For a second they were all motionless: the madwoman with her black eyes and mouth open, the blade still in the air, Pitt with the truncheon clenched in his hand, and Royce ten feet beyond them.
Then Royce's hand went to his pocket, and before the woman could move, the shot rang out, and she took a stumbling step towards Pitt. There was another shot, and another, and she fell into the road and lay across the gutter, blood soaking her shawl, the razor tinkling thinly on the stones and the pale blossoms of the primroses lying around her.
Pitt bent over her for a moment. There was nothing to do. She was dead, shot cleanly through the heart from behind, as well as through the shoulder and the chest. He had no idea which bullet had killed her; it might have been any of the three.
He stood up slowly and looked at Royce, who was still standing with the gun in his hand, a revolver, black and pol-
270
ished, no longer hidden in the deep overcoat pocket. Royce's face was white, almost drained of expression; the fear had too recently left him.
'Good God, man-you nearly got yourself killed!' he said huskily. He passed his hand over his eyes and blinked, as though dizzy. He looked down at the woman. 'Is she dead?'
'Yes.'
'I'm sorry.' Royce went towards her but stopped more than a yard away. He passed the gun to Pitt, who took it reluctantly. Royce stared at the woman. 'Although perhaps it is for the best. Poor creature may at last be at peace. This is cleaner than a rope.'
Pitt could find no argument. Hanging was a grotesque and terrible thing, and why drag out a trial for a woman who was so patently insane? He faced Royce and tried to think of something appropriate to say.
'Thank you, Sir Garnet. We appreciate your courage- without it we might never have caught her.' He held out his hand.
The constables were there from the south side of the bridge, and the pie vendor and the footman were approaching just beyond the circle of light. Micah Drummond stopped on the pavement and stared at the woman, then at Pitt and Royce.
Royce took Pitt's hand and wrung it so hard the flesh was bruised.
Micah Drummond knelt down and looked at the woman, moving the shawl away from her face, opening the front of it and searching for some mark of identity.
'Do you know her, sir?' he asked Royce.
'Know her? Good God, no!'
Drummond looked at her again, and when he turned back to them his voice was quiet, touched with compassion as well as horror.
'Some of her clothing comes from Bedlam. It looks as if she was in the asylum recently.'
Pitt remembered what the woman's last words had been. 271
He stared at Royce. 'She knew you,' he said quietly, very levelly. 'She called you by name.'
Royce was motionless, his eyes wide; then very slowly he went and looked down at the dead woman. No one spoke. Another foghorn sounded on the river.
' 'I-I 'm not certain, but if she really has come from Bedlam, then it could be Elsie Draper, poor creature. She was lady's maid to my wife, seventeen years ago. She was a country woman, came with Naomi when we were married. Elsie was devoted to her, and when Naomi died she took it very badly. She became deranged, and we were obliged to have her committed. I-I admit, I had no idea she was homicidally insane. I wonder how in the name of heaven she came to be free.''
' 'We haven't been notified of an escape,'' Drurnmond answered. 'Presumably she was released. After seventeen years they may have thought her safe.'
Royce gasped. 'Safe!' The word hung in the damp air, with the slow-curling mist
