by Anne Perry
“Hello, Froggy,” Pitt said cheerfully. “Can you spare me a few minutes?”
The man looked at him skeptically. “I ain’t got nothing as I oughtn’t to. You got no right to look!”
“I’m not looking, Froggy. I want your advice.”
“And I ain’t ratting on no one!”
“Your artistic advice,” Pitt elaborated. “On the worth of a perfectly legitimate picture. Or, to be more precise, an artist.”
“Who?”
“Godolophin Jones.”
“No good. Don’t touch it. But ’e’s bleedin’ hexpensive. Where d’you get that kind o’ money? You bin takin’ bribes, or suffink? D’you know what ’e sells for—four or five ’undred nicker a time, or near enough.”
“Yes, I do know that, and I won’t press you to tell me how you know. Why does he sell that highly, if he’s no good?”
“Oh, now there you ’as one o’ life’s mysteries. I dunno.”
“Maybe you’re wrong, and he is good?”
“Now, there’s no need to be rude, Mr. Pitt! I know my business. Couldn’t sell one o’ them Joneses, not if I was to give you a chicken with each one. People as buy from me wants suffink as they can keep for a while; then, when nobody’s lookin’ for it anymore, ship it out to some collector what ain’t too choosy as to ’ow they come by fings. No collector wants a Jones. You ask why they pays so ’igh—maybe it’s vanity? Don’t understand the Quality, never ’ave—and you’re wastin’ your time if you thinks you can. They’re a different sort of animal from you and me. No knowin’ what they’ll do, or why. Except I can tell you this—that Joneses never change ’ands; nobody sells ’em ’cos nobody buys ’em. Now, that’s a rule, that is—if it’s worth buying, somewhere, sometime, somebody’s goin’ to sell it!”
“Thank you, Froggy.”
“That all?”
“Yes, thank you, that’s all.”
“Does it ’elp?”
“I’ve no idea. But I think I’m glad to know it all the same.”
On his return to the police station before the end of the day, Pitt was greeted by the sergeant who had previously met him with news of one corpse after another. His heart sank as soon as he saw the wretched man’s face flushed with excitement again.
“What is it?” he snapped.
“That plate, sir, the photographic plate from the dead artist’s house.”
“What about it?”
“You sent it to be developed, sir.” He was practically fidgeting in his fever.
“Naturally—” Sudden hope seized Pitt. “What was on it? Tell me, man, don’t stand there!”
“A picture, sir, of a naked woman, naked as a babe, but nothing like a babe, if you get my meaning, sir?”
“Where is it?” Pitt demanded furiously. “What have you done with it?”
“It’s in your office, sir, in a brown envelope, sealed.”
Pitt strode past him and slammed the door. With shaking fingers he picked up the envelope and tore it open. The photograph was as the constable had said, an elegant but highly erotic pose of a woman without a shred of clothing. The face was perfectly clear. He had never seen her before, either in life or in paint. She was a total stranger.
“Damn!” he said fiercely. “Damnation!”
Pitt spent the next day trying to discover the identity of the woman in the photograph. If she was a person of social standing at all, the picture alone was motive for murder. He gave the sergeant a copy and had him try all the police stations in the inner city to see if anyone recognized her, and he took another copy himself, this time with the body carefully blocked out, to see if anyone in society knew her. She did not have to be a lady; even a maid, seeking to make a little money on the side with such things, would lose not only her present employment but any hope of future employment with all its security, clothes, regular meals, companionship, and certain status of belonging. That, too, could be cause for murder.
Of course, he went back to Vespasia.
She hesitated a long time before replying, weighing her answer so carefully he was more than half prepared for a lie.
“She reminds me of someone,” she said slowly, her head a little to one side, still considering it. “The hair is not right; I seem to feel it was done differently, if indeed I do know her. And perhaps it was a little darker.”
“Who is it?” he demanded, impatience boiling inside him. She might actually have the last clue to murder on the back of her tongue, and she was havering like a nervous bride.
