Belgrave Square Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 surprised. “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