The Whitechapel Conspiracy - Anne Perry [46]
He bit into the pie, being careful not to squash out its contents.
Adinett was of independent means and had no need to earn his living. He could spend his time as he wished. Apparently that was usually visiting various clubs, many of them to do with the armed services, exploration, the National Geographic Society, and others of a similar nature. That was the pattern of those who had inherited money and could afford to be idle. Tellman despised it with all the anger of a man who had watched too many others work all the hours they were awake and still go to bed cold and hungry.
He passed a newspaper boy.
“Paper, sir?” the boy invited. “Read about Mr. Gladstone? Insulted the laborers o’ the country, so Lord Salisbury says. Some get an eight-hour day—mebbe!” He grinned. “Or they brought out a new edition o’ Darkness an’ Dawn, all about corruption an’ that, in ancient Rome?” he added hopefully.
Tellman handed over his money and took the late edition, not for the election news but for the latest on the anarchists.
He quickened his pace and turned his mind back to the problem. It would give him more than one kind of satisfaction to find out why Adinett had committed murder, and prove it so all London would be obliged to know, whether they wished to or not.
He was well-used to tracing the comings and goings of people, but always with the authority of his police rank. To do it discreetly would be very different. He would have to call on a few favors done in the past, and perhaps a few yet to come.
He decided to begin at the most obvious place, with hansom cab drivers he knew. They usually frequented the same areas, and the chances were that if Adinett had used a cab—and since he did not own a coach, that was quite likely—then he would more than once have come upon the same driver.
If he had used an omnibus, or even the underground railway, then there was almost no chance at all of learning his movements.
The first two cabdrivers he found were of no assistance at all. The third could only point him in the direction of others.
It was half past nine. He was tired, his feet hurt and he was angry with himself for giving in to a foolish impulse, when he spoke to the seventh cabdriver, a small, grizzled man with a hacking cough. He reminded Tellman of his own father, who had worked as a porter at the Billingsgate fish market all day and then driven a hansom half the night, whatever the weather, to feed his family and keep a roof over their heads. Perhaps it was memory which made him speak softly to the man.
“Got a little time?” he asked.
“Yer wanna go somewhere?” the cabbie responded.
“Nowhere special,” Tellman answered. “I need some information to help a friend in trouble. And I’m hungry.” He was not, but it was a tactful excuse. “Can you spare ten minutes to come and have a hot pie and a glass of ale?”
“Bad day. Can’t afford no pies,” the cabbie answered.
“I want help, not money,” Tellman told him. He had little hope of learning anything useful, but he could still see his father’s weary face in his mind’s eye, and this was like a debt to the past. He did not want to know anything about the man; he simply wanted to feed him.
The cabbie shrugged. “If you like.” But he moved quickly to leave his horse at the stand and walk beside Tellman to the nearest peddler, and accepted a pie without argument. “Wot yer wanna know, then?”
“You pick up along Marchmont Street way quite often?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Tellman had brought a picture of Adinett which he had not thrown away after the investigation. He took it from his pocket and showed it to the driver.
“Do you recall ever picking up this man?”
The cabbie squinted at it. “That’s the feller wot killed the one wot digs up ancient pots an’ the like, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“You police?”
“Yes—but I’m not on duty. This is to help a friend. I can’t make you tell me anything, and no one else is going to ask you. It’s not an investigation, and I’ll probably get thrown out if I’m caught following it up.”
The cabbie looked at him with awakening interest.