Death in the Devil's Acre (13 page)

Ambrose raised his thready eyebrows. “Really, Inspector, do you imagine I ask gentlemen for their names? Don’t be naive!”

“No, I didn’t imagine you asked them, Ambrose,” Pitt replied levelly. “But I most certainly imagined you knew!”

Ambrose smiled. In an obscure way it was an admission of his competence, of his professional skill. Indecision wavered for a moment in his face, then disappeared. “No,” he said at last. “Not Bertram Astley—nor Dr. Pinchin either.” His smile widened. “Sorry.”

Pitt believed him. The indecision he judged not to be whether to admit to it but whether to brag a little and pad out the importance of his clientele—and by implication the fact that he had nothing to fear from Max.

“No.” Pitt glanced around the room again and allowed a faint curl to his lip. “No—I imagine not.” He closed the door on Ambrose’s hot eyes and the flare of sudden anger on his face.

Crossgate Street was dirty and cold, but Pitt had no difficulty locating the Daltons’ establishment. It was large and seemed to be cheerful, full of gaudy red and pink furnishings, and there was a fire in the main receiving room, even though it was the middle of the afternoon. Apparently the Daltons catered to clients around the clock. The place did not have the stale, acrid smell of a public house in off-business hours; it seemed they kept maids, like any domestic establishment.

He was met by a plump round-faced girl, ordinary enough, with a country-fresh complexion. Pitt felt a twinge of pity that she should be engaged in such an occupation. Still, she was far better off in a bawdy house such as this, with a roof over her head and regular meals, than many another woman who walked the streets looking for any man who would buy her body for the price of a day’s food for her child, or a piece of clothing for its back.

He saved her the indignity of importuning him. “I’m here from the police,” he said immediately. “I want to speak to Mr. Dalton. He may be able to help me with some information.”

“Mr.—oh!” Comprehension and amusement flooded her face. “You mean Miss Dalton. Would that be Miss Mary or Miss Victoria, sir? Although I’m not rightly sure as they’ll want to be seein’ the police!”

“Miss—” It had not occurred to him that the Daltons would be women, although there was no reason why not. There was an air of femininity about the place, a simple sensuality that was less self-conscious and infinitely less effete than the house of either Max or Ambrose Mercutt. Somehow he found it less offensive, although he could not think why.

“Either Miss Dalton will do,” he answered. “And I am sorry, but I insist upon seeing them. It is a matter of murder. If they make it necessary, I shall return with other officers, and things may become unpleasant. I cannot imagine that anyone will wish that. It is bad for business.”

The girl looked startled. His manner was courteous, his voice so very civilized, and yet what he said jarred. “If you’ll wait here—” She scuttled away, and immediately Pitt was sorry. He had had no need to be so harsh, but it was impossible to undo it now.

Barely moments later, a slightly older woman appeared, perhaps in her early thirties, buxomly built, with a blunt, handsome face and a dusting of freckles on her skin. She looked like a competent parlormaid on her day off. Her dress was high to her neck and of plain lavender color; there was no paint on her face that Pitt could see.

“I am Victoria Dalton,” she said civilly. “Violet says you are from the police and you wish to speak to me. Would you like to come into the parlor at the back? Violet will bring us tea.”

Feeling ludicrous, as if he had made a wild error of judgment, Pitt silently followed her trim back as she walked out of the big red and pink hall, with its sofas and cushions, along a corridor and into a small, more intimate room where there was another fire burning. From somewhere upstairs he heard the peal of woman’s laughter, followed by a shriek of delight and a fit of giggles. He did not hear any man. Apparently it was two women recounting exploits to each other—not a matter of trade.

Victoria Dalton sat down on a large green sofa and invited Pitt to make himself comfortable on a similar one opposite her. She folded her hands in her lap and stared at him pleasantly.

“Well, what is it you wish of us?”

He was a little taken aback; she was so composed, so totally different from Max, or Ambrose Mercutt. This place was like a middle-class house, comfortable, with an air of family about it. He felt impelled to use euphemisms, which was ridiculous.

“I am investigating a murder, ma’am,” he began, not as he had intended. Somehow she had put him out of ease. “In fact, three murders.”

“How unpleasant.” She spoke as if he had remarked upon the weather.

