Pentecost Alley

by Anne Perry

White-faced, Ewart went to the door and disappeared along the passage. He came back a moment later. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” he said, uncertain whether to sit or to stand, watching Pitt with apprehension.

  “I’ve just been speaking with the Reverend Jago Jones,” Pitt said slowly.

  “Oh?” Ewart did not know whether to be interested or not.

  “About the murder of Mary Smith,” Pitt went on. “In Globe Road, six years ago.”

  Ewart went sheet-white. He struggled for breath and gagged. Very slowly he collapsed back into the chair behind him, feeling for it with fumbling hands.

  “Why did you destroy the witnesses’ records?” Pitt asked. “I know the answer, but I’ll give you the chance to say it yourself, if you have that shred of honor left.”

  Ewart sat in silence. The torment was plain in his face, as naked as hate and grief and failure and the inner terror that one can never escape, the knowledge of self.

  “He offered me money,” he said so quietly Pitt could barely hear him. “Money to make a better life for my family. My sons for his. He said it was an accident. Finlay never meant to kill the girl. When he realized what he had done he tried to revive her. That was why they threw the water over her. But of course he’d gone too far. The game had got out of hand and he had choked the life out of her. He must have gagged her before she screamed. The marks of it were on her cheeks.”

  He leaned down and hid his face in his hands. “But he didn’t kill the others.” His voice was thick, half muffled. “You had the right man. Costigan was guilty, I’d swear to that! And Ella Baker too! God knows how Finlay’s things got there. That was one of the worst days of my life, when I saw them. It was like hell opening up in front of me.”

  Pitt said nothing. He could imagine it: the sudden, sick horror, the fear, the desperate writhing of the mind to find escape, the relentless terror as fact piled upon fact, and the sheer incomprehensible mystery of it.

  There was no sound from the passageway outside, nothing but a blur of sounds from the street.

  It was a full fifteen minutes of agonized silence in the room before the door opened and Lennox came in. He looked tired. He saw Ewart first, slumped over the desk, then Pitt in the chair opposite it.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Is Inspector Ewart ill?”

  “Probably,” Pitt answered. “Come in and close the door.”

  Lennox obeyed, still puzzled. Pitt remained where he was.

  “You were the first at the scene of Ada McKinley’s death after Constable Binns, weren’t you, Doctor?”

  “Yes. Why?” He did not look troubled, only surprised.

  “And of Nora Gough’s death also?”

  “Yes. You know I was.”

  “You examined the bodies before anyone else?”

  Lennox stared at him curiously, the dawn of understanding in his weary hazel eyes.

  “You know that too.”

  “Then you went through to comfort the witnesses before we spoke to them?” Pitt continued.

  “Yes. They were … upset. Naturally.”

  “Were you first on the scene of Mary Smith’s death also?”

  Lennox paled, but he kept his composure.

  “Mary Smith?” He frowned.

  “In Globe Street, six years ago,” Pitt said softly. “A young girl, only just taken to the streets, about fifteen or sixteen years old. She was killed in exactly the same way. But was she, Dr. Lennox?”

  For seconds no one moved. There was not even the sound of breathing. Then Ewart looked up at Lennox, his face haggard.

  But the pain in his eyes was a shadow, a ghost compared with that in Lennox’s face, in his whole thin body.

  “My sister,” he whispered. “Mary Lennox. She was sixteen when that animal did that to her!” He looked down at Ewart. “And you had the evidence and you let him go! What did he pay you that was worth that, Ewart? What in God’s name was worth that?”

  Ewart said nothing. He was too numb with despair and self-loathing to feel another blow.

  “So when you found a prostitute murdered, without the use of a knife,” Pitt went on, speaking to Lennox, “and you were the first on the scene, you put Finlay FitzJames’s belongings under the body and broke her fingers and toes to look like Mary’s, and tied the garter, cross-buttoned the boots, threw water over her, and waited for us to do the rest, hoping Finlay FitzJames would be blamed,” Pitt said carefully.

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you get the badge and the cuff link?”

  “I stole them from Ewart. He kept them, so they wouldn’t be in the evidence,” Lennox replied.

  “And when Finlay wasn’t blamed, and we hanged Costigan, you were first on the scene of Nora Gough’s death, so you did it again,” Pitt went on. “Did you coach the witnesses too? Persuade them they had seen a man like Finlay at the house?”

  “Yes.”

  Ewart rose to his feet, swayed and almost overbalanced.

  Neither of the others moved to help him.

  “I must get out,” he said hoarsely. “I’m going to be sick.”

  Lennox stepped back to let him pass. Ewart fumbled for the doorknob, threw the door open and went out, leaving it swinging behind him.

  Lennox faced Pitt.

  “He deserved to be hanged for what he did to Mary,” he said in a low, husky voice. “Are you going to charge Finlay now, or is he still going to get away with it?” The words were torn out of him.

  “I haven’t enough evidence to charge him,” Pitt said bitterly. “Unless Ewart confesses, which he may, or he may recover his composure and realize I have very little proof.”

  “But …” Lennox was desperate.

  “I can see if Margery Williams will identify Finlay,” Pitt went on. “She might. So might the other two witnesses who saw him. Or there is the possibility Helliwell and Thirlstone may be sufficiently frightened they will speak, especially if they are identified as well.”

  “You must!” Lennox leaned forward and grasped Pitt, his grip so hard it pinched the flesh. “You must …”

  He got no further because the door opened and a very worried Constable Binns put his head in.

