Pentecost Alley tp-16 Page 3

  “Time?”

  “I know that ’cos this time I looked. I were ’ungry, and reckoned as I’d done well enough as I could get summink decent ter eat. I were goin’ down ter the pie stand on the corner o’ Chicksand Street, till the rozzer come back and all the row started. ’Ad ter stay ’ome, and I’m fair starvin’ now.”

  Pitt said nothing.

  She stared at him with sudden anger.

  “Think I’m an ’eartless bitch, don’cher?” she demanded, her voice hard, full of resentment. “Well, I felt sick as you at first, but that’s two hours ago, or like, an’ I ain’t eaten proper since yest’day. Death comes often ’ere, not like up west w’ere it’s all soft an’ folk die easy. An’ that doc were real fair. ’E told me as she probably din’t feel much fer long. Made Nan put on a kettle and get us all a cup o’ tea. An’ ’e laced it wif a drop o’ brandy. Never known a bloke be so …” She was lost for a word. She had no term of praise to convey what she meant, the sudden warmth, the feeling that for a moment her emotions and her grief had been truly more important to him than his own. It eased the bitterness out of her face, till Pitt could see the woman she might have been had time and circumstance been different.

  Nan Sullivan was at least ten years older than Rose, and long hours and too many bottles of gin had blurred her features and dulled her hair and eyes. But there was still a softness in her, some spark of memory left a gentleness behind it, and when she spoke there was an echo of the west of Ireland in her voice. She sat on her bed, frowsy, tearstained and too tired to care.

  “Sure I was at the other end o’ the alley,” she agreed, looking at Pitt without interest. “Took me a while to find anyone. I had to walk along to Brick Lane.” It was obviously a defeat she no longer bothered to hide. “I got back just as Ada come indoors.”

  “So you saw the man who went in?” Pitt said eagerly.

  “Sure I did. Least I saw the back of his head, and his coat.” She sighed and the ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “Lovely coat it was. Good gabardine. I know good gabardine when I see it. Used to work in a sweatshop. Master o’ that had a coat o’ gabardine. His was brown, as I recall, but it sat on the shoulder the same way. Neat and sharp it was, no rumples, no folds where there shouldn’t be.”

  “What color was this one?” He was sitting in the one chair, about a yard away from her. This room opened onto the midden, and he could not hear the sounds of the street.

  “This one?” She thought for a moment, her eyes far away. “Blue. Or mebbe black. Wasn’t brown.”

  “Anything about the collar?”

  “Sat fine. Sort o’ curve you don’t get in a cheap coat.”

  “Not fur, or velvet?” he asked. “Or lambskin?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, just wool. Can’t see the cut with fur.”

  “What about his hair?”

  “Thick.” Unconsciously she brushed her fingers through her own hair, thinning with time and abuse. “An’ fair,” she added. “Saw the light on it from the candles in Ada’s room. Poor little bitch.” Her voice dropped. “Nobody should have done that to her.”

  “Did you like her?” he asked suddenly.

  She was surprised. She had to think for a moment. “I s’pose I did. She brought trouble, but she made me laugh. An’ I had to admire her fight.”

  Pitt felt a moment’s irrational hope.

  “Who did she fight with?”

  “She went up west sometimes. Had nerve, I’ll say that for her. Didn’t often sell herself short.”

  “So who did she fight with, Nan?”

  She gave a sharp, jerky little laugh.

  “Oh, Fat George’s girls, up near the Park. That’s their patch. If it had bin a knife in her, I’d ’ave said Wee Georgie’d done it. But he’d never have strangled her, or done it in her own room either. He’d have done it in the street and left her there. Besides, I know Fat George when I see him, and Wee Georgie.”

  That was unarguable. Pitt knew them both too. Fat George was a mountain of a man, unmistakable for anyone else, let alone Finlay FitzJames. And Wee Georgie was a dwarf. Added to which, whatever the trespass into their territory, they would have beaten her, or crippled her, or even disfigured her face, but they would not have brought down the police upon themselves by killing her. It would be bad for business.

  “You saw this man going into Ada’s room?” Pitt returned to the subject.

