face, the expression in his eyes. “What is it? What’s happened? Is—is somebody else dead?”
“In a way.” He slumped down in the chair beside the stove and began to unlace his boots.
She knelt in front of him and started on the other one.
“What do you mean, ‘in a way’?”
“Aaron Godman. He didn’t kill Blaine,” he replied.
She stopped, her fingers curled around the wet laces, staring up at him.
“Who did?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t him. The flower seller was wrong about the time, and Paterson discovered it the day he died. Maybe he knew who it was, and that was why he was killed.”
“How can she have been wrong about the time? Didn’t they question her properly?”
He told her about the clock, and the malfunction when it was cleaned. She finished undoing his boots, took them off and put them close to the stove to dry out, then his socks, and rubbed his frozen feet with a warm towel. He wriggled his toes in exquisite relief, explaining how Paterson had misunderstood, how he had pressed until his conviction that Godman was guilty had overridden the woman and she had given in.
“Poor Paterson,” she said quietly. “He must have felt dreadful. I suppose it was his guilt over that which made him reckless for his own safety. He must have wanted desperately to put things right.” She went to the kettle which was singing quietly on the back of the stove, and pulled it forward onto the hot plate to bring it right to the boil, reaching with the other hand for the teapot and the caddy.
“Why did he write to Judge Livesey and not to you, or to his own inspector?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” He continued rubbing his cold feet, rolling up his trousers to keep the wet fabric from his legs. “I suppose he thought Livesey had the power to reopen the case. I certainly hadn’t, without some absolutely conclusive evidence, and even then I could only take it to the courts. Livesey could do it much more directly. And he was involved with the original appeal; in fact he was in charge of it. It was he who presented the judgment.”
Charlotte poured the scalding water onto the tea and closed the lid of the pot. “I suppose he couldn’t be … at fault, could he?”
“He had nothing to do with the original case,” he replied. “He certainly couldn’t have killed Blaine—and he couldn’t have killed Paterson. He was at a dinner all evening until well into the small hours of the morning. By which time Paterson was dead. We can prove all that by the medical evidence, and also by the landlady’s testimony of the time the outer doors were locked.”
She brought the teapot to the kitchen table, and cups, milk from the pantry, and a large slice of brown bread, butter and pickle. She poured the tea, gave him his, and sat down opposite him as he began to eat hungrily.
“I suppose it must have been whoever killed Blaine,” she said thoughtfully. “Paterson must have told them he knew, which means that he had worked it all out. I wonder how.” She frowned. “I don’t see how knowing it couldn’t have been Godman tells him who it was.”
“Nor do I,” Pitt said with his mouth full. “Believe me, I’ve racked my mind over and over to think of what he could have seen or deduced which told him the answer—and I cannot think of it.” He sighed. “I wish to heaven he’d told someone! It was only in retracing his steps I even discovered that he’d found out Godman wasn’t guilty.”
She held her mug of tea in both hands.
“Who have you told?” she asked very quietly.
“Drummond—only Drummond,” he replied, watching her face. “It isn’t something anyone wants to know. It means they were all wrong—the police, the lawyers, the original trial and jury, the appeal—everyone. Even the hangman executed an innocent man. I imagine he’ll see that in his nightmares for a while.” He shivered and hunched his shoulders as though it were cold in the kitchen, in spite of the stove. “And the newspapers, the public —everyone, except Joshua Fielding and Tamar Macaulay.”
“What did Mr. Drummond say?”
“Not much. He knows as well as I do what the reaction is going to be.”
“What will it be? They cannot deny it—can they?”
“I don’t know.” He set his mug down wearily. “There’ll be a lot of anger, probably a lot of blame, everyone saying someone else should have known, should have been more competent, should have done something differently.” He smiled with a bitter humor. “I think Adolphus Pryce is about the only one who will come out of it without blame of some sort. He was supposed to prosecute, and he did. But Moorgate, Godman’s solicitor, is going to feel guilty for not having believed his client, whatever he does about it now; and Barton James for not having pressed the flower seller harder—but then he believed Godman was guilty, so he wouldn’t have seen any point. But he still had an innocent client, and let him be hanged.”
He picked up the mug again but it was nearly empty. “And Thelonius Quade, who tried the first case, will be bound to wonder if he could have or should have directed something differently and found the truth. Lambert will feel guilty for having charged the wrong man—and just as bad, let the right one go, not only free but unsuspected, to kill again.”
“And the appeal court judges,” Charlotte added, reaching for his mug and refilling it. “They denied the appeal and confirmed the wrong verdict. They are not going to retreat easily.” She passed him back the mug. “When will you tell Tamar Macaulay?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even thought about that yet.” He passed his hand over his eyes, rubbing them and shaking his head. “Tomorrow, maybe. Maybe later. I would really rather have a better idea of who it was before I tell her. I’m not sure enough what she’ll do.”
“Anyway”—she smiled bleakly—“not tonight. In the morning it will look different, maybe clearer.”
He finished his tea. “I doubt it.” He stood up. “But for the moment I don’t care. Let us go to bed, before I get too tired to climb the stairs.”
“Could it be Joshua Fielding?” Charlotte said over the breakfast table, her face pale with anxiety, watching Pitt as he spread his toast with marmalade. “Thomas, if it is, what am I going to do about Mama?”
