Anne Perry - [Thomas Pitt 13]

by Farriers' Lane

  Pitt thought for a moment, and kept his voice free from the skepticism he felt. “It may be that Tamar Macaulay was the leader in the affair, the seducer, if you wish—but do you suppose she allowed Blaine to realize that?”

  “I have no idea.” Lambert was contemptuous. “Does it matter?”

  Pitt shifted position a little in the chair. He wished Lambert would open a window. The room was almost airless. “Well, it’s not the truth of the relationship that matters, surely, but what Blaine thought it was,” he pointed out. “If he imagined himself a hell of a fellow, having an affair with an actress, then he would have felt guilty, and wary—however ridiculous that was in fact.”

  “I doubt it,” Lambert replied, his face hardening into resentment as he understood the point. “Godman was not a big man, either in height or build. Blaine was not heavy but he was tall. I don’t think it would occur to him to have any physical fear.”

  Pitt shifted uncomfortably, instinctively pulling at his collar to ease it from choking him. “Well, if Blaine was a large man, and Godman quite slight, it is unlikely Godman could have carried Blaine once he was dead and lifted him up against the door while he nailed his hands and feet to it,” he reasoned. “By the way, how did he manage that? Do you know?”

  The color deepened in Lambert’s face.

  “No, I don’t know, nor do I care, Inspector Pitt. The kind of rage he must have been in to do such a thing, maybe he found the strength after all. They say madmen have a superhuman power when the mania is on them.”

  “Maybe,” Pitt said, heavy with doubt.

  “What on earth could it matter now?” Lambert demanded harshly. “It was done. And he did it—that’s beyond any question. Blaine, poor devil, was nailed up to the stable door.” His face was pale, his voice charged with emotion. “I saw him myself.” He shuddered. “Fixed there by farrier’s nails through his hands and feet—arms wide like the figure of Christ, feet together, and blood all over the place. Godman was seen coming out of the alley with blood on him. He lifted the body up somehow, probably he nailed the hands one at a time.”

  “Have you ever tried to lift a dead body, Lambert?” Pitt asked very levelly.

  “No—nor have I tried to crucify anyone—or ride a bicycle on a tightrope!” Lambert snapped. “But the fact that I can’t do it doesn’t mean it cannot be done. What are you trying to say, Pitt? That it wasn’t Godman?”

  “No. Just trying to understand what happened—and what it could have been that Judge Stafford was thinking when he questioned all the witnesses again. He was apparently concerned with the medical examiner’s report. I wonder if it had to do with that.”

  “What makes you think it had anything to do with that? Did he say so?” Lambert demanded.

  “He said very little. Wasn’t the medical evidence the ground for the appeal?”

  “Yes, but there was nothing in it. The appeal was denied.”

  “Perhaps that was what troubled Stafford,” Pitt suggested.

  “Then it is a legal point, not evidential,” Lambert stated with absolute certainty. He leaned forward a little, again concentrating on Pitt’s face, his expression hard, brows drawn together. “Look, Pitt, it was a very difficult case to investigate, not for the evidence—that was plain enough, and there were witnesses—but because of the atmosphere. My men were as horrified as the general public—more so. We saw the actual body, for God’s sake. We saw what that monster did to him—poor devil.”

  Pitt felt an instant constriction. He had seen corpses, and felt the wrench of horror and pity, imagined the fear, the moment when death came, and the insanity of hatred that must have been there in the killer’s face—or the terror they felt which drove them, and however briefly lost them their reason and something of their humanity.

  Lambert must have seen the thought in his eyes.

  “Can you blame them if they found it hard?” he said quickly.

  “No,” Pitt agreed. “No, of course I can’t.”

  “And the deputy commissioner was onto us every day, sometimes several times a day, demanding we find whoever did it, and that we find proof of it.” He shivered even in the hot room, and his face pinched into an expression of pain. “You don’t know what it was like! He told us every day what the newspapers were saying, how there were anti-Jewish riots in the streets, slogans daubed on walls, people throwing stones and refuse at Jews, synagogue windows smashed. He went on about it as if we hadn’t heard it for ourselves. He said we had to clear it up within forty-eight hours.” His lips curled. “Of course he didn’t tell us how! We did everything we could—and I’ll swear to that, Pitt. And we did it right! We interviewed everyone in the area—the doorman who took the message from the boy—”

  “What boy?” Pitt interrupted.

