by Anne Perry
“Take it,” Tallulah urged. “It’s yours.”
The mother looked up, speechless.
The child had no words. Her eyes widened. She looked up at Tallulah, then took a step towards her, and another, then she threw her arms around her.
For an instant Tallulah froze, her whole body stiff with an instinctive revulsion. Then she made an effort of will which was there in her face only an instant, then gone again. She smiled and bent down, putting her own arms around the child in response.
Then the moment was gone, and she moved on to the next person in line, but a softness remained in her face as if her wide eyes still saw something precious.
The people in the line moved by slowly, one by one. Men were resentful, hating to take charity. Women, gaunt-faced, holding grubby children, had no such pride. To them the cold and hunger of a child was sharper than any diminution of status or confession of need.
When the last mug had been filled and Jago and Tallulah were left alone with the cart, Pitt went over to them. Tallulah was picking up the now-empty sack from which the clothes had been taken. He wondered if perhaps she had brought it herself, a material contribution as well as her labor.
Jago walked over and greeted him civilly enough, but his eyes were wary and tired. Tallulah was some yards away, still tidying up.
“What can we do for you, Superintendent? I don’t know anything more than I did last time we spoke.”
“Did you know Nora Gough?” Pitt asked quietly. “I didn’t have the chance to ask you then.”
Jago smiled in spite of himself. “No you didn’t, did you! Yes, I knew her slightly. A pretty girl. Very young. Very confident. I think she might well have been one of those who go on to marry and become quite respectable. It happens, you know?” He looked at Pitt to see if he believed it.
“Yes, I know it does,” Pitt agreed. “I’ve seen it a few times.”
Jago sighed. “Of course you have. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to patronize you.”
“Any reason you say that … about Nora?”
“Not directly. Just an impression. She may have said something. Why? Do you think it has any relation to her being killed?”
“I’m looking for anything at all. A handkerchief with Finlay’s initials on it was found under her pillow.”
Jago cleared his throat sharply, his face suddenly very pale.
“You can’t think …” He let out a long sigh. “What do you want of me, Superintendent? I know nothing about who killed either woman. I … I find it hard to believe it was Finlay, and I would regret it more profoundly than you could know if it were.” He did not look at Tallulah. It did not seem at that instant as if her pain was what was uppermost in his mind.
“A man resembling Finlay was the last customer to be seen leaving Nora’s room,” Pitt went on, watching Jago’s face.
“And you think it was Finlay?” Jago asked. “Can’t you trace this man? Someone else must have seen him after he left Myrdle Street. Where did he go? There are all sorts of people around at that time of the afternoon. Why on earth would Finlay come to Whitechapel at that hour? It doesn’t make sense. I assume he can’t prove where he was, or you wouldn’t be here asking me this.” He kept his voice low, so Tallulah, who was almost finished, would not hear him.
“No, he can’t,” Pitt agreed. “And no one saw this man after he left the house in Myrdle Street.”
“Who have you asked?” Jago screwed up his face in concentration.
Pitt listed off all the names he could remember of the neighbors he and Ewart had spoken to. “Where were you, Reverend?” he said at the end.
Jago laughed abruptly. “Playing shove halfpenny with half a dozen urchins in Chicksand Street, then I went back to the vicarage for tea, to meet with some charitably minded ladies. I didn’t go anywhere near Myrdle Street, and I certainly didn’t see Finlay … or whoever it was.”
“No one saw him leave.” Pitt shrugged. “Which doesn’t seem possible. Is everyone lying?”
“No.” Jago seemed certain. “If no one saw him, then either you’ve described him so inaccurately they don’t recognize him from what you say … or he didn’t leave.”
Pitt stared at him. Perhaps that was true? Perhaps whoever it was had not left at all, but gone up or down the stairs and remained on one of the other floors of the tenement?
Or else he had changed his appearance so much he no longer seemed a young man with fair wavy hair and good clothes.
