Pentecost Alley (44 page)

“Yes … and they can only say he was well dressed and had thick hair. Look, Pitt.” He forgot Pitt’s new rank and addressed him as he used to be, an equal. “I’ve been over the ground again and again. I’ve got men out searching for this man, with descriptions. They’ve tried every other brothel and bawdy house from Mile End to the north, Limehouse to the east, and the Tower to the west. Everybody’s seen half a dozen men who answer the description, at least.” He started to add something, then changed his mind and bit it off. “There’s nothing.”

Pitt leaned back, worn out himself. Was it Finlay FitzJames after all? Or was it Jago Jones, in some insane, bitter mixture of hatred of prostitutes, of Finlay, of all his past life and whatever he used to be, and of Finlay’s knowledge of him? Or perhaps it was even that Finlay had introduced him to it? Was that the core of his madness—the conviction that somehow Finlay was the one who had led him to discover the sinner within himself, the uncontrollable appetite?

“What is it?” Ewart asked, sitting upright suddenly, knocking a pile of papers with his elbow. “What do you know?”

“Nothing,” Pitt answered. “But I shall have to go and speak to the Reverend Jago Jones again.”

“Jones?” Ewart said in surprise, leaving the papers where they were. “You think he knows something? I doubt it. Good man, but not worldly-wise. If he knew anything, he’d have told us already.” His voice fell flat again, the moment’s hope gone out of it. “Anyway, it’s a waste of time your going to see him. He won’t betray a parishioner, even if he knows for certain who it is. Priest’s vows, and all that. Better to compare between Ada and Nora, see who might have known both of them. I’ve already started.” He fished among the fallen papers and pulled out a few. He pushed them across at Pitt. “These are the people who know both the women and dealt with them, one way or another: clothes, hosiery, cosmetics, medicines, food, shoes, even bed linen.” He grunted. “Never realized a prostitute went through so much bed linen. See, just a few of them are the same.”

“Naturally.” Pitt took the paper, although he did not expect it to reveal anything interesting. “I don’t suppose there are all that many dealers in such things in a small area like this. Any of them answer the description?”

“Not so far. Most of them are middle-aged and were at home with their families at the time.” Ewart relapsed into his hopeless air, leaning back in his chair, slumped over.

“Anything from Lennox?” Pitt asked.

“No. She was killed in exactly the same way,” Ewart answered, his face pinched, pain written all through him, and a driving, consuming anger. “Tortured the same. All the details match, even those no one else knows but us. It had to be the same person.”

“Anything different at all?” Pitt said quietly. The shabby room was claustrophobic, too small to contain the huge emotions within it.

“No, not a thing,” Ewart answered.

“Anything at all found, apart from the button and the handkerchief?” Pitt went on.

“No.”

“Odd, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“That all the evidence at both scenes implicates Finlay FitzJames …”

“Circumstantial,” Ewart said too quickly, then slipped down in his chair again, white-faced.

“I was going to say,” Pitt continued, puzzled and unhappy, “that it doesn’t seem natural. The more I look at it, the more it seems as if the evidence in both cases was put there by someone specifically so we should find it. Has anyone in either building ever seen Finlay FitzJames before?”

Ewart sat upright with a jolt. “No!” A spark of hope lit in his face. “I’ll ask them all again, but I’m sure they haven’t. You’re right! It’s too much of a coincidence to suppose that he came here for the very first time and killed a woman he’d never even met before. Why would he, unless he’s mad? He might do it once, if …” He swallowed hard, as though his throat were almost closed with the strain. “If he were drunk, or … or crazed with … with lust, or anger, or whatever grips people. But that once would scare him out of his senses. He’d never come back less than two months later and do it again. Especially when he knows we already suspect him.”

He was leaning over the desk now, his face sharp with eagerness. “You’ve met him, Pitt. Did he seem to you like a man possessed by insanity? Or like a young man who’d occasionally behaved like a fool, lost his self-control in the past, drank a bit too much and couldn’t remember the night before, and was terrified he’d be blamed for something he didn’t do? Terrified of letting down his family, of having his father despise him and make life exceedingly unpleasant for him for several months, if not years?”

It was exactly how Finlay had impressed Pitt. He could
not have worded it more perfectly himself. It was an acutely perceptive characterization of the man he had seen. He had underrated Ewart’s judgment.

