Pentecost Alley (35 page)

“Tell me all you can remember from just before you saw Nora at almost four o’clock,” he prompted.

She stared at him, then began hesitantly.

“I ’eard Nora come inter ’er room an’ call ter Edie abaht a petticoat, but I din’ ’ear wot Edie said. I were busy doin’ me ’air ready fer the evenin’. I finished, and went aht. I got a customer real quick, one o’ me reg’lars….”

“Who was that?”

“Wot?”

“Who was he? What does he look like?”

She hesitated only a moment, glancing at Edie, then at Mabel.

“Jimmy Kale,” she answered. “ ’E come ’ere most Sundays. Not always ter me. Sometimes one o’ the other girls.”

“And what does he look like?”

“Tall, skinny. Got a long nose. Always sniffin’.”

“Did he come to Nora?” Pitt asked.

“Yeah, I reckon so. But ’e wouldn’t’ve ’urt ’er! W’y would ’e? ’E don’t even know ’er, ’cepting ter …” She stopped.

Pitt accepted that that was not knowing her in any sense that mattered.

“Go on. How long was Jimmy Kale with you?”

“ ’Alf hour.”

“Then what?”

“I ’ad a cup o’ tea wi’ Marge over the road. She come ’ere sometimes. ’Er old man knocks ’er around summink terrible.”

“Was she here between four and five o’clock? Would
she come in through the door at the front and past Nora’s room?”

She shook her head.

“Nah, she come across the wall an’ up them areaway steps on the outside. That way ’er ’usband don’ see ’er, and nob’dy takes ’er for one o’ us.” She laughed abruptly. “Poor cow. She’d be better orff if she was! Anybody beat me like ’e do ’er, I’d stick a shiv in ’is guts.”

“When did she go?” Pitt ignored the reference to knives.

“When Mabel started ter yell. Rest o’ the noise don’t matter, but she knew that were different. We all did….”

She swallowed and her throat tightened. She started to cough and Lennox moved to her side, taking her hand and patting her firmly on the back. The human contact seemed to comfort her, the warmth of touch which demanded nothing of her. She took a shuddery breath. For a moment she hovered on the edge of abandoning herself to the comfort of weeping and clinging to someone.

Lennox removed his hand and passed over the cup of tea.

She straightened up again.

“We knew as summink were terrible wrong,” she said levelly. “Nora ’ad Syd Allerdyce wif ’er. ’E come ter the door wif ’is pants rahnd ’is ankles. Proper fool ’e looked too, fat as a pig and red in the face. In’t ’alf so la-di-da caught like that, ’e weren’t.” The dislike was heavy in her face. She did not forget a condescension, or forgive it. “Angie from upstairs were at the end o’ the alley wi’ a pail o’ water. She dropped it and it went all over the place. I suppose someone cleared it up. I dunno. I din’t. An’ Kate come out o’ ’er room wif a shawl rahnd ’er. S’pose ’er customer were still there. Edie went inter Nora’s room an’ saw ’er there, an’ Mabel still yellin’. Edie ’it ’er rahnd the face ter stop ’er, then come out an’ sent Kate fer the rozzers.”

“Did you see Nora’s customer?”

“Nah. I were busy meself.”

“Where is your room, compared with hers?”

“Next ter it.”

“What did you hear?”

“ ’Ear? Everythink! ’Eard Syd wheezin’ an’ groanin’ like ’e was climbin’ a mountain. ’Eard them two bloody cats fightin’ in the alley—”

“Do you mean cats or women?” Pitt interrupted.

She glared at him. “Cats! Furry thin’s wot eat mice an’ squeals like all the devils in ’ell ’alf the night. Geez! Don’t they ’ave cats up west w’ere you come from? ’Ow d’yer keep the mice down? Or don’t you ’ave them neither?”

“Yes, we have them. I have two cats, actually.” He thought with a sudden surge of pleasure of Angus and Archie curled up asleep in their basket by the kitchen range. But they didn’t have to battle anyone for their food and milk. “What else?”

“ ’Eard Shirl upstairs screamin’ at someone out the front,” Pearl replied. “Yellin’ like a stuck pig, she were. Worse’n the cats. Reckon someone bilked ’er. An’ someone dropped a tray down the stairs. ’Ell of a row. Then there was Mabel an’ ’er customer, laughin’ like fools they was. Reckon as ’e were drunk out o’ ’is wits. ’Ope yer got paid well, Mabel?”

“Course,” Mabel said with conviction.

