Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [160]
The man’s face stiffened. “No he does not. He does not smoke, sir. He finds the smell of tobacco offensive.”
“You are quite sure?”
“Of course I am sure. I have worked for Mr. Kreisler for several years, both here and in Africa.”
“Thank you, that is all I needed to know. Good day.”
The manservant muttered something under his breath along the general lines of a parting, but less polite than he would have wished to be heard.
It was now early evening. Pitt got back into the hansom. “Berkeley Square,” he ordered.
“Right y’are, guv.”
It was not far, and Pitt rode deep in thought. There was one more thing he wanted to find, and if it was as he now expected, then there was only one conclusion that fitted all he knew, all the material evidence. And yet emotionally it was a tragedy out of proportion to anything he had foreseen or imagined. The thought of it saddened him, even touched him with a dark fear of the mind, a confusion of ideas and beliefs, as well as a very immediate apprehension about his own actions and the course that lay before him now.
The cabby peered in. “What number, guv?”
“No number. Just stop by the nearest manhole down into the sewers.”
“What did yer say? I didn’t ’ear yer right. Sounds like yer said the sewers!”
“I did. Find me a manhole,” Pitt agreed.
The cab moved forward thirty or forty yards and stopped again.
“Thank you.” Pitt climbed out and looked back at the hansom. “This time I definitely want you to wait. I may be a little while.”
“I wouldn’t leave yer now if yer paid me to go,” the cabby said vehemently. “I never ‘ad a day like this in me life before! I can get free dinners on this fer a year or more. Yer’ll want a light, guv?” He scrambled down and detached one of his carriage lamps, lit it and gave it to Pitt.
Pitt took it and thanked him, then pulled up the manhole lid and very carefully climbed into the hole down the rungs into the bowels of the sewer system. The daylight decreased to a small round hole above him, and he was glad of the lamp and its pool of light. He turned to make his way along through the round brick-lined tunnel, moisture dripping onto the path and echoing eerily as it struck the rancid waterway between. Tunnel led off tunnel, down steps and over sluices and falls. Everywhere was a sound of water and the sour smell of waste.
“Tosher!” he called out, and his voice echoed in all directions. Finally he fell silent and there was no more sound than the incessant dripping, broken by the squeak of rats, and then nothing again.
He walked a dozen more yards, and then shouted again. “Tosher” was the general cant term for the men who made their living scavenging the sewers. He was close to a great sluice that must have spilled water over a drop of a dozen feet onto a lower level. He moved on, and called a third time.
“Yen?”
The voice was so close and so harsh it startled him and he stopped and nearly fell into the channel. Almost at his elbow a man in thigh-high rubber boots came out of a side tunnel, his face grimy, his hair smeared across his forehead.
“Is this your stretch?” Pitt jerked his arm backwards towards the way he had come.
“‘Course it is. What d’yer think I’m doin’ ’ere, lookin’ for the source o’ the Nile?” the man said with contempt. “If yer lookin’ fer a stretch o’ yer own, this ain’t it. It’s not fer sale.”
“Police,” Pitt said succinctly. “Bow Street.”
“Well, yer off yer beat,” the man said dryly. “Watcher want ’ere?”
“A woman’s blue cloak, maybe put down a manhole almost a week ago.”
In the dim light the man’s face had a guarded look, devoid of surprise. Pitt knew he had found it, and felt a sudden breathlessness as the reality of his belief swept over him.
“Maybe,” the man said cautiously. “Why? What’s it werf?”
“Accessory after the fact of murder, if you lie about it,” Pitt replied. “Where is it?”
The man drew in his breath, whistling a little between his teeth, looked at Pitt’s face for several seconds, then changed his mind about prevaricating.
“There weren’t nothing