She shook her head. “I don’t know—I just feel a certain familiarity.”
He let out his breath in a sigh of exasperation.
“There’s no use trying to goad me, Thomas,” she replied. “I am an old woman—”
“Rubbish!” he snapped. “If you are going to plead infirmity of mind—I’ll charge you with perjury!”
She smiled at him bleakly. “I do not know who it is, Thomas. Perhaps it is someone’s daughter, or even someone’s maid. Maybe I have normally seen that face under a lace cap? Hair makes a lot of difference, you know. But if I see her again, I shall send a messenger to you within the hour. You said you found this photograph in Godolphin Jones’s house, in his camera? Why is it so important?” She glanced at the picture still in her hand. “Is the rest of it indecent? Or is there some other person in it? Or perhaps both?”
“It is indecent,” he replied.
“Indeed.” She raised her eyebrows a little and handed it back to him. “Motive for murder then. I presumed so. Poor creature.”
“I must know who it is!”
“I appreciate your desire,” she said calmly. “You have not need to reinforce it.”
“If everyone were to go around murdering witnesses to indiscretion—” He was frustrated almost beyond the stretch of his temper. He was now nearly sure she was concealing something from him, if not knowledge, at least strong suspicion.
She cut across him. “I do not approve of murder, Thomas,” she said staring up at him. “If I remember who it is, I shall say so.”
He had to be content with that. He knew perfectly well she would say no more. He took his leave with as much grace as he could muster and went out into the thickening fog.
He spent most of the rest of the day inquiring, with the picture in his hand, but no one else was prepared to admit having known the woman, and by dusk he was cold, his legs and feet ached, there was a blister on his heel, and he was hungry and thoroughly miserable.
Then, as the fourth hansom cab passed him without stopping and left him islanded under the gas lamp in a sea of icy vapor, he had a sudden idea. He had temporarily forgotten all about the other corpses, presuming them incidental. They had all died naturally; only Godolphin Jones was murdered. But perhaps there was some bizarre connection? Horatio Snipe had been a procurer of women. Could his clientele have included Godolphin Jones—either for his own appetite or as subjects to photograph? Perhaps that was his particular fetish—lewd photography.
He ran out into the street, shouting at the next cab as it approached, and reluctantly it pulled to a halt.
“Resurrection Row!” he bellowed at the driver.
The man pulled a fearsome face but wheeled his horse round and started back, muttering angrily under his breath about darkness and graveyards, and what he hoped would happen to residents of such places if they hired cabs they could not pay for.
Pitt almost fell out at the other end, shoving coins at the alarmed driver, and strode down along the barely lit pavement to find number fourteen, where Horrie Snipe’s widow lived.
He had to knock and shout loudly enough to make a nuisance and send windows opening along the street with cries of abuse before she came to the door.
“All right!” she said furiously. “All right!” She opened it and glared at him; then, as she recognized him, her expression changed. “What do you want?” she said incredulously. “ ’Orrie’s dead, and buried twice! You oughta know that! It was you w’ot came wiv ’
im the second time. Don’t say someone’s dug ’im up again?”
“No, Maizie, everything’s fine. Can I come in?”
“If you ’ave to. What do you want?”
He squeezed in past her. The room was small, but there was a fire burning strongly, and it was much cleaner than he would have expected. There was even rather a good pair of candlesticks on the mantel shelf, polished pewter, and lace antimacassars over the backs of the chairs.
“Well?” she demanded impatiently. “I ain’t got nuffink in ’ere as isn’t mine—if that’s what you’re thinking!”
“It wasn’t what I was thinking.” He pulled out the picture. “Do you know her, Maizie?”
She took it between her finger and thumb gingerly. “An’ what if I do?”
“There’s ten shillings in it for you,” he said rashly. “If you give me her name and where I can find her.”
“Bertha Mulligan,” she said, without hesitation. “Lodges with Mrs. Cuff, down at number one thirty-seven, straight down on the left-’and side. But you won’t find ’er at ’ome this time o’ the evening. I shouldn’t wonder. Beginning work about now.”
