Pentecost Alley (32 page)

“If you are suggesting that Finlay was there half an hour before the murder,” Augustus interrupted icily, “then you are not only mistaken, Superintendent, but you are impertinent, and beginning to exceed your authority and trespass upon our goodwill.”

“Not at all,” Pitt answered. Finlay might not know why Pitt had come, but surely Augustus must now guess. Why was he pretending to be angry and obtuse? Pitt had not expected thanks, but neither had he expected this prickly pretense. “I am quite satisfied his account of his day was exactly true. The mistaken identification of him as having been in Pentecost Alley is easy enough to understand….”

Augustus was not interested, and certainly not about to
be placed in obligation to an inferior who had done no more than his duty.

“If you have a point, Superintendent, please arrive at it. If you wish my thanks, I am obliged you handled the matter with discretion. I trust you do not expect further of me than that?”

It was grossly offensive.

“I did not expect even that!” Pitt snapped. “I perform my duty for myself, for no one else. There was no personal favor involved to consider. Similarly, I find it my duty to discover who could have placed your son’s belongings at the scene of a crime, presumably with the intention of having him at the very best involved in a scandal and his reputation damaged—at the worst hanged.” He said the word distinctly and with pleasure. “I would have expected you to wish the answer known even more fervently than I do.”

Augustus’s eyes narrowed. He had obviously not anticipated such a retort, and his reaction was unprepared.

“And if the Hellfire Club badge which was discovered in your pocket, sir,” Pitt went on, turning to Finlay, “was your original one, then someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to see you blamed. It also raises the question not only why they had a second badge made with your name on it, but how they knew to make it so exactly similar to the first! The only way even a jeweler can tell them apart is by the very slight variation in the script behind the pin.”

Finlay’s composure disappeared. He looked pale and the confidence went from his eyes, leaving them glittering and nervous. He turned slowly and looked at his father.

For a moment Augustus was also caught off balance. He had no answer ready. His resentment that Pitt should have caused him discomfort was hard in his mouth, the tightening of his lips.

Finlay drew breath to speak, looked back at Pitt, then at his father again, and changed his mind.

“Did you have the badge made yourself, sir?” Pitt asked. “It would be understandable in the circumstances, and not require any explanation before the law.”

“N-no,” Finlay stuttered, then swallowed. “No, I didn’t.” He looked profoundly unhappy now.

A long clock by the far wall chimed the quarter hour. Through the window Tallulah was still visible in the swing seat.

“I did, Superintendent,” Augustus said at last. “As to the first badge, I can only presume it was lost or stolen years ago, as my son has already said. Similarly the cuff link. No one has seen that in five years either. One can only presume the same person had both of them.”

“And chanced to use Ada McKinley’s services and leave them both there, either on the same occasion or on two separate occasions?” Pitt finished, unable to keep the disbelief from his voice.

Augustus’s features were expressionless, except for a swift flicker of rage there, and then gone again.

“It would seem so,” he said coldly.

Pitt turned to Finlay.

“Then that narrows down the possibilities a great deal,” he reasoned. “There cannot be many of your acquaintances who had the opportunity to find by chance, or to steal from you, two such intimate articles and then accidentally to lose them in Pentecost Alley the night of Ada’s murder.”

“The cuff link could have been there for any amount of time,” Augustus pointed out, his face tight with anger. “You said it was hidden from view, down the back of a chair. It might have been there for years.”

“Exactly,” Pitt agreed. “And the badge could only have been there since the previous customer. Any new person in the bed must have felt it.”

“All very puzzling,” Augustus granted. “But it is not a problem with which anyone in my family can assist you. And frankly, since you know beyond question who killed the wretched woman, I would have thought you had
better pursuits with which to occupy your time. Are you not rather a senior officer to be concerned with the possible theft of a cuff link and a badge, neither of them intrinsically worth more than a guinea or two, and perfectly easily replaced? My son is not pressing charges against anyone, nor have we at any time even reported the loss, much less requested that you investigate the matter.” He picked up his book again, although he kept it closed. “Thank you for your concern, but we would all rather you bent your efforts towards preventing some of the violence that mars our streets, or protecting our more valuable property from thieves. I am obliged to you for calling, Superintendent.” He reached with the other hand towards the bell to summon a servant to show Pitt out.

