Cater Street Hangman

by Anne Perry

  “Good morning, Miss Ellison.” He watched Maddock disappear into the hall and closed the door behind him. “Charlotte, I came to tell you about George Ashworth.”

  Relief flooded through her. It was nothing to do with Dominic.

  “You know?” he said with surprise. What an extraordinary face he had; his feelings were so easily reflected, almost magnified in it.

  She was confused.

  “No? What about him? Did you discover something?” Again she was afraid, thinking of Emily. Was it Ashworth after all? That would at least mean he would not be able to hurt Emily any more, humiliate her by leaving her for someone else. The thought was touched with deep regret, which was ridiculous. It was only a very small part of her that had liked him.

  Pitt was watching her. “You like him,” he observed with a smile. His eyes were gentle.

  “I dislike him intensely,” she said with considerable sharpness.

  “Why? Because you are afraid for Emily? Afraid he would kill her, or afraid he will eventually get bored with her and move on to someone else, perhaps someone with money, or a title?”

  She resented his accuracy, his intrusion. Emily’s humiliation and hurt were none of his business.

  “Afraid he might kill her, of course! What is it you came to tell me, Mr. Pitt?”

  He ignored her terseness, still smiling. “That he probably did not even know the Hiltons’ maid, and he certainly did not kill Lily Mitchell. His actions are very fully accounted for all that day and night.”

  She was pleased, very pleased, which made no sense. It meant Ashworth would remain free to humiliate Emily, and she cared very much that that should not happen.

  “So you have eliminated one more person,” she said, looking for words, anything to say to him to banish the silence and avoid his eyes watching her, smiling, seeing every expression, every thought in her face.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Not a very satisfactory method of detection.”

  “Is that all you can do?” She meant it as a genuine question, not a criticism.

  He smiled a little wryly, a self-deprecating gesture. “Not quite. I’m trying to build up in my mind a picture of the kind of person we’re looking for, of the sort of man driven to do such things.”

  Involuntarily she voiced the same thought that had so horrified Dominic. “Do you think perhaps he’s a man—who—doesn’t know himself what he’s done, doesn’t know why, doesn’t even remember afterwards? Then he would be just as ignorant and as afraid as the rest of us?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  It was no comfort. She wished he had said no. It brought the person, the hangman, closer; it removed the gulf between them. He could be any one of them. Only God could know how he would feel when he discovered himself!

  “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “It frightens me, too. He must be found, but I am not looking forward to doing it.”

  She could think of nothing to say. Her mind’s eye could see only Dominic’s black tie, big enough to strangle the world. She wished Pitt would go away, before the very dominance of it in her mind made her tongue slip.

  “I saw your brother-in-law the other day,” he went on.

  She felt herself tighten. Fortunately she had her back to him and he could not see the spasm in her throat, the terror. She tried to speak, to sound casual, but nothing came. Was that what he had really come for, because he knew or guessed already?

  “In a coffeeshop,” he continued.

  “Indeed?” she managed to speak at last.

  He did not reply. She knew he was looking at her. She could not bear the silence. “I cannot imagine you had a great deal to discuss.”

  “The hangman, of course, but not much else, except a few other crimes. He seemed to feel this was the most important.”

  “Isn’t it?” She turned back to look at him, to judge from his face what he meant.

  “Yes, of course it is, but there are many others. My sergeant lost his arm a week ago.”

  “Lost his arm!” she was horrified. “How? What happened?” She remembered the little man vividly. How could he have had such an appalling accident?

  “Gangrene,” he said simply, but she saw the anger in his eyes. For a moment she actually forgot about Dominic. “He got an iron spike through it,” he went on, “when we went into the rookeries after a forger.” He told her what had happened.

  “That’s horrible,” she said fiercely. “Does that sort of thing happen to—to many of you?”

  She saw the flicker of hope in his face, then self-mockery as he derided his own feelings. Emily was at least partially right. He did care what she thought of him.

  “No, not many,” he answered. “It’s as often tragic, pitiful, or even funny, as it is violent. Most people would prefer to serve their sentences and stay alive. The punishments for violence are too savage to be taken lightly. Murder is a hanging offence.”

  “Funny?” she said incredulously.

  He sat sideways on the arm of one of the chairs. “How do you suppose people stay alive, in the rookeries, without a sense of humour? Without a rather bitter notion of the ludicrous, without wit, one could drown in it. You wouldn’t understand the costermonger, the prostitutes, the dolly-shop owners, but if you did, you’d find them funny sometimes: savage, giving no quarter and expecting none, inventive, greedy, but often funny as well. That’s the sort of world they live in. The weak and the disloyal die.”

  “What about the sick, the orphaned, the old?” she demanded. “How can you regard that with humour!”

  “They die, just as they often do even at your end of society,” he replied. “Their deaths are different, that’s all. But what happens to a divorced woman in your world, or one who has an illegitimate child, or a woman whose husband dies or can’t meet the bills? He’s politely driven to ruin, and often suicide. As far as you’re concerned, he or she is ruined from the day of their disgrace. You no longer see them in the street. You no longer call on them in the afternoons. There is no possibility of work, of marriage for the daughters, no credit with tradesmen. It’s a different kind of death, but we usually see the end of it, all the same.”

