Death in the Devil's Acre Read online

  Had he bought them as gifts for her, an indulgent expression of his love? He could not imagine it of a man with the face he had seen in the Devil’s Acre. But by then he had already been robbed of that quickening that inhabits the flesh, of the capability for passion and pain, moments of tenderness, dreams or illusions.

  Even in life we mask our vulnerability. What right had Pitt, or anyone else, to know what this man had felt for his wife? What vain or hopeless ideas still haunted him?

  Or was her indifference apparent now because there had long ago ceased to be any real emotion between them? Was his death merely the formal ending of a relationship that was merely a facade? They had been married fifteen years; that much she had told him. There were no children. Had there ever been?

  Could that even have been the reason she chose this plain, older man—a kindness to a woman whose moral character had been blemished? Or perhaps who already knew she was barren? Had gratitude turned over the years to hatred?

  Had she sought love elsewhere? Was that where the silk flowers and the gowns came from? It was an obvious question, and he would be obliged to search.

  He asked her if she had ever heard of Bertram Astley, Max Burton, or Dr. Pinchin. The names produced no answering flicker in her face. If she was a liar, she was superb. Neither did he find any mention of the other victims in Pomeroy’s papers.

  There was nothing to do but thank Mrs. Pomeroy and leave with a peculiar feeling of unreality, as if all the time she was speaking she had barely been aware of him. He was an usher in the theater, and she was watching the main drama somewhere else, out of his sight.

  The next obvious thing was to try the Acre again, and the best source was Squeaker Harris. Pitt found him in his grubby attic, hunched over the table by the window—the cleanest thing in the place—so that the winter light could fall onto his paper. Too many careful, suspicious eyes would examine his work. It must meet the highest standards of perfection or he would not remain in his trade.

  He glared at Pitt balefully. “You ain’t got no right bustin’ inter a man’s ’ouse!” he exclaimed as he covered the paper he was working on as inconspicuously as possible. “I could ’ave yer—fer trespassin’. Vat’s agin ve law, Mr. Pitt. An’ wot’s more, it ain’t right.”

  “It’s a social call,” Pitt replied, sitting on an upended box and balancing with some difficulty. “I’m not interested in your business skills.”

  “Ain’t yer?” Squeaker was not convinced.

  “Why don’t you put them away?” Pitt suggested helpfully. “In case dust falls on them. You don’t want anything spoiled.”

  Squeaker gave him a squinting glare. Such leniency was confusing. It was very contrary of policemen to be so inconsistent in their behavior. How was anyone to know where he stood? However, he was glad of the chance to put the half-completed forgeries out of sight. He returned and sat down, considerably easier in his mind.

  “Well?” he demanded. “Wotcher want ven? Yer ain’t come ’ere fer nuffin’!”

  “Of course not,” Pitt said. “What’s the word about these murders now? What are they saying, Squeaker?”

  “The Acre slasher? Vere ain’t no word. Nobody knows nuffin’, and nobody ain’t sayin’ nuffin’.”

  “Nonsense. You telling me there’ve been four murders and mutilations in the Acre, and nobody’s got any ideas as to who did them, or why? Come on, Squeaker—I wasn’t born yesterday!”

  “Neever was I, Mr. Pitt. And I don’t want ter know nuffin’ abaht it. I’m a lot more scared o’ ‘ooever done vose geezers like vat van I ever am o’ you! You crushers is a nuisance, Gawd knows, bad fer ve ’ealf an’ bad fer business, and some of yer is downright nasty at times. But yer ain’t mad—least not ravin’ mad like ve lunatic wot does vis! I can understand a decent murder along wiv ve next man! I ain’t unreasonable. But I don’t ’old wiv vis, an’ I don’t know nobody as does!”

  Pitt leaned forward and nearly fell off the box. “Then help me find him, Squeaker! Help me put him away!”

  “Yer mean ‘ang ‘im.” Squeaker pulled a face. “I dunno nuffin’, an’ I don’t want ter! It’s no use yer arskin’ me, Mr. Pitt. ’E ain’t one o’ us!”

  “Then who are the strangers? Who’s new in the Acre?” Pitt pressed.