She continued to regard him candidly, like an obedient child, waiting for him to continue. It was disconcerting. Either she had not fully understood him, or else death was so commonplace it held no power to shock her. Meeting her steady gray eyes, he believed it was the latter.

The maid brought the tea and left it on a tray for them. Victoria Dalton poured and handed him a cup. He accepted it with thanks.

He began again. “The first victim was Max Burton. He kept a house in George Street. Perhaps you knew of him?”

“Of course,” she said. “We knew he had been murdered.”

“He was good at his business?” Why was he finding it so hard to question her? Was it because she gave him no openings and, unlike Ambrose Mercutt, was not defensive?

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “He had a remarkable talent.” For the first time, her face showed some expression, one of anger. Her full lips turned down at the corners, but Pitt had the odd conviction that it was a reflection of disapproval, not any sense of personal injury.

“Ambrose Mercutt says he used a number of wellborn women in his George Street establishment,” Pitt went on.

She gave a slight smile. “Yes, Ambrose Mercutt would tell you that.”

“Is it true?”

“Oh, yes. Max was very clever. He was very attractive to women, you know. And there is a certain class of women, wellborn, idle, married for convenience to some bloodless man—probably a great deal older than themselves, poor in the bedroom, without appetite or imagination—and they become bored. Max appealed to them. They began by having an affair with him; then he introduced them to the top end of the trade. He could get a high price for whores like that.” She discussed it as any merchant might speak of her goods, a marketing process.

“Did he take any of your custom?” he asked equally bluntly.

She was quite sober. “Not much. We provide skill rather than novelty. Most of these wellborn women have more sense of adventure, more”—she frowned a little—“more need to fill their boredom than patience or knowledge how to please. A good whore has humor and generosity, and doesn’t ask questions.” She smiled bleakly. “As well as a good deal of practice.”

She was so used to the idea that it was ordinary to her. The traffic in womanhood was her daily life, and it did not move her emotions. To know her business was necessary for survival.

“What about Ambrose Mercutt?” He changed direction.

“Oh, yes, Ambrose was suffering,” she said. “He caters to the same trade: gentlemen with jaded tastes who want something novel, something to stimulate their imagination, and are prepared to pay for it.” Now there was real contempt in her face. Her eyes narrowed and there was a sudden brilliant glitter in them that could even have been hatred, but for whom he had no idea. Perhaps for those rich, spoiled women with money and time to dabble in whoredom for entertainment—her women did it to live. Perhaps for Ambrose because he pandered to them. Or maybe for the men who made it all worthwhile by paying.

Or was it hatred for Max because he had taken her trade after all? Or something he had not even considered yet? Could she even have been attracted to Max herself? It was conceivable; she was young, the curves of her mouth were soft and rich. Was Max’s killing simply the rage of a woman rejected?

Considered in that light, though, Hubert Pinchin’s death made no sense.

“Where did he meet these highborn women?” he asked instead. “Not here in the Acre?”

The emotion died from her face. Her eyes were calm again, like gray water with flecks of slate in them. “Oh, no, he went to some of the dining places and theaters where such women go,” she replied. “He had been a footman in a big house—he knew how to behave. He was very striking to look at and he had good clothes. He had an art to sense when a woman was dissatisfied, and he knew which ones had the nerve or the desperation to do something about it.”

Once again, Pitt was forced to acknowledge that Max had had a talent of massive proportions, and had exercised it to the full. But if it was immense, it was also dangerous.

What happened when these women grew bored, or frightened? Society would turn a blind eye to a great deal, but whoring for money in the Devil’s Acre was grossly beyond its capacity to ignore. There was an almost infinite difference between what a man might do and get away with—as long as he was discreet—and what a woman, any woman, might be forgiven. Sexual appetite was part of a man’s nature, abhorred by the sanctimonious but accepted—even made the butt of sly jokes—and given a certain reluctant admiration by most.

But, by convention, men chose to believe that women were different. Only harlots took pleasure in the bedroom. To sell one’s body was sin unto damnation. And when these women of Max’s saw their safety—their marriages—imperiled, what did they do? Did Max allow them to leave quietly, as secretly as they had come, and then obliterate their names from his memory? Or did he keep an eternal whip held over them?