  There was nothing to say to him. She would like to have hated him, to have denied it all, or justified it, but she knew inside her it was true. Little bits of memory returned, people whose names were not to be mentioned anymore, people one suddenly did not see again.

  He put his hand out and touched her arm gently. She could feel the warmth of him.

  “I’m sorry, Charlotte. I had no right to say that as if it were your fault, as if you were part of it willingly or consciously.”

  “That doesn’t alter it though, does it?” she said bleakly.

  “No.”

  “Tell me about some of the things that are funny. I think I need to know.”

  He leaned back, taking his hand away. She felt a coldness from the move. She would have expected to find his touch offensive; it surprised her that she did not.

  He smiled a little wryly. “You met Willie at the police station?”

  Involuntarily she smiled also. She recalled the thin face, the friendly mixture of interest and contempt for her ignorance.

  “Yes; yes, I imagine he could tell a few colourful stories.”

  “Hundreds, some of them even true. I remember one he told me about a costermonger family, and a long and picturesque revenge against a shofulman—”

  “A what?”

  “A passer of forged money. And Belle—I was going to say you would like Belle, but she’s a prostitute—”

  “I might still be capable of liking her,” Charlotte replied, then wondered if she had committed herself too rashly. “Perhaps. . . . ”

  His face softened in amusement. “Belle came from Bournemouth. Her parents were respectable but extremely poor, in service in a middle-class house. Belle was seduced—I understand with more force than charm—by the son of the house, and as a result turned out. She was henceforth marked as soiled. Na
turally it was never considered that he should marry her. She came to London and discovered she was pregnant. To begin with she worked as a seamstress, sewing shirts—collars and wristbands stitched, six buttonholes, four rows of stitching down the front, for two and a half pence each. Do you sew, Charlotte? Do you know how long it takes to make a shirt? Do you do household accounts? Do you know what two and a half pence will buy?

  “She tried the workhouse, but was turned away because she did not have an official admittance order. At that point she was propositioned by a gentleman not old enough to be rich enough to make an advantageous marriage, but with plenty of natural appetite. It earned her enough to feed her child and buy him a blanket to sleep in.

  “And it opened a whole new world to her. She wrote to her parents every week; she still does, and sends them money. They think she earns it dressmaking. And what good would it serve to let them discover otherwise? They don’t know what dressmakers earn in London.

  “She found a landlord who protected her, but then he started taking more and more of her money. But this time she had friends—of many sorts, not just customers. She’s a handsome girl, shrewd, but not unkind, and I’ve seldom seen her when she couldn’t smile about something.”

  “What did she do?” Charlotte cared.

  “She had a steady lover who was a screever, a writer of letters, a forger of certificates, false testimonials and so forth. He had an uncle who was a kidsman. He organized all his little protégés to plague the landlord every time he went out of the door. His watch was stolen, his seals, his money. But worse than that, they jeered at him, pinned notes to him, and made him a laughingstock.”

  “If he was robbed, why didn’t he call the police?” she felt compelled to ask. “Especially if he saw who did it, and it continued?”

  “Oh he did! That’s how I came to know of it.”

  “You arrested them?” she was horrified and angry.

  He smiled at her, meeting her eyes squarely.

  “Unfortunately I had a stiff leg that day, and I was unable to run fast enough to catch any of them. Sergeant Flack got something in his eye, was obliged to stop and get it out, and by the time he could see again, they had gone.”

  She felt a wave of relief. “And Belle?”

  “She got a reasonable rent, and kept the rest of the earnings.”

  “And did she continue—as—as a prostitute?”

  “What else? Go back to stitching shirts at two and a half pence each?”

  “No, of course not. I suppose it was a silly question. It makes me realize a little how lucky I am to be born as I was. I always used to think it was unjust, that saying about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children to the third and fourth generations. But it isn’t, is it? It’s just a fact of life. We reap what our parents have sown.”

  She looked up and found Pitt’s eyes on her. The softness in them embarrassed her, and she turned away.

  “What about the hangman? Do you think he—can’t help it?”

  “I think it’s possible he doesn’t even entirely know it. Which is perhaps why even those closest to him don’t know it either,” he answered.

  The black tie came back to her mind with cold horror. For a while she had forgotten it, forgotten Pitt as a threat and thought of him only as—no, that was ridiculous!

  She stood up a little stiffly. “Thank you for coming to tell me about Lord Ashworth. It was extremely courteous of you, and has set my mind at rest, at least from the worst fear.”

  He stood up also, accepting the dismissal, but there was disappointment in his face. She was sorry for it; he did not deserve it. But she was too afraid of him to let him stay. He had an ability to anticipate her, to understand her thoughts too well. His quick sympathy, his intelligence, would lead her into betraying herself, and Dominic.

  He was still looking at her, damn him!

