Farrier's Lane (5 page)

“Of course.” Joshua bowed very slightly, first to Caroline, who blushed self-consciously, then to Charlotte. “I regret the circumstances of our meeting. I can offer you little comfort or refreshment.”

“I knew he had been taken ill,” Tamar said, returning them to the matter in hand. Her voice was low and of unusual timbre. “I did not know he had died.” Her face pinched with sadness. “I am very sorry. I have no idea how we can be of help.”

“You called upon him at his home earlier in the day?”

“Yes.” She added nothing, no explanation. She had an extraordinary repose, even delivering such a bald reply.

“And I saw him later, in my lodgings,” Joshua added. “He seemed perfectly well then. But is that really what you wished to ask?” He looked very relaxed, hands in his pockets. “Surely Mrs. Stafford is the one to tell you anything you need to know. Doesn’t his own physician know his condition?”

Pitt corrected the misapprehension. “I am not a physician, Mr. Fielding. I am an inspector with the police.”

Joshua’s eyebrows rose and he straightened up, taking his hands out of his pockets. “With the police? I’m sorry—I thought he was taken ill. Was it an injury? Good heavens—in the theater?”

“No, it looks as if it may have been poison,” Pitt said carefully.

“Poison?” Joshua was incredulous and Tamar stiffened. “How do you know?” Joshua asked.

“I don’t,” Pitt replied, looking from one to the other of them, “But the symptoms were alarmingly like those of opium poisoning. I should be irresponsible were I not to allow the possibility, and learn what I can, tonight, while memories are sharp and recent, before I hand the matter over to whoever will handle it when the medical report comes in.”

“I see.” Joshua bit his lip. “And you have come here because both Tamar and I saw him during the day, and you suspect us?” His face was tight, full of hurt. Almost unconsciously he put out his hand and touched Tamar’s arm. It was a protective gesture, although she looked in some ways the stronger of the two. Her face was fiercer, less vulnerable than his.

Watching her, Charlotte thought of the little she had heard of the Godman case, and the appalling loss of her brother. She wondered what Aaron Godman had been like. If he resembled her, Charlotte could imagine how people might have feared him, and believed him at least capable of a passion that could have ended in murder!

“Among many others.” Pitt did not prevaricate. “But it is also possible you may provide some observation which will simply guide us to the truth.”

“You mean implicate someone else,” Tamar said coolly. “We have been through a murder investigation before, Inspector Pitt. We cherish no illusions that it will be a pleasant affair, or that the police will rest before they have found evidence to satisfy a court of someone’s guilt.”

Charlotte was acutely aware of how exact was her use of words. The wound of her brother’s conviction was far from healed.

“It is ours to present the evidence, Miss Macaulay,” Pitt replied without anger or criticism in his face. “Not to decide on it—thank God. But I have never knowingly provided anything which I did not believe to be true. I am aware that you feel your brother was wronged, and that it
was in connection with that case that you visited Mr. Stafford today.”

“Of course.” Her amusement was genuine, if bitter. “I have no other reason for seeking his acquaintance. I am aware that actresses have a certain reputation. In my case it is not warranted. And I know no reason to suppose it was in Mr. Stafford’s either.” There was savage laughter in her eyes, a mockery of Stafford and of herself and all people suppressed of emotions. “He was a somewhat humorless man,” she went on. “Lacking in imagination, and in the unlikely event he were to pursue a romance, I think he would be more discreet than to choose an actress with whom to do it!”

Charlotte looked at Pitt’s face and saw the imagination take flight in him. Tamar was a woman a man might fall in love with, even passionately, but not a woman with whom he would have an affaire. She was the stuff of dreams, even of visions, not a pleasant pastime, a little laughter and sensuality away from the duties of marriage or the loneliness of a bachelor life. Charlotte could not imagine her as a comfortable woman, and she believed Pitt did not either.

“I do not leap to conclusions, Miss Macaulay.” Pitt’s voice cut across her thoughts. “Even when they seem on the firmest of ground.”

A smile flashed across Tamar’s face and vanished.

“And you, Mr. Fielding?” Pitt turned to Joshua. “Did Mr. Stafford come to sec you about this case?”

“Yes, of course. I gathered from what he said that he was considering reopening it after all.” He sighed heavily. “Now we have lost that chance. We have not managed to persuade anyone else to consider it at all.”

“Did you see him alone, Mr. Fielding?”

“Yes. I imagine that there is no point in my telling you what happened, since there is no one to verify it.” Joshua shrugged. “He simply asked me about the night Blaine was killed, and made me rehearse everything I know all over again. But he said he was off to see Devlin O’Neil—that was Blaine’s friend, with whom he quarreled that evening—over money, I think.”

“Did he have this with him?” Pitt pulled the silver flask out of his pocket and held it forward.

Joshua regarded it curiously. “Not that I saw, but then one doesn’t usually carry such a thing where it is visible. Why? Is it poisoned?”

Tamar shrank a little into herself and looked at it with distaste.

“I don’t know,” Pitt replied, putting it away again. “Have you seen it before, Miss Macaulay?”

“No.”

Pitt did not argue.

“Thank you. I expect whoever is in charge tomorrow will speak to you again. I’m sorry to have had to distress you this way.”

Joshua shrugged gently, a smile crossing his face and disappearing.

Pitt bade them good-night and after the briefest exchange Charlotte, Pitt and Caroline took their leave. Outside the night was dark; the theater lights were dimmed now, only the ordinary street lamps like luminous pearls in a faint fog that was gathering in gauzy wraiths in the air. Carriage wheels hurried along the damp streets and hooves clattered sharply on the wet stone.