  “Yes.”

  He frowned. “You mean she opened the door for him. She didn’t take him in? She didn’t bring him from the street?”

  Her eyes widened. “No! No, she didn’t, come to think on it. He must have come here on his own-sort of reg’lar, or like that.”

  “Do you get many regulars?” Then he saw instantly from her face how tactless the question was. Ada might have, but she did not.

  A flicker of understanding crossed her features, and knowledge of all the nuances of failure and his perception of what it meant, and his momentary regret.

  She forced herself to smile, made it almost real. “Not reg’lar, like calling. See the same faces, but nobody makes appointments. Might come on the chance, sure enough. Ada was popular.” Her face crumpled, her shoulders sagged, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. “She was quick with her tongue, poor little beggar, and she could make you laugh.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “And people like to laugh.” She looked at Pitt. “She gave me a pair of boots once. We had the same size feet. They had a real pretty heel. She’d done better than me that week, and it was me birthday.” The tears spilled over her cheeks and ran down the paint on them, but she did not contort her face. There was a strange kind of dignity in her, a genuineness of grief which made nothing of the shabby room with its unmade dirty bed, the garish clothes, the smell of the midden coming up from the yard, even her weary body, too often used, too little loved.

  All Pitt could offer was to lend Ada McKinley the same worth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly and without thinking, placing his hand for a moment over hers. “I’ll do everything I can to find who did this to her, and I’ll make him answer, whoever he is.”

  “Will you?” she asked, swallowing awkwardly. “Even if he’s a gent?”

  “Even if he’s a gent,” Pitt promised.

  He went through the same questions with the third woman in the house, whose room was next to Ada’s. Her name was Agnes Salter. She was young and plain with a long nose and wide mouth, but there was a vitality to her which would probably serve her well enough for at least another ten years. With the bloom gone from her skin and the firmness from her body, she might find it much harder to make her way. Most probably she was as aware of that as he.

  “ ’Course I knew Ada,” she said matter-of-factly. She sat straight in a hard-backed chair, her skirts hitched up almost to her knees. Her legs were excellent, her best feature. No doubt she knew that too. She was not regarding Pitt as a man. He could see in the total disinterest in her expression that it was merely habit, and possibly quite comfortable. “Bit cocky, but not bad,” she went on, referring to Ada. “Willin’ ter share. Lent me a garter once.” She smiled. “Knew I ’ad better legs ’n ’er. Not that ’ers were bad, mind. But money’s money. I did well wi’ that. Some geezers get ’igh on garters. Guess fancy ladies don’t wear ’em. All whalebone stays and cotton drawers.”

  Pitt did not comment. It was now daylight outside and there was traffic on the street beyond the alley and the sweatshop opposite was hard at work.

  “Can’t tell yer nuffink,” Agnes went on. “Don’t know nuffink. I’d see the bastard quartered if I could. There’s risks-and there’s risks.” Her fingers were clenched, knuckles white, belying her studied casual air. “Yer ’spect ter get beat up now’n again. It’s part o’ life. An’ mebbe the odd cuttin’, which can go too far if yer man’s had a skinful. But this in’t right, poor sow. She never asked fer this.” She pushed out her large lower lip and her face was filled with anger. “Not that I s’p
ose any o’ you lot give a toss. Just another tart got done. There’s more’n enough tarts in London anyway. Mebbe it’s some ’oly Joe cleanin’ up the place?” She gave a laugh, a little high and sharp, and Pitt heard the fear in it.

  “I doubt it,” he said sincerely, although it was a possibility he had not thought of in this instance. It should not be ruled out.

  “Oh yeah?” She was curious. “Why not? Ada were a tart, just like the rest of us.”

  He did not quibble the use of words. He answered honestly.

  “There are evidences which suggest it could have been a man of wealth, and possibly position. She didn’t bring him up. According to Nan, he came here and Ada let him in. Sounds as if he’d been here before.”

  “Yeah?” She was surprised, and at least to some degree comforted. “Mebbe ’e were someone as she knew?”

  “Who did she know?”

