Pentecost Alley Read online

  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?”

  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?”

  “Cover her,” Pitt answered, seeing the urgency of distress in his face, and liking him so much more than he did Ewart, even though he understood Ewart’s feelings, his weariness, his familiarity with such scenes and lives and the people who lived them. If he had ever had romantic delusions about young women in the streets, they were long since destroyed by reality. He was not unfeeling. It was simply that for his own sanity he must limit his emotions. And more immediate than that, to do his job and be of any use, his brain must be clear, driven by thought, not emotion. Ada McKinley was beyond human help, but other women like her were not.

  But Pitt still preferred Lennox’s vulnerability. It sprang from some kind of hope and a different sort of care.

  Lennox shot him a look of gratitude, then came forward across the room. First he pulled down the dead woman’s skirt to cover her legs, then took the quilt from the bed and spread it over her, hiding her distorted face as well.

  “Did you find anything else you haven’t mentioned yet?” Pitt asked Ewart.

  “Do you want a list of her belongings?” Ewart said tartly.

  “Not yet. I’ll see Constable Binns, then the other witnesses in order.”

  “Here?” Ewart looked around, his eyes avoiding the bed.

  “Is there anywhere else?”

  “The other women’s rooms, that’s all.”

  “I’ll see Binns here, and the women in their own rooms. I need some idea of the geography of the house.”

  Ewart was satisfied. It was what he would have done.

  Binns was about thirty, fair-haired, blunt-faced, still looking shaken and rubbing his hands. He was not used to standing motionless on guard. His feet were numb; Pitt knew from the careful, clumsy way he walked.

  “Sir?” He stood facing Pitt, his eyes studiously away from the bed.

  “Tell me what you saw,” Pitt directed.

  Binns stood at attention. “Yessir. I were following me usual beat, which is Spittalfields, end o’ Whitechapel Road, up ter beginnin’ o’ Mile End Road, an’ north ter ’Anbury Street and back again.” He took a deep breath, still staring straight ahead. “I gets ter corner o’ Old Montague Street an
d sees this feller come boltin’ out o’ the entrance o’ Pentecost Alley lookin’ like ’e’d seen a ghost or summink. ’E were abaht ter scarper orff westwards, towards Brick Lane way, but I reckoned as there must be summink wrong or ’e’d ’a’ walked normal, instead o’ keep dartin’ a look over ’is shoulder like ’e were afraid someone was arter ’im.” He swallowed. “So I nabbed ’im sharp by the back o’ ’is collar and brought ’im up short. ’E squealed like the devil ’ad ’im. So then I knew ’e’d like seen summink bad. ’E were scared witless.”

  Pitt nodded in commendation. Neither Ewart nor Lennox moved, standing back in the shadows, listening.

  “I made ’im go back,” Binns continued, moving a little to ease his cramped feet as the circulation returned. “I thought it’d be one o’ these rooms up ’ere. Other side’s a sweatshop. ’E could ’a’ nicked summink, but ’e didn’t ’ave nuffink with ’im, so I came in ’ere.” His eyes wandered momentarily, but ignored Ewart and Lennox as if he did not see them. “This is the first room. The door were ’alf open, so I come in.” His voice dropped almost to a whisper and he glanced at the bed. “Poor little cow. I knew straight orff as she were dead, so I didn’t touch nuffink. I shut the door an’ took ’im wif me, and raised the alarm wif me whistle. Seemed like ferever till someone ’eard me, but I s’pose it weren’t no more’n five minutes. P.C. Rogers were passing along Wentworth Street, an’ ’e come runnin’. I sent ’im for Mr. Ewart.”

  “What time was that?” Pitt asked.

  Binns flushed. “I dunno, sir. First I were too busy ’oldin’ the witness ter take out me watch, and then w’en I saw ’er I never thought ter. I know that’s right unprofessional, but I knew ’er, y’see, an’ it fair shook me.”

  “What can you tell me about her?” Pitt asked, watching the man’s face.

  He shifted his weight, but still remained at attention.

  “Bin ’ere six year, or thereabouts. Dunno w’ere she come from. Pinner way, I think. Country, any’ow. Miles from ’ere. Pretty she were, then. All roses and cream.” He shook his head, his face crumpled. “Said she were a parlor maid in one o’ them big ’ouses up Belgravia way. Lorst ’er character.” He said it almost expressionlessly, as if it were an old tragedy, too familiar to arouse anger anymore. “Butler got ’er inter trouble. She told the lady o’ the ’ouse, an’ they kept the butler an’ sent ’er packin’. Child come early. Didn’t live, poor little beggar. Though that could ’a’ bin fer the best.” His face pinched and his eyes looked far away. “Death is better than the work’ouse, or some o’ them baby farms. So she took ter the streets. Smart, she were, an’ I guess she were bored and angry too.” The gentleness ironed out of his features. His face set. “She’d ’a’ liked ter’ve got even wi’ that butler.”

  Pitt had no doubt that if she had, Binns for one would have been blind that moment. As a constable, Pitt might have too. Now he could not afford such a luxury.

  “Maybe she tried blackmail on the butler?” Ewart spoke for the first time and there was a lift in his voice. “And he killed her?”

  “Why?” Lennox said slowly. “His employer already knew her story and didn’t care.”

  “It’s irrelevant,” Pitt cut across them. “No one would have taken her word against his. Not now.” In a sentence he had reduced her to what she was, and he knew it. The only reason he had been called to her murder was because of Finlay FitzJames’s name on the badge. Some men in Ewart’s position would have suppressed it and gone through the motions of searching for her killer, then simply marked the case unsolved and left it. Perhaps if Lennox had not been there he would have. But Lennox had seen him find the badge under the body, and he would not have remained silent. There was no discretion in his face, no cynicism, only an aching, worn-out hurt.

