Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [26]
“Yes,” Mrs. Geddes said quietly. She stood up and smoothed her jacket. “Yes, o’ course. I’m comin’.”
The morgue was close enough to walk to, and there was so much noise in the street that conversation would have been difficult. Hansom cabs, omnibuses, wagons and brewers’ drays clattered past them. Street peddlers shouted, men and women argued, and a costermonger roared with laughter at an old man’s joke.
It was utterly different inside the morgue. The silence and the clinging, damp smell closed over them, and suddenly the world of the living seemed far away.
They were conducted through to the icehouse where bodies were stored. The sheet was taken off the face of the man from Horseferry Stairs.
Mrs. Geddes looked at it and drew in her breath in a little gasp.
“Yes,” she said with a catch in her voice. “Oh dear . . . that’s Mr. Cathcart, poor soul.”
“Are you quite sure?” Pitt pressed.
“Oh yes, that’s ’im.” She turned away and put her hand up to her face. “Whatever ’appened to ’im?”
There was no need to tell her about the green velvet dress or the chains, at least not yet, perhaps not at all.
“I am afraid he was struck on the head,” he answered.
Her eyes widened. “Yer mean on purpose, like? ’E were murdered?”
“Yes.”
“Why’d anyone wanna murder Mr. Cathcart? Were ’e robbed?”
“It seems very unlikely. Do you know of anyone who might have quarreled with him?”
“No,” she said straightaway. “ ’E weren’t that sort.” She kept her face averted. “It must be someb’dy very wicked wot done it.”
Pitt nodded to the morgue attendant, who covered the body again.
“Thank you, Mrs. Geddes. Now I would appreciate it very much if you would take me to his house and allow me to find out whatever I can there. We’ll get a hansom.” He waited a moment while she composed herself, then walked beside her out of the morgue and into the sunlight again. “Are you all right?” he asked, seeing her ashen face. “Would you like to stop for a drink, or find a place to sit down?”
“No thank you,” she said stoically. “Very nice o’ yer, I’m sure, but I’ll make us a proper cup o’ tea w’en we get there. No time ter be sittin’ down. Yer gotta find them as done this an’ see ’em on the end of a rope.”
He did not reply, but continued beside her until he saw a hansom and hailed it. He asked her for the address and gave it to the cabbie, then settled down for the ride. He would have liked to question her further about Cathcart, but she sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her eyes fixed, every now and then giving a little sigh. She needed time to absorb what had happened and come to terms with it in her own way.
The hansom rumbled across the Battersea Bridge and down the other side, turning left along George Street, and stopped outside an extremely handsome house whose long garden backed onto the water. Pitt alighted, helping Mrs. Geddes out. He paid the driver and gave him a message to take to the local police station requesting a constable to come.
Mrs. Geddes sniffed hard, and with a little shake of her head, walked up the long driveway and, taking a key from her pocket, opened the front door. She did it without hesitation. It was obviously a regular thing for her.
The moment he was inside Pitt stared around him. The entrance hall was long and light, with stairs down one side. It was excellently lit from a very large window extending the length of the stairwell. On one wall were several photographs of groups of people—half a dozen ragged urchins playing in the street; beside them society ladies at Ascot, lovely faces under a sea of hats.
“I told you ’e were good,” Mrs. Geddes said sadly. “Pour soul. I dunno wot yer wanter see ’ere. There in’t nuffink missin’, nuffink stole, so far as I can see. ’E must ’a bin set on in the street. ’E didn’t never ’ave them sort o’ people ’ere!”