squarely.
“It’s settled, Pitt. You are to take over the case. Sergeant Innes will work with you, show you what they have so far, and do any local investigations you may wish. Report your progress to me.”
Pitt understood him perfectly. He also knew him well enough not to doubt his integrity. If it proved that Byam had killed his blackmailer, Drummond would be distressed and deeply embarrassed, but he would not defend him or seek to conceal it.
“Yes sir,” Pitt agreed with a bare smile. “Does Sergeant Innes know I am coming?”
“He will in another five minutes,” Drummond answered with a flicker of humor in his eyes. “If you wait here he will join you. Fortunately he was here at the station-or perhaps it was not fortune…” He left the rest unsaid. Such a thing had become possible with the invention of the telephone, a magnificent and sometimes erratic instrument which made immediate communication possible between those possessed of one, as was Byam, and presumably someone in the Clerkenwell station.
Drummond took his leave, back to Bow Street, and Pitt waited in the shabby, overused hallway until Sergeant Innes should appear, which he did in a little more than the five minutes promised. He was a small, wiry man with a very large nose and a sudden smile which showed crooked white teeth. Pitt liked him straightaway, and was acutely aware of the indignity of the position he had been put in.
“Sergeant Innes.” Innes announced himself a trifle stiffly, not yet knowing what to make of Pitt, but having appreciated from his rank that it was not Pitt who had engineered this sudden overtaking of his case.
“Pitt,” Pitt replied, holding out his hand. “I apologize for this-the powers that be…” He left it unfinished. He did not feel at liberty to tell Innes more; that was presumably the reason the local station was not permitted to conduct the affair themselves.
“Understood,” Innes acknowledged briefly. “Can’t think why, very ordinary squalid little affair-so far. Miserable usurer shot in his own offices.” His expressive face registered disgust. “Probably some poor beggar he was squeezing dry ’Oo couldn’t take it anymore. Filthy occupation. Vampires!”
Pitt agreed with him heartily and was happy to say so.
“What do you have?” he went on.
“Not much. No witnesses, but then that would be too much to hope for.” Innes flashed his amiable smile. “Usury is a secret sort of business anyway. ’Oo wants the world to know ’e’s borrowin’ money from a swine like that? You got to be pretty desperate to go to one o’ them.” He started to walk towards the door and Pitt followed. “Easiest ter see the corpse first,” Innes went on. “Got ’im in the morgue just down the road. Then we can go to Cyrus Street, that’s where ’E lived. ‘Aven’t really ’ad much time to look ’round that yet. Just got started when a constable came flyin’ ’round ter tell us ter stop everythin’ and come back ter the station. Left the place locked and a man on duty, o’ course.”
Pitt went down the steps outside and onto the busy pavement. The air was still warm and heavy, sharp with the smell of horse dung. They walked side by side, Pitt’s long, easy stride and Innes’s shorter, brisker march.
“Just begun to question the local people,” Innes went on. “All know nothing about it, o’ course.”
“Of course,” Pitt agreed dryly. “I imagine no one is particularly grieved to see him dead.”
Innes grinned and glanced at Pitt with sidelong amusement. “No one’s even pretending so far. A lot of debts written off there.”
“No heir?” Pitt was surprised.
“No one claimed to be so far.” Innes’s face darkened. His own feelings in the matter were transparent. Pitt would not be surprised if a few of the records of debt were kept overlong by the police in their investigations, important evidence, not to be released too soon. Personally if they were misplaced he would not be overduly concerned himself. He had sharp enough memories of hunger and cold and the gnawing anxiety of poverty from his own childhood to understand the despair of debt and wish it on no one.
They strode along between busy women with bales of cloth, baskets of bread and vegetables and small goods to sell. Costermongers pushed barrows along the cobbles close to the curbs, crying out their wares; peddlers stood on corners and proffered matches, bootlaces, clockwork toys and a dozen other trivial items. Someone had a cart with cold peppermint to drink, and was doing an excellent trade. A running patterer’s singsong voice recited the latest scandal in easy doggerel.
