“I recall it now,” Pitt confessed. “But I had forgotten that particular horror.”
She spoke very quietly, her voice subdued, full of fear, and close, with a drawing in of her body as if the emotion were still as sharp in her as it must have been five years ago.
“It was very ugly, Mr. Pitt. It was as if something had come out of a nightmare and taken living form. Everyone I know was just as appalled as we were.” Unconsciously she included her husband. “Until Godman was hanged, we could think of little else. It intruded into everything like a darkness, as if it could come out of Farriers’ Lane and that hideous yard, and slash and crucify us all!” She shuddered as though even this room were somehow not safe.
“It is finished, Mrs. Stafford,” Pitt said gently. “There is no need to be concerned anymore, or to let it disturb you.”
“Is it?” She swung around, facing him. Her dark eyes were wide, still full of fear, and her voice had a hard, frightened edge to it. “Do you think so? Isn’t that why Samuel was killed?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Mr. Livesey seems to think that Mr. Stafford was quite satisfied that the verdict was correct. He simply wanted to find further proof of it so even Tamar Macaulay would be convinced and let it rest. In the public good.”
She stood very still, her body stiff under its black gown.
“Then who killed Samuel?” she said quietly. “And for heaven’s sake, why? Nothing else makes any sense. And it was immediately after that woman came here, and he went to speak to O’Neil and Joshua Fielding about the evidence. Do you—do you think maybe one of them really killed Kingsley Blaine, and they are afraid Samuel knew something about it—and that he was going to prove it?”
“It is possible,” he conceded. “Mrs. Stafford, can you think of anything he may have said which would help us to find out what he knew? Even what he intended, would help.”
She was silent for several moments, her face heavy with concentration.
Pitt waited.
“He seemed to feel it was extremely urgent,” she said finally, a deep line of anxiety between her brows. “He would not have gone to Devlin O’Neil again, someone so close to the murdered man’s family, and a personal friend, unless he felt he had new information or evidence. I—I just know, from his manner, that he had learned something.” She stared at him with fierce concentration. “It is only natural that he did not discuss it with me. It would have been improper. And of course I did not know the details anyway. All I knew was what was public knowledge. Everyone was talking about it. One could not bump into a friend or acquaintance anywhere, even at the opera or the dinner table, without it creeping into the conversation after a few moments. There was terrible anger everywhere, Mr. Pitt. It was not an ordinary crime.”
“No.” Pitt thought of the dark air of fear and prejudice which would blow from the bloodstained Farriers’ Lane, even into the withdrawing rooms of London and the discreet, plush lined gentlemen’s clubs with a clink of crystal and the aroma of cigar smoke.
“It wasn’t, I assure you!” There was an urgency in her now, as if she thought he doubted her. “I have never known such a public fury over a crime—other than the Whitechapel murders, of course. And even so, there was an element of blasphemy in this which outraged people in quite a different way. Even gentle and pious people could not wait for him to be hanged.”
“Except Tamar Macaulay,” he observed.
She winced. “It is an abominable thought that she may have been right, is it not?”
“Indeed!” he said with a sudden surge of feeling. “In many ways far worse than the original crime.”
She looked uncomprehending.
“The murder of Kingsley Blaine was the murder of one man,” he explained with a bitter smile. “The murder, if you like, of Aaron Godman was the slow, judicial passion incurred by the fear and rage, and misjudgment, of a nation and what purports to be the justice system it practices. To have criminals is a sad fact of humanity. To have laws which, when tested to their limit, exact an irretrievable punishment from an innocent person, in order to assuage our own fears, is a tragedy of a far greater order. We all consented to it; we are all tainted.”
She looked very pale, her eyes hollow, skin tight on her throat.
“Mr. Pitt, that is—that is simply dreadful! Poor Samuel; if he feared that, no wonder he was so disturbed.”
“He was disturbed?”
“Oh yes, he has been anxious about the case for some time.” She looked down at the rich carpet. “Of course I was not sure to begin with whether it was simply that he was afraid Miss Macaulay was going to revive the subject in the public mind again and try to bring the law into disrepute. And of course that would have caused him great concern.” She met Pitt’s eyes. “He loved the law. He had given most of his life to it, and he held it in reverence above all things. It was like a religion to him.”
He hesitated; the next thought that came to the edge of his mind was difficult to put to her without being offensive.
She was staring at him, waiting for his response, her eyes still haunted by fear.
“Mrs. Stafford,” he began awkwardly, “I hardly know how to ask you, and I do not wish to be insulting, but—but is it possible he—he intended to protect the reputation of the law—in people’s eyes …” He stopped.
“No, Mr. Pitt,” she said quietly. “You did not know Samuel, or you would not need to ask. He was a man of total integrity. If he had further evidence that convinced him Aaron Godman might not have been guilty, he would have made it public, whatever the risk to the reputation of the law, or of any individual barrister or the original trial judge, or indeed to himself. But if he had such evidence, he would surely already have made it known. I think perhaps he had only a suspicion, and now he is—gone—we may never know what it was.”
“Except by retracing his steps,” Pitt replied. “And if it is necessary, then I shall do that.”
“Thank you, Mr. Pitt.” She forced herself to smile. “You have been most considerate, and I have every faith you will handle the whole matter in the best way possible.”
“I will certainly try,” he replied, conscious already that his findings might be far from what she could wish or foresee, it would not be easy to learn what Samuel Stafford had discovered so long after the event, and which had caused someone such terror they had again resorted to murder. He looked at her handsome face with its dark brows and well-proportioned bones, and saw the calmness in her eyes for the first time since he had seen her in her theater box watching the stage, before Stafford was taken ill. He felt guilty, because she placed a trust in him he doubted he would be able to honor.
He bade her good-bye with haste, because it embarrassed him, and after a brisk walk, took a hansom cab east again to the chambers of Adolphus Pryce, Q.C. They were in one of the larger Inns of Court, close by the Old Bailey, and the oak-paneled office was bustling with clerks and juniors with inky fingers and grave expressions. An elderly gentleman with white whiskers and a portentous air came up to him, peering at him over the top of his gold-rimmed pince-nez.
“And what may we do for you, sir?” he enquired. “Mr. er …?”
“Pitt—Inspector Thomas Pitt, of the Bow Street station,” Pitt supplied. “I am here in connection with the death last night of Mr. Justice Stafford.”