Belgrave Square Read online

  They rode the rest of the way without resuming the conversation. Pitt could think of nothing else relevant to say. To have made polite conversation was beneath the respect they had for each other, and Drummond was apparently consumed with his own thoughts, which to judge from his face were far from comfortable.

  At Clerkenwell they alighted and Drummond went in ahead of Pitt, introduced himself, and requested to see the senior officer in charge. He was conducted upstairs almost immediately, leaving Pitt to wait by the duty desk, and it was some ten or twelve minutes before he returned looking grim but less ill at ease. He met Pitt’s eyes squarely.

  “It’s settled, Pitt. You are to take over the case. Sergeant Innes will work with you, show you what they have so far, and do any local investigations you may wish. Report your progress to me.”

  Pitt understood him perfectly. He also knew him well enough not to doubt his integrity. If it proved that Byam had killed his blackmailer, Drummond would be distressed and deeply embarrassed, but he would not defend him or seek to conceal it.

  “Yes sir,” Pitt agreed with a bare smile. “Does Sergeant Innes know I am coming?”

  “He will in another five minutes,” Drummond answered with a flicker of humor in his eyes. “If you wait here he will join you. Fortunately he was here at the station—or perhaps it was not fortune …” He left the rest unsaid. Such a thing had become possible with the invention of the telephone, a magnificent and sometimes erratic instrument which made immediate communication possible between those possessed of one, as was Byam, and presumably someone in the Clerkenwell station.

  Drummond took his leave, back to Bow Street, and Pitt waited in the shabby, overused hallway until Sergeant Innes should appear, which he did in a little more than the five minutes promised. He was a small, wiry man with a very large nose and a sudden smile which showed crooked white teeth. Pitt liked him straightaway, and was acutely aware of the indignity of the position he had been put in.

  “Sergeant Innes.” Innes announced himself a trifle stiffly, not yet knowing what to make of Pitt, but having appreciated from his rank that it was not Pitt who had engineered this sudden overtaking of his case.

  “Pitt,” Pitt replied, holding out his hand. “I apologize for this—the powers that be …” He left it unfinished. He did not feel at liberty to tell Innes more; that was presumably the reason the local station was not permitted to conduct the affair themselves.

  “Understood,” Innes acknowledged briefly. “Can’t think why, very ordinary squalid little affair—so far. Miserable usurer shot in his own offices.” His expressive face registered disgust. “Probably some poor beggar he was squeezing dry ’Oo couldn’t take it anymore. Filthy occupation. Vampires!”

  Pitt agreed with him heartily and was happy to say so.

  “What do you have?” he went on.

  “Not much. No witnesses, but then that would be too much to hope for.” Innes flashed his amiable smile. “Usury is a secret sort of business anyway. ’Oo wants the world to know ’e’s borrowin’ money from a swine like that? You got to be pretty desperate to go to one o’ them.” He started to walk towards the door and Pitt followed. “Easiest ter see the corpse first,” Innes went on. “Got ’im in the morgue just down the road. Then we can go to Cyrus Street, that’s where ’E lived. ‘Aven’t really ’ad much time to look ’round that yet. Just got started when a constable came flyin’ ’round ter tell us ter stop everythin’ and come back ter the station. Left the place locked and a man on duty, o’ course.”

  Pitt went down the steps outside and onto the busy pavement. The air was still warm and heavy, sharp with the smell of horse dung. They walked side by side, Pitt’s long, easy stride and Innes’s shorter, brisker march.

  “Just begun to question the local people,” Innes went on. “All know nothing about it, o’ course.”

  “Of course,” Pitt agreed dryly. “I imagine no one is particularly grieved to see him dead.”

  Innes grinned and glanced at Pitt with sidelong amusement. “No one’s even pretending so far. A lot of debts written off there.”

  “No heir?” Pitt was surprised.

  “No one claimed to be so far.” Innes’s face darkened. His own feelings in the matter were transparent. Pitt would not be surprised if a few of the records of debt were kept overlong by the police in their investigations, important evidence, not to be released too soon. Personally if they were misplaced he would not be overduly concerned himself. He had sharp enough memories of hunger and cold and the gnawing anxiety of poverty from his own childhood to understand the despair of debt and wish it on no one.