“I am not concerned with the property,” Pitt answered, still sitting where he was. “Only with the use made of it, to try to incriminate you.” He looked at Finlay. “You appear to have a very powerful and very bitter enemy, sir. The police would like to give you all possible assistance in discovering who that is and, if necessary, prosecuting them.”

Finlay was white, a fine beading of sweat on his skin. He swallowed as if he had something caught in his throat.

“I have many enemies, Superintendent,” Augustus cut across him, but his tone was guarded. “It is the price of success. It is unpleasant, but I am not afraid of it. The attempt to ruin my son has failed. Should they try anything further, I will deal with it myself with whatever defense is appropriate to its nature. I always have. I appreciate your concern for our well-being and your interest in justice.” This time he reached the bell. “The footman will show you out. Good day to you.”

Pitt remained unsatisfied about the issue, but he could not afford the time to pursue it any further, nor could he think of any useful line of enquiry. If Augustus had had the second badge made, that was explained, but not how
the first one had been put in the bed in Pentecost Alley, or how it had come into the possession of whoever had left it there. Pitt could not believe both that and the cuff link had ended in the same room accidentally.

Possibly it was an enemy of Augustus FitzJames who sought this brutal and devious way to have his revenge, but it seemed more likely the opportunity had arisen for an enemy of Finlay. The other members of the Hellfire Club seemed the obvious choice. Why had they disbanded? Tedium? A sudden maturity? Some opportunity for one of them to advance himself, for which sobriety and a better reputation were necessary, and that had brought all of them to a realization that it was time to abandon such self-indulgence?

Or had there been a quarrel?

Pitt could not get rid of the idea that it was a quarrel, and that Jago Jones was the one with the obvious opportunity to leave anything in Ada’s rooms. Yet Jago’s face when he had first questioned him about the murder still sprang to his eye, and the horror in it when he had told him that Finlay’s badge had been found in the bed.

Did Finlay actually know who had tried to incriminate him, and did he also know why? Was it possible that he planned his own revenge, perhaps with his father’s help?

Why would he not simply tell Pitt and allow him to deal with it? A prosecution for theft, or even for simply leaving another man’s belongings in a prostitute’s room, would ruin Jago Jones. It would ruin Helliwell. His very proper parents-in-law would be scandalized by such a thing. Polite society would cease to know him. It would be long, drawn out and acutely painful. The victim would suffer every moment of it, both in anticipation and in retrospect. What punishment could be crueler or more effective than that?

If Augustus did not choose to effect it, then there must be some reason. To stay his hand and hold the threat forever over someone? To ask for some favor in return,
something so big it would be worth forgoing the present pleasure?

Could taking his vengeance rebound upon himself or his family? Was the glamorous and flighty Tallulah in some way vulnerable?

It did not occur to Pitt as a possibility that Augustus would forgive the offense.

August ended in suffocating heat and passed into early September. The trial of Albert Costigan was due to begin. Two evenings before it opened, Pitt went back to Whitechapel to see Ewart and the police surgeon, Lennox. They met, not in the police station, but in a public house off Swan Street, and ate a supper of cold pigeon pie washed down with cider and followed by plum cake.

They talked of agreeable things. Lennox told a funny story about one of his patients a little farther west who had recently acquired a bathtub and invited all the neighbors to behold it.

Ewart was elated because his eldest son had won a place at University and passed his first-year exams. Pitt was surprised that the boy had had sufficient education in Whitechapel for such a thing to be possible, but he forbore from saying so. Then Ewart explained that he had been able to send him to boarding school, where he had received excellent tuition.

