assure you it has not, I have many personal possessions which I would dispose of, and I would do, before falling into the clutches of such a person. I have had far too much experience of tragic cases of men in debt to usury through my court to allow myself into such a desperate pass.”
It did not seem to occur to him that Pitt would doubt him. Perhaps it was too easily proved for him to imagine anyone would tell anything but the truth. Of course he did not know that Pitt had been to his home and knew for himself that he had much he could have realized money on, had he the need, but his very lack of pressing the point made Pitt think it the more likely he felt no guilt in the matter. Even now he stared wide-eyed and amused more than angry at the suggestion, and there was no fear in him, no tension in his body, no shadow in his eyes.
“He must have had my name for some other reason,” Carswell went on with a shrug of his shoulders. “My calling means that my name is known to various people of unsavory character and dubious occupation. Perhaps one of his clients passed through my court?”
“Very possible,” Pitt agreed. “But his book stated quite specifically that you owed him a large amount of money. The sum was written out, and the date at which you borrowed it, at what rate of interest, and when the loan was due. It was not simply a casual reference.”
Carswell drew his brows down. “How very peculiar. I assure you, Mr. Pitt, it is quite untrue. I have never borrowed money in my life.” His otherwise pleasant voice grew a trifle sharper. “I have never required to. My situation is more than comfortable, which I could prove to you, had I the mind to, but I prefer to keep my financial affairs confidential, and I see no reason why I should break that custom because you have come across a moneylender with a malicious sense of amusement.”
He leaned back a little and looked very directly at Pitt.
“Go back and tell Mr. Weems that I do not appreciate having my name taken lightly, and that he would be well advised to be truthful in future, or it will go ill with him. One can be prosecuted for willfully making mischief with another man’s reputation.”
“You have never met Mr. Weems?”
“I have not, sir.” His tone grew sharper; his patience was thinning and he no longer felt anxious. “I thought I had made that plain! Now if that is all you have to say, I would ask you to allow me the remainder of my respite from court in peace so I may collect my thoughts and take some refreshment.”
Pitt looked at him carefully, but he could see nothing in Carswell’s face whatever but the good-natured irritation any man might feel at such a liberty both with his name and his time.
“Mr. Weems is dead,” he said quietly. “He was murdered a week ago.”
“Oh.” Carswell was obviously taken aback, but still there seemed no fear in him. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to speak lightly of any man in his extremity. But I am afraid I still cannot help you. I do not know him. Nor can I think of any reason why he should have my name in his papers. It seems to me extremely mischievous.” He frowned, a flicker of anxiety returning to his face. “Is there some conspiracy, Mr. Pitt? You mentioned that people may be lying. You asked me where I was, and now you say this man Weems has been murdered. Did your suspect claim to have been in my company at the time?”
Pitt smiled, a small, rather bleak gesture. “I too would prefer to reserve some of my information, sir,” he said as courteously as was possible with such a statement. “Thank you for sparing me your time in the middle of the day. I will find my own way out. Good day, Mr. Carswell.”
“Good day,” Carswell replied from behind, his voice subdued and thoughtful.
There was little purpose in seeking information from Carswell’s friends or colleagues. They would only infer that the police had been inquiring about him, and he would realize he was suspected of Weems’s murder. He was far too used to criminal procedure to imagine Pitt would waste his time otherwise. It would put him on his guard without offering any benefit, and the chance that any friend would betray anything of import was so remote as not to be worth pursuing.
All that was left now was the tedious and wearing task of following him for as many days as were necessary, either to establish that he had a pattern of spending, a debt that would tend to confirm his borrowing from Weems, or some secret that would make blackmail possible; or else find nothing, which would mean that he was aware of his danger and clever enough to conceal his weaknesses, or there were none, and Pitt would have to look further to find out why his name was on Weems’s list.
It was a morning and evening job through the week. Carswell was safe enough in the court through the days, except perhaps at midday when he might well take his luncheon out. Pitt could hardly stand around inside the court building to see who visited him, as he had done himself, through the day. He did not wish Carswell to be aware he was being observed-apart from warning him, it would make keeping him in sight so much more difficult.
Pitt hated having his hours and his whereabouts dictated in such a way; it was an oddly irritating limitation he had left behind with his first promotion. The freedom to act for himself without forever reporting and accounting to someone else was one of the things he liked best about being a detective rather than a uniformed officer. He smiled at his own frailty that such a small thing should feel so cramping, and resented it just as much.
But Carswell, Urban and Latimer were the best suspects, unless it was Byam after all, which was a thought he would avoid as long as possible. And he was deeply reluctant to find it was one of the ordinary borrowers, the small men and women driven to despair by cold, hunger and worry. If it was one of them he would feel an icy finger of temptation to call the case unsolved, and he did not want to face the moral dilemma of that. He might find his judgment confounded by emotions of pity and anger against the endless grind that allowed one man to bleed another into hopelessness and rob him of the dignity of a choice that was better than death by cold and hunger not only for himself but for his children-this terrible violence. If you drive a man to choose between death of his body or corruption of his soul, how much are you also to blame if his choice is the wrong one?
Such were Pitt’s thoughts as he stood, hands in his pockets, head down, as he waited for Carswell to leave the court at the end of the day. It was harder following people in the summer. The evenings were light until ten or later, the weather was warm, so there was no excuse for pulled-down hats, turned-lip collars, and no shadows to sink back into. Not often was there fog to blanket one, and little rain to hurry through with head down. And his height was against him; he stood half a head above the crowd. If Carswell once realized he was there, he would recognize him and pick him out easily enough again.
When Carswell emerged he had little difficulty in following him to Curzon Street, where he waited until well after the dinner hour, when he decided he was probably going to remain there all night. He gratefully gave up and, shivering a little from the long standing still, he turned and strode off to the main thoroughfare where he could find a hansom to take him back to Bloomsbury and his own home.
It was only when he was lying in bed listening to Charlotte’s quiet breathing and feeling her warmth beside him that he realized with a start of guilt that there was no real reason why Carswell could not have gone out again once his family was asleep. If he had any nefarious purpose to fulfill, it might very well be accomplished in the night, the one time he could best count on a measure of privacy, and not feel any call to explain his whereabouts. Perhaps that was when he had visited Weems-not in the evening but the middle of the night, the short summer night which would only amount to five or six hours of darkness.
It was too late now. But tomorrow he would have to go to Clerkenwell police station and request at least one other man to help him. Carswell must be watched all the time, day and night.
He turned and put his arms around Charlotte, touching her hair soft over her shoulder, heavy and warm, smelling faintly of the lavender water she liked. He smiled and put his guilt behind him. She stirred slightly and moved a little closer.
Innes continued to investigate the borrowers on Weems’s first list, and in the small room in the Clerkenwell station he told Pitt of seven who were in deep distress with nothing else to pawn, no food and owing rent, no clothes but those they stood in, hollow eyes filled one moment with resignation, the next with a sudden flame of anger and the will to fight. None of these few could find anyone to swear as to their presence somewhere else when Weems was killed. Innes told Pitt their names with a deep unhappiness. He made little effort to hide his own wish that it should be one of the “nobs” who was guilty. He stood in the Clerkenwell station in the room they had lent Pitt, his thin body stiff, his shoulders squared, looking at Pitt a little defiantly.
It would have been clumsy to express understanding in words. The feeling was both too profound and too delicate: a mixture of pity; guilt for not suffering with them, for seeing what should have been private; and fear that in the end they would have to arrest one of them and take him to be tried and hanged, exactly as if they had understood nothing.
“Then we’d better follow Mr. Carswell very thoroughly,” Pitt said with no particular expression in his voice, and