  They strode along between busy women with bales of cloth, baskets of bread and vegetables and small goods to sell. Costermongers pushed barrows along the cobbles close to the curbs, crying out their wares; peddlers stood on corners and proffered matches, bootlaces, clockwork toys and a dozen other trivial items. Someone had a cart with cold peppermint to drink, and was doing an excellent trade. A running patterer’s singsong voice recited the latest scandal in easy doggerel.

  The morgue was grim and there was a musty carbolic smell as soon as they were in the door. The attendant recognized Innes immediately but looked at Pitt with some suspicion.

  Innes introduced him laconically and explained his presence.

  “I suppose you want to see Weems?” the attendant said with a grimace, pushing his hand over his head, and smoothing off his brow a single strand of fairish hair. “Disagreeable,” he said conversationally. “Most disagreeable. Come with me, gentlemen.” He turned around and led the way to a room at the back of the building, stone floored with tiled walls and two large sinks along the far end. A stone table stood in the middle with guttering leading away from it to the drain. There were gas jets on the walls, and one pendant lamp from the center of the ceiling. On the table, covered by a sheet, Pitt saw the very clear outline of a body.

  Innes shivered but kept his face stoically expressionless.

  “There you are,” the attendant said cheerfully. “The late Mr. William Weems, as was. Of all the citizens of Clerkenwell, he’ll be one of the least missed.” He sniffed. “Sorry, gentlemen, p’r’aps I spoke out of turn. Shouldn’t cast aspersions at the dead—not decent, is it.” He sniffed again.

  Pitt found the smell of death catching at his stomach, the wet stone, the carbolic, the sweet odor of blood. He wished to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  He lifted the sheet off the body and looked at what remained of William Weems. He was a large man, flaccid in death now that the rigor had worn off and the muscles of his abdomen were relaxed and his limbs lay slack, but in life Pitt guessed him to have been quite imposing.

  The manner of death was hideously apparent. The left half of his head had been blasted at close range by some sort of multiple missile, a gun with a very large barrel and loose bullets or even scrap metal. There was nothing left to judge what his appearance might have been, no ear or cheek or hairline, no eye. Pitt had seen many a constable sicken and faint at less. His own stomach tightened and beside him he heard Innes suck in his breath, but he forced himself to remember that death would have been instant, and what was left here on this table was simply the clay that used to be a man, nothing more; no pain, no fear inhabited it now.

  He looked at the right side of the head. Here the features were intact. He could see what the large broad nose had been like, the wide mouth he could guess at, the heavy-lidded, greenish hazel eye was still open, but somehow inhuman now. It did not strike him as having been a pleasing face, although he knew it was unfair to judge in any manner of death, least of all this. He was ashamed of himself for feeling so little grief.

  “A shotgun of some sort,” Innes said grimly. “Or one of them old-fashioned things they load at the muzzle, with all sorts o’ stuff, bits of iron fillings an’ the like. Very nasty.”

  Pitt turned away from the body and back to Innes.

  “I take it you didn’t find the gun?”

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p; “No sir. At least I don’t think so. There’s an old-fashioned hackbut on the wall. I suppose ’E could ’ave used that, and ’ung it back up again.”

  “Which means he didn’t bring it with him,” Pitt said doubtfully. “What does the doctor say?”

  “Not a lot. ’E died some time yesterday evening, between eight an’ midnight ’E reckons. As you can see, it must ’a bin straightaway. Yer don’t ’ang around with a wound like that. No tellin’ at this time what distance away, but can’t ’a bin far, ’Cos the room in’t that big.”

  “I suppose no one heard anything?” Pitt asked ruefully.

  “Not a soul.” Innes smiled very slightly. “I doubt we’ll get a great deal o’ help from the locals. ’E weren’t a popular man.”

  “I never knew a usurer who was.” Pitt took a last look at the pallid face, then allowed the attendant to cover it with the sheet again. “I suppose they’ll do a postmortem?”

  “Yeah, but I dunno what for.” Innes pulled a face. “Plain enough what killed ’im.”

  “Who found him?” Pitt asked.