“Doing what?”
She gave a snort of disgust at his stupidity for asking. “On the streets, o’ course. Probably up in one of them cafes near the ’Aymarket. Good-lookin’ girl, Bertha.”
“I see. And does Mrs. Cuff have other lodgers?”
“If you mean does she run an ’ouse, then I says go and look for yourself. I don’t talk about me neighbors, same as I don’t expect no gossip about me, nor poor ’Orrie, when ’e was alive.”
“I see. Thank you, Maizie.”
“Where’s my ten bob?”
He fished in his pocket and brought out string, a knife, sealing wax, three pieces of paper, a packet of toffees, two keys, and about a pound’s worth of change. He counted out ten shillings for her, reluctantly; it had been a promise made in the heat of discovery. But her hand was out, and there was no going back on it. She snatched it, checking it minutely.
“Thank you.” She closed her grip on it like a dying man’s and put it into the reaches of her underskirts. “That’s Bertha, all right. Why do you want to know?”
“Her picture was found in a dead man’s house,” he replied.
“Murdered?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it, then?”
“Godolphin Jones, the artist.” She might not have heard of him. Probably she could not read, and the murder would be of little interest in this quarter.
She did not seem in the least surprised.
“Stupid girl,” she said imperturbably. “I told ’er not to go posin’ for ’im; better to stick to what she knows. But not ’er, would try to better ’erself. Greedy, she was. I never like things on paper, meself; only leads to trouble.”
He grabbed at her arm without thinking, and she pulled away sharply.
“You knew she posed for Godolphin Jones?” he demanded, holding onto her.
“Of course I did!” she snapped. “Do you take me for a fool? I know what goes on in that shop of ’is!”
“Shop! What shop?”
“That shop of ’is a number forty-seven, of course, where ’e takes all the photographs and sells them. Disgusting, I calls it. I can understand a man who wants a girl and can’t get one for ’isself, like what ’Orrie used to provide for; but one what gets ’is fun out o’ lookin’ at pictures, now that’s what I call un’ealthy!”
A flood of understanding washed over Pitt, and a whole world of possibilities opened.
“Thank you, Maizie.” He clasped her hand with a warmth that positively alarmed her. “You are a jewel among women, a lily growing in a rubbish yard. May heaven reward you!” And he turned and charged out of the door into the thick darkness of Resurrection Row, crowing with delight.
9
ALICIA FIRST HEARD of the death of Godolphin Jones from Dominic. He had spent a morning with Somerset Carlisle, going over the names of those they could count on to support them when the bill came before the House in a few days’ time, and the news had come, whispered from servant to servant around the Park. Carlisle’s kitchen maid had been keeping company with Jones’s footman and had been among the first to hear.
Dominic arrived at the Fitzroy-Hammond house before luncheon, looking breathless and a little white. He was shown straight into the room where Alicia was writing letters.
As soon as she saw him, she knew something else was wrong. The joy she had expected to feel evaporated, and she was aware only of anxiety.
“What is it?”
He did not take her hands as usual. “They found the body of Godolphin Jones this morning. He was murdered.” He made no attempt to tell her gently or evade the unpleasantness. Perhaps association with Somerset Carlisle and the workhouse in Seven Dials had made such qualities ridiculous, even an offense against reality. “He was strangled to death about three or four weeks ago,” he went on, “and buried in someone else’s grave—the man who fell off the cab and you first thought was Augustus. He turned out to be someone’s butler.”
She was stunned, bemused by the rapidity of fact after fact, all new and jarringly ugly. She had never even thought of Godolphin Jones as having anything to do with the corpses. In fact, since Augustus was buried again, she had tried to dismiss the whole matter from her thoughts. Dominic was far more important, and over the last week her feelings about him had been becoming gradually less complete, tinged with an unhappiness, or perhaps an anxiety, that she had tried alternately to resolve or to put from her mind. Now she simply stared at him.