Had Stafford planned to reopen the case of murder for which Aaron Godman had been hanged? Was that why he had been killed? Tamar Macaulay wanted it reopened. Who wanted it kept closed—enough to murder?

Or was it something entirely different: a different person, a different fear—or hate?

Charlotte walked a little faster and linked her arm in Pitt’s as he looked for a hansom to take them home.

2

M
ICAH
D
RUMMOND
was in his office early in the morning. Since the case which had centered on Belgrave Square that summer, and produced so much horror and scandal, and for Drummond himself, knowledge that affected every part of his life, he was no longer happy with his own thoughts. Work was something of a relief, even though it offered reminders far too often of just what a tortuous web of obligations he had unknowingly entered when he accepted membership in the secret society of the Inner Circle.

Eleanor Byam was a different matter. The only way he could keep his mind from her was to sink it in the urgent and complicated problems of other people.

He was standing near the window in the thin autumn sunlight when Pitt knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Drummond said hopefully. There was too little on his desk and what there was was stale. He had already read it and delegated it appropriately. Now all he could do was send for further reports every so often to keep him abreast of every new turn of events, which would be more interference than his officers deserved. “Come in!” he said again more sharply.

The door opened and Pitt stood in the entrance, his hair curling wildly, his jacket crooked and his cravat in imminent
danger of coming undone completely. Drummond found him a remarkably reassuring sight, at once familiar and yet always on the brink of some surprise.

Drummond smiled. “Yes, Pitt?”

Pitt came in, closing the door behind him.

“I was at the theater last night.” He put his hands in his pockets and stood in front of the desk, at anything but attention. In another man Drummond might have resented it, but he liked Pitt too much to wish to reaffirm their relative positions of authority.

“Oh yes.” Drummond was surprised. It was not one of Pitt’s regular habits.

“Invitation from my mother-in-law,” Pitt elaborated. “Justice Samuel Stafford died in his box,” he went on. “I saw him taken ill and went to offer any help I could.” He pulled a silver hip flask out of his jacket pocket, a beautiful thing gleaming in the light.

Drummond looked at it, then at Pitt’s face, waiting for the explanation.

Pitt put the flask on the green leather desk top.

“There’s no medical report yet, of course, but it looked too much like opium poisoning to ignore the possibility. Justice Ignatius Livesey was there as well. He’d been in the next box and came to help too. Actually it was he who realized it might well be poison. He saw Stafford drink from the flask, so he took it from Stafford’s pocket and gave it to me, for the medical examiner to look at.”

“Samuel Stafford,” Drummond said slowly. “He’s an appeal court judge, isn’t he.” It was not a question, just an observation. “Poor man.” He frowned. “Poison? Opium? Doesn’t seem very likely.”

Pitt lifted his shoulders and there was a rueful expression in his eyes.

“No, it doesn’t, on the face of it,” he agreed. “But I made a few enquiries into what he had done during the day, and some interesting things emerged. Do you remember the Blaine/Godman case, about five years ago?”

“Blaine/Godman?” Drummond came a little closer to the
desk. His face creased in thought, but apparently nothing came to his mind.

“A man crucified against a door, in Farriers’ Lane,” Pitt said.

“Oh!” Drummond winced. “Yes, of course I do. Fearful business, absolutely appalling! There was a terrible outcry. One of the most horrible cases I can remember.” He looked at Pitt with a frown. “But what has Stafford’s death in the theater last night got to do with Farriers’ Lane? The man who did that was hanged at the time.”

“Yes,” Pitt said with anger and pity in his face. He hated hanging, whatever the offense. it only compounded one barbarity with another, and human judgment was far too often fallible, mistakes too easy, knowledge too little. “Stafford was one of the judges who denied Godman’s appeal,” he went on aloud. “His sister, the actress Tamar Macaulay, has been trying to reopen the case ever since then. She believes her brother was not guilty.”

“Not unnatural,” Drummond interrupted. “People find it very hard to accept that their relatives, even their friends, can be guilty of something so horrific. Surely she was on stage, wasn’t she? She was hardly in a position to poison Justice Stafford’s flask of—whatever it is—whiskey?”

“I’ve no idea!” Pitt picked it up and unscrewed the top, putting his nose to it delicately. “Yes—it’s whiskey. Yes, she was on stage at the time he died. But she called on him earlier in the day, at his home.” He screwed the top back on and set the flask on the desk again.

“Oh!” Drummond was surprised and concerned. The picture began to look darker. “But why would she kill Stafford? How could that possibly help her brother’s cause? Or has she lost all sense of reason, and her wits as well?”

Pitt smiled. “I have no idea! I’m only telling you what happened last night, and handing over the flask to you, so you can give it to whoever is put in charge of the enquiry—if there is one.”

“Mr. Samuel Stafford.” Drummond smiled back, a charming expression that totally altered the gravity and somewhat ascetic cast of his face. “Justice of Her Majesty’s
Court of Appeal. A most important person, indeed! A case worthy of your talents, Pitt! A delicate case, a most political one,” he added. “It will require careful and tactful investigation, should it prove to be murder. I think you had better take care of it yourself—definitely. Yes—delegate whatever else you have on hand at the moment, and enquire into this.” He picked up the flask from the desk and handed it back to Pitt, meeting his eyes with humor and challenge.