by Anne Perry
“Do you know Ella Baker?” Pitt asked him. “Or know of her? Have you ever heard her name?”
Forrest looked blank. “No. And I know most of the women on the streets around here. But I’ll ask Dawkins. He’s been here for years and he knows ’em all.” He rose to his feet and went out, excusing himself, and returned a few minutes later with a large, elderly sergeant with gray hair. “Dawkins, have you ever heard of a woman, a tart around here, called Ella Baker?” He turned to Pitt. “What did she look like, sir?”
“Tall, ordinary sort of face,” Pitt answered. “But very beautiful fair hair, thick and wavy.”
Dawkins thought carefully for a moment, then shook his head. “No sir. Nearest to that description is Lottie Bridger, an’ she died o’ the pox sometime early this year.”
“You’re absolutely sure, Dawkins?” Forrest urged.
“Yes sir. Never ’eard the name Ella Baker, an’ never ’ad a girl on the streets ’round ’ere like you said.”
“Thank you, Dawkins,” Forrest dismissed him. “That’s all.”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.” Dawkins left, looking puzzled, closing the door behind him with a sharp click.
“What does that mean?” Forrest regarded Pitt with open confusion. “Are we saying as this woman didn’t do our killing then?”
“I don’t know what we’re saying,” Pitt confessed. “Have you got records of this case I can look at?”
“Course. I’ll have them sent for.” Forrest excused himself again, and it was a long, frustrating quarter of an hour before he returned with a slim folder of papers. “This is it, sir. Isn’t a lot.”
“Thank you.” Pitt took it, opened it and read. Forrest was right; there was very little indeed, but the details were the same as in the deaths of Ada McKinley and Nora Gough. It was all set out clinically, unemotionally, in fine copperplate handwriting. The name of the victim had an air of unreality: Mary Smith. Was that really her name? Or did they simply not know what to call her? She was new in the area, new to prostitution. There was nothing else said about her, no place of origin, no family mentioned, no possessions listed.
Pitt read carefully from the description of objects found on the premises. No mention was made of anything which could be called a clue. Certainly there was nothing belonging to Finlay FitzJames, or any other gentleman.
He read the statements of witnesses, but they conveyed little. They had seen men come and go, but what else were they to expect in the room of a prostitute. There were no personal details, only that they were fairly young.
It was all insubstantial. No wonder the officer in charge had failed to find the killer. And the officers were Constable Trask, and Constable Porter, with Ewart the inspector in charge. The surgeon who had examined the body both at the scene of the crime and later was Lennox.
Why had neither of them mentioned it to Pitt? He could think of no justifiable answer.
“I don’t remember this in the papers,” he said to Forrest, who had sat silent throughout, his face furrowed with anxiety.
“It wasn’t in,” he replied. “Only ’er death, that’s all. None o’ the details. You know how it is: keep it back, might help to trap someone. They knew something, let something slip….”
“Yes, I know,” Pitt agreed, but the answer troubled him deeply. It made inescapable the darkest fears in his mind.
When he faced Ewart with it in his office in Whitechapel two hours later, Ewart stared at him blankly, his face stunned, eyes as if mesmerized.
“Well?” Pitt demanded. “For God’s sake, man, why didn’t you tell me about the first case?”
“We didn’t solve it,” Ewart said desperately. “There wasn’t anything in it that could have helped.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Pitt turned on his heel and walked over to the window, then swung around and stared back at Ewart. “You can’t know whether it would have helped or not! Why would you conceal it?”
“Because it only obscures the present.” Ewart’s voice was rising too. “There’s nothing to say it was the same person. It was Mile End, and six years ago. People copy crimes, especially mad people, wicked, stupid people who read about something and it sits in their brains, and they—”
“What newspapers?” Pitt asked curtly. “Most of those details were never released to the papers, which you know as well as I do. I never heard of the case, neither had any of the other people here working on this one. Nobody in Whitechapel connected it with the first one—but you must have. And Lennox!”
“Well, they weren’t related, were they?” Ewart said with triumph of logic. “Are you saying now that you aren’t sure it was Ella Baker who killed the Gough woman?”
