Anne Perry - [Thomas Pitt 05]

by Bluegate Fields

  “It is desired by me,” Emily replied with literal truth. “That is sufficient for a policeman in Deptford!”

  Somerset Carlisle received them without surprise. Apparently, Emily had had the forethought to warn him of their coming, and he was at home with the fire piled high and hot chocolate prepared. The study was littered with papers, and in the best chair a long, lean black cat with topaz eyes lay stretched, blinking unconcernedly. It seemed to have no intention of moving even when Emily nearly sat on it. It simply allowed her to push it to one side, then rearranged itself across her knee. Carlisle was so accustomed to the creature he did not even notice.

  Charlotte sat in the chair near the fire, determined that Emily should not dictate this conversation.

  “Albie Frobisher has been murdered,” she said before Emily had time to approach the subject with any delicacy.” He was strangled and put in the river. Now we shall never be able to question him again to see if he changes his testimony at all. But Emily has pointed out”—she must be fair, or she would make a fool of herself—“that his death will be an excellent tool to engage the sympathy of the people whose influence we wish for.”

  Carlisle’s face showed his disgust at the event, and an unusually personal anger.

  “Not much use to Jerome!” he said harshly. “Unfortunately, people like Albie are murdered for too many reasons, and most of them perfectly obvious, to assume it related to any particular incident.”

  “The girl prostitute has gone, too,” Charlotte continued. “Abigail Winters. She’s disappeared, so we can’t ask her either. But Thomas did say that he thinks neither Jerome nor Arthur Waybourne ever went there, to her rooms, because there is an old woman at the door who watches everyone like a rat, and she makes them all pay her to pass. She never saw them, and neither did any of the other girls.”

  Emily’s mouth curled in revulsion as her imagination conjured up the place for her. She put out her hand and stroked the black cat.

  “There would be a procuress,” Carlisle said, “and no doubt a few strong men around to deal with anyone who caused trouble. It’s all part of the mutual arrangement. It would be a very sly girl indeed who managed to smuggle in private customers—and a brave one. Or else a fool!”

  “We need more facts.” Emily would not allow herself to be excluded from the conversation any longer. “Can you tell us how a girl who begins as respectable ends up on the streets in places like these? If we are to move people, we must tell them about the ones they can feel sorry for, not just the ones born in Bluegate Fields and St. Giles, whom they imagine never desire anything else.”

  “Of course.” He turned to his desk and shuffled through piles of papers and loose sheets, coming up at last with the ones he wanted. “These are rates of pay in match factories and furniture shops, and pictures of necrosis of the jaw caused by handling phosphorus. Here are the piecework rates for stitching shirts and ragpicking. These are conditions for entry into a workhouse, and what they are like inside. And this is the poor law with regard to children. Don’t forget a lot of women who are on the streets are there because they have children to support, and not necessarily illegitimate by any means. Some are widows, and the husbands of some have just left, either for another woman or simply because they couldn’t stand the responsibility.”

  Emily took the papers and Charlotte moved beside her to read over her shoulder. The black cat stretched luxuriously, kneading its claws in the arm of the chair, pulling the threads, then curled up in a ball again and went back to sleep with a small sigh.

  “May we keep these?” Emily asked. “I want to learn them by heart.”

  “Of course,” he said. He poured the chocolate and passed it to them, his wry face showing he was not unaware of the irony of the situation: sitting by the blazing fire in this infinitely comfortable room, with its superb Dutch scene on the wall and hot chocolate in their hands, while they talked about horrendous squalor.

  As if reading Charlotte’s thoughts, Carlisle turned to her.

  “You must use your chance to convince as many other people as possible. The only way we’ll change anything is to alter the social climate till child prostitution becomes so abhorred that it withers of itself. Of course we’ll never get rid of it altogether, any more than any other vice, but we might reduce it massively.”