It flicked through Pitt’s mind that she had probably taken all the man had, but that was his affair, if he chose to take chances. He imagined the cacophony of sound that must have gone on during the hour Nora Gough was murdered. She could probably have screamed herself hoarse and been lucky to have been heard above the general clamor.

And yet Mabel’s screams of horror had been distinguished quickly enough.

He looked at Lennox.

Lennox pursed his lips and shook his head very slightly.

“No way to tell,” he said quietly. “She may have known him, and by the time she realized what was happening, it was too late.”

Pitt said nothing. He turned to the other girls.

“The names of your customers?” he asked. “Kate?”

“Bert Moss come just before five. Early, but Sundays is different. ’As ter get ’orne fer ’is tea. Then Joe ’Edges. ’E were still ’ere, like, w’en Mabel started to yell.”

“With you at that moment?”

“Yeah. Look, ’e din’t do it! I brung ’im in! ’E weren’t never by ’isself ’ere!”

Pitt nodded and turned to Mabel.

“Dunno. I never asked.” She shrugged. “Don’t matter.”

“He wasn’t anybody you’ve had before?”

“No. Never seen ’im in me life.”

“When did he come, and when did he leave?”

“ ’E come at quarter after four, near enough, an’ left abaht ten minutes afore five. I were jus’ takin’ ’im aht an’ goin’ back ter the street w’en I saw Nora’s customer goin’….” Her face blanched. “Gawd Almighty! D’yer think that were …”

She slumped forward suddenly and Pitt thought she was going to be sick. She started to gasp for breath and her chest heaved.

“Stop it!” Lennox said smartly. “There!” He grabbed the tea from Pearl and thrust it into Mabel’s hands. “Drink it slowly. Don’t gulp it.”

She tried to take it but she was shaking so badly, her fingers stiff, that she could not hold it.

Lennox steadied it, his hands over hers, keeping it from spilling.

“Drink it,” he told her firmly. “Concentrate, or you’ll get it all over you. Hold it still!”

She obeyed, sipping slowly, focusing her attention on it. Gradually her breathing began to subside and become
normal again. After several minutes she sat up and put the now empty mug on the table in front of her.

“What did he look like?” Pitt asked her more gently.

“Look like?” She stared across the table at him. “ ’E were, I dunno. Orn’ry. ’E ’ad fair ’air, all sort o’ wavy.”

“What kind of clothes?” Pitt could feel himself cold inside. “What was he wearing, Mabel?”

“Din’t really look much.” She stared at him in horror, and he knew the other pictures that were in her mind, herself on the bed in Nora’s place.

“Expensive?” Lennox said, his voice cutting the silence.

Pitt glanced at him, but it was the same question he would have asked. It was in all their minds, it had to be.

“Yeah. Men around ’ere in’t got nuffink like that.”

“Would you know him if you saw him again?” Pitt asked, thinking back to Rose Burke, and her face as she had stared at Finlay FitzJames coming out of the front door in Devonshire Street.

“I dunno.” Mabel was terrified. It was there in her white, clammy skin and shivering body. “I sees ’undreds o’ men. In’t their faces wot I look at. It’s money wot matters at the end, i’n it? It’s only money as gets yer food an’ yer rent.”

“Thank you,” Pitt acknowledged, rising to his feet and pacing three steps across the kitchen floor, and back again. “Do you know anything else about your regular customers? Where do they live? What do they do? How can I find them?”

“Wo’ for?” Kate looked at him narrowly.

“In case they seen ’oo done Nora, yer stupid cow!” Edie said. “Wot yer think?” She swung around to Pitt. “It’s yer job to get this bastard wot’s doin’ girls ’round ’ere! Please, mister! First ’e done poor Ada over on Pentecost Alley, now ’e done Nora. ’Oo’s next? An’ next arter that?”

Pearl began to cry again, softly, like a lost child.

“Geez, Edie!” Mabel said desperately. “Why yer gotter say summink like that?”

Edie swung around. “Well, it weren’t that rotten little swine Costigan, were it? ’E bin ’anged by the neck till ’e were dead and stuck six feet under, in’t ’e?” She jabbed her fingers towards the wall and the darkness outside. “It’s some bastard wot’s still aht there, i’n it? Some bastard wot could come in ’ere an’ be yer next customer, eh? Poor Nora’s, weren’t it? ’Oo’s gonner ’elp us if the rozzers don’t, eh? I dunno ’oo ’e is. D’you?”

“Did anybody see anyone else here this afternoon?” Pitt asked one more time. “Anyone at all?”