The morgue was grim and there was a musty carbolic smell as soon as they were in the door. The attendant recognized Innes immediately but looked at Pitt with some suspicion.
Innes introduced him laconically and explained his presence.
“I suppose you want to see Weems?” the attendant said with a grimace, pushing his hand over his head, and smoothing off his brow a single strand of fairish hair. “Disagreeable,” he said conversationally. “Most disagreeable. Come with me, gentlemen.” He turned around and led the way to a room at the back of the building, stone floored with tiled walls and two large sinks along the far end. A stone table stood in the middle with guttering leading away from it to the drain. There were gas jets on the walls, and one pendant lamp from the center of the ceiling. On the table, covered by a sheet, Pitt saw the very clear outline of a body.
Innes shivered but kept his face stoically expressionless.
“There you are,” the attendant said cheerfully. “The late Mr. William Weems, as was. Of all the citizens of Clerkenwell, he’ll be one of the least missed.” He sniffed. “Sorry, gentlemen, p’r’aps I spoke out of turn. Shouldn’t cast aspersions at the dead-not decent, is it.” He sniffed again.
Pitt found the smell of death catching at his stomach, the wet stone, the carbolic, the sweet odor of blood. He wished to get it over with as quickly as possible.
He lifted the sheet off the body and looked at what remained of William Weems. He was a large man, flaccid in death now that the rigor had worn off and the muscles of his abdomen were relaxed and his limbs lay slack, but in life Pitt guessed him to have been quite imposing.
The manner of death was hideously apparent. The left half of his head had been blasted at close range by some sort of multiple missile, a gun with a very large barrel and loose bullets or even scrap metal. There was nothing left to judge what his appearance might have been, no ear or cheek or hairline, no eye. Pitt had seen many a constable sicken and faint at less. His own stomach tightened and beside him he heard Innes suck in his breath, but he forced himself to remember that death would have been instant, and what was left here on this table was simply the clay that used to be a man, nothing more; no pain, no fear inhabited it now.
He looked at the right side of the head. Here the features were intact. He could see what the large broad nose had been like, the wide mouth he could guess at, the heavy-lidded, greenish hazel eye was still open, but somehow inhuman now. It did not strike him as having been a pleasing face, although he knew it was unfair to judge in any manner of death, least of all this. He was ashamed of himself for feeling so little grief.
“A shotgun of some sort,” Innes said grimly. “Or one of them old-fashioned things they load at the muzzle, with all sorts o’ stuff, bits of iron fillings an’ the like. Very nasty.”
Pitt turned away from the body and back to Innes.
“I take it you didn’t find the gun?”
“No sir. At least I don’t think so. There’s an old-fashioned hackbut on the wall. I suppose ’E could ’ave used that, and ’ung it back up again.”
“Which means he didn’t bring it with him,” Pitt said doubtfully. “What does the doctor say?”
“Not a lot. ’E died some time yesterday evening, between eight an’ midnight ’E reckons. As you can see, it must ’a bin straightaway. Yer don’t ’ang around with a wound like that. No tellin’ at this time what distance away, but can’t ’a bin far, ’Cos the room in’t that big.”
“I suppose no one heard anything?” Pitt asked ruefully.
“Not a soul.” Innes smiled very slightly. “I doubt we’ll get a great deal o’ help from the locals. ’E weren’t a popular man.”
“I never knew a usurer who was.” Pitt took a last look at the pallid face, then allowed the attendant to cover it with the sheet again. “I suppose they’ll do a postmortem?”
“Yeah, but I dunno what for.” Innes pulled a face. “Plain enough what killed ’im.”
“Who found him?” Pitt asked.
“Feller what runs errands for ’im an’ does some clerking.” Innes wrinkled up his nose at the odor in the room. “If you don’t want anything more in ’ere, can we get on to Cyrus Street, sir?”
“Of course.” Pitt moved from the wet stone, carbolic and death with a sense of release. They thanked the morgue attendant and escaped out into the heat, dirt, noise, the gutters and horse manure and overspilling life of