  “We will!” Emily said with a deeper anger than Charlotte had heard in her before. “I’ll see that every society woman in London is so sickened by it she’ll make it impossible for any man with ambition to practice it. We may not have a vote or pass any laws in Parliament, but we can certainly make the laws of society and freeze to death anyone who wants to flout them for long, I promise you!”

  Carlisle smiled. “I’m sure,” he said. “I never underestimated the power of public disapproval, informed or uninformed.”

  Emily stood up, carefully depositing the cat in the round hollow she had left. It barely stirred to rearrange itself.

  “I intend to inform the public.” She folded the papers and slipped them into her embroidered reticule. “Now we shall go to Deptford and look at this corpse. Are you ready, Charlotte? Thank you so much, Mr. Carlisle.”

  The Deptford police station was not easy to find. Quite naturally, neither Emily’s footman nor her coachman was acquainted with the area, and it took several wrong turnings on seemingly identical corners before they drew up in front of the entrance.

  Inside was the potbellied stove, and the same constable sat at the desk writing up a report, an enamel mug of tea steaming at his elbow. He looked startled when he saw Emily in her green morning dress and feathered hat, and although he knew Pitt, he did not know Charlotte. For a moment he was at a loss for words.

  “Good morning, Constable,” Emily said cheerfully.

  He snapped to attention, slid off his seat, and stood up. That at least had to be correct; one did not sit on one’s behind to speak with ladies of quality.

  “Good morning, ma’am.” His eye took in Charlotte. “Ma’am. Are you lost, ladies? Can I ’elp you?”

  “No, thank you, we are not lost,” Emily replied briskly, with a smile so dazzling the constable was completely disconcerted again. “I am Lady Ashworth, and this is my sister Mrs. Pitt. I believe you know Inspector Pitt? Good, of course you do. Perhaps you did not know there is a great desire for reform at the moment, especially with regard to the abuse of children in the trade of prostitution.”

  The constable blanched at a lady using so vulgar a term, and was embarrassed by it, although he frequently heard far coarser expressions used by others.

  But she did not give him time to protest, or even to cogitate upon it.

  “A great desire,” she continued. “And for this, of course, a certain amount of correct information is required. I know that a young boy prostitute was pulled out of the river here yesterday. I should like to see him.”

  Every vestige of color drained out of his face.

  “You can’t, ma’am! ’E’s dead!”

  “I know he’s dead, Constable,” Emily said patiently. “He would be, having been strangled and dropped into the river. It is the corpse that I wish to see.”

  “The corpse?” he repeated, stupefied.

  “Exactly,” she said. “If you will be so kind?”

  “I can’t! It’s ’orrible, ma’am—quite ’orrible. You can’t ’ave any idea, or you wouldn’t ask. It’s not for any lady at all to see, let alone the likes o’ you!”

  Emily opened her mouth to argue, but Charlotte could see that the whole initiative was going to slip away if she did not intervene.

  “Of course it is,” she agreed, adding her own smile to Emily’s. “And we appreciate your sensitivity to our feelings. But we have both seen death before, Constable. And if we are to fight for reform, we must make people aware that it is not pleasant—indeed as long as they are permitted to deceive themselves that it is unimportant, so long will they fail to do anything about it. Do you not agree?”

  “Well—well pu
t like that, ma’am—but I can’t let you go and look at something like that! ’E’s dead, ma’am—very dead indeed!”

  “Nonsense!” Emily said sharply. “It’s freezing cold! We have seen bodies before that were far worse than this one can possibly be. Mrs. Pitt once found one over a month old, half burned and full of maggots.”

  That left the constable speechless. He stared at Charlotte as if she had produced the article right there in front of him by some abominable sleight of hand.

  “So will you be good enough to take us to see poor Albie?” Emily said briskly. “You did not send him back to Bluegate Fields, did you?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. We got a message as they didn’t want ’im after all. Said as ’e’d bin took out o’ the river ’ere, we ’ad as much right to ’im as anyone else.”

  “Then let us go.” Emily began to walk toward the only other door, and Charlotte followed her, hoping the constable would not block them.

