Pentecost Alley (28 page)

“Are you going to tell Thomas?” Emily asked in a very small voice.

“No,” Charlotte answered, more out of pity than good sense. “At least, not unless I have to. He … he may discover whatever he needs to know before there’s any need.”

“Thank you.”

Indeed, Pitt did discover at least part of it when he and Ewart went back to Pentecost Alley late in the afternoon. Nan Sullivan was as indecisive as on the previous time Pitt had seen her, but he still had every confidence in Rose Burke. The change in her stunned him.

“I dunno,” she said, looking first at Pitt, then away. They were sitting in the kitchen, a large, chipped enamel pot of tea on the table, odd pottery cups around. The cooking range made the place hot and airless. No one wanted to open the window onto the stinking yard below with the fumes from the midden and the pigsty next door.

“What don’t you know?” Pitt demanded. “You were quite sure when you saw him from the hansom in Devonshire Street. You were certain enough then you were ready to hang him yourself.”

“I were ready to ’ang whoever done ’er,” Rose corrected
stubbornly. “That in’t ter say it were ’im. I only saw ’im fer a minute, an’ the light weren’t good.”

“Are you afraid, Rose?” Pitt tried to keep the anger out of his voice, or the stinging contempt he wanted to put into it.

“No!” She glared at him, ignoring Ewart completely. “No, I in’t afraid. Wot’s ter be afraid of?”

“Threats from someone,” he replied. “The man you identified belongs to a very powerful family.”

“ ’E may do, but ’e in’t spoken ter me,” she said with a curl of her lip. “If that’s wot yer think, yer wrong … dead wrong. I jus’ want yer ter get the right man, the man wot really done ’er, poor little cow.” She fiddled with her spoon, slicking it against the cup. “An’ I think as it could be the butler wot got ’er into trouble in the first place. ’E done it again, an’ this time ’is mistress might not be so quick ter believe ’im. ’E got reason ter wanner get rid o’ Ada. Geezers like the one wot yer showed me in Devonshire Street don’ come down ter Whitechapel. They get their bits o’ pleasure up the ’Aymarket way, an’ Windmill Street.”

“That’s true,” Ewart conceded.

“You said Ada sometimes went up there,” Pitt pointed out.

“Sure. But I never said as she brought ’em ’ome ’ere!” she said with derision. “She in’t that daft. If she ’ad ’a’, like as not that Costigan’d ’a’ took more’n ’alf ’er money. An’ why would one o’ them gents foller ’er ’ere? Wot for? She weren’t that good. There are plenty more w’ere she come from, an’ ter them, one tart’s as good as another.”

“Are you now saying it was this butler you saw?” Ewart interrupted quickly, leaning forward over the table. “Describe him!”

“No I in’t sayin’ it were ’im,” she said cautiously. “I’m sayin’ as it might ’a’ bin. Geez! Don’t yer care ’oo yer top, long as it’s someone?”

“I care very much,” Pitt replied between his teeth,
holding on to his temper. “I find your certainty then, and your change of mind now, suspicious. It makes me wonder if someone has been changing it for you, either with threat or with promise.”

“You sayin’ as I bin paid ter lie?” she asked angrily.

“No.” Ewart was placating. “Nobody’s saying you’re lying, Rose. We simply have to be sure. Nothing can bring back Ada, and it’s a man’s life we are talking about. A wrongful accusation would be in its way a second murder.”

“Well, mebbe I could lie ’baht somethin’ as don’t matter,” she said carefully, this time looking at Ewart. “But not ter get some poor sod cropped, ’ooever ’e is. Ter tell the truth, I were upset that Ada were killed.” She lifted her shoulders very slightly, a gesture of apology and resignation. “I were sort o’ angry an’ scared, an’ too quick ter make up me mind. I wanted someone caught an’ topped, ’cos it made it feel better fer the rest o’ us. Safer, like.” She took a breath and turned to Pitt again. “I wan’ed ter think as I knew ’oo it were. Now I’ve ’ad time ter think better, I can see as that’s stupid. It’s gotta be the right sod, not just any poor bastard as looks a bit like ’im. ’Asn’t it?”

“Yes,” Pitt conceded grimly. “Yes, it has to be the right one.”

“Of course.” Ewart moved his arm as if to pat her shoulder, then changed his mind. “Of course it has,” he added gently.