  Squeaker put on an elaborate air of grievance. “’Ow ve ’ell do I know? ’E’s mad! Mebbe ’e only conies aht at nights. Mebbe ’e ain’t even ’uman. I dunno anyone as knows anyfink abaht it! None o’ ve pimps or blaggers or shofulmen I know ’as got any call ter do vat kind o’ fing! An’ yer know we screevers don’t go in fer nastiness. I’m an artist, I am. Fer me ter get violent wiv me ’ands ’d ruin me touch.” He waved his fingers expressively, like a pianist. “Dips don’t neever,” he added as an afterthought.

  Pitt conceded with a smile. Unwillingly he believed Squeaker. Still he gave it a last try. “What about Ambrose Mercutt? Max was taking his trade.”

  “So ‘e was,” Squeaker agreed. “Better at it, see? An’ Ambrose is a nasty little bastard w’en ’e’s crossed as many o’ ’is girls’d tell yer. But ’e ain’t mad! If ’n someone’d stuck a shiv inter Max and dropped ’im inter ve water, or even strangled ’is froat, I’d ’ave said Ambrose, quick as look atcher.” His lip curled. “But you lot’d never ’ave fahnd ’im! Just gorn, vat’s all—Max’d just ’ave gorn, and you rozzers’d never ’ave known ve diff’rence. Nobody but a fool or a lunatic draws attention ter ’isself by cuttin’ people abaht an’ leavin’ ’em in gutters fer people ter fall over.” He raised his scruffy eyebrows. “I arks yer, Mr. Pitt—now ’oo’d leave a corpus in front of an ’ouse ’o mercy, wiv all vem ’oly women in it—if n ’e was right in ’is mind, like?”

  “Did Ambrose employ children in his brothel, Squeaker?”

  Squeaker screwed up his face. “I don’t ’old wiv vat. It ain’t ’ealfy. A proper man wants a proper woman, not some scared little kid.”

  “Does he, Squeaker?”

  “Gawd! ‘Ow do I know? You fink I got vat kind o’ money?”

  “Does he, Squeaker?” Pitt persisted, his voice harder.

  “Yes! Yes ‘e does! Greedy little git! Go an’ ’ang ’im, Mr. Pitt, an’ welcome!” He spat on the floor in disgust.

  “Thank you. I’m obliged.” Pitt stood up and the box collapsed.

  Squeaker looked at the box and his face wrinkled up. “Yer shouldn’t ’ave sat on vat, Mr. Pitt! Yer too ’eavy fer it—now look wot yer done! I oughta charge yer fer breakages, I ought!”

  Pitt pulled out a sixpence and gave it to him. “I wouldn’t like to owe you, Squeaker.”

  Squeaker hesitated, the coin halfway to his teeth. The thought of Pitt owing him was extremely attractive, even tempting. But sixpence now was better than a debt Pitt might let slip from his rather erratic mind.

  “Vat’s right, Mr. Pitt,” he agreed. “Shouldn’t never owe nobody. Never knows as w’en vey might collect at an inconvenient moment.” He raised candid eyes. “But if n I ’ears ’oo done the poor geezers—fer sure like—I’ll send and tell yer.”

  “Oh, yes?” Pitt said skeptically. “You do that, Squeaker.”

  Squeaker spat again. “’Ope ter die! Oh, Gawd—I didn’t oughter said vat! Geez! May Gawd strike me if’n I don’t!” he amended—with greater trust in his ability to obtain mercy from the Almighty than from the Acre slasher.

  “He can have you after I’ve finished with you.” Pitt looked him up and down. “If He can be bothered with what’s left!”

  “Nah, Mr. Pitt, vat ain’t nice. Yer abusin’ me ’orspitality.” Squeaker was aggrieved, but happily so. It was a feeling he enjoyed. “Ve trouble wiv you crushers is yer ain’t got no happreciation.”

  Pitt smiled and went out the door. He picked his way down the stairs carefully, avoiding the rotted ones, and went outside into the cold malodorous air of the alley. Tomorrow he would get a picture of Ernest Pomeroy and take it around the brothels in the Acre.

  Charlotte was waiting for hi
m when he arrived home. She was beautiful, her face radiant, hair soft and sweet to smell. She clung to him fiercely as if she were bursting with energy.

  “Where have you been?” he asked, holding her hard.