“You’re right,” he said aloud. “It comes back every time to someone else trying to blame him.” He looked at Ewart steadily. “Were we wrong with Costigan? I was so absolutely sure I was right. I couldn’t explain the boots or the garter, but I was sure he killed her.”

“So was I,” Ewart said quickly, seriously. “I still think so. The boots and the garter must have been the customer before.”

“And the second time, with Nora?” Pitt asked. “Not the same customer?”

“No, that’d be done by whoever put the handkerchief and the button there, to add to it looking like the same person.” His mouth tightened. “I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like your Reverend. Bit of a fanatic anyway. I mean … why would a high-living gentleman suddenly give up everything and study to be a minister, then choose to come to work here in Whitechapel?” He shook his head. “People like him don’t have to work at all. Take the rest of the old Hellfire Club members … Helliwell works in the City, but only when he feels like it. Doesn’t really have to. Just likes to live high. Got a wife to keep, and I daresay children now. Runs a carriage, big house, servants, gives parties. His wife’s dress allowance is probably more than Jago Jones makes in a decade.”

Pitt could not argue. Other thoughts raced into his mind.

“And Thirlstone,” Ewart went on, an edge to his voice. “Plays at being an artist. Doesn’t make any money at it. Doesn’t need to. Just enjoys himself. Drifts from one stupid conversation to the next. Walks in the Park, goes to studios and exhibitions. FitzJames wants to be an ambassador or a Member of Parliament, but he doesn’t actually work every day, like you or me. Goes to the Foreign Office when he feels like it. A lot of what he does is cultivate the right people, be seen at the right places.”

Pitt said nothing. He heard the contempt in Ewart’s voice and he understood it, perhaps even shared it.

“But Jones works from morning till night,” Ewart concluded. “Sundays as well. I don’t know what they pay him, but they don’t say ‘poor as a church mouse’ for nothing. Wears old clothes, eats the same as the rest of ’em ’round there. Probably as cold in winter as they are, worse than I am. Why?”

“I don’t know.” Pitt stood up. “But you’re right, it requires an answer. You had better keep on looking for this man who last saw Nora.”

“I don’t know who else to question,” Ewart protested. “We’ve spoken to all the women in the building, the people in the bottle factory, local residents, shopkeepers.”

“Even the beggars and workers in the street,” Pitt said from the doorway. “Keep on trying them. Someone must have seen him. He didn’t walk out of there and disappear.” He turned the handle. “Unless you’ve got any better ideas?”

He left Ewart in the dark, untidy office and went back to Myrdle Street. The question of the customer who had disappeared nagged at his mind. He had to be the one who killed her, but the fact that no one admitted seeing him leave was significant. In fact, no one even admitted seeing him arrive. The house was a brothel. There were always people about. It was not only a fact of business, it was part of their safety. Every woman who worked the streets was aware of the dangers of a client who was violent, abusive, refused to pay, or had tastes and demands beyond those she was willing to satisfy.

He walked briskly from the police station along the gray streets filled with traffic: men and women bustling along the pavements, tradesmen, petty clerks, errand boys, deliverymen, peddlers and news sellers. Nora’s death was still on every front page, along with protests of Costigan’s innocence and the call for reform. Some even asked for abolition of the police because of their failure
to catch the first Whitechapel mass murderer, and now a second.

Pitt hurried by, wanting to look the other way and yet drawn to them against his will. His imagination painted lurid headlines. What he saw was even worse. He was spared nothing.

“Police getting nowhere!” screamed one. “Whitechapel lives in terror again!” And another sandwich board read, “Has Jack the Ripper returned? Police helpless!” “Senior policeman Pitt going ’round in circles! Or is he? Does he know something he dare not tell? Who is the Whitechapel murderer?”

He arrived at the house in Myrdle Street tense, miserable and out of breath. No one was up yet. Business had resumed as usual. The demands of debt do not wait upon a decent mourning period, and the fact that a murder had been committed on the premises had not apparently deterred the clientele.

He roused Edie with some difficulty, and she came into the kitchen at the back, her long black hair tangled, her face puffed with sleep, a loose robe wrapped around herself. Her trade had robbed her of any pretension to modesty.

“Yer wastin’ yer time,” she said sourly, sitting down on one of the hard-backed chairs. “We don’t none of us know nuffink as we ’aven’t already told yer. We saw no one else come nor go that night ’cept our own customers. We dunno ’oo the geezer was wif the fair ’air wot went inter Nora’s room, an’ we didn’t ’ear nuffink.”

