Pentecost Alley tp-16 Read online

  Pentecost Alley

  ( Thomas Pitt - 16 )

  Anne Perry

  Anne Perry

  Pentecost Alley

  1

  “Sorry Sir,” Inspector Ewart said quietly as Pitt stared down at the woman’s body sprawled across the big bed, at her face swollen in the asphyxia of death. “But this one you ought to see.”

  “So I assume,” Pitt said wryly. Since his promotion to command of the Bow Street Station, he no longer dealt with ordinary episodes of violence, theft and fraud. The assistant commissioner had directed that he reserve his attention for those crimes which had, or threatened to have, political implications; those which involved persons of social prominence and might provoke embarrassment in high places if not dealt with both rapidly and tactfully.

  So his being sent for at two in the morning to come to this Whitechapel slum over the murder of a prostitute required some explanation. The pale-faced constable who had ridden with him in the hansom had said nothing as they clattered through the August night, the streets narrowing, becoming meaner, the smell of sour smoke, crowded middens and the sharp odor of the river stronger as they moved eastwards.

  They had stopped at Old Montague Street opposite the cul-de-sac of Pentecost Alley. The light from the gas lamp on the corner did not reach this far. Holding his bull’s-eye lantern high, the constable had led Pitt past refuse and sleeping beggars, up the steep, creaking steps of the tenement building, in through the deep-stained wooden door, and along the passage to where Ewart was waiting. The sound of weeping came from somewhere farther back, sounding frightened and carrying a rising note of hysteria.

  Pitt knew Ewart by reputation, and he nurtured no doubts that there was some very real reason why he had been sent for, and so urgently. If nothing else, Ewart would be highly unwilling to yield command of his case to another officer, especially one who had risen from the ranks as Pitt had and who only a short while ago had been his equal. Like many regulars in the police force, Ewart believed that the only man with a right to such a position was one born to it, as had been Pitt’s predecessor, Micah Drummond, a man of independent wealth and military experience.

  Pitt looked at the woman. She was young. It was difficult to tell a prostitute’s age. The life was harsh, often short. But the skin on her bosom where her dress was torn open was still unmarred by drink or disease, and the flesh was firm on her thighs where her red-and-black skirt had been lifted. Her left wrist was tied to the bedpost with a stocking, and there was a garter around her arm just above the elbow, a blue satin rose stitched to it. The other stocking was tied in a noose around her neck, tight, biting into it, almost cutting. The top half of her body, and all the bed around it, was drenched with water.

  The sound of weeping was still audible, but it was quieter now, and there were other voices as well, and footsteps in the passage, light and quick.

  Pitt looked around the room. It was surprisingly well furnished. The walls had been papered a long time ago, and though they were marked by the incessant damp and mold, and faded where the light had struck them, there was still a recognizable pattern. The fireplace was small, the dead ashes in it gray-white. The fire had been a gesture, something flickering and alive rather than a source of heat. The one chair was a cheerful red with a hand-stitched cushion on it, and there was a rag mat on the floor. An embroidered sampler hung over the shallow mantel, and the wooden chest for clothes and linens was polished. Even its brass handles gleamed.

  The washstand held a single ewer and basin.

  On the floor beside the bed were the girl’s high black boots, not side by side, but half over each other. The round, shiny buttons of the left one had been fastened through the buttonholes of the right one. A bone-handled buttonhook lay beside them. It was a ridiculous, distorted gesture, and one that could only have been done deliberately.

  Pitt drew in his breath and let it out in a sigh. It was ugly, and sad, but there was nothing in it to cause Ewart to have sent for him. Prostitution was a dangerous way to make a living. Murders were not unique, and certainly not reason for scandal in high places, or even in low ones.

  He turned to look at Ewart, whose dark face was unreadable in the light from the bull’s-eye, his eyes black.

  “Evidence.” Ewart answered the question he had not asked. “Too much of it to ignore.”

  “Saying what?” Pitt felt a chill beginning to eat inside him in spite of the mild night.