“No I’m not.” Pitt swung around and gazed out of the window again, at the gray buildings and the darkening October sky. “She confessed to it. And I found her hair in Nora’s bed, long fair hair. Nora must have pulled it out when they struggled.”
“So what’s the matter?” Ewart demanded with growing confidence. “I was right. The two cases are unconnected.”
“How do you know that Ella Baker didn’t kill the first girl, Mary Smith, or whatever her name really was?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she did. It hardly matters. We can’t prove the first one was her, and she’ll hang for this one anyhow.”
“And she says she’s never heard of Finlay FitzJames,” Pitt added.
Ewart hesitated. “She’s lying,” he said after a moment.
“And Augustus FitzJames says he’s never heard of her, either,” Pitt went on.
Ewart said nothing. He drew in his breath, and then let it out again silently.
“Was there anything at the scene of the first murder to incriminate Finlay?” Pitt asked curtly.
Ewart looked straight back at him. “No, of course not. If there had been I’d have mentioned it. That would have been relevant. We never had any idea who did it. There was nothing to go on … nothing at all.”
“I see.”
But Pitt did not see. He traveled from Whitechapel back to the center of the City, and went straight to Cornwallis’s office.
Cornwallis welcomed him, striding forwards with his hand out, his face alight.
“Well done, Pitt. This is brilliant! I admit, I had lost hope we should have such a satisfactory outcome—and a confession, to boot.” He dropped his hand, suddenly realizing something was wrong. The smile faded from his lips. His eyes clouded. “What is it, man? What now? Sit! Sit down.” He gestured to one of the large, leather-covered easy chairs, and sat in the other himself. He leaned forwards, his face grave, his attention total.
Pitt told him about the crime in Mile End.
Cornwallis was stunned. “And Ewart has only just told you? That’s beyond belief!”
Pitt could think of no easy way to recount what had actually happened without implicating Charlotte, and this was not a time for lies or evasions of any sort.
“Ewart didn’t tell me at all,” he said grimly. “My wife discovered it, and she told me.” He noticed the look on Cornwallis’s face, but perhaps Vespasia had made some reference or other, because he did not question what Pitt said.
“But you have spoken to Ewart?” he affirmed, his eyes dark with foreboding.
“Yes,” Pitt replied. “He said he didn’t mention it because he thought it irrelevant.”
“That is inconceivable.” Cornwallis was very earnest, his whole face filled with distress. “And Lennox was involved as well?”
“Yes. Although that is easier to understand. He may well have assumed Ewart had told me. It was Ewart’s job, not his.”
“But why?” Cornwallis said with exasperation. “I can’t begin to understand it! Why would Ewart hide that first murder?” His hands were clenched, fidgeting. “All right, he failed to solve it, but that’s no shame to him. From what you say, there were no clues to follow. The witnesses saw nothing of value. There was nothing further he could have done. Pitt …” He looked wretched, hardly able to bring himse
lf to say what he meant.
“I don’t know,” Pitt replied to the question that had not been asked. “I can’t believe Ewart was involved in a murder, let alone three. But I have to know. I’m going back to the original witnesses to the Mile End case. I know their names and the address where it happened. But it’s not my station, and it’s not my crime. I need your permission to question Inspector Forrest about Ewart’s duties that night.”
Cornwallis’s face was tight with pain. He had been in command too many years not to know the weaknesses and the fallibilities of man, that courage and temptation can work side by side, and loyalty and self-deceit.
“You have it,” he said quietly. “We must know. Go back to the first murder, Pitt. I can’t believe Ewart is guilty himself. He certainly wasn’t of the second or third, we know that. But if Ella Baker didn’t do it, then for God’s sake, who did?” He frowned. “Do you believe it is really credible that we have three extraordinary murders, all with the same features of torture and fetishism, the cross-buttoned boots, the water, committed by three different people?”
“It looks like it,” Pitt replied. “But no, I don’t believe it. It’s preposterous. There is something fundamental that we don’t yet know, and I have no idea what it is.” He stood up.
