Farrier's Lane (38 page)

Pitt thought of the Inner Circle, but he said nothing. Drummond was as helpless as he was to fight against that. They might guess who belonged; they would not know unless favors were called for, and then it was too late.

“For God’s sake be careful, Pitt,” Drummond said urgently. “Be sure you are right!”

“Yes sir,” Pitt agreed obediently, rising to his feet. “Thank you.”

    Pitt found Lambert early in the morning, still looking a little sleepy and far from pleased to see him.

“I can’t tell you anything more,” he said before Pitt asked.

“I assumed if you knew anything you would have said so at the time,” Pitt replied. He hoped he sounded casual, not condescending, but the thought flickered through his mind to wonder if Lambert were of the Inner Circle as well. But regardless, he hated checking another man’s work as if he expected to find an error of such magnitude, but he
felt no alternative. He looked at Lambert’s rumpled, angry face. In his place he would have resented it, but as he had told Drummond, he would also have wanted to know. The uncertainty would have been worse, the lying awake at night turning it over and over in his mind till every mistake possible seemed real and guilt marred everything, confidence waned, all other decisions seemed flawed.

He looked at Lambert again, sitting uncomfortably in his chair. “Don’t you need to know?” he said frankly.

“I do know.” Lambert avoided his eyes. “The evidence was conclusive. I have enough present-day cases without investigating past ones that are closed.” He looked up, guilt and anger in his face. “We were a trifle hasty in the way we handled it, I give you that. I wouldn’t say every decision is the one I would make if I had it to do again, with more time for judgments, and nobody hounding me day and night for an arrest. But then I daresay you’d conduct a few of your cases differently if you had a second chance. Beginning with the Highgate case.”

“I would,” Pitt said quietly, remembering the second death with a sick unhappiness. “But I still intend to go over the Farriers’ Lane case. I don’t want to do it without you, but I will if you force me.” He met Lambert’s unhappy eyes. “If you are certain you were essentially correct, all I can do is prove that.” He leaned forward. “For heaven’s sake, man, I’m not trying to find fault with your procedure! All I want is to make sure of the facts. I know what it is like to work under pressure with the newspapers demanding an arrest in every issue, people shouting at you in the streets, the assistant commissioner breathing heavily and sending for reports every day, and the Home Secretary facing questions in the House of Commons.”

“Not like this case, you don’t,” Lambert said bitterly, but he looked slightly mollified.

“May I see the files and ask Paterson to help me find the witnesses again?” Pitt asked.

“You can speak to Paterson, but I can’t spare him to go ’round with you. He’ll tell you what he remembers. You’ll get the names from the files, and where they are now you’ll
just have to find out. Not that it will do you any good,” he added, rising to his feet. “You’ll never find the layabouts who saw him come out of the lane. They’re probably half of them dead by now. The doorman’ll just say the same, and the urchin, who is the only one who really saw him, is totally unreliable, even if you can get hold of him. Still, the flower seller’s all right, and I’ll get Paterson for you.”

“Thank you,” Pitt accepted.

Lambert went to the door and pulled it open. He called for a sergeant and told him to fetch the files on the Farriers’ Lane case, then he came back into the room, looking at Pitt with a frown.

“If you find anything—I’d like you to tell me.”

“Of course.”

The sergeant came in before any further speech was necessary, and Pitt thanked him and took the files away to read in the small room Lambert had provided.

He had read Joshua Fielding’s statement, and Tamar Macaulay’s, and was halfway through the theater doorman’s when Sergeant Paterson came in. He looked anxious but there was no anger yet in him, no sense of having been offended.

“You want to see me, sir?”

“Yes, please.” Pitt indicated the chair opposite him and Paterson sat on it reluctantly, his face still full of questioning.

“Tell me again everything you remember of the Farriers’ Lane case,” Pitt asked him. “Begin with the first you heard of it.”

Paterson sighed very slightly and began.

“I was on duty early. A constable sent a message that the blacksmith’s boy in the Farriers’ Lane smithy had found a dreadful corpse in his yard, so I was sent straight ’round to see what was what.” His eyes were on Pitt’s face. “Sometimes we get reports like that, and it turns out to be a drunk, or someone died natural. I went straightaway, and found P.C. Madsen standing at the entrance to Farriers’ Lane, white as a sheet and looking fit to be buried hisself.”