  “I ought to ask my sergeant!” the constable said helplessly. “ ’E’s upstairs. Let the go an’ ask ’im if’n you can!” This was his chance to put the whole ridiculous thing into someone else’s hands. He had been used to all manner of weird affairs coming in through the door, from drunks to terrified girls or practical jokers, but this was the worst of all. He knew they really were ladies; he may work in Deptford, but he knew quality when he saw it!

  “I wouldn’t dream of putting you to the trouble,” Emily said. “Or your sergeant either. We shall only be a moment. Will you be kind enough to show us the way? We should dislike to find the wrong corpse.”

  “Lord! We only got the one!” He dived through the doorway after her and trotted behind them exactly where Pitt had gone the day before, into the small, cold room with its sheet-covered table.

  Emily strode in and whipped off the cover. She looked down at the stiff, bleached, puffed corpse, and for a moment she went as white as it was; then, with a supreme effort, she controlled herself long enough to allow Charlotte to look also, but she was unable to speak.

  Charlotte saw an almost unrecognizable head and shoulders. Death and the water had robbed Albie of all the anger that had made him individual. Staring at him now, the emptiness lying on the table, she realized how much the will to fight had been part of him. What was left was like a house without furniture, after the inhabitants have taken away the things that marked their presence.

  “Put it back,” she said to Emily quietly. They walked out past the constable, close to each other, arm in arm, avoiding his eyes so he would not see how much it had shocked them and taken all their confidence.

  He was a tactful man, and whatever he saw or guessed he made no mention of.

  “Thank you,” Emily said at the street door. “You have been most courteous.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Charlotte added, doing her best to smile at him; she did not succeed, but he took the intention for the deed.

  “You’re welcome, ma’am,” he replied. “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” he added, because he did not know what else to say.

  Outside in the carriage, Emily accepted the rug from the footman and allowed him to wrap it around her feet and Charlotte’s.

  “Where to, milady?” he asked without expression. After the Deptford police station, nothing else she could say would surprise him.

  “What time is it?” she inquired.

  “A little after noon, milady.”

  “Then it is too early to go calling upon Callantha Swynford. We must find something to do in the meanwhile.”

  “Would you care for luncheon, milady?” The footman tried not to make it too obvious that he cared for it himself. Of course, he had not just viewed a drowned corpse.

  Emily lifted her chin and swallowed.

  “What an excellent idea. You had better find us somewhere pleasant, John, if you please. I do not know where such a place may be, but no doubt there is a holstelry of some sort that serves ladies.”

  “Yes, milady, I’m sure there is.” He closed the door and went back to tell the coachman that he had succeeded in obtaining luncheon, and implied by his expression what he thought of it all.

  “Oh, my God!” Emily sat back into the upholstery as soon as the door was closed. “How does Thomas bear it? Why do birth and death have to be so awfully—physical? They seem to reduce us to such a level of extremity there is no room to think of the spiritual!” She gulped again, hard. “Poor little creature. I have to believe in God, of some sort. It would be intolerable to think that was all there was—just to be born and live and die like that, and nothing before or after. It’s too trivial and disgusting. It’s like a joke in the worst possible taste.”

  “It’s not very funny,” Charlotte said somberly.

  “Jokes in bad taste aren’t!” Emily snapped. “I couldn’t face eating, but I certainly don’t intend to allow John to know that! We’ll have to order something, and of course we shall eat separately. Please do not be clumsy enough to allow him to learn of it! He is my footman and I shall have to live with him in the house—not to mention whatever he might say to the rest of the servants.”

  “I have no intention of doing so,” Charlotte replied. “And not eating will not help Albie.” She had seen and heard of more violence and more pain than Emily, cushioned by Paragon Walk and the Ashworth world. “And of course there’s a God, and probably heaven, too. And I most sincerely hope there is hell also. I have a great desire to see several people in it!”

  “Hell for the wicked?” Emily said tartly, stung by Charlotte’s apparent composure. “How very puritan of you.”

