Pentecost Alley Read online

  “It was not my intention, Mr. FitzJames,” Pitt replied. He would not be intimidated by the man. Once such a pattern was set it would be impossible to break. He was in charge of Bow Street and he owed this man nothing but courtesy and the truth. “But if that is the way you care to view it, then you may take it so.”

  FitzJames drew in his breath sharply, was about to retaliate, then realized the matter must be far more serious than he had originally supposed or Pitt could not have had the audacity to speak so.

  “I think you had better explain yourself.” He turned to his son. “Finlay! We shall retire to my study. We do not need to trouble your mother and sister with this.”

  Mrs. FitzJames shot a pleading look at him, but she had been dismissed, and she knew better than to argue. Tallulah bit her lip in frustration, but she also kept her peace.

  Finlay excused himself, then rose and followed his father and Pitt from the dining room, across the picture-hung hall and into a large book-lined study. There oxblood-red leather chairs surrounded a fireplace with a club fender in brass, leather bound also. It was a comfortable place for four or five people to sit, facing each other, and read or talk. There was a silver tantalus on a side table, and half a dozen books out of the glass-fronted cases.

  “Well?” FitzJames said as soon as the door was closed. “Why are you here, Mr. Pitt? I assume there has been an offense or a complaint. My son was not involved in it, but if he knows anything that may be of assistance to you, then naturally he will inform you of such details as you require.”

  Pitt looked at Finlay and could not tell whether he resented his father’s assumption of control or was grateful for it. His bland, handsome face revealed no deep emotion at all. Certainly he did not seem afraid.

  There was no purpose in prevarication any longer. FitzJames had robbed him of any subtlety of approach and the surprise it might have given him. He decided to attack instead.

  “There has been a murder—the East End,” he replied calmly, looking at Finlay. “A Hellfire Club badge was found on the site.”

  He had expected fear, the flicker of the eyes when the blow falls, however expected, the sudden involuntary pallor of the skin. He saw none of it. Finlay was emotionally unmoved.

  “Could have dropped at any time,” FitzJames said, dismissing the news of murder. He indicated a chair for Pitt to sit in, then himself sat directly opposite. Finlay took a third chair, between them, to Pitt’s left. “I assume you consider it necessary to speak to all those who are, or have been, members,” FitzJames continued coldly. “I dispute the necessity. Do you imagine one of them may have witnessed it?” His flat eyebrows rose slightly. “Surely if that were so they would already have reported the matter to some police station or other?”

  “People do not always report what they see, Mr. FitzJames,” Pitt replied. “For various reasons. Sometimes they do not realize that it is important, other times they are reluctant to admit they were present, either because the place itself embarrasses them or else the company with whom they were there—or simply that they had said they were elsewhere.”

  “Of course.” FitzJames relaxed a trifle in his chair, but he still sat forward in it, his elbows on either arm, his fingers over the ends. It was a position of command and control, reminiscent of the great statues of the Pharaoh Ramses, drawings and photographs of which were printed in the newspapers. “With what hours are we concerned?”

  “Yesterday evening from nine until midnight, or a little later,” Pitt replied.

  FitzJames’s face was under tight control, deliberately expressionless. He turned to his son. “We can end this matter very quickly. Where were you yesterday evening, Finlay?”

  Finlay looked embarrassed, but resentful rather than afraid, as if he had been caught in an indiscretion, but no more. It was the first thread-thin whisper of doubt in Pitt’s mind as to his involvement.

  “Out. I … I went out with Courtney Spender. Went to a couple of clubs, gambled a bit, not much. Thought of going to a music hall, and changed our minds.” He looked at Pitt ruefully. “Didn’t see any crimes, Inspector. And to be frank, haven’t had anything to do with the other club members in years. I’m sorry to be of no use to you.”

  Pitt did not bother to correct him as to his rank. He was almost certain Finlay was lying, not only because of the badge but because he so perfectly answered the description of the man Rose and Nan had both seen. There was a faint flush in his cheeks, and his eyes met Pitt’s, steady and overbright.

  FitzJames moved restively, but did not interrupt, and Finlay did not look at him.