  “Oh—Godman gave some street urchin the message to give to Blaine,” Lambert explained. “By word of mouth—nothing written. At least he was clear and sane enough for that. Presumably Godman waited in the shadow at the far side of the street until he saw the theater lights go off and Blaine come out, then sent the urchin over to give the message right then. That way he’d be sure it reached him. Then Blaine turned and went north into Soho. We have the doorman’s testimony of all that. And presumably Godman followed him, eventually cutting ahead of him and catching him in Farriers’ Lane, where he killed him.”

  “Planned?” Pitt asked curiously. “Do you suppose he knew the farrier’s nails were there? Or was that opportunism?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Lambert replied with a shrug. “The fact that he lured Blaine there with a message purporting to come from Devlin O’Neil shows that he intended no good. It’s still a premeditated murder.”

  “Doorman’s evidence?” Pitt asked.

  “And the urchin.”

  “Go on.”

  “We also have the evidence of the layabouts who were hanging ’round the entrance of Farriers’ Lane and saw Godman come out. When he passed under the street lamp they saw the blood on his coat. Of course at the time they simply thought he was a drunk, staggering ’round, and thought the blood was from some injury he had done himself, falling over, bloody nose, or whatever. They didn’t care.”

  “He was staggering?” Pitt asked curiously.

  “I suppose so. He was probably exhausted after his exertion, and more than a little mad.”

  “But he had composed himself so totally he could stop and make jokes by the time he reached the flower seller two streets away.”

  “Apparently,” Lambert said irritably. “He was quite in control by then. The evidence was very specific. It was that really which hanged him.” His voice was defensive again and he sat rigid in his chair. “He’s a very good man, Paterson, the sergeant who found that.”

  “The flower seller?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I speak with him?”

  “Of course, if you wish, but he’ll only tell you what I have.”

  “What about the coat with the blood on it?”

  “He got rid of it somewhere between the end of Farriers’ Lane and Soho Square, where he met the flower seller. We never found it, but that’s hardly surprising. Any sort of coat wouldn’t lie around in a London street for long. If no one kept it for themselves they’d sell it to the old clothes dealers for the price of a week’s lodgings—or more.”

  Pitt knew that was true. A good gentleman’s coat would fetch enough for a month in a penny gaff, and bread and soup besides. It could be the difference between life and death for someone. A little blood would be nothing at all.

  “And the necklace?” he asked.

  “The necklace?” Lambert was surprised. “For heaven’s sake, man, no doubt she kept it. It was worth quite a lot, according to the dresser, who knew a diamond when she saw it. I suppose being an actress’s dresser she saw quite a lot of the imitation, and the real.” There was an inflection in his voice, a shadow across his face that showed his contempt for artifice, professional or amateur. He made no distinction between i
llusion designed to entertain, or to convey a deeper truth, and the merely bogus intended to deceive.

  “Did you look for it?” Pitt asked.

  “Yes, of course. But she’d have a hundred places to hide it if she wished. It wasn’t stolen; we could hardly institute a police search. She could simply have taken it to the nearest hock shop until the outcry died down.”

  “Has she ever been seen with it since?”

  “I’ve no idea!” Lambert’s voice rose in exasperation. “Blaine is dead and Godman’s hanged. Who’s to care?”

  “Blaine’s widow. Apparently it should have been hers.”

  “Well, I daresay she had larger losses to grieve over,” Lambert snapped. “She was a very decent woman, poor creature.”

  Pitt kept his temper with difficulty, and only because it was in his own interest. A quarrel would achieve nothing, and in truth, he was finding Lambert difficult to like, even though not hard to sympathize with. It must have been a wretched, panicky, overwhelming time with public hysteria and superior officers crowding him, looking over his shoulders at every act, and demanding impossible results.

  “What about the weapon?” Pitt asked.

  Lambert’s face tightened again. “Not conclusively. There were half a dozen long farrier’s nails used to crucify him. The medical examiner concluded it was probably one of them.”

