Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [177]
Ewart said nothing. He was too numb with despair and self-loathing to feel another blow.
“So when you found a prostitute murdered, without the use of a knife,” Pitt went on, speaking to Lennox, “and you were the first on the scene, you put Finlay FitzJames’s belongings under the body and broke her fingers and toes to look like Mary’s, and tied the garter, cross-buttoned the boots, threw water over her, and waited for us to do the rest, hoping Finlay FitzJames would be blamed,” Pitt said carefully.
“Yes.”
“Where did you get the badge and the cuff link?”
“I stole them from Ewart. He kept them, so they wouldn’t be in the evidence,” Lennox replied.
“And when Finlay wasn’t blamed, and we hanged Costigan, you were first on the scene of Nora Gough’s death, so you did it again,” Pitt went on. “Did you coach the witnesses too? Persuade them they had seen a man like Finlay at the house?”
“Yes.”
Ewart rose to his feet, swayed and almost overbalanced.
Neither of the others moved to help him.
“I must get out,” he said hoarsely. “I’m going to be sick.”
Lennox stepped back to let him pass. Ewart fumbled for the doorknob, threw the door open and went out, leaving it swinging behind him.
Lennox faced Pitt.
“He deserved to be hanged for what he did to Mary,” he said in a low, husky voice. “Are you going to charge Finlay now, or is he still going to get away with it?” The words were torn out of him.
“I haven’t enough evidence to charge him,” Pitt said bitterly. “Unless Ewart confesses, which he may, or he may recover his composure and realize I have very little proof.”
“But …” Lennox was desperate.
“I can see if Margery Williams will identify Finlay,” Pitt went on. “She might. So might the other two witnesses who saw him. Or there is the possibility Helliwell and Thirlstone may be sufficiently frightened they will speak, especially if they are identified as well.”
“You must!” Lennox leaned forward and grasped Pitt, his grip so hard it pinched the flesh. “You must …”
He got no further because the door opened and a very worried Constable Binns put his head in.
“Sir … Mr. Ewart just went out of ’ere lookin’ like ’e ’ad the devil be’ind ’im, sir, an’ ’e took them sticks o’ dynamite as we took from the—”
Pitt shot to his feet, almost knocking Lennox over, and charged past Binns and out into the corridor. Then he spun around, face-to-face with the two men who were hard on his heels.
“Binns, go and get a hansom. Commandeer one if you have to. Go—now!”
Binns obeyed, ran down the stairs, and they heard his feet clattering on the boards below.
Pitt looked at Lennox. “Give your resignation to the sergeant immediately. Be gone by the time I get back. Just don’t tell me where, and I shan’t look for you.”
Lennox stood motionless, gratitude flooding his face, softening the harsh lines, filling his eyes with tears.
Pitt had no time to say anything further. He plunged down the stairs after Binns and ran through the entrance hall and down the steps into the street. Binns was waiting with a very angry cabdriver standing by the open door of a hansom.
“Number thirty-eight Devonshire Street!” Pitt shouted, and swung himself up and into it with Binns a step behind. “Fast as you can, man! Lives depend on it!”
The cabby caught the tension and the urgency. He cracked the whip and the cab lurched forward. In a few moments it was charging through traffic at considerable risk to everything in its way.
Neither Pitt nor Binns spoke. They were thrown from side to side and clinging onto the handles, in peril of being injured, and there was too much noise to hear anything clearly above the hooves, the wheels, the creak of straining woodzx and the yells of outraged coachmen.
When they slowed to a halt in Devonshire Street, Pitt threw the door open and was out onto the pavement, Binns a yard behind him. He raced up the steps and yanked