Pentecost Alley tp-16

by Anne Perry

  “What things?”

  “What things?” Daniel echoed. “Is Papa frightened and upset? Is he people?”

  “No,” Charlotte lied, wondering frantically how to protect them. Which was worse: trying to pretend everything was all right when it obviously was not, and only making them feel more frightened because they were lied to; or telling them something of the truth, so at least it made sense and they were part of the family? They would be worried and frightened, but not by the formless horrors of imagination and the feeling that they were alone and not trusted.

  Without having made a conscious decision, she found herself answering.

  “There has been another lady died in Whitechapel, just the same as the one a little while ago. It looks as if perhaps the wrong man was punished. People are very upset about it, and sometimes when you are angry or frightened, you want to blame someone. It makes it feel less difficult.”

  Jemima was puzzled. “Why does it?”

  “I don’t know. But you remember when you walked into the chair and stubbed your toe?”

  “Yes. It went all blue and yellow and green.”

  “Do you remember how you felt?”

  “It hurt.”

  “You said it was my fault.” Daniel’s eyes narrowed and he looked at his sister accusingly. “It wasn’t my fault. I never put the chair there! You weren’t looking where you were going.”

  “I was!” Jemima said indignantly.

  “You see?” Charlotte interrupted. “It’s easier to be angry than to admit you were clumsy.”

  Daniel beamed with triumph. For once his mother had actually taken sides and he had won the argument.

  Jemima looked cross. A flash of temper lit her eyes and she glared at him.

  “The point is,” Charlotte went on, realizing her example had not been a fortunate one, “that when people are upset, they get angry. They are upset now because another lady has died, and they are frightened that they may have punished the wrong man, so they feel guilty as well. They are looking for someone to be angry with, and Papa seems like a very good person, because he was the one who thought the man they punished was the one who did it. Now it looks as if he wasn’t.”

  “He made a mistake?” Jemima asked, the furrow deep between her fine, soft brows.

  “We don’t know yet. It’s too difficult to understand. But it is possible. We all make mistakes sometimes.”

  “Papa too?” Jemima asked gravely.

  “Of course.”

  “Will they get very angry with him?”

  She hesitated. Was it better to be forewarned? Would a comforting lie rebound on her later and make the hurt even worse? Or was she adding an unnecessary fear, expecting far too much of them? She wanted above everything to protect them. But what was protection? Was it lies or truth?

  “Mama?” There was the beginning of fear in Jemima’s voice. Daniel was watching her carefully.

  “They may do,” she said, meeting the solemn eyes. “But they will be wrong, because he has done the best anyone can do. And if there has been a mistake, then it was everybody’s, not just his.”

  “Oh,” Jemima replied. “I see.” She turned back to her breakfast and continued eating, very thoughtfully.

  Daniel looked at her, then back at Charlotte, took a deep breath, and resumed his meal also.

  “I’ll walk to school with you today,” Charlotte said decisively. “It’s a lovely day, and I’d like to.” If there were other newspapermen waiting outside, or remarks of any sort in the street, she would not have Gracie involved in a full-scale battle with Daniel and Jemima in the middle. She would have to keep a very firm bridle on her own temper.

  And as it happened the real unpleasantness did not occur until the afternoon editions were out, and then it was extremely ugly. Someone had given the press a very lurid account of Nora Gough’s murder, with a detailed description of the signs and symptoms of asphyxiation by strangling. This time the broken bones, the boots and the water were not omitted. Nothing was spared, and all was naturally likened to the murder of Ada McKinley as well. There were large pictures of Costigan looking frightened and sulky, only now instead of interpreting his scowl as viciousness, they called it terror of the judgment of the law, as used to crush the common man before the wheels of perjured justice. Pitt’s name was sprinkled liberally in every article and he carried the blame for Costigan’s hanging far more prominently than he had ever won the praise for his original arrest.

