Again the second man laughed uproariously.
“I want to take something, not fetch it back,” Pitt answered, hoping he had not gone too far.
“Slack water,” the first man replied, watching him closely. “Stands ter reason. No current pullin’ yer.”
“Is the current strong?”
“‘Course it’s strong! It’s a tidal river, ain’t it! Geez, w’ere you bin? Yer stupid or summink?”
“If I got here early, where could I wait?” Pitt ignored the insult.
“Well not ’ere, if yer don’t want to be seen, that’s fer sure,” the man said dryly, and clasped his pipe between his teeth again.
“Why? Who’d see me?”
“Well I would, fer a start!”
“Slack water’s in the middle of the night,” Pitt argued.
“I know when slack water is! I come down ’ere middle o’ the night often enough.”
“Why?”
“’cause there ain’t much right ’ere, but a hundred yards or so”-he pointed along the bank-“there’s dozens o’ wharfs. There’s Baker’s Wharf, Sufferance, Bovel and Sons, Landells, West Wharf, the Coal Wharf and a lot o’ steps. And that’s before yer gets to Saint Saviour’s Dock. There’s always summink ter be ‘ad down there.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“‘Course in the middle o’ the night. Look, guv, if yer wants to take summink across the river as yer shouldn’t, this in’t the right place for yer. If yer got to get to the Tower, then go upstream, the Little Bridge Stairs. That’s quieter, and there’s often the odd boat moored up there as yer could take fer nuffink, if yer brought it back again. No trouble. I’m surprised yer didn’t see it from London Bridge if yer came over that way. Only a quarter of a mile or so. Yer can see if there’s a boat.”
“Thank you,” Pitt said with a lift in his voice he could barely control. “That’s excellent advice.” He fished in his pocket and found a shilling. “Have a pint each. I’m obliged to you.”
“Thanks, guv.” The man took the shilling and it disappeared into his pocket. He shook his head as Pitt turned away. “Nutter,” he said to himself. “Right nutter.”
“Back to Little Bridge Stairs,” Pitt told the cabby.
“Right y’are.”
They went back up to Tooley Street and then down Mill Lane towards the river. This time there was no road beside the water. Mill Lane ended abruptly at the bank and Little Bridge Stairs. There was a narrow dock a few yards upriver, and nothing else but the water and the bank. Pitt alighted.
The cabby wiped the side of his nose and looked expectantly at him.
Pitt looked around him, then down at the ground. Nothing would pass that way, except to go to the steps and the water. A carriage could wait here for hours without necessarily being remarked.
“Who uses these stairs?” Pitt asked.
The cabby looked affronted.
“Y’askin’ me? ’ow the ’ell would I know? Be fair, guv, this ain’t my patch.”
“I’m sorry,” Pitt apologized. “Let’s have luncheon at the nearest public house, and they may be able to tell us.”
“Now that sounds like a very sensible idea,” the cabby agreed with alacrity. “I saw one jus’ ’round the corner. Called the Three Ferrets, it were, and looked quite well used, like.”
It proved to be more than adequate, and after a meal of tripe and onions, followed by steamed spotted dick pudding and a glass of cider, they returned to the stairs armed with even more information than Pitt had dared hope for. It seemed very few people used the stairs, but one Frederick Lee had passed by that way on the night in question and had seen a carriage waiting sometime before midnight, the coachman sitting on his box, smoking a cigar, the carriage doors closed. On his way home, more than an hour later, the man had seen it again. He had thought it odd, but none of his business, and the coachman had been a big fellow, and Lee was not inclined to make trouble for no good reason. He believed in minding his own business. He despised nosiness; it was uncivil and unhealthy.
Pitt had thanked him heartily, treated him to a glass of cider, then taken his leave.
But at the narrow, riverside end of Mill Lane, overlooking the water and the stairs down, Pitt walked back and forth slowly, eyes downcast, searching the ground just in case there were any signs of the carriage that had waited there so long, while the tide reached its height, hung slack, and then began the ebb. The surface of the road bore no trace; it was rutted stone sloping away to gutters at the side.
But it was summer. There had been only a brief shower or two of rain in the last week, nothing to wash away debris. He walked slowly up one side, and was partway down the other, about twenty yards from the water, when he saw a cigar butt, and then another. He bent down and picked them up, holding them in the palm of his hand. They were both coming unraveled from the leaf at the charred end, the tobacco loose and thready. He pulled it gently. It was distinctive, aromatic, certainly costly, not the sort of a cigar a cabdriver or waterside laborer would smoke. He turned it over carefully, examining the other end. It was curiously cut, not by a knife but by a specifically designed cigar clipper, the blades meeting equidistantly from either side. There was a very slight twist to it, and the mark of an uneven front tooth where someone had clenched a jaw on it in a moment of emotional tension.
He took out his handkerchief and wrapped them both carefully and placed them in his pocket, then continued on his way.
But he found nothing else of interest, and returned to the hansom, where the cabby was sitting on the box, watching every move he made.
“Got summink?” he asked with excitement, waiting to be told what it was and what it meant.
“I think so,” Pitt replied.
“Well?” The man was not going to be shut out of the explanation.
“A cigar butt,” Pitt said with a smile. “An expensive one.
“Gawd …” The cabby let out his breath in a sigh. “’er murderer sat an’ smoked, with ’er corpse in his carriage, awaiting to take ’er across the river. ’e’s a cool bastard, in’t ’e?”
“I doubt it.” Pitt climbed into the cab. “I rather think he was in the grip of a passion possibly greater than ever before in his life. Take me to Belgravia please, Ebury Street.”
“Belgravia! Yer never thinking ’im what done it lives in Belgravia, are yer?”
“Yes I am. Now get started will you!”
It was a long ride back across the river and westwards, and in places the traffic was heavy. Pitt had plenty of time to think. If Susannah’s murderer had thought of her as a traitor, and felt it so passionately he had killed her for it, then it could only be someone to whom she could be considered to owe an intense loyalty. That must be either her family, represented by Francis Standish, or her husband.
What betrayal could that be? Had she believed Arthur Desmond and Peter Kreisler, after all? Had she questioned Standish’s investment with Cecil Rhodes, the whole manner in which the Inner Circle was involved? If Standish were a member, possibly a prominent one, could he even be the executioner? And had Susannah known, or guessed that? Was that why she had to be killed, for her knowledge, and because she was bent on sharing it rather than remaining loyal to her family, her class, and its interests?
That made a hideous sense. Standish could have met her in Mount Street. She would have expected a quarrel, a plea, but not violence. She would have been quite unafraid of anything but unpleasantness, and climbed into his carriage without more than a little coercion on his part. It satisfied all the facts he knew.
Except for what had happened to her cloak. Now that he was sure she had not been put in the river at all, simply made to look as if the receding tide had left her there by chance, it was no longer a reasonable explanation that her cloak had become lost as the current took her one way and then another.
Had he dropped it in the river for that purpose? Why? It proved nothing. And if he had, why had it not been washed up somewhere, or tangled in some rudder or oar? It would not have sunk with no body in it to carry it down. Anyway, it was a stupid thing to do; simply one more article for the police to search for, and meaning nothing one way or the other.
Unless, of course, the cloak did mean something! Could it be in some way marked, which would incriminate Standish?
Pitt could think of nothing. No one was pretending it was suicide or accident. The method and means were plain enough, even the motive was plain. He had defiantly and unnecessarily drawn attention to it!
