by Anne Perry
Pitt pointed out that Jones had been a society artist and that anyone who had lived in an area like Gadstone Park could not be murdered and then merely forgotten, or other residents of such areas would feel distinctly uneasy as to their own future safety.
The point was conceded him, unhappily.
Then Pitt himself went back to the Park and Major Rodney. This time he would not be put off by the major’s anger or protestations; he could no longer afford to be. If the murderer of Godolphin Jones had taken advantage of the grave robbings to hide his own crime, as St. Jermyn had suggested, then the death of Lord Augustus was irrelevant. There was no point in looking any further for sense or connection between Albert Wilson, Horrie Snipe, W. W. Porteous, and Lord Augustus, because there was none. As far as either motive or means was concerned, the murder of Godolphin Jones stood alone. The key to them surely lay in the pornography shop in Resurrection Row, or in the little book with its hieroglyphic insects, or both.
It was possible the murderer was one of any number of women whose faces were on those photographs, or perhaps someone else he had blackmailed as he had done Gwendoline Cantlay. But surely the number of affaires he had had must be severely limited by both time and opportunity. By all accounts he was not an abnormally charming man. He might have flattered liberally, but society beauties were used to that. On the whole, Pitt inclined to think his romantic opportunities slight. The blackmail must lie in other areas as well, which brought Pitt back once again to Resurrection Row and the photographs.
He was at Major Rodney’s door. The butler answered and suffered him to enter with the look of weary acceptance of one who is resigned to something unpleasant but inevitable. Pitt had felt the same when toothache had finally driven him to the dentist.
The major received him with ill-concealed impatience.
“I have nothing else to add, Inspector Pitt,” he said, waspishly. “If you cannot do better than to go over and over old ground, pestering people, then it would be better if you were to pass the case over to someone more competent. You are making a nuisance of yourself!”
Pitt would not be pressured to apologize. It stuck in his throat. “Murder is an untidy and annoying business, sir,” he replied.
He towered over the major, putting him at a disadvantage. The major waved to a chair and ordered Pitt to sit down. He sat on a straight-backed chair himself, ramrod-stiff, reversing the advantage so now he could look down on Pitt, sprawled in a deep sofa, his coat falling open and his scarf undone in the warmth of the room.
The major’s confidence was somewhat restored.
“Well, what is it now?” he demanded. “I have told you that I had very little personal acquaintance with Mr. Jones, no more than civility required, and I have shown you the portraits. I really cannot think of anything else. I am not a man to make other people’s business my concern. I do not listen to gossip, and I will not permit my sisters to repeat such as they cannot help overhearing, since it is in the nature of women to talk, mostly upon trivial matters.”
Pitt would like to have argued-he could imagine what Charlotte would have said to such a condemnation of women-but the major would not have understood him, and he had no place to discuss such subjects. This was not a friendship and they were not equals; it was not for him to question the major’s convictions.
“Indeed,” he replied. “Gossip can be a great evil, and much of it is false. Although I have often gained valuable insight into the nature or personality of people by listening to it. What one man says of another may be false, but the fact that he says it at all tells me-”
“That the man is a gossipmonger and a liar to boot!” the major snapped. “I have nothing but contempt for you, or for an occupation which obliges you to indulge in such vices!” He stared at Pitt fiercely, seeming to burn him with indignation.
“Precisely,” Pitt agreed. “What a man says may tell nothing of the object of his speech, but it tells a great deal about him.”
“What?” The major was startled. It took him several moments to digest Pitt’s meaning.
“When you open your mouth you may or may not betray another, but you assuredly betray yourself,” Pitt repeated. A new thought had come to him, about Major Rodney and his feelings towards women.
“Huh!” the major snorted. “Never went in for sophistry. Soldier-all my life. Man for doing things, not sitting around talking about it. Better for you if you’d been in the army, make a man of you.” He looked at Pitt’s clothes, the way he was sitting, and Pitt could almost see in his face the vision of the drill sergeant, the barber, and the parade ground, and the miraculous change that could be wrought in a man. He smiled, blissful that it would never be.
“Of course, there are many women with mischievous tongues,” Pitt observed, feeding the major the thoughts he wanted. “And idleness is a schoolmaster of evil.”
The major was again surprised. He had not expected such perception in a policeman, especially this one. “Quite,” he agreed. “That is why I do all I can to see that my sisters are kept occupied. Good, homely tasks, and of course such study as they are capable of, in the care of homes and gardens, and so forth.”
“What about current affairs, or a little history?” Pitt inquired, leading him gently.
“Current affairs? Don’t be foolish, man. Women have neither the interest nor the capacity for such things. And it is unsuitable in them. I see you don’t know women very well!”
“Not very,” Pitt lied. “I believe you were married, sir?”
The major blinked. He had not anticipated the question. “I was. My wife died a long time ago.”
“Very unfortunate,” Pitt commiserated. “Were you married long?”
“A year.”
“Tragic.”
“All over now. Got over it years ago. Not like getting used to a thing. Hardly knew her, really. I was a soldier-away fighting for my Queen and country. Price of duty.”