“Thank you,” he said slowly. “At least I know where to try again.”
“Be careful,” Jago warned. “Remember to take a constable with you. The mood is still ugly. No one liked Costigan when he was alive, but he’s a convenient hero now. Anger and despair run deep, and there are always men who are willing to use it, make some poor stupid beggar stick the police for them, take the blame, and leave them to reap the political reward.”
“I know.” Pitt was eager to start. “Don’t worry, I shall be careful. I don’t want to be responsible for a riot as well as a hanging.” And without waiting any longer he started out towards the Whitechapel Police Station and a constable to accompany him back to Myrdle Street.
11
The day after Pitt had his unfortunate experience in the public house in Swan Street, Charlotte also went to the East End, but not before she had first visited Emily, and then together they had gone to see Tallulah.
“We know it was not Finlay,” Emily said decisively, sitting in Tallulah’s bay window overlooking the autumn garden. “And unfortunately we also know it was not Albert Costigan. For all our various reasons, we need to know who it was. We must set about it systematically.”
“I don’t see what we can possibly do that the police haven’t,” Tallulah said hopelessly. “They have questioned everyone. I know that from Jago. They have even questioned him.” It was obvious from her face that the idea of Jago’s guilt had not entered her mind. Her conviction of his goodness was so total that anything but the smallest fallibility was impossible.
Charlotte carefully avoided Emily’s eyes. The same ugly thought had occurred to both of them, and they had both pushed it aside, but it would not disappear.
“We must apply logic,” Emily continued, looking at Tallulah. “Why would you kill anyone?”
Tallulah was startled. “What?”
“Why would you kill anyone?” Emily repeated. “If you were on the streets living from day to day. Make that leap in imagination. What would drive you to do something so extreme, so messy and so dangerous, as to kill someone?”
“If I killed anyone, it would be on the spur of temper,” Tallulah said thoughtfully. “I couldn’t imagine planning it … unless it were someone I was afraid of, and I wasn’t strong enough to do it otherwise. But that doesn’t apply here, does it?”
“So you might if you were afraid of someone,” Emily clarified. “Why else? What would make you lose your temper enough to kill anyone?”
“Maybe if they mocked me?” Tallulah said slowly. “I might hit them, and perhaps it would be too hard. No one likes being made fun of, not if it is something they are very sensitive about.”
“Enough to kill?” Emily pressed.
Tallulah bit her lip. “Not really … perhaps, if I had a very short temper indeed. I’ve seen some men get very angry if their honor is questioned, or perhaps their wife or mother insulted.”
“Enough to lash out, yes,” Charlotte agreed. “But enough to break someone’s fingers and toes first, and then strangle her?”
Tallulah stared at her, the blood draining out of her face, leaving it chalk-white. She moved her mouth as if to speak but made no sound.
With a violent jolt of guilt, and anger with herself, she realized that of course Tallulah would not read newspapers. No one would have told her how the women died. She might have assumed it was just strangling, something quick, a few moments’ struggle for breath and then oblivion. And now she was, in a sentence, hurled into the reality.
“I’m s
orry,” Charlotte said quietly. “I forgot you didn’t know that. I shouldn’t have said it.”
Tallulah swallowed hard. “Why not?” Her voice cracked. “Why should you shelter me from the truth? That is the truth, is it? They were … tortured?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why on earth would anyone do such a thing? Was it … both of them?” Her eyes implored Charlotte to say it was not.
“Yes. I am afraid it was.”
“That’s horrible!” Tallulah shivered and seemed to shrink into herself, as if the bright, warm room with its charming florals and dainty chairs were cold, in spite of the sunlight through the windows and the low fire in the grate.
“There were other things as well”-Emily glanced at Charlotte warningly-”which seem to suggest it was the sort of crime that has to do with …” She hesitated, seeking a way to describe what she meant without further distressing Tallulah, who was not a married woman and was assumed to be still ignorant of many aspects of life. “Relations between men and women,” she finished.