His voice was a tight monotone, as if he had said this
several times before and still hated it just as much. “It was barely daylight even then, and he took me back through the alley to the stable yard by the smithy, and as soon as I got into the yard and turned ’round, there it was.” He faltered and then continued. “Nailed up to the stable door like, beggin’ yer pardon, sir, like Christ as you see in crucifixes, with great nails through ’is ’ands an’ feet—and through ’is wrists. I suppose that was to ’old the weight of ’im.” Paterson’s own face was white and there was a beading of sweat on his lip. “I’ll never forget that as long as I live. It was the most awful thing I ever saw. I still don’t know ’ow anybody could do that to another ’uman being.”

“According to the medical examiner, he was already dead when they did that,” Pitt said gently.

Two light pink spots burned on Paterson’s cheeks. “Are you saying that makes it any better?” he said thickly. “It’s still blasphemy!”

Pitt thought about all the arguments that it was not blasphemy to a Jew, and knew they would mean nothing to this angry young man, still outraged five years after by the violence of act and of mind that he had seen. So much hatred had wounded him unforgettably.

“I know,” he agreed. “But at least there was less pain. He may actually have died quite quickly—which is some comfort to those who loved him.”

“Maybe.” Paterson’s face was tight, his body stiff. “I don’t see as it makes no difference to what kind of a monster’d do something like that. If you’re trying to say that excuses anything, I think you’re wrong.” He shuddered as memory brought back all the anger and fear. “If we could’ve ’anged ’im twice, I would ’ave.”

Pitt did not comment. “How do you think Godman, or whoever it was, managed to nail him up like that?” he asked instead. “A dead body is extremely awkward to carry, let alone prop up and hold while you nail it by the hands—or wrists.”

“I’ve no idea.” Paterson screwed up his face, looking at Pitt with a mixture of puzzlement and disgust. “I often thought about that and wondered myself. I even asked ’im,
when we ’ad ’im. But ’e just said it weren’t ’im.” His lips curled with contempt. “Maybe madmen do ’ave the strength o’ ten, like they say. Fact is, ’e did it. Unless you’re sayin’ there was someone else ’elped ’im? Is that what you’re looking for—an accomplice?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt replied. “Tell me, what happened then? Kingsley Blaine was quite a big man, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, near six foot, I should think. Taller’n me. I couldn’t ’ave lifted ’im, dead weight, and ’eld ’im up.”

“I see. What did you do next?”

Paterson was still tense, his face white and strained.

“I sent the P.C. to get Mr. Lambert. I knew it were too big for me to deal with on my own. Waiting for ’im to come back was the longest ’alf hour o’ my life.”

Pitt did not doubt it. His imagination pictured the young man standing in the slowly broadening daylight on the gleaming cobbles, his breath pale in the chill air, the cold forge unlit by the terrified boy, and the ghastly corpse of Kingsley Blaine still crucified to the door, the wounds in his hands wet and red.

Paterson must have been seeing it in his mind’s eye again. His face was sickly and his mouth pulled askew with the effort of his self-control.

“Go on,” Pitt prompted. “Mr. Lambert came, and then the medical examiner, I imagine?”

“Yes sir.”

“Had the farrier’s boy touched anything?”

Paterson’s face would have been comical in any other circumstance. Now it merely added the urgently ludicrous and human to the tragic.

“God no, sir! Poor little devil was out of ’is mind wi’ fear. Fit for Bedlam, ’e was. He wouldn’t ’ave touched that corpse if ’is life ’ad rested on it.”

Pitt smiled. “No, I imagine not. Who took him down?”

Paterson swallowed. He looked so white Pitt was afraid he was going to be sick.

“I did, sir, with the medical examiner. The nails was put in so ’ard it took a crowbar to get ’em out. We borrowed it from the forge. The smithy ’isself were in by then.
Looked terrible ill, ’e did, when ’e saw what ’ad appened. ’E sold up and went back to the village wot ’e came from.” He shivered. “Never bin a forge since then. Brickyard now, for all it’s still called Farriers’ Lane. Maybe in a few years it’ll be Brick Lane.”

Pitt hated to bring him back to the subject he would so obviously rather forget, but he had no choice.

“What did the medical examiner tell you then, before he looked at him properly? You must have asked him.”