  “May I see Sergeant Paterson now?” Pitt asked. “I think you have told me all I need to know. I can’t think of anything else you could have done, and I doubt anyone on the Stafford case will. The evidence against Godman seems conclusive so far. I don’t know what Stafford could have been looking into. No one found the necklace or the coat. No one has changed their testimony. You haven’t seen the flower seller again, or the urchin who gave the message to Blaine?”

  “No, as you say, there’s nothing.” Lambert was mollified. “Sorry,” he said, slightly apologetically. “I suppose I was rather uncivil.” He forced a half smile. “It’s a bad memory, and this Macaulay woman keeping on raising the issue and insisting we got the wrong man is pretty hard to take. If Stafford was trying to silence her once and for all, I wish to God he had succeeded!”

  “Perhaps I can,” Pitt said with an answering smile.

  Lambert sighed, relaxing at last, his eyes lighting. “Then I wish you good luck. I’ll get Paterson for you.” And he rose to his feet and walked past Pitt, leaving him alone while he went out into the corridor and Pitt heard his footsteps receding.

  Immediately Pitt rose to his feet and opened the window, gasping in the cold air with relief. He half closed it again after a moment and returned to his seat just as the door opened and a uniformed sergeant appeared, tunic immaculate, buttons gleaming. He was in his early thirties, of roughly average height and build, but his face was unusual. His nose was long and very aquiline, his mouth rather small, but the plainness of his features was redeemed by very good dark eyes and a fine head of hair waving back from a broad brow.

  “Sergeant Paterson, sir,” he announced himself, and stood upright, not quite at attention, but in an attitude of respect.

  “Thank you for coming,” Pitt said evenly. “Sit down.” He waved his arm towards Lambert’s chair.

  “Thank you, sir,” Paterson accepted. “Mr. Lambert said you wanted to speak to me about the Blaine/Godman case.” His face shadowed, but there was nothing evasive in it.

  “That’s right,” Pitt agreed. He did not owe the sergeant an explanation, but he gave it anyway. “A murder I am investigating seems to have some connection. Mr. Lambert has told me a great deal, but I would like to hear from you what you learned about Godman’s movements that night.”

  Paterson’s face reflected his emotions transparently. Even the memory of it brought back the anger and the revulsion he had felt then. His body was tense, his shoulders knotted and his voice changed as he began his answer.

  “I was one of the first to get to the yard in Farriers’ Lane. Blaine was quite a big man, and young.” He stopped, his face tight with pity, and it was painfully apparent that he could recall every detail. He took a deep breath and continued, his eyes on Pitt’s face, watching to see if he understood anything of the real horror of it. “ ’E’d been dead for quite a while. It was a cold night, only a little above freezing, and ’e was stiff.” His voice shook and he controlled it only with an effort. “I’d rather not describe ’im, sir, if you don’t need to know.”

  “I don’t,” Pitt said quickly, sorry for the man.

  Paterson swallowed. “Thank you, sir. Not that I ’aven’t seen corpses before—too many of ’em. But this was different. This was a blasphemy.” His voice thickened as he said the word and his body was rigid.

  “Have you any ideas as to how a slight man like Godman could have got him up like that?” Pitt asked.

  Paterson engaged his mind, leaving his emotions aside. His brow furrowed in concentration. “No sir. I wondered about that myself. But there was never any suggestion that anyone ’elped him. ’E was definitely alone, so far as we know. ’E came out of Farriers’ Lane by ’imself. Not the sort of thing you do with anyone else. I reckon Godman must’ve known ’ow to lift people. Maybe it’s part of his art as a actor. Like firemen.”

  “Possibly,” Pitt agreed. “Go on. How did you trace his movements after he left Farriers’ Lane?”

  “Just patience, sir. Asking people all ’round, street peddlers, crossing sweepers, costers and the like. Found a flower seller who saw ’im very plain. She was under a streetlight in Soho Square, and ’e stopped and spoke to ’er. And there’s no question it was ’im, ’e admitted it ’isself. ’E said it was quarter past midnight. She thought that was right at first, then when we questioned ’er closer, she agreed it was actually quarter to one, and she got it wrong the first time. Apparently ’e tried to tell ’er it was quarter past midnight. There’s a clock just over there, above one of the ’ouses, and she ’eard it strike. It gives just one bell on each quarter, and two at ’alf past, not like most, which do three at the quarter before.”

