The Whitechapel Conspiracy - Anne Perry [126]
“Right now, then … what’s your name? Pitt!” Harper began. “You just tell me exactly what you saw an’ what you did.” He frowned. “And what were you doing in Mr. Sissons’s office anyway? Not part of your duty to go in there, is it?”
“The door was open,” Pitt replied. His hands were clammy, stiff. “It shouldn’t be. I thought something might be wrong.”
“All right, all right! So tell me what you saw, exactly!”
Pitt had prepared this very carefully, and he had said it all to the duty seigeant at the Whitechapel station already.
“Mr. Sissons was sitting at his desk, slumped over it, and there was a pool of blood, so I knew immediately he wasn’t just asleep. Some of the desk drawers were half open. There was no one else in the room and the windows were closed.”
“Why d’you say that? What difference does that make?” Harper challenged. “We’re seven storeys up, man!”
Pitt felt himself flushing. He must not appear too quick. He was a night watchman, not a superintendent of police.
“None. Just noticed it, that’s all.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” Harper looked at him narrowly.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Harper looked skeptical. “Well, he was shot with a handgun, pistol of sorts, so where is it?”
Pitt realized with a lurch that Harper was suggesting he had taken it. He could feel the guilt hot in his face. Suddenly he knew exactly how others had felt when he had questioned them, men perhaps innocent of the crime but with other desperate secrets to hide.
“I don’t know,” he said as steadily as he could. “I suppose whoever shot him took it when they went.”
“And who could that be?” Harper asked, his eyes wide, pale blue. “Aren’t you the night watch? Who came or went, then? Or are you saying it was one of the men who work here?”
“No!” Wally spoke for the first time. “Why’d any one o’ us do that?”
“No reason at all, if you’ve any sense,” Harper replied. “More like he shot himself, and Mr. Pitt here thought he’d take a little souvenir. Maybe sell it for a few shillings. Good gun, was it?”
Pitt looked up at him with amazement and met his gaze squarely. It was that instant he realized with horror that crawled over his skin that Harper had known what he was going to find. Harper was Inner Circle, and he intended it to be suicide. Pitt’s throat was tight, his mouth dry.
Harper smiled. He was master and he knew it.
Jenkins shifted his feet unhappily. “We got no evidence o’ that, sir.”
“Got no evidence against it either!” Harper said sharply, without moving his eyes from Pitt’s. “We’ll have to see what turns up when we look into Mr. Sissons’s affairs, won’t we?”
Wally shook his head. “Yer got no reason ter say as Tom took the gun, an’ that’s a fact.” His voice shook with fear, but his face was stubborn. “And any’ow, Mr. Sissons never shot ’isself, ’cos I seen the body. ’E were shot in the right side of ’is ’ead, like ’e were right-’anded, which ’e were! ’Ceptin’ ’is right fingers was broke an’ the wotsits cut, so ’e couldn’t curl up ’is fingers … so ’e couldn’t ’a pulled a gun tight ter shoot it. Doctors wot looks at ’im’ll tell yer that.”
Harper was confused and angry. He turned to Jenkins and met a blank stare of dumb insolence and immovability.
“Well, then,” he said angrily, looking away. “I suppose we’d better find out who sneaked in past our two diligent night watchmen … and murdered their employer. Hadn’t we?”
“Yes sir!” he responded.
Harper spent the rest of the morning questioning not only Wally and Pitt as to every detail of their watch, but also all the night staff and many of the clerks who came in to start the day.
Pitt did not tell him about the man he had seen leaving. At first he kept silent more from instinct than thought-out reason. It was