Seven Dials by Anne Perry

without question it reflected a darkness inside.
    “Find the truth,” he answered with a slight grimace, knowing both that he had set himself a huge task, perhaps an impossible one, and that even if he succeeded the truth he found would very probably be one he would hate-and might not be able to conceal without even worse pain.
    Ryerson did not answer him, but rose to his feet to show him to the front door himself, ignoring the services of the waiting footman.
     
    IT TOOK PITT the rest of the morning and into the early afternoon to find the police surgeon and obtain his attention. He was a large man with heavy shoulders and quivering chins that settled into his neck without noticeable distinction. He had an apron tied around his vast girth, and his hands were scrubbed pink, presumably to get rid of the evidence of his day’s work, if not the smell of carbolic and vinegar. He greeted Pitt with indignant good humor.
    “Thought I’d got rid of you when you left Bow Street,” he observed in a remarkably attractive voice. It was the only physically pleasing quality about him, apart from his hair, which was thick and curling and so clean as to shine in the gaslight from the lamps above him as they stood in his office. His eyebrows rose. “What do you want now? I don’t know any bombers or anarchists. My ignorance of such things is precious to me, and I intend to keep it until I die peacefully of old age, sitting in the sun on some park bench. I can’t help you-but I suppose I can try, if you insist.”
    “Lieutenant Edwin Lovat,” Pitt replied. He liked McDade and he had nothing pleasanter or more useful to do than extract information from him a piece at a time.
    “Dead,” McDade said simply. “Shot through the chest-heart, actually. Small handgun, close range. Very neat.”
    “Great skill required?” Pitt asked.
    “Only for a blind man with a moving target!” McDade looked at Pitt sideways. “Haven’t seen the body, have you.” That was a statement, not a question.
    “Not yet,” Pitt agreed. “Should I?”
    McDade shrugged his massive shoulders, setting his chins quivering. “Not unless you need to know what he looked like, which is much the same as any other well-built young English soldier with a comfortable style of living, plenty of good food, and not much exercise lately. He’d have run to fat in another ten years, when the muscle went soft.” His expression became rueful. “Handsome, I should think, when he was alive. Good features, good head of hair, all his teeth, which in his early forties isn’t bad. Mind, it’s intelligence and humor that make you like a man, and it’s hard to tell that when you’ve only seen him dead.” He looked away from Pitt as he spoke those words, and there was the very faintest shred of self-consciousness in him. Was he excusing his own massive size, defending himself from critical thought even though nothing had been said?
    “Exactly,” Pitt agreed. He had never considered himself handsome either. He smiled suddenly.
    McDade colored. “Well, what else do you want?” he demanded, swinging around. “He was shot! Through the heart. I’ve no idea whether that was luck or skill. Killed him on the spot-it would do!”
    “Thank you. I suppose there’s nothing else you can tell me?”
    “Like what?” McDade’s voice rose incredulously. “That he was shot by a left-handed man with a walleye and a limp? No, I can’t! Shot by somebody a couple of yards away who could hold a gun steady and see what they were doing. Is that any help?”
    “None at all. Thank you for your time. May I see him?”
    McDade waved a short, fat arm indicating the general area beyond the door. “Help yourself. He’s on the third table along. But you shouldn’t have any trouble finding him. The other two are women.”
    Pitt forbore from remark and went out as directed.
    He looked at the body of Edwin Lovat, hoping it would give him a sense of the man’s reality. He stared at the