by Anne Perry
Before he replied, she smiled at him, radiantly, absolutely, the tears spilling over and running down her cheeks.
He reached across and took her hand, turning it over and kissing the palm very gently.
“I don’t know,” he confessed, then held her fingers very tightly.
Cornwallis looked harassed. He invited Pitt to sit down but was too tense to do so himself. He paced back and forth across the carpet in his office, stopping every now and then, forcing himself to stand still. He did not mention that the campaign to pardon Costigan was gaining momentum, but they both knew it. Nor did he say that several questions had been asked in the House of Commons, and not only was Pitt held to blame for an exceedingly ugly stain on British justice, but he himself was also.
“Have you learned anything?” he asked quietly. There was no anger in his voice, and certainly no accusation. He was a man in whom crisis brought out the strength. His loyalties were plainest when tested to the bitter end.
“Nothing useful,” Pitt said honestly. “I have spoken again to Thirlstone and Helliwell, but no one will admit to any serious quarrel, although a pattern of dislike is becoming plain. They didn’t part friends, but I have no idea yet why. In fact,” he added ruefully, “I’m not honestly sure if it even matters.”
“What about Jones?” Cornwallis asked. “You didn’t mention him.” His face tightened and it obviously pained him to say what he was about to. “I know he is a man of the cloth, and very obviously doing fine work in Whitechapel, but that doesn’t mean he is not capable of personal hatred of a man like FitzJames. You don’t know what old wrongs may be in the past, Pitt.” He jammed his hands into his pockets, pulling them out of shape. “Nor is any man invulnerable to hungers and loneliness that can overwhelm one at times. He has chosen a path of service and self-denial, but he is a young man. It can happen that we ask too much of ourselves and find our weaknesses sharper than we can bear.”
Pitt heard the emotion in his voice, and the urgency. Was he speaking entirely of Jago Jones? He had spent long, lonely years at sea himself, with all the isolation of command. The responsibility for the lives of every man on his ship, with no one else to turn to for six months at a time.
“I know,” Pitt answered quietly. “Please God it is not he, and I believe it isn’t, but I know it is not impossible. I’ll see him. Then I’m going back to the most straightforward way, start again at the beginning with the evidence in the death of Nora Gough. I want to know more about her.”
“Does anything connect the two victims?” Cornwallis asked, starting to pace again, then stopping in a square of sunlight. “Apart from the same occupation and neighborhood?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to see Ewart again. He must have found something by now.”
“He’s a good man,” Cornwallis said seriously. “I’ve been looking into his record. Everyone speaks well of him, not just because of the success he’s had professionally but personally as well. His reputation is excellent. Quiet, conscientious, good family man. Works extremely hard and saves his money.” Cornwallis’s voice lifted with surprise. “He has three sons and a daughter. Daughter married well, to a farmer somewhere in Kent. Doing very well. His oldest son has a place in University, and the other two look set the same way. That’s a remarkable achievement.” He did not add “for an ordinary policeman.” Tact held his tongue, but he meant it. “We couldn’t have a better man with us.”
“Yes,” Pitt agreed. “He’s a good man. You know, he never thought FitzJames was involved with Ada McKinley. He always believed it was someone local. Perhaps he was right. It might have been exactly the domestic tragedy he had said. I should have listened to him more closely, paid more attention to his judgment. He never thought the connection with FitzJames mattered, and perhaps it doesn’t. I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“Then the core to this doesn’t lie with FitzJames at all?” Cornwallis said with a frown, more as if he were testing an idea than voicing a conviction. He was standing over by the telescope and the sextant on the wall, and the sunlight caught his face and gleamed on the polished brass surfaces. “What about this handkerchief? It could be his, but is it? Does it have to be?”
“No. Anyone could have had it made.”
“And the button?”
“Expensive, but quite easily obtained if one went to any good tailor.”
“So it doesn’t really mean anything?”
“It doesn’t mean FitzJames was there,” Pitt corrected. “It means someone would like us to think he was. And that someone wasn’t Costigan.”
Cornwallis shook his head a little and his eyes were bright with sadness.
“It comes back to Jones again,” he said quietly. “He seems to be the common factor, Pitt.”
“I know.”
“We must face it. Find out exactly where he was when both women were killed. Stay with the evidence. Forget the reason why. He was a member of this wretched club. He lives and works in Whitechapel. He knew Ada McKinley. Perhaps he knew Nora Gough as well.” He shook his head fractionally. “I know you think it’s out of character with what you have seen of the man, but what do you really know?”
