“May I speak with him?”
“Of course, if you wish, but he’ll only tell you what I have.”
“What about the coat with the blood on it?”
“He got rid of it somewhere between the end of Farriers’ Lane and Soho Square, where he met the flower seller. We never found it, but that’s hardly surprising. Any sort of coat wouldn’t lie around in a London street for long. If no one kept it for themselves they’d sell it to the old clothes dealers for the price of a week’s lodgings—or more.”
Pitt knew that was true. A good gentleman’s coat would fetch enough for a month in a penny gaff, and bread and soup besides. It could be the difference between life and death for someone. A little blood would be nothing at all.
“And the necklace?” he asked.
“The necklace?” Lambert was surprised. “For heaven’s sake, man, no doubt she kept it. It was worth quite a lot, according to the dresser, who knew a diamond when she saw it. I suppose being an actress’s dresser she saw quite a lot of the imitation,
“Did you look for it?” Pitt asked.
“Yes, of course. But she’d have a hundred places to hide it if she wished. It wasn’t stolen; we could hardly institute a police search. She could simply have taken it to the nearest hock shop until the outcry died down.”
“Has she ever been seen with it since?”
“I’ve no idea!” Lambert’s voice rose in exasperation. “Blaine is dead and Godman’s hanged. Who’s to care?”
“Blaine’s widow. Apparently it should have been hers.”
“Well, I daresay she had larger losses to grieve over,” Lambert snapped. “She was a very decent woman, poor creature.”
Pitt kept his temper with difficulty, and only because it was in his own interest. A quarrel would achieve nothing, and in truth, he was finding Lambert difficult to like, even though not hard to sympathize with. It must have been a wretched, panicky, overwhelming time with public hysteria and superior officers crowding him, looking over his shoulders at every act, and demanding impossible results.
“What about the weapon?” Pitt asked.
Lambert’s face tightened again. “Not conclusively. There were half a dozen long farrier’s nails used to crucify him. The medical examiner concluded it was probably one of them.”
“May I see Sergeant Paterson now?” Pitt asked. “I think you have told me all I need to know. I can’t think of anything else you could have done, and I doubt anyone on the Stafford case will. The evidence against Godman seems conclusive so far. I don’t know what Stafford could have been looking into. No one found the necklace or the coat. No one has changed their testimony. You haven’t seen the flower seller again, or the urchin who gave the message to Blaine?”
“No, as you say, there’s nothing.” Lambert was mollified. “Sorry,” he said, slightly apologetically. “I suppose I was rather uncivil.” He forced a half smile. “It’s a bad memory, and this Macaulay woman keeping on raising the issue and insisting we got the wrong man is pretty hard to take. If Stafford was trying to silence her once and for all, I wish to God he had succeeded!”
“Perhaps I can,” Pitt said with an answering smile.
Lambert sighed, relaxing at last, his eyes lighting. “Then I wish you good luck. I’ll get Paterson for you.” And he rose to his feet and walked past Pitt, leaving him alone while he went out into the corridor and Pitt heard his footsteps receding.
Immediately Pitt rose to his feet and opened the window, gasping in the cold air with relief. He half closed it again after a moment and returned to his seat just as the door opened and a uniformed sergeant appeared, tunic immaculate, buttons gleaming. He was in his early thirties, of roughly average height and build, but his face was unusual. His nose was long and very aquiline, his mouth rather small, but the plainness of his features was redeemed by very good dark eyes and a fine head of hair waving back from a broad brow.
“Sergeant Paterson, sir,” he announced himself, and stood upright, not quite at attention, but in an attitude of respect.
“Thank you for coming,” Pitt said evenly. “Sit down.” He waved his arm towards Lambert’s chair.
“Thank you, sir,” Paterson accepted. “Mr. Lambert said you wanted to speak to me about the Blaine/Godman case.” His face shadowed, but there was nothing evasive in it.
“That’s right,” Pitt agreed. He did not owe the sergeant an explanation, but he gave it anyway. “A murder I am investigating seems to have some connection. Mr. Lambert has told me a great deal, but I would like to hear from you what you learned about Godman’s movements that night.”
Paterson’s face reflected his emotions transparently. Even the memory of it brought back the anger and the revulsion he had felt then. His body was tense, his shoulders knotted and his voice changed as he began his answer.
“I was one of the first to get to the yard in Farriers’ Lane. Blaine was quite a big man, and young.” He stopped, his face tight with pity, and it was painfully apparent that he could recall every detail. He took a deep breath and continued, his eyes on Pitt’s face, watching to see if he understood anything of the real horror of it. “ ’E’d been dead for quite a while. It was a cold night, only a little above freezing, and ’e was stiff.” His voice shook and he controlled it only with an effort. “I’d rather not describe ’im, sir, if you don’t need to know.”
“I don’t,” Pitt said quickly, sorry for the man.
Paterson swallowed. “Thank you, sir. Not that I ’aven’t seen corpses before—too many of ’em. But this was different. This was a blasphemy.” His voice thickened as he said the word and his body was rigid.