  “Feller what runs errands for ’im an’ does some clerking.” Innes wrinkled up his nose at the odor in the room. “If you don’t want anything more in ’ere, can we get on to Cyrus Street, sir?”

  “Of course.” Pitt moved from the wet stone, carbolic and death with a sense of release. They thanked the morgue attendant and escaped out into the heat, dirt, noise, the gutters and horse manure and overspilling life of the street. He resumed the questions. “He has no housekeeper?”

  “Woman what comes and cooks and cleans a bit.” Innes marched sharply beside him. “She only does breakfast in the mornings. She saw the light on in the office and took it ’E was awake, so she made his meal and left it on the table without disturbing him. She just called out that it was ready, and weren’t bothered when she ’eard no answer. Apparently he weren’t given to pleasantries an’ it didn’t strike ’er as nothing wrong.” He dug his hands into his pockets and skipped a step to avoid tripping over a piece of refuse. It was a brilliant day and still hot. He squinted a trifle in the sun. “O’ course she fairly threw a fit when we told ’er as she’d cooked breakfast for a dead man, within yards of ’is corpse. ’ad ter fetch ’er two glasses o’ gin to bring ’er ’round.”

  Pitt smiled. “Had she anything interesting to say about him, in general?”

  “No love lost. On the other ’and, no particular grudge either, no quarrel as far as we can learn. But then she’d not likely mention it if there was.”

  “Any callers of interest?” Pitt avoided a fat woman with two children in tow.

  “Who knows?” Innes replied. “People don’t often make a big show o’ calling on a moneylender. Come in the back door, and leave the same. ’is establishment was designed to be discreet. Part of ’is trade, as it were.”

  Pitt frowned. “It would be. He would discourage a good deal of his custom if he were obvious, but for precisely that reason I would have expected him to keep some sort of protection.” They stopped at the curb, waited a few moments for a space in the traffic, then crossed. “After all he must have had a lot of unhappy clients,” he said on the far side. “In fact a good many even desperate. Who was he receiving alone at night?”

  Innes supplied the obvious answer. “Someone ’E weren’t frightened of. Question is, why wasn’t ’e? ’Cos ’E thought ’E were protected?” He sniffed. “Or ’E thought the person weren’t dangerous? ’Cos ’E was expectin’ someone else? ’Cos ’E were crossed by someone ’E knew? Gets interestin’, when you think about it a bit.”

  Pitt would like to have agreed, but at the back of his mind was the spare, charming figure of Lord Byam. Would Weems have expected his lordship of the Treasury to commit murder over a sum of twenty pounds a month? Hardly. And if he were going to, then surely he would have at the beginning, not now, two years later?

  “Yes it does,” he agreed aloud. “What about this clerk and errand runner? What sort of a man is he?”

  “Very ordinary.” Innes shook his head. “Sort of gray little man you see ducking in and out o’ alleys, hurryin’ along the edge o’ pavements all ’round Clerkenwell, an’ can never bring ter mind again if yer try. Never know if it were the one you were lookin’ for, or just someone like ’im. Name’s Miller. They call ’im Windy, don’t know why, unless it’s because ’e’s a coward.” He pulled a face. “But then I’d say ’E was canny rather, more sense than ter stay and fight a battle ’E in’t fitted ter win.”

  “Description fits half a million gray little men around London,” Pitt said unenthusiastically, passing a group of women arguing loudly over a basket of fish. A brewer’s dray lumbered by majestically, horses shining in the sun, harness bright, drayman immaculate and immensely proud. A coster in a striped apron and flat black hat called out his wares with no audible pause to draw breath.

  They bore left from Compton Street into Cyrus Street, and within moments Innes stopped and spoke to a constable standing to attention on the pavement. He stood even more stiffly and stared straight ahead of him, his uniform spotless. His buttons gleamed and his helmet sat straight on his head as if it had been dropped on a plumb line.

  Pitt was introduced.

  “Yessir!” the constable said smartly. “No one come or gorn since I bin ’ere, sir. No one asked for Mr. Weems. I reckon as ’ow the word’s gorn out, and no one will now. Everyone pretendin’ as they never knew ’im.”

