Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [29]
Finally he abandoned it, and after informing the desk sergeant of his intention, he stepped out into the rapidly chilling afternoon air and walked briskly to the St. Pancras Infirmary, glancing briefly across the road at the Smallpox Hospital, then climbed the steps to the wide front entrance. He was already inside when he remembered to straighten his jacket, polish his boots on the backs of his trouser legs, transfer half the collected string, wax, coins, folded pieces of paper and Emily’s silk handkerchief from one pocket to the other to balance the bulges a trifle, his fingers hesitating on the handkerchief’s exquisite texture just a second longer than necessary. Then he put his tie a little nearer center and ran his fingers through his hair, leaving it conspicuously worse. Then he marched to the superintendent’s office and rapped sharply on the door.
It was opened by a young man with fair hair and a narrow, anxious face.
“Yes?” he said, peering at Pitt.
Pitt produced his card, an extravagance which always gave him a tingle of pleasure.
“Inspector Thomas Pitt, Bow Street Police,” the young man read aloud with alarm. “Good gracious. What can you possibly want here? There is nothing amiss, I assure you, nothing at all. Everything is in most excellent order.” He had no intention of allowing Pitt in. They remained standing in the doorway.
“I did not doubt it,” Pitt soothed him. “I have come to make some confidential inquiries about a doctor who I believe has worked here—”
“All our doctors are fine men.” The protest was instant. “If there has been any impropriety—”
“None that I know of,” Pitt interrupted. Drammond was right, it was going to be exceedingly difficult to elicit anything but panicky mutual defense. “There has been a most serious threat against his life.” That was true, in essence if not precisely the way he implied it. “You may be able to help us discover who is responsible.”
“Against his life? Oh, dear me, how monstrous. No one here would dream of such a thing. We save lives.” The young man picked nervously at his tie, which was apparently in danger of throttling him.
“You must occasionally have failures,” Pitt pointed out.
“Well—well, of course. We cannot work miracles. That would be quite unreasonable. But I assure you—”
“Yes—yes!” Pitt cut across him. “May I speak with the governor?”
The man bridled. “If you must! But I assure you we have no knowledge of such a threat, or we should have informed the police. The superintendent is a very busy man, very busy indeed.”
“I am impressed,” Pitt lied. “However if this person succeeds in carrying out his threat, and murders the doctor in question, as well as his current victim, then your superintendent will be even busier, because there will be fewer physicians to do the work …” He allowed the train of thought to tail off as the man in front of him was alternately pink with annoyance and then white with horror.
However, the harassed superintendent, a lugubrious man with long mustaches and receding hair, could tell Pitt nothing about Shaw that advanced his knowledge. He was far more agreeable than Pitt expected, having no sense of his own importance, only of the magnitude of the task before him in battling disease for which he knew no cure; ignorance that swamped the small inroads of literacy; and a perception of cleanliness where there was too little pure water, too many people,