  “Would you be good enough to give me Mr. Spender’s address, sir?” Pitt asked politely. “Or better still, if he has a telephone, we can clear up the matter instantly.”

  Finlay’s mouth fell slack. “I … I … can give you his address. No idea if he has a … if he has a telephone.”

  “I daresay your butler would know,” Pitt said quickly. He turned to FitzJames. “May I ask him?”

  FitzJames’s face froze.

  “Are you saying that my son is telling you less than the truth, Mr. Pitt?”

  “I had not thought so,” Pitt said, sitting in a mirror position in his own chair, hands on the arms. Finlay sat upright, on the edge of his seat.

  FitzJames drew in his breath sharply, then changed his mind. He reached for the bell.

  “I … I think that may have been the day before. Is it yesterday evening we are enquiring about?” Finlay looked confused. His cheeks were red and he clenched his hands, fidgeting and moving uncomfortably.

  “Where were you last night, sir?” Pitt could not afford to relent.

  “Ah … well … to tell you the truth, Inspector …” He looked away, then back at Pitt again. “I … I drank rather too much, and I can’t remember precisely. Around the West End. I know that. Weren’t anywhere near the East End. No reason. Not my sort of place, you know?”

  “Were you alone?”

  “No! No, of course not.”

  “Then who was with you, sir?”

  Finlay shifted in his seat a little.

  “Oh—various people—different times. Good God, I don’t keep a list of everyone I see! Most fellows take a night out occasionally. Do the odd club and hall, you know? No, I don’t suppose you do know.” He was not sure whether he intended it as an insult or not; the uncertainty was clear in his face.

  “Perhaps you will let me know if you should be fortunate enough to remember,” Pitt said with controlled politeness.

  “Why?” Finlay demanded. “I didn’t see anything.” He laughed a little jerkily. “Wouldn’t make a decent witness in my state, anyway!”

  FitzJames finally broke in. “Mr. Pitt, you have come into my home unannounced and at a most inconvenient hour. You said there has been a new murder somewhere in the East End … a large and nonspecific area. You have not told us who is dead nor what it has to do with anyone in this house, beyond the fact that a badge has been found of some club or other of which my son was a member several years ago and is not presently. To the best of our knowledge, it no longer exists. You require some better reason to continue to take of our time.”

  “The murder was in Pentecost Alley, in Whitechapel,” Pitt answered. He turned again to Finlay. “When did the Hellfire Club last meet, Mr. FitzJames?”

  “For God’s sake, man!” Finlay protested, still no more than irritated. “Years ago! What does it matter? Anyone could have dropped a badge in the street. Or—in a club, for that matter.” He gestured with his hands. “Doesn’t mean a thing! Could have been there for … I don’t know … months … even years!”

  “There’s rather a sharp pin on it,” Pitt pointed out. “I think a prostitute would have noticed it in her bed in quite a short time, say five minutes at the outside. Less, in this particular circumstance, since she was lying on it.”

  “Well, where did she say it came from?” FitzJames said angrily. “You aren’t going to take the word of a common whore over that of a
gentleman, are you? Any gentleman, let alone my son.”

  “She didn’t say anything.” Pitt looked from one to the other. “She was dead, her fingers and toes broken. She was drenched with water and then strangled with her own stocking.”

  Finlay gagged and went putty gray, his body slack.

  FitzJames took a very slow, deep breath and held it while he steadied himself, then let it out in a sigh. He was white around the mouth and there were two spots of color in his cheeks. He met Pitt’s eyes with a cold, defiant stare.

  “How regrettable.” He had difficulty keeping his voice level and under control. “But it has nothing to do with us.” He did not take his eyes from Pitt’s, as if by strength of will he could mesmerize him. “Finlay, you will give the Inspector the names and addresses of all those you know to be members of this unfortunate association. Beyond that, we cannot be of assistance.”

  Pitt looked at Finlay. “The badge we found has your name on it.”

  “He has already told you that he has not associated with them for years,” FitzJames said, his voice rising. “No doubt the badge was handed back to whoever was the president in charge of the … club … and he has since misplaced it. It has nothing to do with the identity of whoever killed this unfortunate woman. I imagine with an occupation like hers it is a natural hazard.”

