Pentecost Alley tp-16 Read online

  “Of course they will,” Aloysia said meaninglessly. “It is unpleasant, but there is no need whatever to worry.”

  Augustus regarded her with a world of contempt in his eyes and the tired lines around his mouth deepened.

  “No one is worried, Aloysia. It is simply a matter of dealing with things so that nothing unpleasant does happen as a result of … incompetence, or other misfortune we cannot prevent.” He turned to Tallulah. “You, madam, will deport yourself in a manner which raises no eyebrows whatsoever and gives no malicious tongues the fuel with which to spread gossip. And you, sir”-he looked at Finlay-“will conduct yourself like a gentleman. You will confine your attentions to your duty and to such pleasures as are enjoyed by the sort of young lady you would wish to marry. You might escort your sister. There are soirees, exhibitions and other appropriate gatherings all over London.”

  Finlay looked desperate.

  “Otherwise,” Augustus continued, “this matter may not be as easily contained as you would wish.”

  “I had nothing to do with it!” Finlay protested, a rising note of desperation in his voice.

  “Possibly,” Augustus said dryly, continuing with his breakfast. The discussion was over. He did not need to say so in words; the finality in his voice was total. Argument with it would have been useless.

  Tallulah and Emily finished the remains of their meal in silence, then excused themselves. As soon as they were in the hallway and out of earshot, Tallulah turned to Emily.

  “I’m sorry,” she said with distress. “That must have been dreadful for you, because I’m sure you know what he was talking about. Of course they will clear it all up, but it could take ages. And what if they never find out who it was?” Her voice sharpened as panic mounted inside her. “They never found the other Whitechapel murderer! He killed five women, and that was two years ago, and still no one has the faintest idea who he was. It could be anyone!”

  “No it couldn’t,” Emily said steadily. She was speaking empty words, but she hoped Tallulah would not know it. “That other failure had very little to do with this.” She believed Pitt could find the truth, but probably all the truth, which even if Finlay were as innocent as he claimed, might include a few facts about him which were embarrassing or painful, or both. The trouble with an investigation was that all manner of things were discovered, perhaps irrelevant to the crime, private sins and shames which it was afterwards impossible to forget.

  And when people were afraid they too often behaved badly. One might see them far more clearly than one ever wished. There was more to fear than simply a discovery of guilt.

  “It is probably someone in her daily life,” she went on very steadily, thinking even as she was saying it that Augustus FitzJames was not certain of his son’s innocence. Emily knew from the edge in his voice, the way he overrode his wife’s comfortable words, that a needle of doubt had pricked him. Why? Why would a man have so little confidence in his own son as to allow such an awful possibility into his mind?

  “Yes, of course it is,” Tallulah agreed. “I’m just upset because Papa is going to try to force me to marry some bore and become a bland, uninteresting wife sewing useless embroidery and painting watercolors no one wants to look at.”

  “Thank you.” Emily smiled at her.

  Tallulah blushed scarlet. “Oh God! I’m so sorry! What an unpardonable thing to say! I didn’t mean it like that!”

  Emily blinked at the blasphemy, but said frankly, “Yes you did. And I don’t blame you. Plenty of women spend their whole lives doing things they despise. I bore myself to tears sometimes. And I am married to a politician, and usually he is very interesting. I was bored last night because he has been so busy I have seen little of him lately, and I have done nothing to interest myself. I need a good issue to fight for.”

  Gradually the color subsided in Tallulah’s cheeks, but she still looked mortified.

  Emily took her by the arm and led her back up the stairs towards her temporary bedroom.

  “I have a great-aunt by marriage,” she continued, “who is never bored a day in her life, because she is always concerned with something, usually battling some injustice or ignorance. She doesn’t take on anything easy, so everything tends to last.” She could have mentioned that she had a mother who had just married a Jewish actor seventeen years her junior, and a sister who had married beneath her, to a man in the police force, and brought drama into all their lives by becoming involved in the worst of his cases. But just at the moment that would be tactless, not to mention overwhelming.

