Farrier's Lane (18 page)

“No one else passed through Farriers’ Lane that night? Odd, wasn’t it, if it was a usual passageway?” Pitt asked.

“Well, put it this way, if they did, either they didn’t see Blaine nailed up to the stable door or they didn’t report it. And I suppose either of those is quite likely. You’d be looking where you were going and in the dark not see him …”

“The stable wasn’t in a direct path.”

“No—no, it was over the far side of the yard.”

“So whoever killed Blaine either lured him across the yard or was strong enough to carry him,” Pitt reasoned.

“I suppose that follows,” Lambert conceded. “But then he knew Godman; it wouldn’t be hard to persuade him to come out of the alley into the yard …”

“Wouldn’t it? I wouldn’t go into a dark stable yard alone with a man whose sister I was seducing, would you?”

Lambert stared at him, his face growing pink with confusion and annoyance.

“I think you have leaped to a conclusion, Pitt, for which there are no grounds. Kingsley Blaine was a good-looking, well-spoken, rather naive young man who became enamored of a very skilled actress, not really all that beautiful, but … magnetic, a woman who knows how to manipulate men.” There was both certainty and contempt in his voice. “If anyone was seduced, it was Blaine, not her. And Godman may have resented that like poison, but he knew it was true.” He shook his head. “No, Pitt, Tamar Macaulay was not an innocent young girl seduced by a callous man. No one who knew the people concerned could have imagined that. I think it is quite easy to believe that Blaine would go to Godman, thinking himself quite safe.”

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 illusion 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.