—and power. Membership was secret. Any given man might know a few by name, or by sign and word, but not all. Allegiance to the Circle was paramount; it overrode all other loves and loyalties, all other calls upon honor.
Drummond had no idea whether Aubrey Winton was a member of the Inner Circle or not, but he thought