“I am sorry I could be of no help.” Livesey held out his hand and Pitt shook it. It was an unusual courtesy from a judge to a policeman, and he appreciated it.
After luncheon he went to the offices of Adolphus Pryce and was obliged to wait nearly half an hour before Pryce was free to see him. The office was the same, comfortable, elegant, and individual. Pryce himself was just as graceful, but there was a tiredness in his face and his gestures looked habitual, devoid of the inner energy they had had before. He too was disappointed in himself: his dreams had been shown to be shallow, his emotions dishonest, and it hurt him where there was no evasion, and as yet no healing.
“Yes, Pitt? What can I do for you?” he said politely. “Do sit down.” He indicated the chair opposite. “I really feel I have already told you everything I know, but if there is something more, please ask me.” He smiled bleakly. “I should congratulate you for solving the Farriers’ Lane case. That was an excellent piece of work. You have certainly put the rest of us to shame. Poor Godman was innocent. That is a fact I shall not live with easily.”
“Nor, I imagine, will many others,” Pitt said grimly. “But you have nothing to reproach yourself for. Your duty was to prosecute him. You were the only one in the court who was an enemy in plain guise, and he knew you for one. The others were either on his side or supposed to be impartial.”
“You are too hard on them, Pitt. Everyone believed him guilty. The evidence was overwhelming.”
“Why?” Pitt asked, his eyes meeting Pryce’s with challenge.
Pryce blinked. “I don’t understand you. What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Why was it overwhelming? What came first, the evidence or the belief? I begin to think perhaps it was the belief.”
Pryce sat down wearily. “Perhaps it was. We were all horrified, and a little frightened. You know the public is a savage animal when you disturb its deeper beliefs and awaken its fears. There is no purpose whatever in trying to reason with it, explain what you can do, and what you cannot, tell them how difficult it is. All they want is results. They do not care how you obtain them, they don’t want to know the details or the cost. But you are a policeman, you must know that. I don’t imagine they have left you uncriticized or harried over poor Stafford.”
“No,” Pitt said ruefully. “Although there hasn’t been a public outcry. It was a quieter crime. It lacked the horror. I suppose people feel that a judge is somehow different from themselves, and so the fear is a step removed, not personal. There is no unreasoning monster out there in the shadows crucifying people. Though certainly the Home Secretary has been down to chivvy us once or twice.”
Pryce crossed his legs and a faint flicker of amusement touched his mouth.
“You sound bitter, Pitt. What can I help you with? I really have no idea who killed Stafford, or why.”
“Neither have I,” Pitt said sourly. “I am reduced to going over the facts again—and again. Did you see him during the interval that evening?”
Pryce looked vaguely surprised, as if he had been expecting some difficult question.
“Yes. He was in the smoking room, talking to various people. I don’t think I can remember who. I spoke to him myself, but only briefly. Something of no meaning at all—the weather, or the latest cricket disaster, I think. I didn’t see him drink from the flask, if that is what you are hoping.”
“Did he have a glass in his hand?”
Pryce’s eyes widened. “Come to think of it, yes, he did. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Why does a man drink from a flask if he has a glass of whiskey in his hand?”
“A second one, I suppose,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “He did drink from the flask, because he drank the poison. It was in the flask when we tested it. That is about the only fact which is incontrovertible.”
“Well, there must be a limited number of people who could have put it there, by the mere physical facts,” Pryce said logically. “One can reduce their number, surely? Disregard motive, for the time being. It has to be someone who had access to the flask after he left Livesey, because both Livesey and his companion were seen to drink from it then, and they are both in perfect health. And yet it was in the flask when Stafford drank from it later, presumably in the theater. It could be someone in the interval, I suppose.”
“Who else was in the smoking room?”
“A couple of hundred people.”
“They didn’t all speak to Stafford. Can you recall the names of anyone who might have been close enough to him to have spoken to him, or seen what happened?”
Pryce sat silent for a moment or two, looking bleakly at Pitt.
“I remember the Honorable Gerald Thompson,” he said at last. “He has a voice that would break glass, and never stops talking. He was close to Stafford, and facing him. And Molesworth was there, from Chancery. Do you know him? No, I don’t suppose you do. Big man, bald, with a white beard.”
“Is that all you remember?” Pitt asked.
“There was a tremendous crush in there,” Pryce protested. “Everyone elbowing their way through, trying not to spill drinks, vying for attention, all talking at once. And there was a bit of a commotion going on because Oscar Wilde was there, and at least a dozen people wanted to speak to him. I can’t think why. He was close to Stafford.” Pryce’s face lit with malicious amusement. “You could always go and ask him.”
“Is he likely to have noticed anything?”
Pryce’s eyebrows shot up. “I have no idea. I should doubt it. Too busy being amusing.”
“Thank you.” Pitt rose to his feet. At least Pryce had given him something to pursue, although he had no plan beyond that, nothing else to seek, no one to question.
“Not at all,” Pryce replied. “I imagine I will see you again. What I’ve given you will be of little use. Even if someone did see him drink from the flask, it won’t tell you anything, unless they saw someone else put something into it—and that seems a little like hoping someone will tell you the Derby winner before the day.”
Pitt took his leave without further comment. They had said it all.
Outside it was bitterly cold with a wind off the river which cut through the wool of his coat, into his flesh. He walked rapidly along the footpath, head down, woollen muffler tight, collar up over his ears, until he came to the