Cornwallis rose also and went to his desk, writing Pitt a brief note of permission. He gave it to Pitt wordlessly, gripping his hard hand, his own body stiff. He held Pitt’s eyes, wanting to speak, to communicate some of the emotion he felt, but there was nothing to say. He took a deep breath, hesitated, then let it out again.
Pitt nodded, then turned and left, going out into the sharp October air to hail a hansom and return once again to Mile End. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.
By quarter past five he had seen the duty rosters for the day of Mary Smith’s death. There was no way in which Ewart could have been involved in her murder, just as he could not have been involved in the murders of Ada McKinley and Nora Gough.
Next he left and went to the house in Globe Road where Mary Smith had died. He asked the grayly unshaven landlord for the first witness named in the statements.
“Is Mr. Oliver Stubbs here?”
“Never ’eard of ’im,” the landlord said abruptly. “Try somew’ere else.” He was about to close the door on Pitt when Pitt put his foot in it and glared at him with such ferocity he hesitated.
“ ’Ere, wos’ matter wiv you, then? Get yer foot outer me door or I’ll set the dog on yer!”
“Do that and I’ll close you down,” Pitt said without hesitation. “This is a murder enquiry, and if you want to avoid the rope as an accomplice, you’ll do all you can to help me. Now, if Oliver Stubbs isn’t here, where is he?”
“I dunno!” The man’s voice rose indignantly. “ ’E scarpered two years gorn. But ’e never done no murder as I knows of.”
“Mary Smith,” Pitt said tersely.
“ ’Oo?” The man’s eyes widened. “C’mon! D’yer know how many Mary Smiths there are ’rahnd ’ere? Every tart wot tries ’er hand is Mary Smith.”
“Not all of them end up tortured, strangled and tied to a bed,” Pitt grated between his teeth.
“Geez! That Mary Smith.” The man paled under his stubble beard. “Bit late, aren’t yer? That were six, seven years gorn.”
“Six. I need to see the original witnesses. Get in my way and I’ll find something to arrest you for.”
The man turned away and yelled into the dim passageway behind him. “ ’Ere! Marge! Come ’ere!”
There was no reply.
“Come ’ere, yer lazy sow!” He raised his voice even more.
There was another moment’s silence, then a fat woman with ginger hair emerged from one of the back rooms and came forward.
“Yeah? Wot yer want?” She looked at Pitt with minimum curiosity.
“Weren’t yer ’ere six years ago?” the man asked her.
“Yeah,” she answered. “So?”
“This rozzer wants ter talk to yer. An’ be nice to ’im, Marge, or ’e’ll do the lot of us.”
“Fer wot?” she said with a sneer. “I in’t done nuffink agin the law.”
“I don’t care,” the man replied, coughing hoarsely. “Jus’ tell ’im, yer stupid mare. Yer was ’ere. Tell ’im!”
“Are you Margery Williams?” Pitt asked her.
“Yeah.”
“You were one of the witnesses the police spoke to about the murder of Mary Smith six years ago?”
She looked uncomfortable, but her eyes did not waver. “Yeah. I told ’em everythin’ I know. Wot yer want ter know fer now? Yer sure as ’ell in’t gonna catch him.”
“You said ‘him.’” He looked at her closely. “Are you taking it for granted it was a man who killed her, or could it have been a woman?”
Contempt filled her face. “Wot kind o’ woman does that ter ’nother woman? Geez, where do you come from, mister? Course it were a man! Din’t yer look at wot I said? They wrote it all down on their little bits o’ paper. Always scribblin’, they was.”
The man stood beside her, looking from her to Pitt and back again.
“They can’t have kept it,” Pitt said, realizing with surprise how much must have been thrown away once it was regarded as of no use, and the case marked “unsolved” and forgotten. “Tell me what you can remember of the man you saw, and with as much detail as possible.”
“Wot in ’ell do it matter now?” She screwed up her face, eyeing him with suspicion and curiosity. “Yer never sayin’ yer got someone, ’ave yer? After all them years?” She hesitated another moment, deep in thought. “ ’Ere! You sayin’ as it were the same one wot done Mary Smith as done the other women in Whitechapel?”
