Pentecost Alley (17 page)

“Nor would he be the first to go back in a temper and beat the thief,” Pitt pointed out. “I don’t think he’d be well advised to try that story.”

“But there wasn’t a fight,” Ewart said with a sudden smile. “Lennox said that, and we saw it for ourselves.”

“Which proves what?”

Ewart’s eyes opened wide.

“That … that he took her by surprise, of course. That he was someone she knew and wasn’t afraid of.”

“Not a customer from whom she’d just stolen something.”

Ewart was losing his patience. “I don’t know what it proves, except we’ve a long way to go yet.” He turned away and pushed the door to Ada’s room. It swung open and Pitt followed him inside. It was exactly the same as when they had first come, except that the body of Ada was no longer there. The window was closed and it was oppressively hot.

“I’ve searched right through it,” Ewart said wearily. “There’s nothing here except exactly what you’d expect. It doesn’t tell us anything about her. No letters. If she had anyone, either they didn’t write or she didn’t keep them.”

Pitt stood in the middle of the floor.

“They probably couldn’t write,” he said sadly. “Many people can’t. No way to keep in touch. Any pictures?” That was a forlorn hope too. People like Ada would have little money for photographs or portraits.

“No.” Ewart shook his head. “Oh, there’s a pencil sketch of a woman, but it’s fairly rough. It could be anyone. There’s nothing written on it.” He walked over and took it out of a small case inside the chest where it was kept with a few handkerchiefs, pins and a comb. He gave it to Pitt.

Pitt looked at the piece of paper. It was bent around the edges, a little scarred across one corner. The sketch was simple, as Ewart had said, of a woman of perhaps thirty with a gentle face, half smiling, her hair piled on her head. It had a grace in the lines, but it was only a rough sketch, the work of a few moments by an unskilled hand. Perhaps it was Ada’s mother … all she had of her past, of a time and place where she belonged.

Suddenly he was so choked with anger he could have beaten Finlay FitzJames black and blue himself, whether he had killed Ada or not, simply because he did not care.

“Sir?” Ewart’s voice broke across his thoughts.

“What?” he said, looking up sharply.

“I’ve already asked around and learned a lot about her life, the sort of customers she had, where she went regular, if she could have crossed up someone. It’s always possible, you know, that the boots and the garter were from her last customer, and not necessarily to do with whoever killed her.”

“Have you!” Pitt asked. “And what did you discover?”

Ewart looked profoundly unhappy. His face was puckered and the sweat on his skin gleamed wet.

“She was cheeky. A bit too much brass for her own good,” he said slowly. “Changed her pimp a short while ago. Chucked him over and got someone new. Now he could be taking it hard. She was a nice bit of income for him. And he could have had a personal interest. Not impossible. She was handsome.”

“What did he look like?” Pitt asked, trying to quell the flicker of hope inside him.

Ewart’s eyes avoided his. “Thin,” he answered. “Dark …” He tailed off; the pimp was nothing at all like the man Rose Burke and Nan Sullivan had described. It was pointless to discuss it any further. Of course they must know all they could about Ada’s life, and then about Finlay FitzJames’s as well.

“Well, you’d better follow up the new pimp,” Pitt said wearily. “I’ll speak to these women again.”

In fact, Pitt had considerable trouble raising anyone, but a quarter of an hour later he was sitting on a hard-backed wooden chair in the kitchen with Nan Sullivan, who looked exhausted, blowsy and bleary-eyed. Every time he changed his balance the chair tilted and threatened to tip over. He asked her to tell him again what she remembered of the night Ada had been killed. It was not that he expected any new evidence; he wanted to weigh up what impression she might make on a jury and whether anyone would believe her rather than Finlay FitzJames.

She stared at Pitt, her eyes blinking, unfocused.

“Describe the man you saw going into Ada’s room,” Pitt prompted, steadying himself on the chair again. A couple of flies droned lazily around the window. There were two pails standing with cloths over them. Probably water.

“Fair hair, he had,” Nan answered him. “Thick. And a good coat, that’s all I can say for sure.” She looked away, avoiding Pitt’s eyes. “Wouldn’t know him again. Only saw his back. Expensive sort of coat. I do know a good coat.” She bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears. “I used to work in a shop, making coats, after me man died. But you can’t keep two little ones alive on what they pay you. Worked all day and half into the night, I did, but still only made six shillin’s a week, an’ what’ll that get you? Could’ve kept me virtue, an’ put the baby to one o’ them farms, but I know what happens to them. Sell ’em they do, into Holy Mother knows what! Or if they’re sickly, let the poor souls die. Leave them to starve, so they do.”