  “Gentleman,” Ewart replied. “Of a very well connected family.”

  Pitt was not surprised. He had feared it would be something of the sort, pointless and destructive, something with which there was no graceful way to deal. He did not ask Ewart why he thought so. It would be better to see the evidence and make his own deductions.

  There was a noise along the passageway, a creaking of footsteps, and another man appeared in the doorway. He was twenty years younger than Ewart, no more than thirty at the most. His skin was fresh, his hazel eyes wide, his face thin, aquiline. His features had been formed for humor and tenderness, but the marks of pain had scored them deeply already, and in the flickering light he was haggard. He brushed his hair back off his brow unconsciously and stared first at Ewart, then at Pitt. He carried a brown leather bag in his hand.

  “Lennox. Surgeon,” Ewart explained.

  “Good morning, sir,” Lennox said a little huskily, then cleared his throat and apologized.

  There was no need. Pitt had little regard for a doctor who could look at violent death and feel no shock, no sense of outrage or loss.

  He stood back a little so Lennox could see the body better.

  “I’ve already examined her,” Lennox declined. “I was called at the same time as Inspector Ewart. I’ve just been with some of the other women in the building. They were a bit … upset.”

  “What can you tell me?” Pitt asked.

  Lennox cleared his throat again. He looked straight at Pitt, his eyes averted from the woman on the bed, even the spread of her hair and the bright rose on her arm. “She’s been dead several hours,” he answered. “I should say since about ten o’clock last night, not later than midnight. It’s cool in here now, but it must have been warmer then. The ashes in the fire still have a little heat in them, and it’s not really a cold night.”

  “You’re very precise about ten o’clock.” Pitt was curious.

  Lennox flushed. “Sorry. There was a witness who saw her come in.”

  Pitt smiled, or perhaps it was more of a grimace. “And midnight?” he asked. “Another witness?”

  “That was when she was found, sir.” Lennox shook his head minutely.

  “What else can you tell me about her?” Pitt continued.

  “I would guess she was in her mid-twenties, and in good health … so far.”

  “Children?” Pitt asked.

  “Yes … and …”

  “What?”

  Lennox’s face was tight with pain. “Her fingers and toes have been broken, sir. Three fingers on her left hand, two on her right. And three toes dislocated. Left foot.”

  Pitt felt a shiver of ice inside him as if suddenly the temperature of the room had plummeted.

  “Recently?” he asked, although he knew the answer. Had they been old wounds Lennox would not have mentioned them. He would probably not even have noticed them.

  “Yes sir, almost certainly within the last few hours. Just before death, in fact. There’s hardly any swelling.”

  “I see. Thank you.” Pitt turned back to the bed. He did not want to look at her face, but he knew he must. He must see what and who she had been, and what had been done to her here in this shabby, lonely room. It was his job to learn why and by whom.

  She was handsomely built, of roughly a
verage height. As far as he could tell her features had been regular, pleasing in their way. The bones under the puffy flesh were difficult to see, but the brow was good, the nose neat, the hairline gently curved. Her teeth were even and only just beginning to discolor. In another walk of life she might have been a married woman looking forward to a comfortable maturity, perhaps with three or four children and thinking of more.

  “What is this evidence?” he asked, still looking down at her. Nothing he had seen so far suggested anything more than some man’s taste for pain and fear having gone too far.

  “A badge from a gentleman’s private club,” Ewart answered, then stopped and drew in his breath. “With a name on it. And a pair of cuff links.”

  Pitt swiveled around to look at him.

  Lennox was watching, his eyes wide, almost mesmerized.

  “What name?” Pitt’s voice fell into the silence.

  Ewart put up his finger and eased his collar, his face white.

  “Finlay FitzJames.”

  Outside the constable’s footsteps creaked on the floorboards and river fog dripped beyond the dark windows. The weeping in the other room had started again, but fainter, muffled.

