grunt. “But that’s probably so most places. Here at least it’s random, not organized by the state.” He smiled lopsidedly. “Some of the police are corrupt, and most of them are incompetent-but they’re not vicious, bar the odd one or two.”
“Corrupt?” Pitt could not help asking. He had not meant to, but the words were out before he guarded them.
Saul shook his head. “You’re really not from around here, are you!”
Pitt said nothing.
“There’s all sorts of things going on,” Saul continued gravely. “You just keep your head down, mind your own business and look after your own. If gentlemen come down here from up west, you don’t see them, don’t know them. Understand?”
“You mean after women?” Pitt was surprised. There were plenty of better-class prostitutes from the Haymarket to the park and anywhere else. No one had need to come this way where it was dark, dirty and quite possibly dangerous as well.
“And other things.” Saul bit his lip, his eyes anxious. “Mostly things you shouldn’t ask. Like I said, better you don’t know.”
Pitt’s mind raced. Was Saul talking about private vice or the plans of insurrection that Narraway feared?
“If it’s going to affect me, it’s my business,” Pitt argued.
“It won’t, if you look the other way.” Saul’s face was grave; the urgency of his advice was too vivid to deny.
“Dynamiters affect everyone,” Pitt said quietly, afraid the moment he had said it that he had gone too far.
Saul was startled. “Dynamiters! I’m talking about gentlemen from up west who drive around Spitalfields at night in big, black coaches and leave the devil’s business behind them.” His voice trembled. “You tend to your work, run your errands and look after your own, and you’ll be all right. If the police ask you about anything, you don’t know. You didn’t hear. Better still, you weren’t there!”
Pitt did not argue any further, and that evening as he sat over the table with the last of the food, his attention was taken up by a friend of Isaac’s coming to the door bruised and bleeding, his clothes torn.
“Samuel, whatever happened to you?” Leah said in dismay, starting up from her chair as Isaac led him in. “You look like you were run over by a carriage.” She looked at him with concern puckering her face, judging what she should do to help him.
“Had a bit of trouble with a bunch of local men,” Samuel answered, dabbing a bloodstained handkerchief to his lip and wincing as he tried to smile.
“Here! Don’t do that,” Leah ordered. “Let me look at it. Isaac, fetch me some water and ointment.”
“Did they rob you?” Isaac asked without moving to obey.
Samuel shrugged. “I’m alive. It could be worse.”
“How much?” Isaac demanded,
“Never mind how much,” Leah said sharply. “We’ll deal with that afterwards. Fetch me some water and the ointment. The man’s in pain! And he’s bleeding all over his shirt. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of good cloth?”
Pitt knew where the pump was, and the ewer. He went out of the back door and came back five minutes later with the ewer full of water. How clean it was he had no idea.
He found Leah and Isaac together, heads bent, talking quietly. Samuel was sitting back in a chair, his eyes closed. The conversation stopped the moment Pitt came in.
“Ah, good, good,” Isaac said quickly, taking the ewer. “Thank you very much.” He set it down and poured about a pint into a clean pan and put it on the stove. Leah already had the ointment.
“It’s too much,” Leah demanded, her voice low and fierce, her fingers clenched on the jar. “If you give all that this time, then what about next time? And there will be a next time, never mistake it!”
“We’ll deal with next time when it happens,” Isaac said firmly. “God will provide.”
Leah let out a snort of impatience. “He’s already provided you with brains! Use them.” She moved fractionally to place her back to Pitt. “It’s getting worse, and you can see that as well as anyone,” she urged. “With Catholics and Protestants at each other’s throats, and dynamiters all over the place, each one crazier than the last, and now talk about blowing up the sugar factory…”
Samuel sat patiently and silently between them. Pitt leaned against the dresser.
“No one’s going to blow up the sugar factory!” Isaac said tensely, with a warning glance at her.
“Oh? You know that, do you?” she challenged him, her eyebrows arched, eyes wide.
“Why would they do such a thing?” He kept his tone calm.
“They need a reason?” she demanded with amazement. She lifted her shoulders dramatically. “They’re anarchists. They hate everybody.”
“That’s got nothing to do with us,” he pointed out. “We look after our own.”
“They blow up the sugar factory, it’ll have to do with everyone!” she retorted.
“Enough, Leah!” he said, finality in his tone. Now it was an order. “Look after Samuel. I’ll find him some money to tide him over. Everyone else’ll help. Just do your part.”
She stared at him solemnly for several seconds, on the edge of further argument, then something in his face deterred her, and without saying anything further she obeyed.
The water reached the boil, and Pitt carried it over so she could minister to Samuel.
An hour later, in the privacy of the room Isaac used to work on his books, Pitt offered him a contribution of a few shillings towards the fund for Samuel. He was unreasonably delighted when it was accepted. It was a mark of belonging.
Tellman said nothing to anyone about his interest in John Adinett or his conversation with the cabdriver. It was three days before he was able to take the matter any further. Wetron had spoken to him again, questioning him about his present case more closely, wanting a detailed accounting of his time.
Tellman answered with exactness, obedient and unsmiling. The man had taken Pitt’s place, and he had no right to it. It might not have been of his choosing, but that excused nothing. He had forbidden Tellman to contact Pitt or take any further interest in the Adinett case. That was his fault all right. Tellman stared at his round, smooth- shaven face with bland, dumb insolence.
By late Tuesday afternoon he again had time to himself, and the first thing he did was to leave Bow Street, buy a ham sandwich from a peddler, and a drink of fresh peppermint, then walk slowly up towards Oxford Street, thinking hard.
He had taken another look at the notes he had made during the investigation and had seen that there were several spaces of time, often as much as four or five hours, in which they did not know where Adinett had been. It had not seemed to matter then, because they were concerned with the details of the physical facts. Where Adinett had spent his time seemed to be irrelevant, only a matter of catching all the details. Now it was all he had.
He walked more slowly. He had no idea where he was going, except that he must pursue something definite, both for Pitt’s sake and because he had no intention of going back to Gracie empty-handed.
Why would a man like John Adinett go three times to a place such as Cleveland Street? Who lived there? Was it possible he had odd tastes in personal vice which Fetters had somehow discovered?
Even as he said it to himself, he did not believe it. Why should Fetters care anyway? If it were not criminal, or even if it was, it was no one else’s concern.
But perhaps Fetters had discovered something about Adinett which he could not possibly afford to have known. That would have to be something criminal. What?
He increased his pace slightly. Perhaps the answer was in Cleveland Street. It was the only thing so far that was unexplained.
At Oxford Street he caught an omnibus going east, changed at Holborn, and went on towards Spitalfields and Whitechapel, still turning the question over and over in his mind.
Cleveland Street was very ordinary: merely houses and shops, tired, grubby, but reasonably respectable. Who lived here that Adinett had come to see three times?
He went into the first shop, which sold general hardware.