  “Does she?” Tallulah said with a flicker of interest. “Her husband doesn’t mind?”

  “Actually he’s dead, and he doesn’t count,” Emily conceded. “If he were alive that would make it harder. What about this Jago that you mentioned?”

  “Jago!” Tallulah laughed jerkily. “Can you see Papa allowing me to marry a parish priest in Whitechapel? I should end up with about two dresses to my name, one to wash, one to wear, and live in a drafty room with cold water and a roof that leaked. Socially I should cease to exist!”

  “I thought priests had vicarages,” Emily argued, standing at the top of the stairs on the bright sunlit landing with its yellow carpet and potted palms. A housemaid in crisp lace-trimmed cap and apron walked across the hall below them, her heels clicking on the parquet. There might be vicarages in Whitechapel, but they were still another world from this.

  Tallulah bit her lip. “I know that. But I would have to give up so much. No more parties. No more beautiful gowns, witty conversations that last all night. No more trips to the theater and the opera. No more dinners and balls and coming home in the dawn. I wouldn’t even be warm enough half the time, or have enough to eat. I might have to do my own laundry!”

  It was all perfectly true.

  “Do you want to change Jago into something he isn’t?” Emily asked her.

  “No!” Tallulah drew in her breath slowly. “No, I don’t. Of course not … I …” She stopped. She did not know what she meant. The decision was enormous.

  “No one gets everything,” Emily said softly. “If what you care for in him is that part which clings to his own values, then you have to accept all that goes with it. Perhaps it is time to weigh up exactly what life with him would mean and what life without him would be for you, and then decide what you really want. Don’t let it go by default. It is too important for that. It could be your whole life.”

  Tallulah’s curious face was twisted in self-mockery, but there were tears in her eyes.

  “There’s no decision for me to make. Jago wouldn’t even look at me in that way. He despises everything I am. It’s just a matter of trying to help Finlay through this, and I can’t even think of a way to do that. And then not letting Papa marry me to anyone too stultifyingly tedious.” She sniffed. “Maybe he’d marry me to someone very old, and they’d die. Then I can be a widow, like your great-aunt, and do as I please.”

  Below them the dining room door opened again and Finlay came out, walking quickly and a little angrily towards the front door.

  “Jarvis!” he shouted. “Where’s my hat and my stick? I left them in the stand last night. Who’s moved them?”

  A footman materialized, duly deferential.

  “Your stick is there, sir, and I took the hat to brush it.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” Finlay reached for the stick. “Well, fetch the hat, Jarvis. Why did you take it anyway? I don’t need a hat brushed every time I wear it.”

  “A bird unfortunately …” Jarvis began.

  Tallulah smiled in spite of herself and took Emily by the arm to guide her back to the room to make the necessary arrangements to have her own dress packed so she could take it with her on her return home.

  Emily made her farewells, then rode home in the FitzJameses’ second carriage, Augustus having taken the first. Her thoughts were engaged in Tallulah’s problems. Was it possible that Finlay was guilty?

  Why would he do such a thing? What was the
re about him that his father knew, or suspected, which made him so cold, so uncertain, and yet unhesitant to defend him?

  Or had she misread the emotions in his face? She had been an onlooker at one meal. Perhaps she was being foolish, absurdly overrating her own judgment.

  She wondered idly what Jago was like that he could have captured Tallulah’s dreams so completely. Apparently he was the opposite of everything she treasured in her present life. Perhaps that was it? Not reality at all, simply an enchantment with the idea of the different. Whatever it was, she liked Tallulah, liked her vividness, her ability to care, and the fact that she was teetering on the edge of dreams for which she would have to pay for the rest of her life. She was worthy of all the help Emily could give her. There was no decision to be made about that.

  When she arrived she thanked the FitzJameses’ coachman, alighted and went up her own front steps. The butler opened the door to her without raising his eyebrows.

