'So do I,' Pitt said grimly. 'We'll be reduced to doubling police on duty and hoping to catch him in the act.' He said it in desperation, but he knew there was little else they could do if indeed that were the case. 'There are still other possibilities.'
'Someone mistook the first victim?' Drummond said thoughtfully. 'They intended Etheridge, but got Hamilton by mistake? It's dark enough in the stretches between the lamps, and if he'd had his back to the light and his face in shadow when he was attacked, their features are enough alike, and with the same light hair-a frightened or enraged person-' He did not finish; the vision was clear enough.
'Or the second crime is an imitation of the first.' Pitt doubted it even as he spoke. 'Sometimes it happens, especially when a crime gains a lot of publicity, as Hamilton's murder did. Or it could be that only one of the murders matters, and we are intended to believe it is anarchists or a madman, when one cold-blooded crime was committed to mask another.'
'Who was the intended victim, Hamilton or Etheridge?' Drummond looked tired. He had slept little in the last week
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and now this cold horror with all its implications stretched darkly in front of him.
'I'd better go and tell the widow.' Pitt was shivering. The night air seemed to eat right through his clothes into his bones. 'Have you the address?'
'Three Paris Road, off the Lambeth Palace Road.'
'I'll walk.'
'There's a hansom,' said Drummond.
'No, I'd rather walk.' He needed time to think, to prepare himself. He set off briskly, swinging his arms to get warm and trying to form in his mind how he would tell this new family of its bereavement.
It took him over five minutes of knocking at the door and waiting before a footman turned on the light hi the hall and gingerly opened the door.
'Inspector Thomas Pitt, Bow Street Station,' Pitt said quietly. 'I'm sorry, but I have bad news for Mr. Etheridge's family. May I come in?'
' 'Yes-yes sir.'' The footman stepped back and pulled the door wider. The hall was large and lined with oak. A single gaslight showed the dun outlines of portraits and the soft blues of a Venetian scene. A magnificent staircase curved up towards the shadows of the gallery landing and the one light glowing there.
'Has there been an accident,
'No, I am afraid he is dead. He was murdered-in the same way as Sir Lockwood Hamilton.'
'Oh my Gawd!' The footman's face blanched, leaving the freckles across his nose standing out sharply. For a moment Pitt was afraid he was going to faint. He put out his hand, and the gesture seemed to recall the man. He was probably no more than twenty at most.
'Is there a butler?' Pitt asked him. The youth should not have to bear the burden of such news alone.
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'Yes sir.'
'Perhaps you should waken him, and a lady's maid, before we tell Mrs. Etheridge.'
'Mrs. Etheridge? There in't no Mrs. Etheridge, sir. 'E's- 'e were a widower. Long time now, before I come 'ere. There's just Miss Helen-that's 'is daughter; Mrs. Carfax, she is-and Mr. Carfax.'
'Then call the butler, and a maid, and Mr. and Mrs. Carfax. I am sorry, but I shall need to speak to them.'
Pitt was shown into the morning room, austere in dark green, with early spring flowers in a misty blue Lalique bowl and paintings on the wall, at least one of which Pitt believed to be an original Guardi. The late Vyvyan Etheridge had had not only fine taste, but