  Charlotte walked out of the front door and along the road bitterly aware of curtains twitching and whispered words behind them. The tea parties she would not be invited to, the people who would not see her in spite of her being directly in front of them, the sudden urgent engagements declared when she approached, did not worry her. All her fury was for Pitt and the children. She would have defended them to the last blow, if only there were someone to strike at!

  As it was, she strode along the road with her head high, ignoring anything to the right or left of her, and swung around the corner almost knocking over old Major Kidderman, who was taking his dog for a stroll.

  “I’m sorry,” she said hastily. “I beg your pardon.” She was about to continue when he spoke.

  “Tribulations of command, my dear,” he said quietly, touching his hat. “Hard, but there we are.” And he smiled at her shyly.

  “Thank you, Major. That’s very …” She did not know what she meant … wise … kind. Both sounded wrong. “Thank you,” she said lamely, but she smiled back at him with a sudden and very real warmth.

  She collected Daniel and Jemima from the school and made the return journey. A pinch-faced young woman crossed the road away from them, her expression one of acute distaste. A woman with three children hurried past, avoiding Charlotte’s eyes. The little girl, in a frilly dress, stopped to speak to Jemima and was told sharply to come along and not waste time.

  On the corner a newsboy was shouting the latest headlines.

  “Police ’ang the wrong man! New murder in Whitechapel! Costigan innocent! Read all abaht it! Another ’orrible murder in Whitechapel!”

  Charlotte hurried past him, averting her eyes. Not that he would have offered her a newspaper or expected her to buy one. She was walking so rapidly both children had to run to keep up with her, and she raced up the steps and pushed the door open with such force it swung back and banged against the stopper on the floor.

  Gracie stood at the kitchen door, a rolling pin in her hand. She was so angry she could hardly speak. Her face filled with relief when she saw Charlotte.

  Charlotte burst out laughing, and the instant after it turned to tears. It was several frightening moments for the children before she could control herself and wipe the tears away. She sniffed, and searched for a handkerchief.

  “Go and wash your hands ready for tea,” she ordered. “Then you can read a story. I’ll find The Wind in the Willows for you.”

  Pitt’s day was far less pleasant. He went first to the Whitechapel police station, to see if any more news had come in, before he went to see Finlay FitzJames. There was nothing. Everyone he saw looked pale-faced and unhappy. They had all been equally sure Costigan was guilty. Few of them actually liked the rope, but they accepted it. It had always been the price of crime. Now they felt a peculiar kind of guilt by association. It was their force which was being blamed, not only in newspapers, but by ordinary people in the street. A constable had been spat on, another shouted at and followed by a crowd of angry youths. Someone had thrown a beer bottle and it had shattered on the wall beyond Constable Binns’s head.

  This morning in the sharp, chilly daylight, they were very sober, and very confused.

  Ewart came in badly shaven, a cut on his cheek and dark circles under his eyes, the skin paper-thin and looking bruised.

  “Anything new?” Pitt asked him.

  “No.” Ewart did not even turn his head to meet Pitt’s eyes.

  “Any report from Lennox?”

  “Not yet. He’s workin
g on it now.”

  “What about the other witnesses?”

  “Found two of them. Very unhappy.” Ewart smiled bitterly. “Not easy to explain to your wife-or your sister, in Kale’s case-that the police want to talk to you because you might have been witness to a murder in a brothel. Don’t imagine Sydney Allerdyce will have a decent supper on the table for years!” There was no regret in his voice; in fact, there was a kind of satisfaction.

  “Did they see anyone?” Pitt pressed the only point which mattered.

  Ewart hesitated.

  “Who did they see?” Pitt demanded, wondering what Ewart was hiding and fearing he knew. “FitzJames?”

  Ewart let his breath out in a sigh. “A young man with thick, fair hair, well dressed, average height,” he replied. He looked quickly at Pitt, trying to read his face. “Doesn’t have to be him,” he added, then a look of anger flickered for a moment, anger with himself for having voiced the thought.

  “Well, it wasn’t Albert Costigan,” Pitt said, before anyone else could. “Did they see any other people coming or going?”

  . “No. Anyway, not that they could remember. Just the women who live there.”