“Yes sir. ’E said the man, we didn’t know ’is name then, that was before we—we looked in ’is pockets. I know I should ’a done that straightaway, but I couldn’t bring meself to.” He looked at once defiant and savagely apologetic. Pitt could imagine the tumult of emotions inside him. “ ’E said as ’e’d been killed before ’e were nailed up,” Paterson went on. “As ’is ’ands ’adn’t bled much, nor ’is feet. It was the wound in ’is side wot killed ’im.”

“Did he say what he thought caused that?” Pitt interrupted.

“Well, yes, ’e made a guess,” Paterson said reluctantly. “But after ’e said as ’is guess were wrong.”

“Never mind, what was his guess then? What did he say?”

“ ’E said ’e thought it were probably a knife o’ some sort, a very long thin one, like a dagger, the Italian ones wi’ them narrow blades.” Paterson shook his head. “But afterwards, when ’e’d ’ad a proper look, ’e said it was more probably one o’ them farrier’s long nails, like ’e were nailed to the door with.”

“Did he say what time he had died?”

“Midnight or around. ’E’d been dead quite a while. Even though it were cold, ’e could be sure it weren’t in the last two or three hours. It were about ’alf past six by then. ’E said it must ’a bin before two in the morning.” Paterson’s face tightened with impatience. “But we know what time, sir, because o’ the evidence o’ the theater doorman, and the men ’anging around the end o’ Farriers’ Lane what saw Godman come out after ’e’d done it.”

“You didn’t know that then,” Pitt pointed out.

“No.”

“What did you learn from the corpse?”

“ ’E were a gentleman,” Paterson began, his whole body rigid as he recalled the picture to his mind. “That were plain from ’is clothes, ’is ’ands—’e’d never done any ’ard work. ’Is clothes were expensive, and ’e’d been at some sort o’ party because ’e were all dressed up, black tailcoat, frilled shirt, gold studs, silk scarf, all that. And an opera cloak.” He shivered again. “First thing we did was start looking for people who’d been around the area all night Found some beggars and drunks who’d been sleeping on the street at the south end o’ Farriers’ Lane and started askin’ them.” He relaxed a fraction as he moved from the corpse to the circumstances. “They’d been up ’alf the night ’round a bit of a fire in the roadway, chestnut brazier, or something, drinking like as not. They said they’d seen this gent go into Farriers’ Lane about ’alf past midnight, tall gent with a top ’at, fair ’air, as much as they could see of it, but it fell over ’is face a bit. No one followed ’im in. I asked ’em that in partic’lar, and they were quite sure. So ’ooever did that to ’im were waiting there for ’im.” Paterson shuddered convulsively.

“Go on,” Pitt prompted him. He could see it in his mind’s eye, as he knew Paterson could. He did not want him dwelling on it again or the emotion would cripple his thought. “How did they describe the man they saw coming out of Farriers’ Lane? I assume there was only one?”

“Oh yes!” Paterson said fiercely. “There weren’t another for an hour or more. God knows ’ow ’e felt when ’e ’eard what ’e’d passed! This one were kind o’ furtive, they said.”

“Did they?” Pitt asked, amazement lifting his voice. “That sounds like an unusual word for such men to use.”

“Well”—Paterson colored very slightly—“what they said actually was that he looked scared, like ’e’d rather not be seen. He came to the end o’ the alley, out o’ the shadows, stood still for a moment to see who was passing, then put ’is shoulders back and walked fairly quickly along the footpath, not looking to right nor left.”

“And where were they standing?”

” ’Round a brazier, ’alf in the gutter.”

“Yes, but which side of the street? Did Godman actually pass them?”

“Oh—no. Opposite side, but close to Farriers’ Lane entrance. They saw ’im clear enough,” Paterson insisted.

“Opposite side of the street, after midnight, a group of layabouts and drunks! Is there a lamp near the end of the lane?”

Paterson’s expression tightened. “About twenty yards. ’E passed under it. Right under it!”

“How did they describe him?” Pitt went on. “Tall, short, thin, large? What did they say? How was he dressed?”

“Well …” Paterson pulled a face. “They said he seemed fairly large, but ’e was dressed in an ’eavy overcoat, dark, but it could have been undone and that would ’ave made ’im look a bit bigger. They weren’t that close, and they didn’t pay particular attention. Why should they?”

“What about the blood? Your report mentions blood, and there must have been a lot. You can’t commit a murder like that without blood all over the place.”

Paterson winced and looked at Pitt with loathing. “They said they saw the dark stain, but they reckoned as ’e’d bin in a fight, or got a bloody nose.”

“So there was really no description,” Pitt pressed.