Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [71]
Forty minutes later he was rewarded by seeing Piers Denoon come up the steps again, this time looking clean, shaved, and dressed in fresh clothes. He walked briskly westward towards Cavendish Square. Tellman had to break into a run to catch up with him just as he stepped off the footpath into a hansom cab.
Tellman swore, and looked around for another. It was late and cold and the square was almost deserted. He sprinted along the footpath towards Regent Street, and was intensely relieved to see another hansom twenty yards away, ambling in the opposite direction. He ran after it. He did not dare call out until he was level with it, in case he drew attention to himself. He scrambled up, telling the driver to turn quickly and follow the first.
It was a hectic journey. Twice he lost Piers Denoon, but caught up with him eventually. He arrived twenty yards behind him when he alighted halfway along Great Sutton Street in Clerkenwell. Denoon paid the driver and after looking both ways along the footpath, rang the doorbell at number twenty-seven.
Tellman shouted to his driver to take him to Keppel Street, and found his voice was hoarse and his mouth dry. The sweat was running down his body and chilling, as if the air froze.
It was just after one o’clock in the morning.
7
PITT WOKE TO hear Charlotte speaking urgently to him, her voice low and sharp with alarm.
“Thomas, there’s someone outside the front door.”
He struggled to escape the clouds of sleep. The room was dark, he could barely even make out her shadow, it was more a sense of the warmth of her near him. But he could hear the low, insistent knocking on the door below.
“I’ll go,” he said, reaching out to touch her shoulder and feeling the soft skin for a moment. Then he climbed out of bed and fumbled for the candle and struck a match. The flame burned up at least sufficiently to find his jacket and trousers. He would have to come back up and dress properly if he had to go out. He looked at his pocket watch sitting on the dresser. It was just after quarter past one.
The knocking had stopped. Whoever it was must have seen the glow through the chink in the curtains and realized they would soon be answered.
Pitt turned up the gas on the landing lamp then ran downstairs in bare feet and went to the front door. He unlocked it, and pulled it open to find Tellman on the step. In what light there was from the hall, he looked pale and exhausted.
“Come in,” Pitt said quietly. “What’s happened?”
Tellman did as he was told and Pitt closed the door. Inside, Tellman looked even worse. His skin was pasty, his lean cheeks covered with faint stubble, and his eyes were hollow.
“What is it?” Pitt repeated. “Do I have to get dressed, or have we time for a cup of tea?”
Tellman was shivering slightly. “There’s nowhere to go,” he answered. “At least not now.”
Without comment, Pitt turned and led the way along the passage to the kitchen. His feet were cold, but at least the wooden floor there would be warmer, and since it was relatively early in the night, he might be able to get the stove back to life without having to rake it all out and start again.
He lit the gas in the kitchen. “Sit down,” he ordered Tellman. “I’ll go up and tell Charlotte it’s just you, then I’ll make a cup of tea.”
Tellman obeyed.
Pitt was back in a few minutes with a shirt and socks on as well. He riddled out the dead ash from the stove, put kindling on top of the warm embers, and watched till they caught. Then he added coal and closed up the front so it would draw. He filled the kettle and put it on the hob. In the basket by the stove the cats Archie and Angus stirred and stretched, rearranged themselves and went back to sleep.
“What is it?” Pitt asked, sitting down opposite Tellman. It would be several minutes before the water boiled.
Tellman seemed to relax a little. Perhaps this kitchen where Gracie worked, and where he and Pitt had