The Whitechapel Conspiracy - Anne Perry [125]
Even as he was moving towards the door he remembered where he had seen the handwriting. He stumbled and banged into the corner of the desk as the full import struck him. It had been during the investigation of Martin Fetters’s death—it was John Adinett’s hand!
He stood stock-still, dizzy for an instant, his leg throbbing where the desk corner had bruised it, but he was only dimly aware.
Wally’s footsteps were almost at the door.
Adinett had known of the plan for Sissons’s ruin, and had praised him for it! He was not a royalist, as they had presumed, but as far from it as possible. So why had he killed Martin Fetters?
The door opened and Wally peered around it, the lantern in his hand making his face look ghostly in the upward light.
“You all right, Tom?” he said anxiously.
“Sissons is dead,” Pitt replied, startled by how hoarse his voice was, and that his hands were shaking. “Looks as if somebody shot him. I’m going to get the police. You stay here and make sure no one else comes in.”
“Shot ’im!” Wally was stunned. “W’y?” He stared across at the figure slumped across the desk. “Gawd! Poor devil. Wot’ll ’appen now?” There was fear in his voice and in his face, which was slack with shock and dismay.
Pitt was hideously conscious of the gun in his pocket and the torn-up pieces of the two letters.
“I don’t know. But we’d better get the police quickly.”
“They’ll blame us!” Wally said, panic in his face.
“No, they won’t!” Pitt denied, but the same thought was like a sick ache in the bottom of his stomach. “Anyway, we’ve got no choice.” He moved past Wally and out of the door, carrying his own lantern high so he could see the way. He must find an unattended vat and get rid of the gun.
The first room he tried had a night worker in it who looked up without curiosity; so did the second. The third was unoccupied and he lifted the lid of the vat, smelling the thick liquid. The paper would not sink in it. He would have to stir it in, but he dared not be found with the pieces. They could still be placed together, with care. He put them on the surface and used the gun to move them around until they were lost, then he let the gun go and watched it sink slowly.
As soon as it was out of sight he went out into the corridor again and ran down the rest of the stairs and out into the yard. He went straight to the gates and down Brick Lane towards the Whitechapel High Street. The false dawn had widened across the sky, but it was still long before daylight. The lamps gleamed like dying moons along the curb edge and shone pale arcs on the wet cobbles.
He found the constable just around the corner.
“Eh, eh! Wot’s the matter wi’ you, then?” the constable asked, stepping in front of him. Pitt could only see the outline of him because they were between lampposts, but he was tall and seemed very solid in his cape and helmet. It was the first time in his life Pitt had been afraid of a policeman, and it was a cold, sick feeling, alien to all his nature.
“Mr. Sissons has been shot,” he said, his breath rasping. “In his office, in the factory up Brick Lane.”
“Shot?” the constable said unsteadily. “You sure? Is ’e ’urt bad?”
“He’s dead.”
The constable was stunned into a moment’s silence, then he gathered his wits. “Then we’d better send ter the station an get Inspector ’Arper. ’Oo are you, an’ ’ow’d yer come ter find Mr. Sissons? You the night watch, then?”
“Yes. Thomas Pitt. Wally Edwards is there with him now. He’s the other night watchman.”
“I see. D’yer know where the Whitechapel station is?”
“Yes. Do you want me to tell them?”
“Yes. You go an’ tell ’em Constable Jenkins sent yer, an’ tell ’em wot yer found at the factory. I’ll be there. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then ’urry.”
Pitt obeyed, turning on his heel, then breaking into a run.
It was nearly an hour later when he was back at the sugar factory, not in Sissons’s office but in one of the other fairly large rooms