“What … things?” Tallulah asked, her voice husky.
Emily looked unhappy. “Silly things. People sometimes have … odd fancies. Some people …” She stopped and looked at Charlotte.
Charlotte took a deep breath. “All sorts of relationships are odd,” she said quietly. “Sometimes people like to say hurtful things to each other, or establish a dominance. You must have seen it? Well, between a man and woman these things are sometimes sharper, and take a physical form. Of course, most people are not like that. But it looks as if whoever did this … was …”
“I see.” Tallulah made a brave effort to look unshaken. “So that means it was someone with a very strong cruel streak, and a man who had a … a physical relationship with her.” She laughed a little jerkily. “Although since that was her trade, it is hardly surprising. But why should he actually kill her?”
“I don’t know,” Emily replied. “Could she have threatened him in any way?”
“How?” Tallulah was confused. “She was far weaker than he. She must have been.”
“Blackmail?” Emily suggested.
“Two of them?” Charlotte was highly skeptical. “Blackmail over what? Because he visited a prostitute? We don’t speak of it openly, but we know that men do. If they didn’t, then there wouldn’t be any prostitutes.”
“We know it happens,” Emily corrected her, “to someone else! What about if it is your husband? What if he has some of these unusual appetites? If he were important enough, it could ruin him. Let’s say he had a very fortunate marriage in view, or already achieved, and was dependent upon the goodwill of his father-in-law for more preferment? Or he needs a son and heir, and his wife is unlikely to give him one if she knows of his behavior?”
“Good,” Charlotte agreed. “That makes sense. Why both Ada and Nora? And why torture them? Why not simply kill them and get out as soon as possible? The longer he’s there, the more risk he runs of being discovered. Is the torture part of what he does anyway? No, it can’t be. No prostitute is going to have her fingers and toes broken whatever you pay her. Tied up, doused in cold water perhaps, but not injured.”
Tallulah was still very pale, and she sat hunched in her pretty chair.
“Proof,” she said thoughtfully. “She had proof of his behavior, and he tortured her to try to make her give it to him.”
“But she didn’t … because she had given it to Nora for safekeeping!” Charlotte finished.
“What sort of proof?” Emily pressed, but her voice was rising in eagerness. At last there was something which made at least a little sense. “Pictures? Letters? A statement from a witness? What else?”
“Statement from a witness,” Charlotte answered. “Paintings wouldn’t mean anything; they’re not evidence. No one would take photographs of such a thing. I mean, how could you? You have to sit still for ages for photographs. And who writes letters to prostitutes? It would have to be something to do with a witness. Maybe it happened before? Perhaps there are lots of women who know, and she had statements from all of them?”
“Then where are they now?” Tallulah looked from one to the other. “Does he have them, or did Nora hide them too well from him?”
“What we have to do,” Charlotte said decisively, sitting more uprightly, “is to learn all we can about Nora and Ada. That’s where the answer is. First we need to have proof they even knew each other. We need to find everything in common in their lives, and then see if we can find any other women who knew this man. They would give us a proper description of him. They might even know his name.”
“Marvelous!” Tallulah stood up. “We’ll begin straightaway. Jago will help us. He knew Ada McKinley. He’ll know where we can start, and he might even help us to gain people’s trust so they will talk to us.”
“I …” Emily looked at Charlotte, uncertain how to say what she needed to without hurting irreparably.
“What?” Tallulah demanded.
Charlotte’s mind raced. “Don’t you think that would be rather an unfair way to do it?” she said, making it up as she went along.
“Unfair?” Tallulah was confused. “To whom? The women? We’re looking for a man who murdered two of them! What has fairness to do with it?”
“Not to the women. To Jago.” Charlotte’s brain cleared. “He is their priest. He shouldn’t compromise his work with the people by being seen to help us. After all, he has to stay there as their friend long after we’ve gone.” She could only think of the hideous possibility that it was Jago himself who had killed the women. Who was more vulnerable to blackmail than a priest with a taste for prostitutes? He could be the one sort of man whose image would not survive the accusation that he had slept with a street woman, or even more than one. His work would be finished, not only in Whitechapel but in the Church anywhere.
