Farriers' Lane - Anne Perry [59]
“The flower seller?”
“Yes.”
“May I speak with him?”
“Of course, if you wish, but he’ll only tell you what I have.”
“What about the coat with the blood on it?”
“He got rid of it somewhere between the end of Farriers’ Lane and Soho Square, where he met the flower seller. We never found it, but that’s hardly surprising. Any sort of coat wouldn’t lie around in a London street for long. If no one kept it for themselves they’d sell it to the old clothes dealers for the price of a week’s lodgings—or more.”
Pitt knew that was true. A good gentleman’s coat would fetch enough for a month in a penny gaff, and bread and soup besides. It could be the difference between life and death for someone. A little blood would be nothing at all.
“And the necklace?” he asked.
“The necklace?” Lambert was surprised. “For heaven’s sake, man, no doubt she kept it. It was worth quite a lot, according to the dresser, who knew a diamond when she saw it. I suppose being an actress’s dresser she saw quite a lot of the imitation, and the real.” There was an inflection in his voice, a shadow across his face that showed his contempt for artifice, professional or amateur. He made no distinction between illusion designed to entertain, or to convey a deeper truth, and the merely bogus intended to deceive.
“Did you look for it?” Pitt asked.
“Yes, of course. But she’d have a hundred places to hide it if she wished. It wasn’t stolen; we could hardly institute a police search. She could simply have taken it to the nearest hock shop until the outcry died down.”
“Has she ever been seen with it since?”
“I’ve no idea!” Lambert’s voice rose in exasperation. “Blaine is dead and Godman’s hanged. Who’s to care?”
“Blaine’s widow. Apparently it should have been hers.”
“Well, I daresay she had larger losses to grieve over,” Lambert snapped. “She was a very decent woman, poor creature.”
Pitt kept his temper with difficulty, and only because it was in his own interest. A quarrel would achieve nothing, and in truth, he was finding Lambert difficult to like, even though not hard to sympathize with. It must have been a wretched, panicky, overwhelming time with public hysteria and superior officers crowding him, looking over his shoulders at every act, and demanding impossible results.
“What about the weapon?” Pitt asked.
Lambert’s face tightened again. “Not conclusively. There were half a dozen long farrier’s nails used to crucify him. The medical examiner concluded it was probably one of them.”
“May I see Sergeant Paterson now?” Pitt asked. “I think you have told me all I need to know. I can’t think of anything else you could have done, and I doubt anyone on the Stafford case will. The evidence against Godman seems conclusive so far. I don’t know what Stafford could have been looking into. No one found the necklace or the coat. No one has changed their testimony. You haven’t seen the flower seller again, or the urchin who gave the message to Blaine?”
“No, as you say, there’s nothing.” Lambert was mollified. “Sorry,” he said, slightly apologetically. “I suppose I was rather uncivil.” He forced a half smile. “It’s a bad memory, and this Macaulay woman keeping on raising the issue and insisting we got the wrong man is pretty hard to take. If Stafford was trying to silence her once and for all, I wish to God he had succeeded!”
“Perhaps I can,” Pitt said with an answering smile.
Lambert sighed, relaxing at last, his eyes lighting. “Then I wish you good luck. I’ll get Paterson for you.” And he rose to his feet and walked past Pitt, leaving him alone while he went out into the corridor and Pitt heard his footsteps receding.
Immediately Pitt rose to his feet and opened the window, gasping in the cold air with relief. He half closed it again after a moment and returned to his seat just as the door opened and a uniformed sergeant appeared, tunic immaculate, buttons gleaming. He was in his early thirties, of roughly average height and build, but his face was unusual. His nose was long and very aquiline, his mouth rather small,