“Not enough,” Pitt confessed, the words dragged out of him. “But then I don’t think I ever do.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll see him tomorrow. After I’ve seen Ewart.” He had not the heart to do it that evening. He knew where Jago would be: handing out soup in Coke Street. He did not want to go and question him while he was doing that. He had never wanted to question a man less, or been less willing to find some other face behind the mask. Tomorrow would be too soon. Tonight was unbearable.
He found Charlotte solicitous but uncommunicative. She had apparently been out all afternoon, and had at last succumbed to taking the children to her mother’s to protect them from the unpleasantness of hearing people’s comments in the streets or the gibes and questions of their schoolfellows.
They did not mention the case. He wanted to forget it for an evening. He had no more thoughts, no more clues to explore, nothing more to wrestle with or try to understand. He was happy to sit quietly, think of something calm and sensible, like the garden, or whether Daniel’s bedroom should be repainted in a more adult fashion now he was growing up. He was no longer really the age for a nursery. And perhaps it was time to give Gracie another raise.
In the morning he went to Whitechapel early and found Ewart still at his desk. He looked tired and unhappy. Pitt did not need to ask if he had discovered anything of value, the denial of it was in every line of his face and body. He had cut himself shaving, and his features looked pinched.
“I haven’t found anything,” he said before Pitt asked. “The evidence means nothing.” He slid back in his chair, his body crumpled, too tired to straighten. He looked strangely beaten, considering it was Pitt who would take the blame. He might be glad now that the case had been removed from his responsibility.
“I know the button and the handkerchief don’t mean anything,” Pitt said, then sat down in the only other available chair. “What else do we have?”
“Nothing.” Ewart spread his hands. “We’ve spoken to all the women again. They say they saw only one man: youngish, with fair, wavy hair. Although they are beginning to be less certain even about that. Some are not sure it was fair. As if that mattered a damn!” His mouth turned down at the corners. “Light plays tricks anyway. We are still looking for him. I’ve got several men on it, but it could be anyone. Could have been some toff from up west, and we’d never find him.”
Pitt stared at him. It was extraordinary to hear a man of Ewart’s rank and experience speaking with such defeat. If that was the man who had tortured and murdered two women, then they must find him, whatever it took. Did Ewart really still fear that it was Finlay FitzJames, with all the ugliness that would mean, the blame, the accusations of dereliction of duty, of bigotry, even of corruption? He could understand his reluctance, even his shrinking from it-but he could not condone it.
He leaned
forward with a jerk. “Well, if he is the man who killed Nora Gough, and Ada McKinley, we are bloody well going to find him,” he said more loudly than he had intended. “Someone must have seen him! He came. He went. Have you repeated the descriptions of him from the women in Myrdle Street to the other women in Pentecost Alley?”
“Yes, I have.” Ewart was too miserable to respond with an answering anger. “They just say it sounds like Costigan. Which it does.”
“Well, has Costigan any brothers, cousins, any relatives at all?” Pitt demanded.
Ewart smiled bitterly. “I thought of that. No, he doesn’t. Rose Burke and Nan Sullivan are still convinced Costigan did it.”
“And who do they think killed Nora Gough?” Pitt said sarcastically.
“Don’t know. Some lunatic who copied Costigan.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake. He could hardly hope Costigan would be blamed.”
“I don’t know,” Ewart said. “Because they saw Costigan and they want to think he’s been topped, finished, out of the way! Whatever they think, it doesn’t matter a toss. Somebody was there, a youngish man with thick hair that waves, and no one else came or went, so it has to be him. God knows who he is … I don’t!”
“No one else came or went?” Pitt repeated.
“That’s right.” Ewart sounded utterly wretched, as if it were his own personal tragedy he spoke of, not just one more of the regular occurrences he must have seen throughout his career. “Can’t get them to move on that.”
“Anything else about the man?” Pitt persisted. “Build? Way he walked? Ears? People’s ears vary very much. Did anyone notice anything at all? Make them think, remember back.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job!” Ewart said angrily. “I have asked them all those things. Nobody took any notice of him. He was just another client.”
“Doesn’t anybody keep a watch?” Pitt could not afford to let it go. He had nothing else. “Don’t these girls have any protection? Even someone to count the customers and make sure they get their fair share of the earnings?”
“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.