“Makes all the difference to a man, education,” he said with a sad little smile, both bitter and sweet, and Pitt wondered what wealth of sacrifice had made it possible for a man on Ewart’s pay. His wife too must have forfeited a great deal. It gave him a view of Ewart he had not even considered before, and he admired him for it. He must have saved all his life. But he did not comment on it. It would have been intrusive. He smiled at Ewart, and Ewart looked away and avoided his eyes, as though embarrassed. The murder in Pentecost Alley was not even touched upon until they left the public house and
walked gently towards the river and the shadows cast by the huge edifice of the Tower of London. The evenings were drawing in. The air was still balmy but night came far sooner and there was a sense of autumn approaching, a fading of flowers, a dustiness of the ground too long without hard, soaking rain.

They stopped on the grass mound under the Tower and stood looking towards the river. The pall of soot and smoke was behind them. The light was soft and apricot gold over the shining sheet of water, hazy in the distance, softening the line of the farther shore. Tower Bridge was just above them. Downstream there was nothing more barring the way to the open sea.

“Are you going to mention the badge and the cuff link?” Pitt asked Ewart. The subject had to be discussed. They were to testify the day after tomorrow.

“Don’t see any point,” Ewart replied guardedly, looking sideways at Pitt. “Doesn’t seem to have any relevance to what happened.”

“I went back to FitzJames,” Pitt said, squinting into the sun. The reflection off the water was becoming brighter, a vivid daub of color, almost silver where it touched the slight ripples of a passing pleasure boat, darker at the widening edges where it spilled across the shore. “I asked him if he had made the second badge himself.”

“Always thought he had.” Lennox pursed his lips. His face still looked melancholy, even in the calm, golden air of evening. The light picked out the fine lines around his mouth and eyes, worn into his flesh by the strain of pity or distress. Pitt wondered what private life he had; where his home was; if he had anyone there to care for, anyone with whom he could laugh and share the beautiful and good things, or to whom he could tell at least some of the things that hurt him.

Ewart was talking to him, and he had not heard.

“What did you say? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening.”

“FitzJames admitted it?” Ewart pressed. “Then that solves it, doesn’t it! Stupid, perhaps, but understandable.
There’s no point in making any mention of it. It only raises questions we can’t answer, and which don’t matter now. I daresay he did go there sometime, and lost them then. Point is: it wasn’t that night, and that’s all that matters.”

“It wasn’t Finlay who had it made,” Pitt argued. “It was his father.”

“Comes to the same thing.” Ewart dismissed it, but a look of loathing crossed his face for an instant and was suppressed.

“Costigan swears he doesn’t know anything about them,” Pitt said quietly into the balmy stillness. It still bothered him. It did not make any sense. He could understand Ewart’s feeling. He shared it.

“Maybe he doesn’t,” Lennox said quietly. “I still think FitzJames had something to do with Ada—if not her death, then at least as a customer. I don’t believe anyone stole those things from him. Who would? Except Ada herself.”

“One of his friends, or supposed friends,” Ewart responded after a moment. “Maybe one of the original club members. We don’t know what they really felt about each other. Could have been a lot of envy there. Finlay had more money than any of them, more opportunities in life. He’s going on to hold high office someday. They are not.” There was an anger, almost a viciousness, in his voice that was startling in the golden summer evening. Pitt thought of how easily Finlay’s opportunities had been bought, and at what cost Ewart’s son’s had been, the countless small things that had been given up to pay for it. It was not surprising Ewart felt resentful at Finlay’s waste of it.

“We’ll never know.” Ewart caught himself and the emotion died out of his voice. It became bland again, professional. “We never do know all of a case. There are motives, small actions unexplained in even the best of them. We have the right man. That’s all that really matters.” He pushed his hands into his pockets and stared
over the water. One or two barges had already lit riding lights and they drifted, almost without undulation.

“It’s part of the crime,” Pitt said, unsatisfied. “Someone put those things there, which means if it wasn’t Costigan, then someone else was present. A good defense counsel is going to ask who it was and raise reasonable doubt.”

Lennox stared at him, his face half shadowed, half gold in the dying sunlight. There was surprise in him and a mixture of alarm.