The Cater Street Hangman - Anne Perry [73]
He dined at his club again two evenings later. It was on the third occasion that he fell into conversation with four other men who lived within a mile or two of Cater Street. At first he had done no more than overhear, but his interest was drawn when they began to discuss the murders.
“ . . . wretched police all over the place, and they don’t seem to be accomplishing a damn thing!” one complained.
“Poor devils are as lost as we are,” someone else argued.
“More lost! Don’t even belong in our world, part of a different social class. Don’t understand us any more than we understand them.”
“Good God! You aren’t suggesting this lunatic is a gentleman?” There was amusement, incredulity, and the edge of anger in this voice.
“Why not?”
“Good God!” he was stunned.
“Well, we’ve got to admit it. If he were a stranger he would have been noticed by now.” The man leaned forward. “For the love of heaven, man, the way everyone feels at the moment, do you think any stranger could go unobserved? Everyone is looking over his shoulder; women daren’t even go next door alone; the men are all watching and waiting. Delivery boys practically clock in and out; they want themselves timed to prove where they were and when. Even cabbies don’t like coming to Cater Street any more. In the past week, two have been stopped by constables, only because they were strange faces.”
“You know,” the man opposite him frowned, “it’s just come to me what that old fool Blenkinsop was talking about the other day! I thought he was rambling at the time, but now I realize he was saying in a roundabout way that he suspected me!”
“Quite! That’s the most damnable thing about it: having people looking queerly at you, not precisely saying anything, but you know cursed well what’s going on in their minds. Even errand boys are getting above themselves.”
“You’re not alone, old fellow! Left my carriage for my wife and was out late. Had to get a cab home. Wretched cabbie asked my destination. I told him and the man had the impertinence to refuse me. ‘Not going to Cater Street,’ he said. I ask you!”
One of them caught Dominic in his peripheral vision. “Ah, Corde! You’ll know what we’re talking about. Dreadful business, isn’t it? Whole place turned upside down. Creature must be insane, of course.”
“Unfortunately it isn’t obvious,” Dominic replied, sitting down in the proffered chair.
“Not obvious? What d’you mean? I would have thought it could hardly be more obvious than to run around the streets garotting helpless women!”
“I mean it does not show in his demeanour at other times,” Dominic explained. “In his face, his actions, or in anything else. He must look exactly like anyone else, most of the time.” Charlotte’s words came back to him. “For all we know, he could be here now, any one of these extremely respectable gentlemen.”
“I don’t care for your sense of humour, Corde. Misplaced. Poor taste, if I may say so.”
“To make jokes about murder at all is poor taste. But I wasn’t joking; I was perfectly serious. Even if you don’t believe in the intelligence of the police, with feeling running as it is, if this man were visible for what he is, surely one of us would have spotted him before now?”
The man stared at him, his face turning purple, then paling.
“Bless me! Shockin’ thought. Not nice having one’s neighbours think—”
“Has it never crossed your mind about someone else?”
“I admit it occurred to me. Gatling behaved a trifle odd. Caught him being overly solicitous to my wife the other day. Hands where they had no business,