“Oh.” Tallulah relaxed. “Yes, I suppose so. We had better go alone. We can find it easily enough. I’d rather we went in the daytime.” She flushed uncomfortably. “In the evening …”
“Of course,” Emily agreed quickly. “It will all be sufficiently unpleasant and difficult without our being considered as rivals.”
Tallulah giggled nervously, but it was agreed. They would meet in the early afternoon, proceed by hansom to Old Montague Street and begin their enquiries-suitably attired, of course.
It was not easy to obtain entrance to the house in Pentecost Alley. Madge answered the door, and remembered them clearly from their earlier visit. They were similarly dressed.
“Wot jer want this time?” she said, eyeing them narrowly through the space between the door and its frame. She looked at Charlotte. “An’ ’oo are you, the parlor maid?” She regarded her handsome figure. “You look more like a parlor maid ter me. All got thrown out, did jer? Well it in’t no good comin’ ’ere. I can’t take yer in. On’y got room for one, and that’ll be expensive. Works on yer earnin’s, though we gotta ’ave rent even if yer don’t earn nuffink. Which one of yer wants it?”
“We’ll come in and have a look,” Charlotte said immediately. “Thank you.”
Madge looked at her suspiciously. “Why does a girl wot speaks proper, like you, wanna work the streets ’round ’ere for? W’y don’t yer work up west, w’ere you could make some real money?”
“I might,” Charlotte agreed. “Let’s look at this room first. Please?”
Madge opened the door and let them in. They followed her along the corridor, which was faintly musty smelling, as if lived in too much, with windows that were never opened. She pushed the second door along and it swung wide. Charlotte was in front. She peered in, and instantly wished she had not. It was so ordinary, about the same size as her own bedroom in the house where she had grown up. It was far less pretty, but it had a lived-in air. It was too easy to imagine the woman who had slept here, and conducted her business here, and died here in fearful pain.
She heard Tallulah behind her draw in her breath sharply, and beside her Emily’s body stiffen
ed, though she made no sound.
“D’jer wan’ it?” Madge asked bluntly, her voice harsh.
Charlotte swung around and saw the huge woman’s face tight, red and chapped, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Let’s sit down and talk about it,” Emily suggested. “Have a cup of tea. I brought a little something to add to it. You’ve got to let the room sometime.”
Without speaking Madge led them to the back of the house and the kitchen.
The room was messy, designed for laundry as well as cooking. A black stove gave off a very slight warmth, its front dull and a fine ash coating the floor around it. The kettle was already on, steaming gently. Perhaps it always was. There were dirty mugs on the board next to the basin and two pails of water standing with lids on. Charlotte guessed the water had to be fetched from the nearest well or standpipe. She hoped they boiled it thoroughly before it was offered for tea. She wished Emily had not suggested it. But then perhaps they would have no other chance to talk, and what was a possible upset stomach compared with the disaster that faced Pitt if the crime was never solved? He would always be thought of as the man who hanged Costigan when he was innocent. Perhaps worse than that, he would think of himself that way. He would doubt his judgment, be awake at night and tear his conscience. And there would be those who would believe he had done it knowingly, in order to protect someone else, someone with the money or the influence to reward him appropriately. He would be suspected of far more than a mere error. Errors could be forgiven; they were a human failing. Corruption was something far deeper; it was the ultimate betrayal, that of self.
The tea was strong and bitter, and there was no milk. They all sat around the table on uneven chairs. Emily produced a small flask of whiskey out of her voluminous pocket and put a generous dash in each mug, to Tallulah’s amazement, although she concealed it almost instantly.
“Here’s to your health,” Emily said optimistically, and lifted her mug.
“Here’s to all our health,” Charlotte echoed, more as a prayer than a toast.