  “Only to see Emily.” She dismissed it as a trifle, but he knew perfectly well why she had gone.

  She gave him a quick kiss and pulled away. “You’re cold. Sit down and warm yourself. Gracie will have dinner in half an hour. Your coat looks very dirty. Where have you been?”

  “To the Devil’s Acre,” he said tartly as he eased off his boots and wriggled his toes. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his feet out toward the fire.

  Charlotte passed him his slippers. “Did you learn anything?”

  “No,” he lied. After all, it was not definable.

  Her face fell into lines of commiseration. “Oh. I am sorry.” Then she brightened, as if an idea had just occurred to her. “Perhaps it would be better to approach it from the other point of view.”

  In spite of himself, he asked, “What other point of view?” And then was angry with his gullibility.

  But she did not hesitate. “The point of view of Max’s women,” she replied instantly. “These murders were committed with a great deal of hatred.”

  He smiled sourly. It was a ludicrous understatement, and, sitting here in her own safe home, what on earth could she know about it? He had seen the corpses!

  “You should look for someone whose life has been ruined,” she went on. “If Max had seduced some woman, and then her husband had found out, he might well hate enough to kill like that—not only Max but whoever had had anything to do with her disgrace.”

  “And how would he find out?” he asked. If she was going to play policeman, let her answer all the difficult, ugly questions that Athelstan would have thrown at him. “There is no connection whatsoever between Max and Hubert Pinchin. We can’t find anyone who knew them both.”

  “Maybe Pinchin was the doctor for Max’s establishments,” she suggested.

  “Good idea. But he wasn’t. There’s a disbarred old crow who does that—and very lucrative it is, too. He wouldn’t share his practice with anyone.”

  “Crow? Is that an underworld term for a doctor?” She did not wait for a reply. “What if the husband came as a customer and found the whore was his own wife? That way he would know who the procurer was as well!” It was an excellently rational solution, and she knew it. She glowed with triumph.

  “And what about the woman?” he said scathingly. “He just bundled her up and took her back home again? I’m sure he wanted her—after that!”

  “I don’t suppose so for a moment.” She sniffed and looked at him impatiently. “But he couldn’t divorce her, could he?”

  “Why not? God knows, he would have cause!”

  “Oh, Thomas, don’t be ridiculous! No man is going to admit he found his wife in the Devil’s Acre working as a whore! Even if the police weren’t looking for someone with a motive for murder, it would ruin him forever! If there is anything worse than death for a man, it is to be laughed at and pitied at the same time.”

  He could not argue. “No,” he said irritably. “He’ll probably kill her, too, but quietly, when he’s ready.”

  Her face paled. “Do you think so?”

  “Damn it, Charlotte! How should I know? If he’s capable of cutting up her pimp and her lovers, what would stop him leaving her in some more respectable gutter when he’s ready? So you bear that in mind, and stop meddling in things you don’t understand—where you can only do damage by stirring up a lot of suspicions. Remember—if you’re right, he’s got precious little left to lose!”

  “I haven’t been—”

  “For heaven’s sake, do you think I’m stupid? I don’t know what you’ve been doing with Emily, but I most assuredly know why!”

  She sat perfectly still, color high in her cheeks. “I haven’t been anywhere near the Devil’s Acre, and to the best of my knowledge I haven’t spoken to anyone who has!” she said righteously.

  He knew from the brilliance of her eyes that she was speaking the literal truth. Anyway, he did not think she would lie to him, not in so many words.

  “Not for want of trying,” he said acidly,

  “Well, you don’t appear to have got very far either,” she retorted. “I could give you the names of half a dozen women to try. How about Lavinia Hawkesley? She is married to a boring man at least thirty years older than she is. And Dorothea Blandish and Mrs. Dinford and Lucy Abercorn, and what about the new widow Pomeroy? I hear she is very pretty, and she knows one or two people in the fast set.”

  “Adela Pomeroy?” He was momentarily startled out of his anger.

  “Yes,” she said with satisfaction, seeing his face. “And there are others. I’ll write them down for you.”

  “Write them down, then forget the whole thing. Stay at home! This is murder, Charlotte, very ugly and violent murder. And if you go meddling in it you may very well end up dead in a gutter yourself. Do as you are told!”

  She said nothing.