  “No—hell for the indifferent,” Charlotte corrected. “God can do as He pleases with the wicked. It is the ones who don’t damn well care that I want to see burn!”

  Emily pulled the rug a little tighter.

  “I’ll help,” she offered.

  Callantha Swynford was not in the least surprised to see them; in fact, the usual etiquette of afternoon calling was not observed at all. There was no exchange of polite observations and trivia. Instead, they were conducted immediately into the withdrawing room set for tea and conversation.

  Without preamble Emily launched into a frank description of conditions in workhouses and sweatshops, the details of which she and Charlotte had learned from Somerset Carlisle. They were gratified to see Callantha’s distress as there opened up before her a whole world of misery that she had never conceived of before.

  Presently they were joined by other ladies, and the wretched facts were repeated, this time by Callantha herself while Emily and Charlotte merely added assurance that what Callantha said was indeed true. By the time they left, late in the afternoon, they were both satisfied that there were now a number of women of wealth and influence who were sincerely concerned in the matter, and that Callantha herself would not forget, or dismiss easily from her thoughts, the abuse of children such as Albie, however much it distressed her.

  While Charlotte was occupied with her crusade against child prostitution in general, trying to inform and horrify those who could change the climate of social opinion, Pitt was still concerned with the murder of Albie.

  Athelstan kept him occupied with a case of embezzlement that involved thousands of pounds abstracted from a large company over a period of years. The incessant checking of double entries, receipts, and payments, and the questioning of innumerable frightened and devious clerks, was a kind of punishment to him for having caused so much embarrassment over the Jerome affair.

  The body of Albie had not been moved from Deptford, so Pitt had nothing to act on. Deptford still had charge of the case—if there was to be a case. In order to learn even that much, he would have to go to Deptford on his own time, after his duties on the embezzlement were over for the day, and his inquiries would have to be sufficiently discreet that Athelstan would not learn of them.

  It was a black evening after one of those flat, lightless days when fires do not draw because the air is too heavy, and every moment one expects the sky to fling a
barrage from clouds so leaden they hang low across the city roofs and drown the horizon. Gas lamps flickered uneasily without dispelling the intensity of the darkness, and the drift of air from the river smelled of the incoming tide. There was a rime of ice on the stones of the street; the cab Pitt rode in moved briskly along while the cabbie kept up a steady hacking cough.

  He stopped the cab at the Deptford police station, and Pitt had not the heart to ask him to wait, even though he knew he might not be long. No man or beast should be required to stand idle in that bitter street. After the heat of movement it could kill the horse; the cabbie, whose livelihood depended on the animal, would have to walk it around and around at no profit merely to keep the sweat from freezing and chilling the animal to death.

  “Night, sir.” The cabbie touched his hat and moved off into the gloom, disappearing before he had passed the third gas lamp.

  “Good night.” Pitt turned and walked into the shelter of the station and the frail warmth of the potbellied stove. It was a different constable on duty this time, but the usual steaming mug of tea was by his elbow. Perhaps it was the only way to keep warm in the enforced stillness of desk duty. Pitt introduced himself and mentioned his earlier visit to identify Albie’s body.

  “Well, Mr. Pitt, sir,” the constable said cheerfully. “Wot can we do for yer tonight? No more corpses as’d interest you, I reckon.”

  “I don’t want any, thank you,” Pitt replied. “I didn’t even get that one. Just wondered how you were doing with it. I might be able to help a little, since I knew him.”

  “Then you’d better talk to Sergeant Wittle, sir. ’E’s ’andlin’ the case, such as it is. Although, to be honest, I don’t reckon we’ve much chance of ever knowing who done it. You know yerself, Mr. Pitt, poor little beggars like that get done in every day, fer one reason or another.”

  “Get a lot of them, do you?” Pitt asked conversationally. He leaned a little on the desk, as though he were in no hurry to pursue a more senior officer.

  The constable warmed to the attention. Most people preferred to ask the opinion of a sergeant at least, and it was very pleasant to be consulted by an inspector.