  Pitt said nothing. He had heard the name. Augustus FitzJames was a man of considerable influence, a merchant banker with political ambitions, and a close friend of several noble families who had held high office. Finlay was his only son, a young diplomat rumored to be in line for an embassy in Europe in the not-too-distant future.

  “And witnesses,” Ewart added, his eyes on Pitt’s face.

  Pitt stared back at him. “To what?” he asked guardedly.

  Ewart was obviously profoundly unhappy. His body was tense, his shoulders tight, his mouth dragged down at the corners.

  “He was seen,” he answered. “Not by people who know him, of course, and the description could fit more than him. Ordinary enough. But it was obviously someone of position….” He seemed about to add something more, perhaps about gentlemen who frequented such places, then decided it did not matter. They both knew there were men bored with their wives, frightened of censure or commitment if they used women nearer their own class, or simply excited by the forbidden, the frisson of danger. Or there were a hundred other reasons why they might choose to purchase their pleasures in alleys and rooms like this.

  “And the cuff links as well,” Lennox added from the doorway, his voice still husky. “Gold.” He laughed abruptly. “Hallmarked.”

  Pitt looked slowly around the room, trying to imagine what had happened here only a few hours ago. The bed was rumpled, as though it had been used, but nothing was torn that he could see. There was a slight smear of blood close to the center, but it could have come from anyone, tonight or a week ago. He would ask Lennox, after he had examined it, if he thought it meant anything.

  His gaze moved around the walls and the sparse furniture. Nothing else was disturbed. But unless a fight was very violent, and between people of something like equal weight or strength, it would hardly mark this ancient wallpaper or overturn the chair or the wooden washstand with its bowl and cracked and mended blue jug.

  As if reading his thoughts, Ewart broke in.

  “There’s nothing interesting in the wardrobe, just half a dozen dresses, petticoats and an outdoor cape. There are underclothes, two towels, and a clean pair of sheets and pillow covers in the chest. Chamber pot under the bed, and one black stocking. Daresay she dropped it some time ago and couldn’t see it in the dark. We wouldn’t have found it without two of us, and the bull’s-eye.”

  “Where did you find the cuff links and the badge?” Pitt asked. “Not under the bed?”

  Ewart pushed out his lip. “One cuff link, actually-at least the two halves for one sleeve. Behind the cushion in the chair.” He pointed towards it. “Jammed down between the seat and the upright. Suppose he took off his shirt and put it over the back, and maybe it got caught. Perhaps he sat on it or something. Left in a panic, and never thought of it until too late. Of course, there’s nothing to say it was left here last night….” He looked at Pitt, waiting for his answer.

  “Possibly,” Pitt agreed. They both knew how unpleasant it would be if they had to pursue a man of FitzJames’s rank. It would be so much easier if it could be some ordinary man, someone local, with no defenders, no power behind him.

  Yet the evidence was there and had to be followed, and it was Pitt who would have to do it. Ewart’s trying to evade the issue was understandable, but it was no real help.

  “It proves someone was here with expensive tastes,” Pitt said wearily. “And the badge proves either that FitzJames was here himself, at some time, or someone who knew him was. Where did you find it? Was that down the chair as well?”

  Suddenly Ewart’s urgency evaporated, leaving him sad and anxious, his face heavily lined, weariness in every crease. His dark eyes were almost black in the candlelight, puckered at the corners.

  “On the bed,” he replied, his voice little more than a whisper. “Under the body.” There was no need to add that it could not have been there before. It was too wretchedly obvious.

  Pitt put out his hand.

  Ewart fished in his coat pocket and brought out a small, round piece of gold, enamel faced, a pin across the back of it. He dropped it into Pitt’s open palm.

  Pitt turned it over, looking at it carefully. It was about half an inch across, the sort of thing a man might wear on his lapel. The enamel was gray, discreet, easily lost against the fabric of a suit. On it were written in gold two words, “Hellfire Club,” and the date “1881”-nine years ago. He turned it over towards the light. Even so it took him several moments before he could discern the very faint, hair-fine writing on the back, behind the bar of the pin-“Finlay FitzJames.” But once he read it there could be no argument.