  Pitt waited to allow his anger to subside, to make some remark that would crush the unthinking arrogance of the man and make him see Ada McKinley, and the women like her, as he did himself: not beautiful, not witty or innocent, but at least as human as anyone else. She had been as capable of hope or pain as his own daughter sitting in the dining room in her gorgeous muslin dress with its lace embroidery, her life before her in which she would probably never know hunger or physical fear, and her worst social sin wearing the same gown as her hostess or laughing at the wrong joke.

  But there was nothing he could say that would hold any meaning. In all the ways they could understand, Ada McKinley was exactly what FitzJames thought she was.

  “Of course,” he said coldly. “But police do not have the luxury of choosing whose murder they will investigate or where that investigation will lead them.” He allowed it to be as double-edged as he intended, even if neither man grasped it.

  “Naturally,” FitzJames agreed with a frown. The conversation seemed to have become pointless. It was obvious from his expression. He turned to Finlay. “When did you last see this badge, if you can recollect?”

  Finlay looked wretched. His extreme discomfort could be attributed to half a dozen possible reasons: his distress at being drawn into the murder of a woman of the streets, his embarrassment at having been so drunk he could not account for his movements last evening, fear at now being in a position where he was going to have to name his friends and draw them in also. Perhaps it was even the suspicion that one or several of them might actually be involved. Or simply anticipation of what his father would say to him once Pitt had gone.

  “I … really … don’t know.” He faced Pitt squarely, but still sitting with his arms folded across his upper stomach. Perhaps it hurt after his indulgence. Certainly the skin around his eyes was puffy and Pitt could well believe his head ached. “It’s years ago. I’m sure of that,” he said unwaveringly. “Five at least.” He avoided his father’s cold gaze. “I lost it then. I doubt any of my friends had it, unless it was accidental, a jape or something.”

  Pitt was perfectly sure there was a lie in it somewhere, but when he looked at FitzJames he met a blank wall of denial. There was not a shadow or flicker of surprise in him. He had expected this answer as if he had known the precise words. Was it rehearsed?

  “The names of the other members?” Pitt asked wearily. Now his lack of sleep was catching up with him, his inner tiredness from too much misery, dark streets and alleys which smelled of refuse and hopelessness. “I require their names, Mr. FitzJames. Someone had that badge last night and left it under the body of a woman he murdered.”

  FitzJames winced with distaste, but he did not move, except his fingers tightened a fraction on the arm of his chair.

  Finlay still looked very pale, and white around the mouth, as if he might be sick.

  In the corner a standing clock ticked steadily with a heavy, resonant tone. Outside the footsteps of a maid clicked softly across the parquet floor.

  “There were only four of us,” Finlay said at last. “Norbert Helliwell, Mortimer Thirlstone, Jago Jones and myself. I can give you Helliwell’s last address, and Thirlstone’s. I have no idea where Jones is. I haven’t seen or heard of him in years. Someone said he’d taken up the church, but they were probably joking. Jago was a damn good fellow, as much fun as anyone. More likely gone abroad to America, maybe. He’s the sort of chap who might go west—Texas or the Barbary Coast.” He tried to laugh, and failed.

  “If you would write the other two addresses for me,” Pitt requested.

  “I don’t suppose they can help you!”

  “Perhaps not, but it will be somewhere to start.” Pitt smiled. “The man was seen, you know? By at least two witnesses.”

  He had expected to rattle Finlay, perhaps even to break him. He failed utterly.

  Finlay’s eyes widened. “Was he? Then you know it wasn’t me, thank God! Not that I know such a woman,” he added hastily. It was a lie, and not even a good one. This time he colored and seemed about to withdraw it.

  It was FitzJames whose face tightened with a lightning flash of uncharacteristic fear, gone again the instant it had come. His look at Pitt now was one of anger, perhaps because he thought Pitt might have recognized it. After all, he had caused it, and that he would not forgive.