  “What about other nearby residents, people out in the street, coming or going? Any peddlers, other prostitutes? Did anyone see anything?” Pitt pressed.

  “Nothing that helps,” Ewart said irritably. “Questioned a drayman who was loading a few yards along most of the time. He only saw people in the street. No one go in or out. Spoke to a couple of prostitutes, Janie Martins and Ella Baker, who were out looking for custom. They saw no one except the men they picked up, and they weren’t close to the house-in fact, Ella’s wasn’t in Myrdle Street at all.”

  “Well, someone both came and went! Nora Gough didn’t do that to herself! Go back and try again. I’m going to see the FitzJameses. I imagine they’ll be expecting me.”

  Ewart laughed sharply, and there was anger and fear in it. He turned his back, as if conscious of having left his emotions naked, and continued writing the report he had been working on when Pitt came in.

  The door in Devonshire Street was opened by the same highly agreeable butler as before, but this time he looked very grave, although it did not mar the pleasantness of his features.

  “Good morning, Mr. Pitt, sir,” he said, opening the door wide to allow Pitt in. “The weather is delightful, is it not? I think October is my favorite month. I imagine it is Mr. FitzJames you wish to see? He is in the library, sir, if you will come this way?” And without waiting for a reply he led the way across the parquet floor and past a magnificent painting of a Dutch harbor scene of the city of Delft, and then into a smaller hallway off which was the library. He knocked at the door and entered immediately.

  “Mr. Pitt, sir,” he announced, then stood aside for Pitt to enter.

  Augustus was standing in front of the fireplace, although there was no fire lit. Pitt had never seen him on his feet before. He had always conducted their conversations without rising. He looked round-shouldered and was beginning to run a little to paunch. His suit was extremely well cut, his collar high and stiff, and his long face with its dominant nose wore a belligerent expression.

  “Come in,” he ordered. “I assumed you’d be ’round here, so I waited for you. Now you are going to tell me you hanged the wrong man. Or are you going to protest that last night’s crime was committed by someone else, a second lunatic in our midst?”

  “I am not going to claim anything, Mr. FitzJames.” Pitt held his temper with great difficulty. Seldom had he wanted to lash back at anyone so much. It was only the absolute knowledge that it would rebound on him which held him from it.

  “I’m surprised you gave so much to the newspapers,” Augustus said tartly, his eyes wide, a curious mocking in them. “I would have thought that for your own protection you would have told them as little as possible. You’re more of a fool than I took you for.”

  Pitt heard the fear threaded through his voice. It was the first time it had been audible, and he wondered if Augustus knew it himself. Perhaps that was why he was so angry.

  “I have not spoken to the press at all,” Pitt replied. “I don’t know who has, and if it was one of the women who live in the house in Myrdle Street, there is nothing anyone can do about it. We would be better employed in discovering the truth, and proving it, than in regretting the public knowledge of this second crime and its likeness to the first.”

  Augustus stared at him, startled as much by his abruptness as by the bitter truth of what he said. It jarred him from the present confrontation back to facing his own jeopardy and the reality of it. There was no time to waste in recrimination, especially against the one person who could most hurt or help him. The effort it cost him to cover his feelings was obvious in his stubborn features.

  “I assume it was like the first?” he said slowly, his eyes searching Pitt’s. “I did not hear all those details in the reports of the McKinley woman’s death.”

  “They were not published,” Pitt replied.

  “I see.” He straightened his shoulders. “Who else would know of them?”

  “Apart from whoever killed her”-Pitt allowed a shadow of irony to pass over his face-“myself, Inspector Ewart, the constable who was first on the scene, and the police surgeon who examined her.”

  “Other women in the house?”

  “Not so far as we know. They would have no occasion to go into her room.”

  “Are you sure?” Augustus demanded, a lift in his voice, as if it could have been hope. “They were there. Perhaps they saw her, and told … I don’t know …” He twitched his shoulder irritably. “Whatever men they associate with! Perhaps this was deliberately copied?”