  She considered for a while. Pitt had asked only out of diligence. He still believed it would prove to be Finlay FitzJames. There was no other likely explanation for the Hellfire Club badge under the body.

  “Someone as’d kill ’er?” she said thoughtfully. “I s’pose anyone ’oo quarreled wiv ’er. I’d ’a’ said some other tart as she pinched a customer from, ’cept she’d ’a’ fought and there’d ’a’ bin one ’ell of a row, an’ I never ’eard nuffink. Anyway …” She shrugged. “Yer might scratch someone’s eyes aht. Or, if yer was real vicious, take a knife ter their faces ter mark ’em, but yer’d do it in the street, wouldn’t yer? Yer’d ’ave ter bin a real mad bitch ter foller ’em ’ome an’ do it cold, like. An’ Ada weren’t that bad.”

  “That bad?” he asked. “But she did take other people’s customers?”

  Agnes laughed sharply. “Yeah! Course she did. ’Oo wouldn’t? She were pretty, an’ smart. She ’ad a quick tongue, made ’em laugh. Some toffs like ter laugh. Makes ’em feel less like they’re in the gutter. Feel like it’s a real woman. Them as can’t laugh wiv their la-di-da wives ’oo are all corsets and starch.” She lifted her lip in a sneer which still had a remnant of pity in it. “Poor cows prob’ly never ’ad a decent laugh in their lives. Ain’t ladylike ter laugh.”

  He said nothing. A dozen images crowded through his mind, but she would understand few of them, and it would serve no purpose trying to explain to her.

  In the house, somewhere above them, a door slammed and feet rattled down the stairs. Someone shouted.

  “And o’ course there’s them as likes the gutter,” Agnes went on, frowning. “Like pigs in muck. Somethink in it excites ’em.” The contempt was thick in her voice. “Jeez! If I din’t need their bleedin’ money, I’d stick the bastards meself.”

  Pitt did not doubt it. But it led him nowhere nearer to who had killed Ada McKinley without a fight. There was no blood in the room, and her body was hardly marked, except for the coldly, deliberately broken fingers and toes. There were no scratches, no bruising such as would have been caused by a drawn-out fight. One fingernail on her right hand had been torn, that was all.

  “Who did she know that would have called on her here?” he repeated.

  “I dunno. Tommy Letts, mebbe. ’E’d come ’ere. Or ’e would ’ave. She don’t work for ’im no more. Got someone better, she said. Bragged about it, jammy bitch.”

  “Could the man you saw have been Letts?”

  “Nah!” She swung her feet. “ ’E’s a dirty little weasel, black ’air like rats’ tails, an’ abaht my size. This geezer were tall, an’ thick ’air, wavy, all clean like a gent. An’ Tommy never ’ad a coat like that, even if ’e stole it.”

  “You saw him?” Pitt was surprised.

  “Nah, I never did. But Rose did. An’ Nan. Taken bad, Nan were. Soft cow. That doc were good to ’er. For a rozzer ’e were ’alf ’uman.” She pulled a face. “Young o’ course. ’E’ll change.”

  There was little more to learn. He pressed her about having heard anything, but she had been busy with her own clients, and the fact that she claimed to have noticed no sounds at all was only indicative that there had been no screams or crashes of knocked-over furniture. Pitt had already assumed as much from the nature of the death and the comparative order of the room. Whoever had killed Ada McKinley had taken her by surprise, and it had been quick. It had been someone she had trusted.

  Pitt left Agnes and went back to the corridor outside, where Ewart was waiting for him. Ewart glanced at him and saw from his expression that there was no escape, no new knowledge to free them from the necessity of going to Finlay FitzJames. A glimmer of hope faded from his black eyes and he looked smaller, somehow narrower, although he was a solid man.

  Pitt shook his head fractionally.

  Ewart sighed. The air blew up the stairs from the open door out to the alley. Lennox waited at the bottom in the shadows, his face lit yellowly by the constable’s bull’s-eye lantern.

  “FitzJames?” he said aloud, a curious lift in his voice.