  “Sir … Mr. Ewart just went out of ’ere lookin’ like ’e ’ad the devil be’ind ’im, sir, an’ ’e took them sticks o’ dynamite as we took from the—”

  Pitt shot to his feet, almost knocking Lennox over, and charged past Binns and out into the corridor. Then he spun around, face-to-face with the two men who were hard on his heels.

  “Binns, go and get a hansom. Commandeer one if you have to. Go—now!”

  Binns obeyed, ran down the stairs, and they heard his feet clattering on the boards below.

  Pitt looked at Lennox. “Give your resignation to the sergeant immediately. Be gone by the time I get back. Just don’t tell me where, and I shan’t look for you.”

  Lennox stood motionless, gratitude flooding his face, softening the harsh lines, filling his eyes with tears.

  Pitt had no time to say anything further. He plunged down the stairs after Binns and ran through the entrance hall and down the steps into the street. Binns was waiting with a very angry cabdriver standing by the open door of a hansom.

  “Number thirty-eight Devonshire Street!” Pitt shouted, and swung himself up and into it with Binns a step behind. “Fast as you can, man! Lives depend on it!”

  The cabby caught the tension and the urgency. He cracked the whip and the cab lurched forward. In a few moments it was charging through traffic at considerable risk to everything in its way.

  Neither Pitt nor Binns spoke. They were thrown from side to side and clinging onto the handles, in peril of being injured, and there was too much noise to hear anything clearly above the hooves, the wheels, the creak of straining woodzx and the yells of outraged coachmen.

  When they slowed to a halt in Devonshire Street, Pitt threw the door open and was out onto the pavement, Binns a yard behind him. He raced up the steps and yanked the doorbell, almost pulli
ng it out of its socket, then beat his fists on the door.

  Binns was shouting something, but he took no notice.

  The door swung open and the agreeable butler looked alarmed.

  “Is Ewart here?” Pitt demanded. “Policeman … Inspector Ewart! Dark, thinning hair, carrying something, probably a bag!”

  “Yes, sir. He arrived a few minutes ago. Called to see Mr. FitzJames.”

  “Where?”

  The butler paled. “In the library, sir.”

  “Is there a fire there?” Pitt’s voice cracked with the unbearable tension.

  “Yes sir. What is wrong, sir? If I can—”

  He never completed his sentence. The blast from the explosion tore out the fireplace and the outer wall of the library. It hurled the door off its hinges into the hallway and the force of heat and air knocked the men to the floor, bruised and wounded. Pitt was driven back and crashed into the hall table, Binns fell to his knees. There were books and loose papers everywhere and a cloud of gray ash.

  There were seconds of silence, except for the settling of stones and rubble, then the screaming started.

  Pitt climbed to his feet, unsteadily, dizzy and hurt, unaware of his bleeding hands or the scratches and smears of blood on his face. He stumbled towards the library and peered in. The wreckage of books littered everything except a space in the center where live coals were burning on the carpet. The body of Ewart lay crumpled, drenched with blood, and less than a yard away what was left of Augustus FitzJames sprawled across the pile of splinters which had been the table. One jagged end speared through his chest, but he would no longer care.

  Pitt turned back and saw the butler rise to his knee, his face gray with shock. Binns moved forward slightly to help him.

  Somewhere beyond the landing a maid was screaming, over and over again.

  Aloysia FitzJames stood at the head of the stairs.

  Finlay came from the withdrawing room. He looked incredulous, as if he did not believe what he saw. He faced Pitt with anger.

  “What in God’s name have you done?” he said abruptly. “Where … where’s my father?”

  “He’s dead,” Pitt answered quietly, the smoke catching in his throat. “So—is—Inspector Ewart. But his records remain. Finlay FitzJames, I arrest you for the torture and murder of Mary Lennox, on the twelfth of September, 1884.”

  Finlay looked once, in desperation, towards the wreckage of the library.

  “He cannot help you this time,” Pitt said. “Nor can Ewart. You can put off the time, Mr. FitzJames, but it always comes, one day or another. Have the courage now to face it. It is still not too late at least for dignity.”

  Finlay stared at him, then his eyes swung wildly, seeking an escape, help, anything but Pitt standing in front of him.

  “I can’t! I won’t! I …” His voice rose higher, more shrill. “You can’t prove—”

  “Ewart confessed before he died.”

  Aloysia came slowly down the staircase and stood by her son, but without touching him. She looked at Pitt.

  “He will come with dignity, Superintendent,” she said very quietly. “I will come with him. In the last few moments I have lost everything that I have lived my whole life believing I possessed. But I will not go out of here weeping, and whatever I feel, no one else will know it.”

  Finlay stared at her, incomprehension turning into rage.

  “You can’t let him …” he began. “Do something!” His voice rose in terror and accusation. “Do something! You can’t let him take me! They’ll hang me!” He started to struggle, but Binns had hold of him so hard by the arm he would have wrenched it out of the socket had he continued to struggle. “Mother! You …”

  Aloysia was not listening. She walked slowly down the steps and Binns followed with Finlay, his features tearstained and twisted with rage.

  Behind them then, grimed and smeared, but still with an agreeable face, the butler staggered to the door and pulled it closed.

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  “A master of crime fiction.”

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  Published by Ballantine Books.

  Available wherever books are sold.

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  Published by Ballantine Books.

  Available wherever books are sold.