The reasons for murder were legion!

Victoria Dalton was still regarding him soberly. He had no idea how much of his thought she had guessed.

“Have you ever heard of a Dr. Hubert Pinchin?” he asked her.

“He was murdered also, wasn’t he.” It was a statement, not a question. “That was some distance from here. No, I don’t think I knew anything about him.” She hesitated. “Not under that name, anyway. People here don’t always give their own names, you know.” She kept all but a shadow of her contempt out of her voice.

“He was stocky, running to paunch,” Pitt said, starting to describe Pinchin as he had seen him dead in the slaughterhouse yard, yet trying to re-create him alive in his mind’s eye. “He had thinning gray-brown hair, a broad, rather squashy nose, mouth apparently good-humored, small eyes, and a plum-colored complexion. He wore baggy clothes. He liked Stilton cheese and good wine.”

She smiled. “There are a lot of gentlemen in London like that, and a great many of them, with unfriendly wives of forbidding virtue, find their way here at some time or another.”

That described Valeria Pinchin remarkably well. It would not be surprising if Hubert Pinchin had found his way to Victoria Dalton’s house, a place of considerable laughter and purchased pleasure, fat pillows, soft bosoms, lush hips, and obliging habits.

“Yes, I imagine so,” he said unhappily. “What about Sir Bertram Astley—young, fair, good-looking, quite tall?” He had forgotten to ascertain the color of his eyes, but the description was useless anyway. There must be several hundred young men in London, even with breeding and money, who would answer it.

“Not by name,” she answered patiently. “And we do not pry. It’s bad for business.”

That was unarguable.

It began to look more and more as if it were a random lunatic with some passionate hatred of masculinity, perhaps some man injured or impotent himself, tormented by it until his mind had turned. That was an unsatisfactory answer. But so far he had discovered no connection, however tenuous, between Max, Dr. Pinchin, and Sir Bertram Astley.

Perhaps if he pursued Max’s conquests something would emerge, some woman known to all of them—perhaps used by all of them. Yes ... a revenge-crazed husband was not impossible. Or even if the woman herself had been blackmailed, she might have hired some ruffian to blot out all traces of her aberration. There were plenty in the Devil’s Acre who would do such a thing for a small fee, small compared to the ruin that might face her. And if she spoke to the ruffian anonymously, well cloaked and hooded, she might be safe enough afterward.

But why the terrible mutilation? His stomach tightened and he felt sick again at the memory of Pinchin with his dismembered genitals. Perhaps it was a husband who had done it, after all. Or a father. There was too much hate involved for something as cold as money.

The speculation was useless until he had more information. He stood up.

“Thank you, Miss Dalton, you have been most helpful.” Why was he being so polite, almost deferential to this woman? She was a bawdy-house keeper, like Ambrose Mercutt and Max himself. Maybe it was a mark of his own worth, and had nothing to do with her. “If I can think of anything else I need to ask, I shall come back.”

She stood also. “Of course. Good day, Mr. Pitt.”

The maid showed him out into the grimy street, the already darkening afternoon. The stink of sewage came up from the river, and the long moan of a foghorn sounded as barges, gunwale deep, made their way toward the Pool of London and the busiest docks in the world.

Perhaps it was not even the same murderer in all three cases. They had been given wide publicity. Maybe one at least was a copycat crime. What about Beau Astley, with his brother’s title, fortune—and possibly even May Woolmer—to inherit?

Why should he be surprised to find the Devil’s work here in the Devil’s Acre?

T
HE MURDER OF
B
ERTRAM
A
STLEY
was on the front pages of all the newspapers. The public was outraged. Under the shrill cries of horror, of the offense to decency, beneath even the compassion, there was a hard, real feeling of fear, close and personal. If a man like Astley could be so obscenely murdered for no apparent reason, who was safe in the streets?

Of course it was not said openly. There were letters to the editor requiring more action from the police, more efficiency, men of better discipline and intelligence. There was a demand to know whose errors were being hidden by this silence. Was there corruption in high places that these monstrous crimes were still unsolved? One elderly gentleman even suggested that the Devil’s Acre be burned to the ground and all its denizens transported to Australia forthwith.