“I’ve never met him,” Urban denied. He had chosen his words carefully, but his face was open and he met Pitt’s gaze easily. “Cyrus Street is out of my area-yours too, for that matter.” His eyebrows rose. “Why are you concerned anyway?”
Pitt told all the truth that he could. “Because of the people who may be involved.”
“Not on my account. Who else is on the list?” Urban asked, pointing to the chair near Pitt, and sitting down in his own chair behind the desk.
Pitt smiled ruefully. “Confidential,” he apologized.
“But important people,” Urban pressed. “Weems was killed several days ago now. I’m not the first you’ve come to see-and you’ve been handling the political cases this last year or so. There’s someone of considerable influence involved in this.” He was watching Pitt’s face and he knew he was right. It was beyond Pitt’s ability, or his desire, to conceal it.
“It was a large amount of money,” Pitt said instead.
“What? That Weems has me down for?” Urban looked puzzled. “But it’s irrelevant-I didn’t owe him anything. I never had anything to do with him.” He took in a breath as if to add something, then changed his mind.
“Why was the solicitor here?” Pitt asked abruptly.
“What?” Urban’s mouth tightened in irritation again. “Oh-that damned Osmar!” He shook his head. “They not only threw the case out of the magistrate’s court, you know, now the wretched man is charging that Crombie and Allardyce committed perjury in saying he behaved indecently in the park, and he wants them prosecuted for it. Can you credit it? I had the best solicitor I could find to see if we can reopen the case and try him again.”
“Osmar?”
“Yes. Why not? Parkins thinks there’s a good chance.”
Pitt smiled. “Good. At least save Crombie and Allardyce from charges.”
“I intend to. And I’d like to know why the magistrate threw it out.” This time it was Urban who saw the momentary evasion in Pitt’s eyes. He hesitated on the edge of asking him, then some professional instinct asserted itself and he remained silent.
“You have no idea why?” Pitt asked.
“None at all,” Urban replied, and Pitt knew he was lying.
“Thank you for your time,” he said. “I’ll have to go back to the list and see what else I can find.”
“Sorry I can’t help you,” Urban apologized again, and smiled courteously as Pitt took his leave.
Investigating Urban proved to be both as difficult and as distasteful as Pitt had expected. He began by going to Urban’s home. This time he took the public omnibus, as the route took him to within five hundred yards of the street, and he was in no particular hurry. Indeed the hot, noisy ride on the bus, sitting squashed between a thin woman in blue with a cold in her head and a large man smelling of beer, gave him an opportunity to let his thoughts roam. Not that it accomplished anything. He had liked Urban and the thought of prying into his private life was increasingly unpleasant. And because he was intelligent and forewarned, this would prove very difficult to accomplish without his becoming aware of it.
By asking him openly about Weems he had forewarned him that Pitt knew he was connected with the case. He was still feeling angry and miserable about Charlotte, furious with her for behaving as if she were a lady with leisure and money to do as she pleased, and for not making better use of her time than entertaining herself. And he was miserable because that was what she had been born to expect, and she was so easily and naturally enjoying the chance that Emily had given her and Pitt never could. And it hurt that she should still find these things so important. He had enjoyed the spectacle of the occasion himself. People had always interested him, people of every sort, and he had been enthralled watching the faces, and observing the ritual games they played with one another, and the passions behind the masks.
But this investigation he was carrying out alone. For once Charlotte knew almost nothing about it, and her concern was not engaged. It was a curiously lonely thing and he missed her sharing it, even if she did not know the people and could contribute nothing but her interest.
What should he learn about Urban? His reputation among his fellows? His home, his life, the money he spent? His professional integrity? He was lying about something, even if only by omission. Could he possibly know why Addison Carswell had dismissed the case against Osmar? Carswell’s name was on Weems’s list as well-but what had Osmar to do with it? And if it was blackmail, why was Byam’s name not there?
He got off the omnibus and walked the last distance along the narrow pavement in the heat, passing women with children, old men gossiping, a tradesman sweeping his shop’s front step, a rag and bone man shouting in a singsong voice, and a housemaid in a crisp cap arguing with a butcher’s boy standing in the areaway wiping his hands on his blue-and-white apron. It was not far from where he lived himself, and not unlike his street. He pushed the thought of Charlotte out of his mind; that was another hurt, for another time.
Urban’s house was quite small and ordinary from the outside, exactly like its neighbors. The front step was scrubbed clean, the door recently painted, the garden was small and neat with a few roses around and a pocket handkerchief lawn. He had already debated with himself what he was going to say. There was little point in duplicity. It would be too easily discovered, and then would create an ill feeling that would be hard, if not impossible, to repair. And if Urban was innocent, that would be an impediment to future work.
The door was opened by a small woman in a gray stuff dress and a plain white apron. Her thick reddish hair was tied back in a knot and there was a white cap balanced precariously, and crookedly, on top of her head. She reminded him of the woman who came to do the heavy scrubbing for Charlotte, and whom Gracie bossed around mercilessly, now that she considered herself a senior servant.
“Yes?” the woman said impatiently. Obviously he had interrupted her in her work and she did not appreciate it.
“Good morning,” he said quickly. “I am conducting a police investigation and I need to examine some papers of Inspector Urban’s. My name is Pitt. May I come in?”
She looked doubtful. “ ’Ow do I know you’re tellin’ me the truth? You could be anyone.”
“I could,” he agreed, and produced his police identification.
She looked at the card carefully. Her eyes did not move along the line, and Pitt guessed she could not read. She looked up at him again, studying his face, and he waited for her to make her judgment.
“All right,” she said at last. “If it’s police yer’d better come in. But ’E in’t done nuffink wrong.”
“It’s information I need,” he said, somewhat begging the question, and followed her into the narrow hallway where she opened one of the doors into the front parlor. “That’s where ’E keeps ’is papers,” she said stiffly. “Anyfink yer wantin’ll be in there. If it in’t, then it in’t ’ere at all.” It was a definite statement he was not going to be allowed anywhere else.
“Thank you,” he accepted. She remained standing rooted to the spot, her eyes hard and bright. Obviously she was not going to leave him alone, policeman or not. He smiled to himself, then began to look around. It was not a large room, and the space was further crowded by at least a dozen paintings on the walls. They were not at all what he would have expected, family portraits, sentimental pastoral scenes or sporting prints. Rather they were very modern impressions of sunlit landscapes: bars of light, blurs of water lilies all blues and greens with flashes of pink; a dazzle of shades and points of vivid color which conjured peasant women lying under the trees by the side of a cornfield. They were highly individual experiments in art, the selection of a man who had very definite opinions and was prepared to spend a good deal of money investing in what he believed to be good. There was no need to look any further for the part of Urban’s lifestyle that would run him into debt. It was here on his walls for any caller to observe.
He stayed a few minutes longer, examining the pictures more closely, seeing the brushwork, the imagination and the skill that had gone into them. Then he went over to the desk and opened it in order to satisfy the waiting housekeeper that he was indeed looking for information of a sort she could understand. He shuffled through a couple of papers, read one, and closed the drawer. Then he swung around to face her. She looked faintly surprised that he should be finished so soon.
“You all done then?” she said with a frown.
“Yes thank you. It was only a small thing, and easily found.”
“Oh-well then you’d best be gone. I got work to do. Mr. Urban’s not the only gennelman as I see after. Mind my step as you go out. Don’t go dragging your feet over it. I just done that, I did.”
Pitt stepped over it carefully and went on down the path and out of the gate. The beauty of the pictures, the courage to back such individual and daring taste should have pleased him. Ordinarily it would have; but this time,
