The Cater Street Hangman - Anne Perry [77]
“He must be a madman!” Dominic said futilely.
Pitt pulled a bitter smile. “We had already got so far.”
“Robbery?” Dominic suggested, then knew it was silly as soon as he had said it.
Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Of a maid on her evening off?”
“Were they—?” Dominic did not like to use the word.
Pitt had no such scruples. “Raped? No. Verity Lessing’s dress was torn open and her bosom scratched quite deeply, but nothing more.”
“Why?” Dominic shouted, oblivious of the heads turning from the other tables. “He must be a raving—! A—a—” He could think of no word. His anger collapsed. “It doesn’t make any sense!” he said helplessly.
“No,” Pitt agreed. “And while we are trying to understand it, trying to see some sort of pattern in the evidence, we still have to do something about the other crimes.”
“Yes, of course,” Dominic stared into his empty coffee cup. “Can’t you leave that to your sergeant, or something? The street is in a terrible state, everyone is afraid of everyone else.” He thought of Sarah. “It’s affecting even the ways we think of each other.”
“It will,” Pitt agreed. “Nothing strips the soul quite as naked as fear. We see things in ourselves and in others that we would far rather not have known about. But my sergeant is in hospital.”
“Was he taken ill?” Dominic was not really interested, but it was something to say.
“No, he was injured. We went into a slum quarter after a forger.”
“And he attacked you?”
“No,” Pitt said wryly. “Thieves and forgers far more often run than fight. You’ve never been into the vast warrens where these people live and work, or you wouldn’t have asked. Buildings are packed so close together they are indistinguishable: any single row has a dozen entrances and exits. They usually post some sort of watchman—a child or an old woman, a beggar, anyone. And they prepare traps. We’re used to the trapdoors that open up beneath you and drop you into a sort of oubliette, a hole perhaps fifteen or twenty feet deep, possibly even into the sewers. But this was different. This fellow went upwards towards the roof, and we chased him up the stairs. I had been set upon by two other villains and was busy fighting them off. Poor Flack charged up the stairway and the forger disappeared ahead of him, dropping a trapdoor downwards, across the stairs. The thing was fitted with great iron spikes. One sliced through Flack’s shoulder, another missed his face by inches.”
“Oh God!” Dominic was horrified. Pictures swam into his mind of dark and filthy caves and passages smelling of refuse, running with rats; his stomach rose at the thought of entering them. He imagined the ceiling slamming shut in front of him, the iron spikes driving into flesh, the pain and the blood. He thought for a moment he was going to be sick.
Pitt was staring at him. “He’ll likely lose the arm, but unless it becomes gangrenous, he’ll live,” he was saying. He passed over the dish of coffee. “You see, there are other crimes, Mr. Corde.”
“Did you catch him?” Dominic found his voice scratchy. “He ought to be hanged!”
“Yes, we caught him a day later. And he’ll be transported for twenty-five or thirty years. From what I hear that’ll likely be as bad. Maybe he’ll be of some use to someone in Australia.”
“I still say he should be hanged!”
“It’s easy to judge, Mr. Corde, when your father was a gentleman, and you have clothes on your back and food on your plate every day. Williams’s father was a resurrectionist—”
“A churchman!” Dominic was shocked.
Pitt smiled sardonically. “No, Mr. Corde, a man who made his living by stealing corpses to