For a moment it seemed such a glaringly obvious conclusion Pitt wondered at the woman’s stupidity. Then he remembered with a jolt that the details of this first death had not been published in the newspapers. If she had not seen the body herself, and the police, specifically Ewart, had not told her, then maybe she was unaware of the exact sameness of the method, even to the most bizarre detail.
“Yes,” he said simply. “It is possible.”
“I ’eard as it was a woman wot done ’em. In’t that true then?” She swung around to the unshaven man. “That Davey Watson’s a liar! ’E said as it were another tart wot done ’em. Wait till I catch ’im, the bleedin’ little sod!”
“It was a woman who killed Nora Gough,” Pitt said soothingly. “Now please describe this man for me as closely as you can remember, but don’t add anything or leave anything out. Please.”
“Right.” She shrugged heavy shoulders. “There were four of ’em. All come together. One were dark an’ kind o’ fancy, arty-lookin’, nothin’ special abaht ’is face as I can remember. Jus’ ordinary, ’cept ’e fancied ’isself or summink. Painter, mebbe!”
There was a clatter somewhere inside the building. A woman swore.
“The second man?” Pitt prompted.
“Pompous as a prater, ’e were, all airs like ’e thought ’e were summink.”
“What did he look like?” Urgency was mounting inside him.
“Nuffin’ much. Orn’ry as muck, w’en it comes ter it.” She stared at him, trying to work out why he cared so much his voice was cracking. “Wouldn’t know him agin if he walked in be’ind yer.”
“And the third?” he pressed.
“ ’Nother self-satisfied sod wot thinks ’e runs the world,” she answered. “ ’Andsome, though. ’Andsome face, lov’ly ’air, all thick an’ waves. Would o’ done a woman good, that ’air.”
“Fair or dark?” Pitt felt a curious sensation of anticipation as he said it, a clenching in his stomach. Ewart had known all this. He had heard this six years ago. What terror or stupidity had kept him silent?
“Fair,” she said without hesitation.
“A gentleman?”
“Yeah, if talk an’ clothes makes a gent, then ’e was a gent. I wouldn’t ’a’ give yer tuppence fer ’im. Nasty li
ttle swine. Summit mean abaht ’im, sort o’ … excited, like ’e were … I dunno.” She gave up.
“And the last one?” Pitt did not want to know, but he had to, there was no evading it. “Can you remember him?”
“Yeah. ’E really were diff’rent.” She shook her head a little, the ginger hair waggling from side to side. “On the thin side, but wi’ one o’ them faces as yer never forgets. Eyes like ’e were on fire. Inside ’is ’ead …”
“You mean a little mad? Or drunk? What?”
“No.” She waved a fat hand impatiently. “Like ’e knew sommat inside ’isself wot were so important ’e ’ad to tell everyone. Like ’e were a poet, or one o’ them musicians, or summink. ’E din’t belong wi’ them lot.”
“I see. And what happened? Are you saying they came together, or one by one, or how?” He asked even though he knew the answer.
“All come together,” she replied. “Then all went ter different rooms. All went orff tergether arter. Close, they was. White as paper. Thought they was sick drunk, till I knew wot they done … or wot one o’ them done. Reckon as they all knew abaht it, though.”
“I see. And do you know which one went in to Mary Smith?”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “They all started tergether wif ’er. Then the one wi’ the ’air stayed wif ’er. Then they all went back agin. I dunno which one o’ them killed ’er, but I’d lay me money it were the one wi’ the ’air. ’E ’ad a look in ’is eyes.”
“I see.” Pitt felt numb, a little sick. “Thank you, Mrs. Williams. Would you testify to that, if necessary?”
“Wot, in a court?”
“Yes.”
She thought about it for a moment. She did not consult the man, who stood by sullenly, unimportant.
“Yeah,” she said at last. “Yeah, if yer wants. Poor Mary. She din’ deserve that. None o’ my girls ever did, nor anybody else’s neither. I’ll see the bastard ’ang, if yer can get ’im, that is!” She gave a harsh, derisive laugh. “That all, mister?”
“Yes, for now. Thank you.”
Pitt walked away slowly. It was now nearly six in the evening, and growing dark with the heavy clouds moving in from the east, a sharper wind behind them, smelling of the river, salt and dead fish and human effort.