  “Good morning, Jenkins,” she said calmly, walking in.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” he replied, closing the door behind her. “Mr. Radley is in the study, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.” She passed him the package containing her dinner gown with instructions to give it to her ladies’ maid. Then, feeling a trifle odd in Tallulah’s muslin morning dress, she walked, head high, to the study to explain herself to Jack.

  “Good morning,” he said coolly when she opened the door. He was sitting at the desk with a pile of papers, a pen in his hand, his expression unsmiling. “I received your message. Rather incomplete. Where were you?”

  She took a deep breath. She found herself resenting the need to account, but she had known it would be unavoidable.

  “I accepted a ride to another party, and did not realize how late I had stayed. They were interesting people, and I met someone …” She still had not made up her mind whether to pass it off as help to a friend in trouble or enquiring into Pitt’s current case. Looking at Jack’s displeased face did not assist her. Whatever she said, it had better be something she could substantiate.

  “Yes?” he prompted, his eyes chilly.

  She must decide immediately, or it would look like a lie. He was not as easy to mislead as she sometimes wished. She had once assumed that his attention could be diverted by a smile, and she had been wrong.

  “I’m waiting, Emily….”

  “I met a young woman I liked very much, and she was in great distress because her brother has been accused of murder…. Thomas is investigating the case. I couldn’t leave it, Jack! I had to find out all I could about it … for her sake, and Thomas’s … and for the truth itself!”

  “Indeed …” He sat back in his chair, regarding her skeptically. “So you stayed the night in her home. What did you learn in this generous effort? Is he guilty?”

  “Don’t be sarcastic,” she replied tartly. “Even I can’t solve a murder over breakfast.” She looked at him with a hesitant smile. “It will take me at least until dinner … maybe even longer.” And with that she met his eyes for an instant, saw the beginning of humor in them, then turned and went out, closing the door behind her.

  In the hall she gave a sigh of relief and ran swiftly upstairs to change.

  4

  At the time Emily was talking to Tallulah at the stairhead, and Finlay was taking his hat and stick from the footman and going out of the door, Pitt was sitting in a hansom on the far side of Devonshire Street with Rose Burke beside him. As the door to number thirty-eight opened and Finlay came out, she leaned forward, peering out of the side, her body stiff. She remained watching, her head turning very slowly to follow his path along the pavement until he disappeared around the corner of Upper Wimpole Street, then she sat back again.

  “Well?” Pitt asked. He did not know what he wanted her to say. If she identified him it would be the beginning of a very unpleasant gathering of facts for an arrest and prosecution. The FitzJames family would muster all its resources to fight back. There would certainly be accusations of police incompetence. Rose herself would be attacked and every attempt would be made to undermine her resolve, slander her character-which would not be hard-and generally discredit her testimony.

  On the other hand, if she did not identify him (or worse than that, said it was not him), then they were thrown back to the cuff link and the badge, and to searching for any resolution which explained their presence but excluded Finlay from the murder itself.

  Rose turned and looked at him. She might have relished her moment of power. He expected to see it in her eyes. Instead there was only anger and a bright, hard hatred.

  “Yeah, it was ’im,” she said in a tight, harsh voice. “That’s ’im wot I saw goin’ in ter Ada just afore she were killed. Arrest ’im. Get ’im tried so they can ’ang ’im.”

  Pitt felt his chest constrict and his heart beat harder.

  “Are you sure?”

  She swung around to glare at him. “Yeah, I’m sure. You gonna argue, ’cos ’e lives in a posh ’ouse in a fancy street an’ got money ter pay ’is way abaht?” Her lip curled with disgust close to hatred.

  “No, Rose, I’m not,” he said softly. “But when I go after him, I want to be sure I have everything exactly right. I don’t want any clever lawyer finding mistakes and getting him off because of them.”

  “Yeah …” She settled back, mortified. “Yeah … well … I suppose so. But yer got ’im this time.”

  “This time?” he asked, although with a little twist of misery he knew what she was going to say.