“Quite so.” Pitt did not have to affect pity; he was beginning to feel it like a welling, bitter spring inside him as his idea grew stronger. “And women are not always the companions one hopes,” he added.
The major’s face sank into lines of quiet reflection, looking back on disillusions. The reality was unpleasing, but the recognition of it gave him a certain satisfaction in having overcome, even a sense of superiority over those who had yet to face it.
“They are different from men,” he agreed. “Shallow creatures, for the most; nothing to talk about but fashion, the way they look, and other similar foolishness. Always laughing at nothing at all. A man cannot take much of that, unless he’s as big a fool as they are.”
The idea crystallized in Pitt’s brain. Now was the time to put it to the test. “Extraordinary thing about these bodies,” he said casually.
The major’s head jerked up. “Bodies? What bodies?”
“Keep turning up.” Pitt watched him. “First the man on the cab box, then Lord Augustus, then Porteous, then Horatio Snipe.” He saw the major’s eye flicker and his Adam’s apple move. “Did you know Horrie Snipe, sir?”
“Never heard of him.” The major swallowed.
“Are you sure, sir?”
“Do you question my word?”
“Shall we say, your memory, sir?” Pitt hated it, but he had to continue, and the more quickly it was done, the shorter the pain. “He was a procurer of women, and he worked in the Resurrection Row area. The same place Godolphin Jones kept his pornography shop. Perhaps that revives your recollection a bit?” He caught the major’s eye and held it in a hard, candid gaze that allowed no retreat, no mercy of pretended ignorance.
The color wavered, then swept up the major’s mottled skin. He was ugly and pathetic, hurting Pitt in a way perhaps he did not hurt himself. He could not see how fragile, how unused he looked, how much of him had never grown.
He could find no words. He could not admit it, and he dared no longer deny it.
“Was that what Godolphin Jones was blackmailing you with?”
Pitt asked quietly. “He knew about Horrie Snipe’s woman, and he sold you photographs?”
The major sniffed. Tears started running down his cheeks, and he was furious with himself for showing weakness, hating Pitt for seeing it.
“I did-I did not kill him!” he said between gulps to control himself. “Before God, I did not kill him!”
Pitt did not doubt it for a moment. The major would never have killed him-he needed him for his private dreams, his pictures and fantasies where he could live out the mastery he could never achieve in life. Jones was doubly precious to him since Horrie Snipe had died just before him, cutting the major off from his brief, wild adventure into the realms of live women.
“No,” Pitt said quietly. “I don’t suppose you did.” He stood up, looking down on the rigid little man, wanting to get out into the fog and drizzle, and escape from the despair inside. “I’m sorry it has been necessary to discuss this. It need not be mentioned again.”
The major looked up, his eyes watering. “Your- report?”
“You are not a suspect, sir. That is all I shall say.”
The major sniffed. He could not bring himself to thank Pitt.
Pitt let himself out and breathed in the bitter fog with a sense of release, almost of warmth within him.
But it was not a solution. Suddenly the little notebook seemed much less promising. Without searching the drawing rooms of London, he knew of no way of finding all the rest of the pictures that carried the hieroglyphic insects. And there was no proof that the owners were all victims of blackmail, or any other sort of pressure. Possibly they were simply customers for the photographs as well, and Godolphin Jones had chosen this disguised and highly profitable way of collecting his fee. To have his art paid for at such inflated prices was a double reward, because it enhanced his professional reputation in a way his skill never could. Pitt was obliged to admire his ingenuity, if nothing else about him.
But if they were customers for his pornographic pictures, they would be the last people to wish him dead! One did not cut off one’s source of supply, especially of something that one desperately wished to be kept secret and that was presumably, in its own way, addictive.
There was, of course, another possibility: a rival in the market. That was a thought that had not occurred to him before. Jones’s work was good; at least he had a better eye than most practitioners in the field that Pitt had come across, although admittedly his experience was slight. He had not worked in the vice areas by choice, but it fell to the lot of every policeman now and again. And all the photographs he had seen before had been pathetic and obvious in their banality: portrayals of nakedness, and very little more. These of Jones’s had at least some pretensions to art, of a decadent sort. There was a little subtlety in them, a use of light and shade, even a certain wit.
Yes, very possibly some other merchant in the same trade had found himself squeezed out of the market and had rebelled in the only way he knew how; effective-and permanent.
Pitt spent the rest of that day and all the following one questioning his colleagues in all of the stations within three or four miles of either Gadstone Park or Resurrection Row to catch up on whatever was known about current dealers in pornographic pictures. When he finally reached home after seven o’clock and found Charlotte waiting for him a little anxiously, he was beyond giving her an explanation and inside himself blessed her for not asking one. Her silence was the most companionable thing he could think of. He sat all evening in front of the fire without speaking. She was wise enough to occupy herself with knitting, making no sound but the clicking of her needles. He did not wish to relive the squalor he had seen, the twisting of minds and emotions until all affections became mere appetites, and the titillation of those appetites for financial gain. So many sad little people clutching paper women, fornicating in and dominated by fantasies: all flesh and prurient, frightened mind, and no heart at all. And he had learned nothing of use, except that no one knew of a rival with either the need or the imagination to have killed Godolphin Jones and buried him in Albert Wilson’s grave.