They left Pentecost Alley and Pitt rode back in the hansom with Ewart.

“We’d better find this butler,” he said wearily. “Even if it is only to eliminate him.”

“I think he’s our man,” Ewart replied, his voice loud with conviction, his face set hard, staring straight ahead as they moved west along the Whitechapel High Street. “Stands to reason. He got Ada with child. That time he got away with it. Lied to his employers. Now he’s done it
again and she was going to come back and tell the whole story. Finish him.”

“She told the whole story the first time,” Pitt pointed out. “What had she to gain from telling it again?”

“Revenge,” Ewart replied, as if the answer were obvious. “He was responsible for her ruin. Oldest motive in the world.”

Pitt looked sideways at him. Ewart was a good policeman. His record was excellent. He was in line for more promotion. This was an extraordinary lapse in his thinking. He had been laboring under some emotion right from the start. Was it pity or disgust? Or was it some fear that Augustus FitzJames would set out to ruin whoever accused his son of such a crime, guilty or innocent, and even Ewart’s long-standing reputation would not be enough to save him?

Of course it would be unpleasant. But bringing a charge against anyone had its tragedy. There were always innocent people hurt, people who simply loved a husband or a son. They would be overwhelmed by events, and then when all the tumult and the public pain was over, they would be left with its grief.

“What good would that do?” Pitt asked him, watching Ewart’s face with its black eyes and the lines of anxiety around his mouth. “Ada had already told her story. Dead, she simply reinforces it. If he killed anyone, it would be the present girl, before she tells her employer. The judgment had already been made between Ada and this man, and she had lost. She might have killed him, but he had no cause to kill her.”

Ewart’s expression hardened, and a flicker of something like fear shadowed across his features, or perhaps it was anger. He was very tired. His hands shook a little. He must hate having a superior like Pitt put in to take over his case because he was deemed incapable of handling a politically sensitive case. Any man would, and Pitt would have himself.

And Ewart was doing a better job of being politically
appropriate than Pitt was. He was searching for any answer but the explosive one.

In his position Pitt would have resented both the man who was brought in and the superior who made the decision.

“I agree with you,” he said quietly. “The evidence against FitzJames is poor. The identification is useless. The cuff links were lost years ago, and the club badge is suspect. It won’t stand alone, now we’ve found a second one in his possession. We’ve got to go back to the beginning. We should look more closely at Ada’s life, and also at FitzJames’s, to see who could be implicated.”

Ewart turned to face him. “Implicated?” he asked slowly. He seemed almost too tired, too stunned by blow after blow to think.

“If FitzJames has enemies so virulent they would put evidence at the scene of the murder to incriminate him,” Pitt started to explain, “then …”

Ewart straightened up a little, realization in his face.

“Oh yes. Of course. Do you want me to do that? I’ll start tomorrow.”

“Good,” Pitt agreed. “I’ll continue with Ada.” It was all ugly, and confusing. He must, as he had said, go right back to the beginning.

Pitt arrived home late, and was startled to find Emily’s great-aunt by her first marriage, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, sitting in his parlor sipping a tisane and talking to Charlotte. He had flung the door open, about to speak, until he saw her, and he stopped.

“Good evening, Thomas,” Aunt Vespasia said coolly, her silver eyebrows raised. As always, she looked exquisite; her face, with its marvelous bones and hooded eyes, had been refined by time and her character marked into it. It was no longer the mere loveliness of youth but a beauty which was the whole structure of a life, fascinating and unique.

She had given him permission to call her by name as a relative. He used it with pleasure.

“Good evening, Aunt Vespasia. How very pleasant to see you.”

“And surprising also, to judge by the expression upon your face,” she retorted. “No doubt you are hungry, and would like to dine. I believe Gracie has your meal prepared.”

He closed the door and came into the room. He was hungry and extremely tired, but he was not willing to forgo the pleasure of her company, nor the interest of her conversation. She would not simply have called because she was passing by. Vespasia never did anything casually, and she did not pass by Bloomsbury on the way to anywhere. He sat down, glanced at Charlotte, then faced Vespasia.

“Are you acquainted with Augustus FitzJames?” he said candidly.

She smiled. “No, Thomas, I am not. I should be offended if you imagined I had called upon you because I was a friend of his and aware that you were investigating that sordid affair in Whitechapel which seems to implicate his son.”