  There was silence in the rest of the house, but the sound of the first traffic could be heard in the street outside, and the smear of dawn paled a little beyond the windows.

  Pitt turned to Binns. “Is that all?”

  “Yessir. I waited till Mr. Ewart come, then I told ’im what I saw an’ done, an’ ’anded it over to ’im. That were a little arter one o’clock.”

  “Thank you. You acted well.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He turned to leave with straighter shoulders, his head high, his feet still numb.

  “We’d better see the witness.” Pitt nodded to Ewart. “In here.”

  A few moments later another constable escorted in a lean, narrow-shouldered man with a brown jacket and dark trousers concertinaed over his boots, hand-me-downs from someone taller. His face was gray-white and twitching with fear. Whatever the pleasure he had purchased that night, it had been at a price he would never willingly have paid.

  “What’s your name?” Pitt asked him.

  “Ob-badiah S-Skeggs,” he stuttered, his face twitching. “I never touched ’er. I swear to Gawd I never did!” His voice was rising in what he intended to be sincerity, and was all too obviously terror. “Ask Rosie!” He gestured to where he imagined Rosie was. “She’ll tell yer. Honest, Rosie is. She’d never lie fer me. She don’t know me from nuffink.” He looked at Pitt, then at Ewart. “I swear.”

  Pitt smiled in spite of himself. “Rosie doesn’t know you?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know her?”

  “I don’t! I mean …” He saw the trap, but he had already stepped into it. He breathed in and tried to swallow, choking himself.

  “You don’t have to make up your mind,” Pitt said dryly. “I’ll ask Rosie anyway. She’ll no doubt know whether you’re a regular or not.”

  “She wouldn’t lie fer me,” Skeggs said desperately, gasping between splutters. “She don’t even like me.”

  “No, I don’t suppose she does,” Pitt agreed. “Do you know what time you got here?”

  “No.” He was not going to risk any more traps. “No. I were leavin’ w’en that rozzer nabbed me. An’ that were unjust, it were. I never done nuffink as is agin’ the law.” He became plaintive. “A man’s allowed a little pleasure. An’ I always paid fair. Rosie’ll tell yer that.”

  “How would she know?” Pitt raised his eyebrows.

  Skeggs’s face tightened venomously.

  “You thought you’d entertain yourself a little more,” Pitt continued. “So when you saw Ada’s door open, you peeped ’round. Only instead of finding her fornicating with a customer, you saw her lying dead, sprawled over the bed, tied to it, her stocking wound ’round her throat and the garter on her arm.”

  Skeggs let out an agonized blasphemy.

  “And you fled, when Constable Binns caught you,” Pitt finished.

  “I were going ter raise the alarm,” Skeggs protested, glaring at Pitt, and then at Ewart, as if to bear out his story. “Call the p’lice, like I should! Fast as me legs’d carry me. That’s why I were runnin’!”

  “So why didn’t you tell Constable Binns about Ada?” Pitt enquired.

  Skeggs looked at him with murder in his eyes.

  “Did you see anyone else?” Pitt went on.

  Outside the light was broadening. There was more noise in the street. People coming and going, calling to each other. The sweatshop opposite was opening up.

  “Yer mean like ’im wot done it?” Skeggs demanded indignantly. “Course I didn’t, or I’d ’a’ told yer. Fink I’d stand ’ere bein’ suspected if I knew ’oo’d really done it? Wot yer fink I am, stupid?”

  Pitt forbore from answering, but Skeggs read the silence as affirmative and bristled with offense. He followed the constable out, glancing over his shoulder still searching for something cutting to say.

  Pitt saw Rose Burke in her own room, two doors farther along. It was a different shape, and perhaps a foot or two wider, but essentially similar. A large bed occupied most of the space, also rumpled and obviously lately used. The sheets had a gray look down the center and were heavily creased. There was a stale smell of sweat and body dirt. Apparently Skeggs had had his money’s worth,
at least up to that point.

  Lennox looked ashen-faced. There was no need for him to have followed, and Pitt wondered why he had. Perhaps he thought Rose might need him.

  But Rose was of sterner stuff. She was broad-shouldered, handsome-bosomed, of no more than average height. Her hair was dark brown but had been bleached in a paler streak across the front. It was startlingly becoming. In fact she was a beautiful woman, even if her skin had coarsened from its youthful duskiness and her teeth were already going. She might have been anything between twenty-five and forty.

  She was too composed to offer any remark before she was asked. She stood in the middle of the room ignoring Lennox and looking at Pitt, waiting, arms folded, only a slightly rapid rise and fall of her chest betraying that she was under any stress at all. Pitt did not know if it was indifference to Ada’s fate or courage. He thought perhaps at least some of the latter.

  “Rose Burke?”

  “Yeah?” Her chin lifted.

  “Tell me about your evening from eight o’clock onwards,” Pitt commanded, then as her face lit with a contemptuous smile, “I’m not interested in doing you for prostitution. I’m after who killed Ada. He’s been here once. If we don’t get him, he could come again. You might be next.”

  “Jeez.” She sucked in her breath, respect and loathing bright in her eyes.

  “Do you want me to tell you it never happens?” he asked more gently. “It’s not true. He broke her fingers and toes, then he strangled her with her own stocking, like a hangman’s noose.” He did not mention the garter or the boots. Better to leave something unspecified. “You think he’ll do it just the once?”

  Lennox winced and seemed about to say something, then changed his mind and silently went out, pushing the door closed behind him.

  Rose breathed the Lord’s name in what might even have been a prayer, because almost as if she did not register what she was doing, she crossed herself. Now the blood was gone from her face, leaving the rouge garish, though it was skillfully applied.