  He looked up at Ewart, then at Lennox, still standing just inside the doorway, his face white, drained of life and color, his eyes full of pain.

  “Did you find it?” Pitt asked Ewart.

  “Yes. The constable didn’t move her. He says he didn’t touch anything. He could see she was dead and he raised the alarm.”

  “Why did he come in? What brought him here in the first place?” It might not matter, but he should ask. “Did he know her?”

  “By sight,” Ewart replied with a shrug. “Her name’s Ada McKinley. Worked this area the last half dozen years or so. Constable Binns says he saw a man come running out in a panic and he stopped him. There could have been something wrong. Made him go back in, thinking he may have got mixed up in a scuffle, tried to cheat one of the girls, or something. Seems that he was a customer of one of the other girls, Rose Burke, and on his way out from her saw Ada’s door open, and being a nosy sort of bastard, took a look in. Hoping to catch someone in the act, I suppose. Anyway, saw more than he bargained for.” Ewart’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “Came running out as if the devil were after him. But he couldn’t have done it. He was with Rose till seconds before Constable Binns saw him. Rose’ll swear for that. She’s one of the witnesses who saw the man go in, whoever he was. We’ve got her waiting for you.”

  “And the man?”

  “Him too.” Ewart let out his breath in a little grunt. “Cross as two sticks, but still here. Swearing fit to turn the air blue. They’re all cross, for that matter. Bad for business.” He pulled a sour face.

  “Isn’t it a bit late for business?” Pitt asked ruefully. “When did all this happen?”

  “When Binns saw him come out.” Ewart’s eyes widened. “About midnight. I got here just after one. I took a look around, then as soon as I saw that badge I knew we were going to have to get you in, so I sent Constable Wardle for you. Sorry, but the way I see it, it’s going to get nasty whatever we do. No way out of it.” He took a deep breath. “Of course FitzJames may be able to give us a proper explanation, and then we can look elsewhere.”

  “Maybe,” Pitt said doubtfully. “What about money? Do you know if anything was taken?”

&nbs
p; Ewart’s face brightened. A light flickered for a moment in his eyes and he hesitated before he replied, considering as he spoke. “Her pimp? That would be a very much easier answer. I mean, easier to understand … to believe.” He stopped.

  “So was there money?” Pitt pressed.

  “There was a small leather purse in the linen box,” Ewart said reluctantly. “About three guineas in it.”

  Pitt sighed, not that he had really hoped. “If she’d been keeping it from him, it wouldn’t be there now. First place he’d look,” he said sadly.

  There was a shrill whistle from a kettle towards the back of the house, and someone swore.

  “Perhaps they quarreled and he killed her before he searched.” Ewart’s voice was keen again. “He panicked and ran. It’d make more sense. Teach the other girls a lesson they’d not forget. More reason to kill her than a customer like FitzJames.”

  “What about the boots?” Lennox asked from the doorway, his voice thick. “I could see him torturing her, but why would someone killing her for money fasten her boots together like that? Or put the garter ’round her arm?”

  “God knows,” Ewart said impatiently. “Perhaps that was the client before he came? He knew she was salting away too much of what she earned, and he came as soon as he saw the customer leave. She had no time to undo the boots or take off the garter.”

  “I can understand her not having time to undo the boots,” Lennox said with harsh sarcasm. “But did the customer go, leaving her tied to the bed by one hand, and she stayed like that while she argued with her pimp?”

  “I don’t know!” Ewart said. “Maybe the pimp tied her up while he searched for money. He would do, to torture her.”

  “And didn’t find it?” Lennox’s eyebrows rose.

  “Maybe there was more, perhaps under the mattress or something? Anyway, why would a man like FitzJames kill a woman like that?” Ewart eyed the body in the bed with a strange mixture of pity and distaste.

  “Probably for the same reason he used her in the first place,” Lennox said bitterly. He turned to Pitt. “I haven’t moved her. Do you need to see her any more, or can I at least cover her?”