The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [144]
“Watcha got?” the boy asked, his eyes fixed on it.
“I don’t know yet,” Pitt replied, but that was not true. He was almost sure it was a thread from a footman’s livery stockings. “Thank you,” he added. “I’ll see if there’s anything else. Does Mr. Scarborough ride in this gig, do you know?”
“No sir. Mr. Scarborough stayed in the ’ouse, sir. Mr. Carvell drove it ’isself, and if he sent anyone on an errand it were me.”
“Do you ever wear livery?”
The boy’s face split into a grin. “What, me! No sir. Mr. Scarborough’d ’ave a fit if I got fancy ideas like that. Put me in me place right quick, ’e would.”
“No stockings?”
“No! Why?” He looked at the thread again, suddenly serious. “Did that come from someone’s stockings?”
“Probably.” Pitt would rather not have had him realize that, but it was too late now, and the questions were unavoidable. It would have been proof of nothing if Scarborough had used the gig himself. He put the thread into a screw of paper and then into his inside pocket. There was little point in asking the boy not to repeat it to the rest of the household, but he did anyway.
“Oh no, sir,” the boy replied solemnly, backing away, then following Pitt as he searched the rest of the gig and the carriage house before returning to the back door, unaccountably tired, as if the energy were drained out of him.
Pitt did not go back to Bow Street. He was angry, with no reason, and loath to go and see the formal charge against Carvell. Farnsworth would be oozing satisfaction and it would gall Pitt bitterly. He felt no sense of achievement at all. It was a tragedy of such proportions all he could think of was the darkness and the pain of it. When he closed his eyes he could see Dulcie’s sweet, intelligent face, and the terrible shock in it when he had told her of her husband’s love for another man. She had accepted that he had had some involvement with another person, but that it should have been a man had almost broken her courage.
And yet deeply as Pitt abhorred it, there was a part of him still suffering a kind of shock, not yet accepting that it was Carvell.
He gave the cabdriver Nigel Uttley’s address. It would serve no purpose at all, but he wished to tell Uttley he knew it was he who had attacked Jack. It would be acutely satisfying to frighten the man, and he could not see how it would harm Jack. Anything Uttley was able to do in that line, he would do anyway, regardless of Pitt.
He arrived there to find Uttley out, which was infuriating, but he should not have been surprised. It was very close to the by-election now. He might well be absent all day.
“I really cannot say, sir,” the footman replied coolly. “It is possible he may return before dinner. If you wish to wait you may sit in the morning room.”
Pitt hesitated only a moment, then accepted. He would wait exactly half an hour. If Uttley did not return by then he would leave his card with a cryptic message on it, and hope it unsettled Uttley as much as possible.
For over forty minutes he walked up and down the elegantly and economically furnished room, surprisingly comfortable in its simplicity. Then he heard Uttley’s voice in the hall, sharp with surprise.
“Pitt? Whatever for now? Poor devil’s hopeless, isn’t he? I don’t know what he imagines I can do. My God, there’ll be some change in the police when I’m in office. Excuse me, Weldon. I’ll only be a few moments.” His step sounded briskly on the marble-inlaid floor until he opened the morning room door and stood just inside the entrance, big, square-shouldered, dressed in a pale suit and beautifully polished boots. He looked casual and supremely confident. “Good afternoon, Superintendent. What can I do for you this time?” His expression was full of amusement.
“Good afternoon,