  “I doubt it was Helliwell or Thirlstone either,” Finlay went on to cover the silence. “But if you insist, then you’ll discover that. Jago Jones I can’t answer for, because you might find him a great deal harder to trace. I don’t even know if he has family. One doesn’t always ask these things, if it isn’t obvious. Kinder not to, if a fellow comes from nowhere in particular, as he seemed to.”

  There was not a great deal more Pitt could do. He considered asking to see the coat Finlay had worn yesterday evening, but unless he destroyed it, the valet could always answer that later.

  “There is the matter of a cuff link,” he said finally. “A rather distinctive one, dropped down the back of a chair in the woman’s room. It has ‘F.F.J.’ engraved on it, and is hallmarked. Not the sort of thing I think her average customers would possess.”

  FitzJames went white, his knuckles shone where he gripped the chair arms. He swallowed with some difficulty. His throat seemed to have contracted as if his collar choked him.

  Finlay, on the other hand, was totally at a loss. His handsome, blurred face showed nothing but confusion.

  “I used to have a pair like that….” he mumbled. “My sister gave them to me. I lost one … but years ago. Never liked to tell her. Clumsy of me. Felt a fool, because I knew they were expensive. Always meant to get another one made, so she wouldn’t know.”

  “How did it get in Ada McKinley’s chair, Mr. FitzJames?” Pitt said with a faint smile.

  “God only knows,” Finlay answered. “As I said, I don’t frequent places like that! I’ve never heard of her! She is the woman who was killed, I presume?”

  FitzJames’s face was dark with anger and contempt.

  “For God’s sake, boy, don’t be such a damn fool. Of course you’ve used women like that in your time!” He turned to Pitt. “But that cuff link could have been there for years! You can’t connect it to last night or anything that happened then. Go and look for these other young men. See if you can find out something about the damned woman. She was probably killed in a quarrel over money, or by a rival in her trade. That’s where your job is.” He rose to his feet, his joints momentarily stiff, as if he had been constricting himself with such a tension of muscles his bones had locked. “We will write these addresses for you. Now I must be about my own affairs. I am overdue in the City. Good day
to you, sir.” And he walked out without looking behind him, leaving Pitt alone with Finlay.

  Finlay hesitated awkwardly. He was embarrassed by having not only been caught in a lie but reprimanded for it in front of Pitt. It was stupid and he had no excuse. It was an instinctive act of cowardice, the instant will to deny, to escape, not something for which any man could be proud. Now he was about to give his friends’ names and addresses to Pitt, and that also was something he could not avoid, and yet it sat ill with him. It would have been so much more honorable, more gentlemanly, to have been able to refuse.

  “I’ve no idea where Jago Jones is,” he said with satisfaction. “Haven’t seen him for years. He could be anywhere. He was always a bit of an odd one.”

  “I daresay someone will know,” Pitt replied with a bleak smile. “Army records, or the Foreign Office, perhaps.”

  Finlay stared at him, his eyes wide. “Yes, possibly.”

  “Mr. Helliwell?” Pitt pressed.

  “Oh … yes. Taviton Street. Number seventeen I think, or fifteen.”

  “Thank you.” Pitt took out his notebook and pencil and wrote it down. “And Mr. Thirlstone

  “Cromer Street. That’s off the Grey’s Inn Road.”

  “Number?”

  “Forty-something. Can’t recall what. Sorry.”

  Pitt wrote that as well. “Thank you.”

  Finlay swallowed. “But they won’t have had anything to do with this, you know. I don’t know where that damned badge came from, but… but I’ll swear it wasn’t anything to do with them. It was a damn stupid club in the first place. A young man’s idea of a devilish good time, but all very silly, really. No harm in it, just … oh …” He shrugged rather exaggeratedly. “A little too much to drink, gambling rather more than we could afford to lose, drinking too much … that sort of thing. Immature … I suppose. But basically quite decent fellows.”

  “I expect so,” Pitt agreed halfheartedly. A lot of people one presumed decent had darker, more callous sides.

  “As I said, the badge could have gone missing years ago,” Finlay went on, frowning, staring at Pitt with a degree of urgency. “I can’t remember when I last saw mine. God knows.”