Pitt said nothing. He knew what she said was true. He knew sweatshop wages, and he had seen baby farms.

There was no sound in the rest of the house. The other women were out or asleep. From outside in the street came the distant noise of wheels and hooves on the stones, and a man calling out. The sweatshop opposite was busy, all heads bent over the needle. They were already five hours into their day.

“Or I could have gone to the workhouse,” Nan went on slowly. “But then they’d have taken the little ones away from me. I couldn’t bear that. If I went on the streets I could feed us all.”

“What happened to your children?” he asked gently, then instantly wished he had not. He did not want to be compelled to share her tragedy.

She smiled, looking up at him. “Grew up,” she answered. “Mary went into service and done well for herself. Bridget got married to a butcher out Camden way.”

Pitt did not ask any more. He could imagine for himself
what two girls would do to keep the precious gift their mother had given them. They might think of her now and again, might even have some idea of what their well-being had cost, but nothing would bring them back here to Pentecost Alley. And it was probably better so. She could imagine their happiness, and they could carry only early memories of her, before she became worn out, shabby and stained by life.

“Well done,” he said, and meant it profoundly, steadying himself on the chair as it tilted dangerously.

“Ada’s child died, poor thing.” She did not say whether her pity was for the child or for Ada herself. “I’d tell you who did it, if I knew, mister, but I don’t. Anyway”—she shrugged her wide shoulders—“as Mr. Ewart said, who’d believe me anyway?”

Pitt felt a wave of anger again.

“Did Mr. Ewart say that?”

“Not in them words, but that’s what he meant. An’ he’s right, in’t he?”

“That depends on several things,” Pitt said, evading the question. He could tell the truth; she would not have thanked him for it. “But if you aren’t sure, then it doesn’t matter anyway. Tell me more about Ada. If it wasn’t FitzJames, who do you think it was?”

She was silent so long he thought she was not going to answer. Flies droned against the glass. There was a banging upstairs and along the corridor someone swore.

Finally she spoke. “Well, if it weren’t for the boots all buttoned up, I’d have said Costigan, he’s her new pimp. Nasty piece of work, he is, an’ no mistake. Pretty.” She said the word with condemnation. “Thinks every woman should want after him. Temper like a mousetrap. All cheese one minute, an’ then bang! Takes off your legs.” She shrugged. “But he’s a coward. I know that sort. The moment he’d seen she was dead, he’d have taken off, scared for his life. He’d never have stopped to do up the boots an’ put the garter ’round her arm.” She looked at
Pitt blankly. “So I reckon as it was her customer, FitzJames or not.”

She had not mentioned the broken fingers and toes, but then she did not know about them.

“Perhaps it was the customer who did the boots and the garter?” he suggested. “And then Costigan came in before she had time to undo them?” It was a reasonable thought.

Nan shook her head. “Me or Rosie’d have seen him, if there’d have been two. Or Agnes. It may look as if no one sees who comes and goes in these rooms, but it isn’t that way. We look out for each other. Have to. Mostly it’s old Madge who watches. Never know what a customer might do. Some of them have too much to drink and get nasty. Some want you to do things a sane person wouldn’t ever think of.” She blinked and sniffed hard, wiping her nose on a piece of rag. “That’s what’s funny about it. You’d have thought she’d have shouted out, wouldn’t you? She can’t have had any idea until the stocking was ’round her throat, poor little bitch.”

“That doesn’t sound like a first-time customer,” Pitt reasoned. “Rather someone she’d had before, and expected to do something odd like that. Was Costigan her lover as well as her pimp?” He leaned forward, forgetting the chair, which tipped violently.

“He’d like to have been,” she said with a curl of her lip. She ignored the chair. She was used to it. “Don’t think he was, but then I don’t know everything. Maybe. But if she let him, why’d he kill her?”

“I don’t know. Thank you, Nan. If you think of anything else, tell me—or Mr. Ewart.”

“Yeah, yeah, course I will.” She watched as he stood up and the chair righted itself with a clatter.