  Ewart winced, as if he had caught an eagerness in it. His teeth ground together. He seemed on the edge of saying something, then changed his mind and let his breath out in a sigh.

  “I’m afraid so,” Pitt answered. “I’ll see him at breakfast. There’ll just be time to go home and wash and shave, and eat something myself. You’d better do the same. I shan’t need you for several hours, at least.”

  “Yes sir,” Ewart agreed, although there was no relief in his voice. The time was put off, not removed.

  Lennox stared up at Pitt, his eyes wide, shadows on his face in the darkness, unreadable, but there was a tension in his thin body under the loose jacket, and Pitt had a momentary vision of a runner about to move. He understood. His own anger was intense, like a white-hot coal somewhere deep inside him.

  He left Ewart to post a constable in Pentecost Alley. The room had no lock, and it would have been futile to trust to that anyway. There were enough picklocks within a hundred yards of the place to make such a gesture useless. Not that there was much evidence to destroy, but the body would have to be removed in a mortuary wagon, and Lennox would have the grim duty of a closer examination. It would be very unlikely to produce anything helpful, but it must be done.

  He wondered as he rode home through the early-morning streets-hectic with traffic, drays, market carts, even a herd of sheep-whether Ada McKinley had any relatives to receive the news that she was dead, anyone who would grieve. She would almost certainly have a pauper’s grave. In his own mind the decision was already made that he would go to whatever form of funeral she was given, even if it was simply an interment.

  He rode west through Spittalfields and St. Luke’s, skirting Holborn. It was quarter past seven.

  Bloomsbury was stirring. Areaways were busy with bootboys and scullery maids. Smoke trickled from chimneys up into the still air. Housemaids were starting the fires in breakfast rooms ready for the day.

  When he reached his own house in Keppel Street, and paid off the cabby, there was a streak of blue sky eastwards over the City, and the breeze was stirring. Perhaps it would blow the clouds away.

  The front door was already unlocked, and as soon as he was inside and had hung up his coat, he smelled the warmth and the odor of cooking. There was a scamper of feet and Jemima arrived at the kitchen door.

  “Papa!” she shouted happily, and started towards him at a run. She was eight years old now and quite conscious of her own dignity and importance, but not too ladylike to love to be hugged or to show off. She was dressed in a blue underfrock with a crisp white pinafore over it and new boots. Her hair, dark brown and curly, like Pitt’s, was tied back neatly and she looked scrubbed and ready for school.

  He held out his arms and she ran into them, her feet clattering with amazing noise for one so slim and light. He was still mildly startled by how loud children’s feet were.

  He hugged her and picked her up quickly. She smelled of soap and fresh cotton. He refused to think of Ada McKinley.

  “Is your mother in the kitchen?” he asked, putting
her down again.

  “ ’Course,” she replied. “Daniel lost his stockings, so we’re late, but Gracie’s making breakfast. Are you hungry? I am.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her she should not repeat tales, but she was already leading him towards the kitchen, and the moment was gone.

  The whole room was warm and full of the smells of bacon and new bread, scrubbed wood and steam from the kettle beginning to sing on the stove. Their maid, Gracie, was standing on tiptoe to reach the tea caddy, which Charlotte must inadvertently have put on the middle shelf of the dresser. Gracie was nearly twenty now, but had not grown appreciably since they had acquired her as a waif of thirteen. All her dresses still had to be taken up at the bottom, and usually lifted at the shoulders and tucked at the waist as well.

  She made a final jump and succeeded only in pushing it to the back of the shelf.

  Pitt walked over and picked it up.

  “Fank you, sir,” she said almost abruptly. She had immense respect for Pitt, and it grew with each new case; and she was perfectly used to being helped in such manner, but the kitchen was her domain, not his. One must keep an order in things.

  Charlotte came in with a smile, her eyes bright to see him but also searching. They had been married too long and too closely for him to be able to hide from her the nature of the call he had received or how it had affected him. The details he could and would refuse her.

  She looked at him carefully, his tired eyes, his unshaven cheeks, the sadness in the lines around his mouth.

  “Can you eat?” she asked gently. “You should.”

  He knew he should.

  “Yes, a little.”