Pitt took down everything else they had to say, but it added nothing more. At midnight he left Ewart and a white-faced Constable Binns to continue searching for the customers the women had named and question them as to who they had seen and what they had heard. That was work for the local station.

Lennox had taken the body of Nora Gough in the mortuary wagon, and tomorrow he would perform an autopsy on her. Not that Pitt expected it to tell him anything different from the brief, sad story he already knew.

He arrived home at five minutes to one to find Charlotte standing in the hall, the parlor door open behind her, her face pale, eyes wide.

He closed the door. He had forgotten until this moment that he was still dressed in his Sunday best and had no coat with him. He had expected to be home long before this. Neither had he eaten.

“Was it the same?” she asked huskily.

He nodded. “Exactly the same.” He walked past her into the parlor and sat down in his easy chair, but forward, leaning on his knees, not relaxing.

She came in and closed the door with a click, then sat opposite him.

“You never told me what the first was like,” she said quietly. “Perhaps you should.”

He knew she did not mean that she could see any
answer he did not, simply that the process of explaining would clarify his own mind, as it had so often before. There was no better way to learn what one meant than by trying to explain it to someone else who was not afraid to say they did not understand.

Carefully, hating every detail, he told her about finding the body of Ada McKinley, what it was like, what had been done to her. He watched her face, and saw the pain in it, but she did not look away.

“And this time?” she asked. “What was her name?”

“Nora Gough.”

“And it was exactly the same?”

“Yes. Broken fingers and toes. Water. Garter with the ribbon ’round her arm, the boots buttoned together.”

“That couldn’t be chance,” she said. “Who knew about all those things, apart from whoever did it?”

“Ewart, Lennox, he’s the police surgeon, Cornwallis, and the constable who was first called. And Tellman,” he answered. “No one else.”

“Newspapers?”

“No.”

“The women in the same house could have talked,” she pointed out. “People do, especially about something that frightens them. To share it diminishes it … sometimes.”

“Even they didn’t have all the details,” he said, remembering what Rose Burke had actually seen. “They didn’t know about the fingers and toes. In fact, Binns and Tellman didn’t either.”

She was sitting forward also, her knees close to his, her hands only inches away.

“Then it was the same person, wasn’t it,” she said softly. There was no criticism in her voice, nor did he see fear in her eyes, only sorrow.

“Yes,” he answered, biting his lip. “It must have been.” Neither of them added that it could not then have been Costigan, but it hung in the air between them, with all its dark pain and guilt.

Charlotte put her hands over his and held them.

“Was it Finlay FitzJames?” she asked, searching his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said frankly. “I found a handkerchief under Nora Gough’s pillow with his initials on it. They aren’t common. But it doesn’t prove he was there tonight.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “But her one customer tonight was seen. He was fair-haired and well-dressed. In other words, a gentleman.”

“Does Finlay FitzJames have fair hair?”

“Yes. Very handsome hair, thick and waving. And they mentioned that particularly tonight.”

“Thomas …”

Her voice had changed. He was aware she was about to tell him something he would not like, something which she found extremely difficult.

“What?”

“Emily was absolutely sure Finlay FitzJames was innocent. She knows his sister….”

He waited.

“She saw him the night Ada was killed, you know?” She looked up, her brow furrowed, her eyes dark and wide.

“Emily saw Finlay?” He was incredulous. “Why on earth didn’t she say so?”

“No … no, Tallulah saw him!” she corrected him. “She couldn’t say so because she had already lied to her father about where she was, saying she was somewhere else!” She was speaking more and more rapidly. “It was a pretty debauched affair. People were drinking too much and smoking opium, or taking cocaine and things like that. It was in Chelsea, on Beaufort Street. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Her father would have taken an apoplexy if he’d known.”

“That I can believe,” Pitt said fervently. “But Tallulah saw Finlay there? Are you sure?”

“Well, Emily is sure. But Tallulah didn’t think anyone would believe her anyway, when she is his sister and had
already told everyone she was at Lady Swaffham’s party.”

“But someone else must have seen him!” Pitt said with a strange, almost frightening sense of exhilaration. Perhaps at least he had not been wrong about Finlay. “Who else was there?”

“That’s it. Tallulah didn’t know anyone, except the person she went with, and she hardly knew him. He was drunk half out of his senses, and doesn’t even remember going.”

“Well, people must have seen Tallulah!” he insisted, gripping her hands without realizing it.

“She doesn’t know who to ask. Parties like that are … well, they are held in private houses. Apparently people drift from one room to another. There are screens for privacy, potted palms, people half drunk … you could come and go and no one would know who you were, or care. Even the host himself didn’t know who was there.”