Pitt spent several hours tracing all he could of Ada’s daily life, and found nothing different in it from the pattern of most women who made their living on the streets. She rose in the middle of the afternoon, dressed, ate her main meal, then started to walk the pavements. Very
often she stayed in the Whitechapel area. There were plenty of customers. But sometimes if it was a fine evening, and especially in the summer, she would go up to the traditional areas for picking up wealthier men: Windmill Street, the Haymarket, Leicester Square. There the theater crowds, elegant ladies and men about town, paraded side by side with prostitutes of all classes and ages, from the well-dressed, expensive courtesans down to the ten- or twelve-year-old children who ran along, tugging at sleeves, whispering obscene offers, desperate for a few pence.

Ada had been beaten the occasional time, usually by her former pimp, a man named Wayland, a mean-faced, part-time drayman who supplemented his income by sometimes bullying, sometimes protecting, girls in the Pentecost Alley area. He had lodgings opposite and spent much of his time lounging around, watching to see that the girls were not actually molested in the open. Once they were inside, any restraint of a violent or dishonest client was up to them. There was a woman, old Madge, the one Nan had referred to, who had been a prostitute herself in her better days and who roomed in the back of the house, and she would come if anyone screamed. Her sight was poor, but her hearing was excellent, and she could wield a rolling pin with accuracy and the full benefit of her twenty stone. She had half killed more than one client whose demands she had considered unreasonable.

But like anyone else, even Agnes in the next room, she had heard nothing from Ada the night of her death.

Wayland could be accounted for all that night by one of his new acquisitions, a plain-faced girl of eighteen or so whose extremely handsome figure earned them both a comfortable income. And as Ewart had admitted, he looked nothing whatever like the man Rose and Nan had described. He was small and thin, with dark straight hair like streaks of black paint over his narrow skull.

There had been hasty quarrels in Ada’s life, flares of
temper, and then quick forgiveness. She had not been one to hold a grudge. There were impetuous acts of kindness: the sharing of clothes; the gift of a pound when times were hard; praise, sometimes when it was least merited.

She had sat up all night with old Madge when she was sick, fetching and carrying for her, washing her down with clean, hot water, emptying slops, all when she could have been out earning. And sitting back in the kitchen again on the same rickety chair, looking at Madge’s worn-out, red face, Pitt thought that if they found who had killed Ada, he would be better off with the law than left to Madge.

“Looked arter me good, she did,” she said, staring at Pitt fixedly. “I should ’ave ’eard ’er! W’y din’t I ’ear ’er call out, eh? I’d ’a’ killed the swine afore I’d ’a’ let ’im ’urt ’er. I in’t no use no more.” Grief puckered her huge cheeks, and her voice, high for so vast a woman, was thick with guilt. “Look wot I done for ’er—nuffink! W’ere were I w’en she needed me? ’Ere, ’alf asleep, like as not. Great useless mare!”

“She didn’t cry out,” Pitt said quietly. “And it could all have been over quite quickly anyway.”

“Yer lying ter me,” she said, forcing a smile. “Yer mean ter be kind, which in’t nuffink bad, but I seen folk choked afore. They don’t die that quick. An’ leastways I might’ve caught the bastard. I’d ’ave finished ’im with me pin.” She gestured towards the rolling pin on the table near her right hand. “Then you could’ve topped me fer it, an’ I’d’ve gorn glad.”

“I wouldn’t have topped you for it, Madge,” he said honestly. “I’d have called it self-defense and looked the other way.”

“Yeah, mebbe yer would an’ all.”

But even though he also went and found Albert Costigan—a brash man of about thirty, sharply dressed and with thick, brown hair—Pitt learned nothing either to confirm or disprove his belief in Finlay FitzJames’s guilt.

*   *   *

Pitt decided to learn all he could about Finlay himself. It would be difficult, and he was afraid of prejudicing any information he might acquire simply by the act of having sought it. Had there been time, it was the type of investigation Charlotte would have helped with, and had done so excellently in the past. It needed subtlety and acute observation. Simple questions were not going to uncover what he wanted to know.

Pitt had already asked discreetly in the Force about Finlay—and learned nothing. Other police superintendents knew only his name, and then only in connection with his father. Pitt had made an appointment to see Micah Drummond, who had been his superior before he had inherited the position. Drummond had gone to live abroad with his new wife, finding London social life intolerable for her after the scandal of her first husband’s death. Micah returned home from time to time, and fortunately this investigation coincided with one of those occasions. He would at least be honest with Pitt and have the courage to disregard the political implications.