“I know.” Pitt tried to be patient. “Nobody outside saw him either. Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar?”

“Yeah. So wot? Yer sayin’ as we got a ghost wot comes in ’ere, strangles Nora, an’ goes aht agin?” She shivered, her heavy flesh dragging at her robe. “Yer mad! In’t no such fing. Someone’s lyin’, that’s all. Somebody seen ’im. They just in’t sayin’.”

“Several people,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “Why?”

“I dunno. It don’t make no sense. I want the bastard
caught and topped!” She put her slender-fingered hands up to her face. “Nora were a cheeky bitch, but nobody deserved wot ’appened to ’er. Could’ve slapped ’er meself a few times. But then reckon as we all get across each other some days.”

“Why did Nora get across you?”

Edie pulled a face of self-mockery touched with a kind of humor.

“ ’Cos she were pretty, I suppose. An’ she could really get the men. ’Ad a way wif ’er.” She looked at Pitt with contempt. “I don’ mean nicked yer customers. I mean yer own men. Took a few as I fancied.”

“Not customers?” Pitt asked. “Not paying men?”

“Geez. Yer can do it for fun too, yer know,” she said indignantly. “Well … not often, mebbe. But it’s good ter ’ave someone ’oo likes yer. No money. Treats yer like yerself, not like they bought yer. Nice ter ’ave jus’ a cuddle an’ a laugh.”

“Yes, of course it is. And Nora would take your man, and other people’s?”

“ ’Ere, not reg’lar. Just mine once, only a geezer wot I fancied, nuffink def’nite. Made an ’abit of it, and we’d ’a’ ’ad ’er thrown aht! She weren’t bad, Nora. An’ if I knew ’ow ter ’elp yer get ’oo it was as done ’er, I’d bust meself ter do it. Bloody useless lot y’are too.” She ran her fingers through her black hair. “Geez! Anyway that little sod Costigan sure as ’ell din’t do it. And yer in’t caught the real bastard wot did, even though ’e’s done it twice now. Gonna wait till ’e does it again, are yer? Catch ’im the third time? Or will it be like in ’eighty-eight, and ’e’ll thumb ’is nose at the lot o’ yer.” She stood up, pulling her robe around her. “I dunno nuffink more, an’ I’m goin’ back ter me bed. I dunno wot they pay yer for. If I weren’t no better at me job than you are, I’d starve.”

Pitt roused Pearl and Mabel, and learned nothing else of use. They only repeated what they had already said.

It was lunchtime, and he was hungry. He walked
towards the river and the nearest public house, the same one in Swan Street where he and Ewart and Lennox had met two evenings before Costigan’s trial.

Was he wrong about Costigan? Could he possibly have been so eager to believe him guilty he had misinterpreted what he said? He had to think back, but he could not remember the words, only his own certainty that it was an admission.

He went to the bar and asked for a pint of cider and a sandwich with cheese and pickle. He took it to a table and sat down, eating without tasting. The room was noisy, packed with porters, draymen and laborers. The smells of sawdust and ale were everywhere, the sounds of voices and occasional laughter. He had been there several minutes and was more than halfway through when a large man with an open jacket stared at him pointedly.

“Rozzer!” he said slowly. “Yer that rozzer wot ’anged Costigan, ain’t yer?”

Pitt looked up at him.

“I didn’t hang him,” he corrected. “I arrested him. The court tried him, the jury found him guilty, and the judge sentenced him.” He took another mouthful of his sandwich and turned away.

Several people close by stopped talking.

“That’s right!” The man raised his voice. “Stuff yer face. Look the other way from us. Wot der we matter? Jus’ poor folks from Whitechapel. ’Ang some poor bastard an’ go ’ome ter yer bed.” The jeering in his voice grew sharper, uglier. “Sleep easy, do yer, Rozzer? Only Costigan in’t gonna wake up agin, is ’e? ’Cos you ’anged ’im! But it don’t stop some bloody toff comin’ ’ere from up west, usin’ our women and then torturin’ ’em an’ stranglin’ ’em, do it?”

Another man joined in, his face tight with hatred.

“ ’Ow much they pay yer, eh? Judas!”

“Judas!” came the cry from half a dozen other throats. No one was eating anymore. All other conversations stopped.

Someone stood up.

The landlord yelled for order and was told to keep his mouth shut.

They moved closer to Pitt’s table, faces ugly.

“Wot yer come back ’ere fer, eh? ’Opin’ ter be paid agin, are yer?”