  “Yeah. Well, yer never got Jack, didjer?” Her body was stiff, her shoulders rigid under her shawl. “ ’E’s still around, fer all we know, waitin’ in some dark doorway ter cut someone again. Well, get this bleedin’ murderer an’ top ’im before ’e does another poor cow.”

  He would have liked to tell her this was not another serial murderer, that that would never happen again, that it was only one hideous aberration. But he was not sure. There was an air of compulsion about this murder, an inward rage that had been momentarily beyond control. If it could happen once, it could, perhaps would, happen again.

  “It’s no help to you, Rose, if we get the wrong man,” he said, watching her face. Its hard, handsome lines were set rigid with hate and fear, her skin still smooth across her cheekbones. If it were not for a certain brashness in her expression, and the quality of her clothes, she could have been a lady like any of the others along Devonshire Street, or this part of Mayfair.

  “ ’E in’t the wrong one,” she replied. “Now I in’t got all day ter sit ’ere talkin’ ter you. I charge fer me time.”

  “You charge for your services, Rose,” he corrected her. “And I don’t want them. You’ll give me as much time as I need. I’m taking the cab back to Bow Street. You can have it from there, if you want.”

  “ ’Oo’s payin’ fer it?” she said immediately.

  “I will,” he offered with a smile. “This once. You can credit me, for next time I want to speak to you!”

  She said nothing. She would not commit herself to words, but there was the slightest of smiles.

  He leaned forward and gave the driver instructions, and when they were at Bow Street he alighted and paid for the rest of the way to Whitechapel.

  He had learned nothing more from Rose on the journey. She was frightened. She remembered the outrage of 1888 far too sharply, the fear that had gripped London so tightly that even the music halls, which laughed at everything and everyone, made no jokes about the Whitechapel Murderer. She needed the police, and she hated that. She saw them as part of an establishment which used her and at the same time despised her.

  Four years ago new laws had been passed, initially intended to protect women and curb pornography and prostitution. In effect they had only meant that the police had harassed and arrested more women, and while some brothels had been closed down, others opened up. Many men still believed that any woman who walked along in certain areas, including some in the West End, was by defi
nition doing so to invite trade. Pornography flowed as freely as ever. It was all one giant hypocrisy, and Rose saw it as such and hated all those who supported it or benefited from it.

  Pitt went into Bow Street Station, nodded to the desk sergeant, and went on up to his office. Tellman was waiting for him, his lantern-jawed face sardonic, his eyes hard.

  “Morning, sir. There’s a report from a Dr. Lennox on your desk. Came about fifteen minutes ago. Couldn’t tell him when you’d be in, so he didn’t stay. Looked wretched, like he’d got an invitation to his own funeral. It’s this Whitechapel murder. I s’pose yer toff is guilty?”

  “Looks like it,” Pitt agreed, reaching across his desk with its beautiful green leather inlay and picking up the sheet of paper covered in generous, sloping handwriting.

  Tellman shrugged. “That’ll be ugly.” There was some satisfaction in his voice, although it was not possible to judge whether it was at Pitt’s discomfort or at the prospect of a family like the FitzJameses being exposed to such a public indignity. Tellman had risen from the ranks and was only too familiar with the bitter reality of hunger, humiliation and the knowledge that life would never offer him its great rewards.

  Pitt sat down and looked at the report Lennox had left him. Ada McKinley had died of strangulation between ten o’clock and midnight. There were no bruises or scratches to indicate that she had fought her attacker. Her fingers had been broken, three on her left hand, two on her right. Three toes had been dislocated on her left foot. On her right hand one fingernail was broken, but that was probably from her attempt to tear the stocking from around her neck. The only blood under her fingernails was almost certainly from the scratches on her own throat.

  There were stretch marks on her abdomen from the child she had borne, one or two old bruises on her thighs and one on her shoulder which was yellowish green, and obviously had predated the night of her death. Other than that, she was in good enough health. As far as Lennox could judge, she was in her middle twenties. There was little else to say.