  “Why? Costigan couldn’t be blamed for it,” Pitt pointed out. “Out of all the people involved in the entire story, he is the only one who is unquestionably innocent of Nora Gough’s death.”

  “Sit down, man!” Augustus waved his hand in a sharp gesture, like hitting something. However, he remained standing, his back to the empty fireplace, his hands behind him. “I don’t know the reason. Maybe it’s no more than to discredit the police and make fools of them.”

  “People don’t murder women in order to make fools of the police,” Pitt answered, remaining on his feet. “There’s a personal reason for killing her, very personal indeed. Her fingers and toes were dislocated or broken, Mr. FitzJames. That is acutely painful. It is a form of torture.” He ignored Augustus’s wince of distaste. “It was done while she was tied up with her own stocking. Then she was doused with water, and her boots were buttoned together, and her garter slid up onto her arm. You don’t do that to someone without a very violent passion burning inside you, not some secondhand reason of wanting to make someone else look foolish.”

  Augustus’s face was very pale, almost gray, and his heavy nose and narrow mouth were pinched, as though in a matter of hours he had aged a decade.

  “I agree, Superintendent, it is obscene. Not the behavior of a civilized man. You are looking for some animal who is less than human. I wish I were able to help you more than I can, but it is not my area of knowledge. I assume this time you did not find anything belonging to my son?” There was certainty in his voice. The question was rhetorical.

  “I am sorry, Mr. FitzJames, but we found this.” Pitt pulled the monogrammed handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out so Augustus could see the lettering.

  For a moment he thought Augustus was going to faint. He swayed a little on his feet and let go his clasped hands to grasp the handkerchief in one hand, then had to extend the other hand also, to maintain his balance. He did not touch it.

  “I … I see the letters, Superintendent,” he said in a hard, tight voice. “I acknowledge they are unusual. That does not mean the article belongs to my son. It most certainly does not mean that he was the person who placed it there. I hope you perceive that as clearly as I do?” For once there was no threat in his tone, instead a mixture of pleading and defiance,
a will to do all he could to avert the disaster which now hung so closely over his family.

  Pitt had it in his heart to be sorry for him, despite his own personal dislike. He wished he could be surer of what he felt about Finlay’s guilt.

  “I know that, Mr. FitzJames,” he acknowledged quietly. “The difficulty is to discover who could have put your son’s possessions so deliberately first at the scene of Ada McKinley’s murder, and now at the scene of Nora Gough’s … and why. I am afraid it may be necessary to look far more closely at those people who consider themselves your enemies. It is beyond reason to suppose your son was selected by chance.”

  Augustus drew in his breath, then let it out again in a sigh.

  “If you say so, Superintendent.” Then his eyes narrowed. “May I ask you how it has happened that you were able to obtain a conviction against Albert Costigan when it now appears he cannot have been guilty? I … I do not mean to imply criticism. I believe it is something we require to know … I require to know. This tragedy now threatens my family imminently.”

  “I am afraid it does.” Pitt took the button out of his pocket and proffered that also.

  Augustus picked it up and examined it.

  “Very ordinary,” he pronounced, looking up at Pitt. “I don’t think I have any like that myself, but I know a dozen men who do. It proves nothing, except possibly that someone of good taste was there.” His face tightened. “Sartorial good taste, anyway.”

  “There were also witnesses,” Pitt said, adding the final blow. “The dead woman’s last customer was a young man of average height with thick, fair hair, and he was well dressed.”

  Augustus did not bother to argue or point out how many young men might answer that description.

  “I see. Naturally I have already asked my son where he was yesterday late afternoon. I assume you will wish to hear it from him in person?”

  “If you please.”

  Augustus rang the bell and, when the butler appeared, sent him to fetch Finlay.

  They waited in silence.

  Finlay arrived within moments. He came in and closed the door behind him. He was casually dressed; obviously he had changed since returning from the Foreign Office, if indeed he had been there at all. He looked frightened, his face blotchy, as if he had drunk too much the previous evening and still suffered the aftereffects. He glanced first at his father, then at Pitt.