A spasm of acute distaste passed over James’s features.
“He said that one of the police beat him,” he replied. “I have no proof whatsoever, but I believed him.”
“I see.”
“Do you.” It was a challenge, and there was definite anger in it. “I did not mention it at the time because I could not prove it, and it would only have alienated the jury even further that he seemed to be maligning the forces of order, and thus indirectly the public in general. Besides which, it was irrelevant to the fact.” There were two spots of pink in James’s cheeks. “It would not have altered the verdict.”
“I know that,” Pitt said honestly. “I just wanted to know, for myself. It explains a little of Paterson’s attitude.”
“It was Paterson?” James demanded.
“I think so.”
“How very ugly. I presume you have automatically thought of revenge?”
“Not Tamar Macaulay. Not the way Paterson was killed. It had to have been a man of considerable strength.”
“With Fielding’s help? No? Well, it is a possibility you must consider. Thank you for your candor, Inspector Pitt. Good day to you.”
“Good day, Mr. James.”
Pitt reported to Micah Drummond, not because he expected any comment from him, and certainly not any specific help, but because his duty required it.
“Whatever you think appropriate,” Drummond said absently, staring at the rain lashing against the window. “Is Lambert being difficult?”
“No,” Pitt replied honestly. “The poor devil was extremely shaken by Paterson’s death.”
“It is a dreadful thing to have a junior killed,” Drummond said with tight lips. “That is an experience you have not yet faced, Pitt. If you do, you will have more sympathy for Lambert, I promise you.” He kept his face to the streaming glass. “You will feel just the same grief, self-doubt, even guilt. You will reexamine everything you said or did to find some fault in your orders, some oversight, anything that you could have done differently, and avoided it. You will lie awake and agonize, feel sick about it, even wonder if you are fit to have command.”
“I don’t have command,” Pitt said with a thin smile, not because he cared about it but because he could hear the weariness in Drummond’s voice, and the knowledge of Lambert’s pain.
“What did the medical examiner say?” Drummond asked. “Hanging, just as it seemed?”
“Yes,” Pitt replied carefully. “That’s all, just hanging. That is what killed him.”
Drummond turned around at last, frowning. “What do you mean, just hanging? That’s enough to kill anyone. What more did you expect?”
“Poison, strangling, a blow to the head …”
“Whatever for, for heaven’s sake? You hardly need to poison a man and then hang him.”
“Would you stand still while someone put a noose around your neck, threw it over the chandelier hook and hauled you up by it?” Pitt asked.
Several expressions flashed across Drummond’s face: comprehension, anger, impatience with himself, and then curiosity.
“Binding on his wrists?” he asked. “Ankles?”
“No—nothing. It requires some explanation, doesn’t it?”
Drummond’s frown deepened. “Where are you going next? You had better do something. I’ve had the assistant commissioner down here again. Nobody wants this thing dragged on any longer.”
“You mean they don’t want the Farriers’ Lane case opened up any further,” Pitt said bitterly.
Drummond’s face tightened. “Of course not. It’s extremely sensitive.”
“I’ll follow Paterson’s last few days, from the time I spoke to him until he died,” Pitt answered the urgent question.
“Let me know what you find.”
“Yes sir, of course.”
Lambert was little use. As Drummond had expected, he was still deeply shocked at the death in such a manner of one of his own men. He had questioned everyone in the lodging house, everyone in the street, all the men who had worked with Paterson or known him personally. He was no nearer finding who killed him.
But he did report to Pitt the record of Paterson’s police duties for the last week of his life, and after tedious piecing together of testimony, times, places, Pitt realized there were considerable gaps in the account of his days when no one knew where he had been.
Pitt guessed he had gone to retrace his entire original investigation of the Farriers’ Lane murder.
He began his own pursuit of Paterson by going back to the theater doorman. It was curiously dead at this time of the day; no color, only the gray daylight, no laughter and the shiver of expectancy before a performance, no actors or musicians entertaining the crowds, just women with mops sitting on the steps with the dregs of a cup of tea, reading the leaves.
Pitt found Wimbush in his small room just inside the stage door entrance.
“Yes sir. Mr. Paterson came back again.” Wimbush screwed up his eyes in thought. “That’d be about six days ago, or maybe five.”
“What did he say to you?”