  “Did it matter?” Pitt asked doubtfully. “You didn’t know what time Blaine was killed, did you? Exactly? Surely the layabouts at the end of Farriers’ Lane didn’t know the time.”

  “No,” Paterson agreed. “But we knew close, because we knew what time Blaine left the theater, which was after quarter past midnight. If Godman had been at the flower seller’s then and ’eadin away from Farriers’ Lane, he couldn’t possibly ’ave delivered the message or killed Blaine in the stable yard, cos ’e took a cab straight after that, an’ the cabby swore ’e took ’im right from Soho Square to ’is ’ouse in Pimlico, which is miles away. And at that time ’e got ter Soho Square an’ the flower seller, ’e’d already got rid o’ the coat. We never could shift the cabby on that. ’E’d picked up other fares straight after ’oo knew the time exact.” Paterson’s face creased with disgust, almost as if he had smelled something which made him feel sick. “It was a good attempt at an alibi, and if the flower seller’d believed what ’e said and ’e’d stuck to it, it might ’a worked.”

  “But she didn’t?”

  “No—she didn’t actually look at the clock ’erself. It was behind ’er, she only ’eard it ring and accepted ’is word that it were quarter past and not quarter to one. And o’ course there were the layabouts at the end o’ Farriers’ Lane.”

  “That sounds like good work, Sergeant,” Pitt said sincerely.

  Paterson flushed. “Thank you, sir. I was never on a case I cared about more.”

  “Did Godman ever admit it, when you arrested him, or later?”

  “No, he never did,” Paterson said bleakly. “ ’E always claimed he was innocent. ’E looked astounded when we went for ’im.”

  “Did he struggle—put up a fight?”

  Paterson avoided Pitt’s eyes for the first time.

  “Well—yes, ’e—er—’e cut up a bit rough. But we had the better of him.”

  “I imagine,” Pitt said with a sudden disc
omfort. “Thank you, Sergeant. I can’t think of anything more to ask you.”

  “Does that ’elp you with your case, sir?”

  “I don’t think so. But it clarifies it. At least I know all I can about the Blaine/Godman affair. I think maybe my case has nothing to do with it except coincidence. Thank you for being so frank.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Paterson stood up and excused himself. Since there was nothing else to learn here, Pitt went to the desk sergeant at the front, thanked him for his civility, and went out into the windy street. It was just beginning to rain and a small boy in a lopsided cap was sweeping horse manure out of the road so two women in large hats could cross without soiling their boots.

  Pitt saw Micah Drummond in the middle of the afternoon. It was raining hard, beating on the windows and streaming down in rivulets, making them so opaque it was impossible to see anything more than the dim blur of buildings beyond. Drummond sat behind the desk in his office and Pitt sat restlessly in the chair in front. The afternoon was darkening early and the gas hissed gently in the brackets on the wall.

  “What have you learned about Stafford?” Drummond asked, tilting his chair back a trifle.

  “Nothing,” Pitt replied bluntly. “I’ve spoken to his widow, who not unnaturally says she thinks he was killed because he was going to reopen the Blaine/Godman case. And Adolphus Pryce says the same.”

  “I notice you say ‘says she thinks,’ ” Drummond observed. “A very careful choice of words. You doubt her?”

  Pitt pulled a face. “Their relationship with each other is a great deal more intimate than proper.”

  Drummond winced. “Surely not murder? There’s no sense in it. They may be immoral, although you have no proof of that. But there is a great distance between falling in love with a married woman and murdering her husband. They are civilized people, Pitt.”

  “I know.” Pitt did not argue as to whether civilized people did such things or they were confined to barbarians, whether by race or social class. It was not what Drummond meant, and he knew it. “I spent rather more time pursuing the details of the Blaine/Godman case,” he said instead. “Trying to find out exactly what Stafford could have been intending to do.”