In the morning he set out again with nothing left but to return to the shop in Resurrection Row and the photographs. The two constables were there when he arrived. Both of them leaped up, red-faced, as he opened the door.
“Oh! It’s you, Mr. Pitt,” one of them said hastily. “Didn’t know who it might be!”
“Does anyone else have a key?” Pitt asked with a twisted smile, holding up the one he had had cut.
“No, sir, not exceptin’ us, o’ course. But you never know. “ ’E might ’ave ’ad-” He trailed off; the idea of an accomplice was never likely, and the look on Pitt’s face told him it was useless. “Yes, sir.” He sat down again.
“We just about got ’em all sorted,” his companion said proudly. “I reckon as there’s about fifty-three different girls, all told. Lot of ’em ’e used a fair number o’ times. I suppose there aren’t that many women as can do this sort o’ thing.”
“And not for long,” Pitt agreed, his amusement vanishing. “A few years on the streets, a few children, and you can’t strip off in front of the camera any more. Unkind thing, the camera; doesn’t tell any comfortable lies. Do you know any of the girls?”
The constable’s back went rigid and his ears burned red. “Who, me, sir?”
“Professionally.” Pitt coughed. “Your profession, not theirs!”
“Oh.” The other constable ran his fingers round his collar. “Yes, sir, I ’ave seen one or two. Cautioned ’em, like. Told ’em to move on, or go ’ome and be’ave theirselves.”
“Good.” Pitt smiled discreetly. “Put them on one side, with names if you remember them. Then give me the best picture of each, and I’ll start checking.”
“The best one, sir?” The constable’s eyes opened wide, his eyebrows almost to the roots of his hair.
“The clearest face!” Pitt snapped.
“Oh-yes, sir.” They both started sorting rapidly and in a few moments handed Pitt about thirty photographs. “That’s all we’re sure of so far, sir. We should ’ave ’em all by lunchtime.”
“Good. Then you can start round the brothels and rooming houses as well. I’ll begin in Resurrection Row, going north. You can go south. Be back here by six o’clock, and we’ll see what we have.”
“Yes, sir. What are we looking for, sir, really?”
“A jealous lover or husband, or more likely a woman who had a great deal to lose if people found out she posed for this sort of picture.”
“Like a society woman?” The constable was dubious, picking up one of the photographs and squinting at it.
“I doubt it,” Pitt agreed. “Possibly middle-class, after something a little daring to do, more likely respectable working-class hard up, or a servant with aspirations.”
“Right, sir. We’ll get this lot sorted and be on our way.”
Pitt left them to it and went out into the Row to begin. The first rooming house got rid of three on his list. They were handsome, professional prostitutes who had been glad of the extra money and rather amused by the whole thing. He was about to leave when, on a sudden chance, he decided to show them the rest of the pictures.
“Oh, now, love.” A big blond one shook her head at him. “You wouldn’t expect me to go around naming other people, would you? What I do meself is one thing, but talkin’ about other girls is something else.”
“I’m going to find them, anyway,” he pointed out.
She grinned. “Then good luck to you, love. You ’ave fun lookin’.”
He did not want to say anything about murder. He had not said anything about it to the landlady, either. It was a crime for hanging, and everyone knew it. The shadow of the gallows closed even the most garrulous moths. If they did not know, so much the better.
“I’m only looking for one girl,” he said reasonably. “Just have to eliminate all the rest.”
She narrowed bright blue painted eyes at him. “Why? What’s she done? Somebody m
ade a complaint?”
“No.” He was perfectly honest, and he hoped it showed. “Not at all. As far as I know, all your customers are perfectly satisfied.”
She gave him a wide smile. “You got a quid to spare then, love?”
“No.” He smiled back good-naturedly. “I want to know how many of the rest of these are regular working girls who don’t have any objection to anyone knowing what they do.”
She was quick. “A touch o’ the black, is it?”
“That’s right.” He was startled by her perception. He must not underrate her again. “Blackmail. Don’t like blackmailers.”
She screwed up her face. “Give us them again, then.”
He passed one over hopefully, then another.
She looked at it, then reached for the next.
“Cor!” She let out her breath. “Bit much of ’er, ain’t there? Don’t ’ardly need a bustle, do she? Backside like the Battersea gasworks!”
“Who is she?” He tried to keep a straight face.
“Dunno. Gimme the next one. Ah, that’s Gertie Tiller. She’d a done that for a laugh. Nobody’ll black ’er for it. Tell ’em where to go, she would.” She handed it back, and Pitt put it in his left pocket with the others he had dismissed. “And that’s Elsie Biddock. Looks better without ’er clothes on than she does with ’em! That’s Ena Jessel. Although that’s never all ’er ’air. Must be a wig. She looks damn silly in all them feathers.”
“Could you put the black on her?” Pitt inquired.
“Never! Proud of it, like as not. Never seen ’er, reckon she’s an amateur. You could try ’er. Amateurs is scared rotten, some of ’em. Poor bleeders just tryin’ to get a bit on the side to make ends meet, pay the rent an’ feed theirselves.”
Pitt put it back in his right pocket.