  “Not surprisingly,” Pitt said dryly. “Murdered men are often unpopular, except with a few who love notoriety. But people ’round here won’t want that kind of attention; most especially those who actually did know him. His friends won’t want to own such a man for acquaintance now, and his enemies will make themselves as close to invisible as they can. As you say, the word will have gone out. We’d better go inside and have a look at the rooms where it happened.”

  “Right sir,” Innes said, leading the way. The front of the house appeared to be an apothecary’s shop such as one might drop into to purchase a headache remedy or other such nostrum, but past the rows of dusty jars and bottles there was another door, much heavier and stronger than would be usual in such a place. At present it was unlocked and swung open easily on oiled hinges, but when they were through into the carpeted passage Pitt looked back and noticed the powerful bolts. This was certainly not an entrance anyone would force without several men behind a battering ram. William Weems had been well prepared to defend himself, it would seem. So who had gained his confidence sufficiently to obtain entry, and when Weems was alone?

  The office was up the stairs along a short passage and had a pleasant window overlooking Cyrus Street. It was a room perhaps ten feet by twelve and furnished with an oak desk with several drawers, a large, comfortable chair behind it, three cabinets with drawers and cupboards, and a chair for visitors. The door on the far side led presumably to the kitchen and living quarters.

  Weems had apparently been sitting in the chair behind the desk when he was shot. There was a large amount of blood spattered around and already in the heat a couple of flies had settled.

  On the walls were three sporting prints which might or might not have been of value, a very handsome, brightly polished copper warming pan, and the hackbut Innes had mentioned in the morgue. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, the metal butt engraved, the flaring barrel smoothed to a satin-fine gleam. Pitt reached out and took it down very carefully, holding it in his handkerchief and from the underneath, not to smudge any marks there might be on it, any threads of fabric, smears of blood, anything at all that would be of use. He looked at it carefully, turning it over and over. It was beautifully balanced. He peered down the barrel and sniffed it. It smelled of polish. Finally he held it as if to fire it, and tightened his finger, pointing it at the floor. Nothing happened. He pulled hard.

  “The firing pin has been filed down,” he said at last. “Did you know that?”

  “No sir. We didn’t touch it.” Innes looked s
urprised. “Then I suppose it can’t’ve bin that what killed ’im!”

  Pitt looked at it again. The blind pin was not shiny. It had not been touched with a file or rasp recently. There was a dark patina of time over it.

  “Not possible,” he said, shaking his head. “This is strictly ornamental now.” He replaced it on the wall where he had found it. On the shelf below there were half a dozen little boxes, three of metal, one of soapstone, one of ebony, one of ironwood. He opened them all one by one. Three were empty, one had two small shotgun pellets in it, the other two each had a few grains of gunpowder.

  “I wonder when that was last full,” he said thoughtfully. “Not that it helps us a lot without a gun.” He looked down and saw with surprise the excellent quality of the carpet, which was soft and dyed in rich, muted colors. He squatted down and turned over the corner and saw what he expected, dozens of tiny hand-tied knots to every inch.

  “Find something?” Innes asked curiously.

  “Only that he spent a lot of money on his carpets,” Pitt replied, straightening up. “Unless, of course, he took it from someone in repayment of a debt.”

  Innes’s eyebrows shot up. “ ’round ’ere? No one who borrows from the likes o’ Weems ’as carpets at all, let alone ones what are worth sellin’.”

  “True,” Pitt agreed, straightening up. “Unless he had a different class of customer, a gentleman who got in over his head gambling, perhaps, and Weems had a fancy for the carpet.”

  “That’d mean Weems went to ’is ’ome,” Innes pointed out. “An’ I can’t see any gentleman bein’ pleased ter entertain Weems in ’is ’ome, can you sir?”

  Pitt grinned. “No I can’t. You may as well know, the reason the powers that be are so concerned in this case is that our Mr. Weems indulged in a little blackmail as well. He had some very important connections, through a relative who was a servant, we are told.”

  “Well now.” Innes looked interested, and there was a flash of satisfaction in his sharp, intelligent face. “I was wondering, but I thought as maybe you wasn’t able ter say. We don’t usually get cases like this taken from us. After all, who cares about one usurer more or less? But a blackmailer is different. You reckon it were someone ’E ’ad the squeeze on as shot ’im?”