  Oh God! Had she dismissed him so hastily he sensed her fear? Had she dismissed him so soon after their mention of the hangman and his possible ignorance of his own actions, that he guessed she knew something? She must make amends.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Pitt. I did not mean to appear rude. I have not even offered you any refreshment.” She forced herself to meet his eyes. She smiled, her face stiff. She must look ghastly. “May I ring for something for you?”

  “No, thank you.” he walked to the door, then turned, frowning a little. “Charlotte, what are you afraid of?”

  She drew a deep breath, her throat tight. A moment passed before she could make any sound come.

  “Why, the hangman, of course. Isn’t everyone?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “Possibly even the hangman himself.”

  The room swung round her. An earthquake must feel like this. It was ridiculous. She must not faint. Dominic might be weak, give way to his appetites, but then one must accept that all gentlemen were like that. But Dominic could have had nothing to do with murder, wires round choking white necks in the street! She must have been insane, weak, and treacherous to have let such suspicions come into her mind.

  “Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “I imagine so. But you must catch him all the same, for everyone’s sake.” She deliberately put a lift into her voice, a positive sound as if it were all only peripherally to do with her, a social concern and not a personal one.

  His mouth curled a little at the corner and with a tiny gesture like a bow, he turned and went out of the room. She heard Maddock opening and closing the front door for him.

  Her knees gave way and she collapsed onto the sofa, tears running down her face.

  When Dominic returned in the evening she could not meet his eyes. Sarah also sat through dinner in silence. Emily was out with George Ashworth and a group of his friends. Grandmama delivered a monologue on the decline of social manners. Edward and Caroline maintained the rudiments of a conversation that no one else listened to.

  Afterwards Sarah said a little stiffly that she had a headache, and retired to bed. Mama accompanied Grandmama up to her sitting room to read to her for an hour or so, and Papa went into the study to smoke and write some letters.

  Dominic and Charlotte were left alone in the withdrawing room. It was a situation Charlotte had dreaded, and yet it was almost a relief to face it. The reality might not be as bad as her fears had become.

  She waited for a few minutes after the others had gone; then she looked up, afraid that if she did not speak soon, he might also leave.

  “Dominic?”

  He turned to face her.

  She was alone with him; she had his entire attention. The dark eyes were fully on her, a little worried. It should have turned her heart over. But all she could think of was Lily Mitchell, and Sarah upstairs unhappy over a trifle, when there was so much more Sarah did not even guess—or did she? And Pitt. She could see Pitt’s face in her mind, the light, probing eyes that made her feel so close. She shook herself hard. The thought was ridiculous.

  “Yes?” Dominic prompted.

  She had never been gifted with tact, never been able to approach things obliquely. Mama would have been so much better at this.

  “Did you like Lily?” she asked.

  His face puckered in surprise. “The maid Lily, Lily Mitchell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did I like her?” he repeated incredulously.

  “Yes, did you? Please answer me honestly. It matters.” It did matter, although she was not sure what she wanted the answer to be. The thought that he had cared for her was sharply painful, and yet the thought that he had used her without caring was worse; it was shabbier, dirtier, wider in its meaning.

  There was a faint colour in his face.

  “Yes, I liked her well enough. She was a funny little thing. Used to talk about the country, where she grew up. Why? Do you want to do something about her? She was an orphan, you know, actually illegitimate, I think. There’s no family to speak of.”

  “No, I wasn’t thinking of doing anything,” she said a little sharply. She had not known
Lily was an orphan. She had lived in the same house with her all those years, and for all the interest she had shown, Lily might as well not have existed. Was Dominic really any worse? “I wanted to know because of you.”

  “Me?”

  Was she mistaken, or had the colour deepened in his face?

  “Yes.” There was no point in lying, in trying to be evasive. He was staring at her. Why on earth should she want so much to touch him now? To reassure herself he was still the same person, the Dominic she had loved all her womanhood? Or was she feeling something like pity?

  “I don’t understand you,” he said slowly.

  She met his eyes with an honesty she could not have imagined a month ago. For the first time she looked deep into him, without fluttering heart or beating pulse. She looked at the person, and forgot the man, the beauty, the excitement.

  “Yes, you do. Millie brought me the necktie she found at the back of the bed when she turned the mattress. It was yours.”

  It seemed not to occur to him to lie. The colour came to his face painfully now, but he did not look away.

  “Yes, I liked her. She was very—uncomplicated. Sarah can be desperately stuffy sometimes.”

  “So can you,” she said brutally, and to her own surprise. A new, angry thought occurred to her, and as soon as it was in her head, it, too, was on her tongue. “How would you feel if Sarah went and made love to Maddock?”

  His face dropped in amazement. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “What’s ridiculous about it?” she asked coolly. “You lay with the maid, didn’t you? Lily wasn’t even a butler, just a maid!”

  “Sarah wouldn’t dream of such a thing; she isn’t a trollop. It’s extraordinary and degrading of you to have said it, even in fun.”

  “The last thing I intended was to be funny! Why are you insulted that I should speak of it hypothetically for Sarah, and yet you can admit it of yourself without any shame at all? You’re not ashamed, are you!”

  The colour came back again to his face, and for the first time he looked away from her.