“No one who knew you would suppose you would try to exert influence, Aunt Vespasia,” he said honestly.

Her silver-gray eyes widened. “My dear Thomas, no one who knew me would suppose me a friend of a nouveau riche bully like Augustus FitzJames. Please do sit down. I find it most uncomfortable staring up at you.”

He found himself smiling in spite of his weariness and the confusion in his mind, the sense of having achieved nothing in all the time and effort he had spent. He sat down opposite her.

“But I do have some compassion for his wife,” she went on. “Although that is not why I called. My principal interest is in you, and after that, in John Cornwallis.” She frowned very slightly. “Thomas, if you charge Finlay FitzJames, be extremely careful that you can prove your
case. His father is a man of great power and no clemency at all.”

Pitt had judged as much, but it was chilling to hear it from Vespasia. She was not a woman too arrogant or too foolish to be afraid, but it was a very rare occurrence indeed, and when he had seen it in the past, it had been of the power of secret societies rather than of individuals. It increased his sense of misery and the darkness of thought which surrounded the murder in Pentecost Alley.

Charlotte was looking at him anxiously.

“It begins to appear,” he began carefully, “as if Finlay FitzJames may not be guilty. Certainly the evidence against him has largely been withdrawn, or explained away.”

“That is very unclear. I think you had better say what you mean,” Vespasia commanded.

He told her about the badge, and then finding the second one in Finlay’s possession, and his inability to obtain any of the other original ones with which to compare them to identify the copy. He did not notice Charlotte’s pink cheeks or averted eyes, he was too absorbed with laying out the evidence for Vespasia.

“Hmm,” she said as he concluded. “Not very satisfactory, but I suppose rather obvious, except for one thing.”

“What thing?” Charlotte said quickly.

“One wonders why Augustus did not have the copy made immediately,” Vespasia answered. “And then require a more thorough search. It could have been done within the first couple of days. If he were going to do it at all, why wait until the discomfort increased? Unless, of course, it was to teach Finlay a lesson, make him thoroughly frightened for a while, and so perhaps more obedient.”

“Why couldn’t Finlay have done it himself?” Charlotte asked, then looked down as if she regretted having spoken.

“Because he panicked and hasn’t the brains,” Vespasia replied simply.

Pitt recalled his first meeting with Finlay.

“But he didn’t seem panicked,” he said honestly. “He was startled, upset, even shocked, but he didn’t seem in a sweat of fear at all. If anything, I would say his fear grew as time went by, and we continued to suspect him.”

“Curious,” Vespasia admitted. “What other evidence had you?”

Pitt noted that she spoke of it in the past, and smiled ruefully.

“Identification by witness,” he replied, then told her the story of Nan Sullivan and Rose Burke and their subsequent retraction.

Vespasia considered for several moments before she commented.

“Not very satisfactory,” she agreed. “That could mean any of several things: possibly she spoke the truth in the beginning and has been persuaded to withdraw it by pressure from someone else, threat of injury or promise of reward; or that her own sense of self-preservation has overcome her hatred or her anger; or conceivably she has decided the information is worth more if kept to herself and used at some future date for profit.” She frowned. “Or it is possible she is telling the truth, and it was a mixture of fear and desire to see someone caught and punished for Ada’s death which made her act impulsively in the first place, and on reflection she realized she was not prepared to perjure herself with an identification she was genuinely not sure of. The story of the butler is tragic, and no doubt true, but obviously irrelevant to her death.”

“Do you still think Finlay did it?” Charlotte asked very quietly, anxiety puckering her brows. “I mean … is the evidence really wrong, or has his father very carefully removed it, or invalidated it?”

Pitt considered for several moments.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “I think if I have to make a decision I would say he did not, but I’m not certain.”

“That is most unfortunate.” Vespasia was simply
stating a fact, but not without sympathy. “If he is innocent, then either he has an exceedingly vicious enemy or an extraordinary series of events has combined to make him appear guilty, which, my dear Thomas, seems unlikely.”

“Yes, it does,” Pitt confessed. “I suppose I return to the very unpleasant task of trying to find the FitzJames family’s enemies.” He sighed. “I wish I even knew whether it was Finlay’s own enemy or his father’s. He seems a fairly harmless young man, a great deal more ordinary than he would probably wish to be….”