Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [12]
At the top, in the main room, light streamed in through the broken windows. The dust and grime on the shards still left in the frames made them look almost like frosted or painted glass. The pool of blood where Magnus Landsborough had lain was congealed now and smeared because the body had been moved. Other than that it was exactly as when Pitt had first arrived. The police and the surgeon had been very diligent.
Pitt leaned over and looked at it long and carefully, studying the outline of the body where it was indicated by footprints, dried blood, and the scuffing of men lifting something heavy and awkward. Magnus had lain full length on the floor. Pitt had a measuring tape among the numerous items in his coat pocket. He took it out and stretched it from the top of where the head had been down to the farthest mark of the feet. Allowing for a little crumpling, the man must have been a trifle over six feet tall. It was not possible to be more accurate.
What was absolutely certain was that he had fallen forward when the shot had struck the back of his head. There was no way at all in which it could have come from the street below and caused him to fall as he had. Added to that, the shot had struck him in the back of the skull, and emerged through the general area of his left cheekbone. The street was narrow and two stories down. Had it come from below it would have been at a sharp upward angle, in at the back of the neck, and out through the brow. And he would have to have been standing facing the room, looking away from the gunfire.
Was it possible Welling was speaking the truth, and the first constable up the back stairs had shot him? But why? Rage? Fear that Landsborough had a gun and posed some immediate danger to him? There had been no gun beside the body.
He heard footsteps on the stairs and a moment later a uniformed sergeant stood in the doorway. He was fresh-faced, probably in his late twenties, and at the moment very sober in demeanor.
“Linwood, sir,” he said stiffly. “You wanted to see me?”
Pitt straightened up. “Yes, Sergeant. Were you the first into this room when we broke in?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Describe what you saw, exactly.”
Linwood concentrated, looking down at the floor. “There were three men in here, sir. One was standing in the far corner, with a gun in his arms, a rifle. He had gingery hair. He was looking straight at me, but not holding the gun to fire. I reckon it could have been empty by then. They’d shot plenty out of the window.”
That sounded like Carmody, from the description. “Who else?” Pitt asked.
“Dark man, lots of hair,” Linwood said, screwing up his face in concentration. “He looked pretty shocked. Standing just about there.” He pointed to a place less than a yard from where Pitt was.
“Beside the body on the floor!” Pitt said in surprise.
Linwood’s eyes opened wide. “Yes, sir. He had a gun, but he couldn’t have shot him. The bullets had to have come from over there.” He indicated the door at the farther end of the room, going towards the stair to the back, down which the police had pursued the man who had shot Landsborough, and presumably escaped.
“What else?” Pitt asked.
“The dead man on the floor,” Linwood answered.
“You’re sure? How was he lying—exactly?”
“Just as you found him, sir. That shot killed him outright. Blew his brains out, poor devil.”
Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Poor?” he questioned.
Linwood’s mouth curled down. “I pity any man shot by his own, sir, whatever he believed in. Betrayal turns my stomach.”
“Mine too,” Pitt agreed. “Are you sure that’s what it was?”
“I don’t see what else it could have been, sir.” Linwood stared straight back at him. “I heard a shot when I was at the bottom of the stairs. Ask Patterson; he was straight behind me, and Gibbons behind him.”
“And Welling and Carmody were standing where you said?”
“Yes. So either one of them shot him,