“Naturally, they’ll be looking in the Park,” he went on.
She was still confused, not understanding him.
“Why? Why should anyone in the Park kill him?”
“I don’t know why anyone at all should kill him,” he said a trifle tersely. “But since you cannot strangle yourself, even by accident, obviously someone did.”
“But why here?” she persisted.
“Because he lived here, and Augustus lived here, and Augustus’s corpse turned up here.” He sat down suddenly. “I’m sorry. It’s wretched. But I had to warn you because Pitt is bound to come. Did you know him—Godolphin Jones?” He looked up at her.
“No, not really. I met him once or twice; he was socially acquainted. He seemed pleasant enough. He painted Gwendoline, and Hester, you know. And I believe all three of the Rodneys.”
“He didn’t paint you?” he asked, frowning a little.
“No, I didn’t really care for his work. And Augustus never expressed any wish for a portrait.” She turned away a little and moved closer to the fire. She was thinking of the murder, but it seemed very impersonal. No one she knew appeared to be involved; no one was threatened by an investigation. She remembered how terrified she had been when it had been Augustus—afraid other people would suspect her, then even worse, that they would suspect Dominic. To begin with, the idea had been something outside herself, outside both of them, and she had felt they stood together facing an undeserved suspicion from those whose ignorance or malice would eventually be proved wrong.
Then the old woman had sowed seeds in her mind of doubt that the circle was really so simple. Assuredly, there was the circle that enclosed both of them in a common motive and held them apart from others; but there was also another circle that enclosed her alone, and it was a double barrier. She was ashamed and frightened by it—but the thought had crept into her mind that Dominic might have killed Augustus. The old woman had said he did, and she had not brought the whole heart, the absolute conviction to denying it that she would have wished, indeed, expected. There was a streak in him, a childlike reaching for his wants, that had allowed her to believe it possible, even if only for an instant.
How well did she know him? She turned away from the fire to look at him now. He was still as handsome, with the elegant head and shoulders, the way the hair grew on his neck, strong, neatly curved to the nape. His face was the same, the
lines of his smile, But how much more was there? What did he think, behind the face? Did she know those things, and did she love them, too?
When she looked at her own face in the glass, she saw even features, fine hair. When she moved closer, in the morning light, she saw all the tiny flaws, but she also knew how to disguise them. The whole was pleasing, even beautiful. Did Dominic see any more than that? Did he see the flaws and still love her, or would they disturb him, even repel him because it was not what he had looked for, believed in?
All he knew was the careful face she presented to him; her best. And perhaps she was at fault for that. She had taken so much trouble to hide all the other facets, the weaknesses and failings, because she wanted him to love her.
Had he wondered if she had killed Augustus? Was that why he had been cooler lately and so absorbed in this bill of Carlisle’s, not sharing it with her? She could have helped! She had every bit as many connections as he, in fact, more! If he had trusted her, felt that unity she believed was love, then he would have told her how he felt, what fear or pity Seven Dials had stirred in him. He would have tried to explain the confusion, in terms not of social wrong but of his own emotions.
He was looking at her now, waiting.
“I don’t suppose it has anything to do with us,” she said at last. “If Mr. Pitt comes here I shall see him, of course, but I cannot tell him anything of value.” She smiled, the nervousness all gone. Her stomach was as calm as sleep. They both knew what had happened, and it was a kind of release, like silence after a crescendo of music, too long and too loud—now she was back to reality again. “Thank you for coming. It was kind of you to tell me. It is always easier to learn of bad news from a friend than a stranger.”
He stood up very slowly. For a moment she thought he was going to argue, to try to pull back the threads; but he smiled, and for the first time they looked at each other without pretense or the delusionary quickening of the heart, the flutter, the urgent breath.
“Of course,” he said quietly. “Perhaps it will be solved before it needs to trouble us. Now I must go and see Fleetwood. The bill comes up very soon now.”