  “Do you hear me?” He had not meant to, but he was raising his voice. “If you and Emily go blundering about, God knows what lunatic you’ll disturb—presuming you get anywhere near the truth! Far more likely it’s a business vengeance in the Acre and nothing to do with society at all.”

  “What about Bertie Astley?” she demanded.

  “What about him? He owned a block of buildings in the Acre, a whole street. That’s where the Astley money comes from, their own private slum.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Oh, yes! Perhaps he had a brothel as well, and he was removed by a rival.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Go back and look again, of course! What else?”

  “Thomas, please be careful!” She stopped, unsure what more to say.

  He knew the dangers, but the alternatives were worse: another murder; public outrage reaching hysteria; Athelstan, afraid for his position, putting more and more pressure on Pitt to arrest someone, anyone, to satisfy Parliament, the church, the patrons of the Acre and other whorehouses all over London. And then terror, fury, and guilt when there was yet another atrocity.

  But, perhaps foremost in his own mind, he felt the need to solve this case himself, to solve it before Charlotte, unwinding some thread from Emily’s society connections, started to follow it from the other end and ran into something she could not handle. He had forbidden her to meddle not only because her life could be in great danger, but also because he must demonstrate that he did not need her help.

  “Of course I shall be careful,” he said stiffly. “I’m not a fool!”

  She gave him a sidelong look and held her tongue.

  “And you stay at home and keep out of it!” he added. “You’ve plenty to attend to here without interfering where you can only get into trouble.”

  Nevertheless, when he went into the Acre the next day, he took even more care than usual to dress inconspicuously, and to walk with that mixture of sureness of where he was going and the furtive, beaten air of someone whose journey is futile and who knows it.

  The day was cold, with gloomy skies and a hard wind blowing up from the river. There was every excuse to pull his hat down and wind his muffler over the bare skin of his face. The sparse gaslights of the Acre glimmered in the murky morning air like lost moons in a sunken, crooked world.

  Pitt had a good likeness of Pomeroy, and he intended to find out everything he could about the brothels that catered to customers who liked children. Somewhere in this cesspit he expected to find Pomeroy’s reason for being here, and he believed it had to do with a need the man could not or dared not satisfy in Seabrook Walk. Nothing else would have brought such a prim, almost obsessively meticulous creature into this world.

  He had begun the day in Parkins’ office, gathering all the information the local police could give him about brothels that were known to employ children. He was even offered the names of snouts, and s
mall personal secrets that might allow him to exert a little pressure to assure the truth.

  But no one was prepared to say that he knew Pomeroy, or had ever catered to him.

  By ten that night Pitt was cold, bone-aching tired; he intended to try one more house before going home. There was no point in lying about who he was this time; Ambrose Mercutt’s doorman knew him. It was his job to remember faces.

  “Wotcher want?” he demanded angrily. “Yer can’t come ’ere nah, it’s business hours!”

  “I’m on business!” Pitt snapped. “And I’m perfectly happy to come and go quietly, and not disturb your customers, if you’ll treat me civilly and answer a few questions.”

  The man considered for a moment. He was long and lean and he had half an ear missing. He was dressed in a modishly cut jacket, with a silk kerchief tied around his throat. “Wot’s it worth to yer?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Pitt said immediately. “But I’ll tell you what it’s worth to you: continued employment and a nice pretty neck—no ugly rope burns! Can ruin a man’s future, a hemp collar.”

  The man snorted. “I ain’t murdered no one. Duffed up a few wot didn’t know w’en they’d ’ad their money’s worth.” He tittered, showing his long teeth. “But they ain’t makin’ no complaints. Gentlemen as comes to these parts never do! And there ain’t nothin’ you can do, rozzer, as’ll make ’em. Rather the than lay a complaint against a pimp, they would!” He struck a pose and his voice rose to a falsetto. “Please Yer Honor, Mr. Beak, there’s this whore I used, an’ I want to complain as she didn’t give me value fer me money! I wants as yer should make ’er be more obligin’, me lud!” He switched position and put his other hand on his hip, looking down his nose. “Why, certainly, Lord Mud-in-Yer-Eye. You just tell me ’ow much yer paid this ’ere whore, and w’ere I can find ’er, and I’ll see as she gives yer satisfaction!”