“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.
“And ’er, don’t know ’er neither.”
Another for the right pocket.
“She’s a looney, daft as a brush, she is. Couldn’t black ’er; she ’asn’t the sense to be scared of anything! Goes with all sorts. And ’er, two for a pair, they are.”
“Thank you.” Two more disposed of.
She took the rest, one by one. “You’re goin’ to be busy, aren’t you, love? Sorry. Know a few o’ their faces but can’t remember where, and don’t know their names or anythin’ about them. That all?”
“That’s a great help. Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome. Could you put in a good word for me with the local rozzers?”
Pitt smiled. “Least said the better,” he replied. “I dare say if you don’t bother them, they’ll be happy enough to pretend they don’t see you either.”
“Live and let live,” she agreed. “Ta, love. Find your own way out?”
“I’ll manage.” He gave her a little salute with his hand and went back out into the street.
The next three places enabled him to write off a dozen more. This list was going down rapidly. So far there was no one who would be likely to be greatly concerned by any part of the affair, least of all their own involvement in it.
By the end of the day, the three of them had identified and dismissed all but half a dozen of the faces.
The following day was harder, as Pitt had known it would be. They had identified the professionals; now they were looking for the women driven to the streets by poverty and fear, those who would be ashamed. It was among these he expected to find the tragedy that had stretched and swelled until the burden was unbearable and had ended in murder.
He had talked to the constables, probably far too long, investing too much of his own feelings of anger and pity in his words. If they did not feel it themselves already, then they were not capable of understanding what his words could only frame. He had been aware of it at the time he was speaking, and yet he had still gone on.
By half-past ten he had found two women who had worked all day in a sweatshop sewing shirts with children pinned to their chairs and walked the streets at night to pay the rent. The sweatshop master looked sideways at him, but he snapped viciously back that all he wanted was to find the witness to an accident, and if he were not prepared to help the police the best he could, Pitt would see to it personally that the shop was turned over at least twice a week to look for stolen goods.
The man asked tartly how, if she was only a witness to an accident, Pitt came to have her photograph.
Pitt could not think of an answer to that, so he glared at the man and told him that it was a secret of police procedure and that unless he wanted a much closer relationship with the police than he already had, he would mind his own business.
That produced the desired silence on the subject and a grudging admission that at least two of the women worked for him and Pitt could speak to them if he must, but to be quick about it because time wasted was money lost, and the women needed all they earned. Policemen might get paid to stand around and talk, but they did not.
The afternoon was much the same: finding one frightened woman after another, ashamed of what she was doing, afraid of being exposed, and yet unable to manage on what sweatshop masters paid and terrified of the workhouse. At all costs they wanted to keep their children out of the institutionalized, regimented despair of the workhouses. They feared losing their children to fostering out, perhaps never to see them again, or even to know if they had survived to adulthood. What was taking off one’s clothes for an hour or two to titillate some anonymous man one would never see again, in exchange for enough money to live for a month?
By the time he came back to the police station at nine o’clock, rain soaking his trousers and boots and running down the back of his neck, he had found only two exceptions. One was an ambitious and rebellious little maid who had dreams of becoming rich and starting her own hat shop. The other was completely different, a very practiced woman of nearer thirty, handsome, cynical, and obviously doing very well at the better end of the professional market. She admitted quite freely to posing for the pictures and defied Pitt to make a crime of it. If certain gentlemen liked pictures, that was their affaire. They could well afford it, and if Pitt were foolish enough to pursue the matter and make a nuisance of himself, he would very likely find his fingers burned by some gentlemen of considerable means, not to mention social standing.
She had rooms at a comfortable address; she made no trouble, paid her rent, and if she had gentlemen callers, what of it? She would admit to no husband, lover, or protector, still less to anything resembling a pimp or a procurer, and the confidence with which she said it made it impossible for Pitt seriously to doubt her.
He walked into his own office weary and disappointed. The best hope seemed the ambitious little maid, and she admitted to the existence of no man who might have cared, except perhaps her employer. Certainly she would be anxious, even desperate not to lose her position and the roof over her head.
The constables were waiting for him.
“Well?” Pitt sat down heavily and took his boots off. His socks were wet enough to wring out. He must have trodden in a puddle, or several.
“Not much,” one of them replied grimly. “Only what you’d expect, poor devils. Can’t see any of them murderin’ anyone, least of all the only bloke what paid ’em a decent bit o’ money. Reckon ’e was like Christmas to them.”
The other one sat up a little straighter. “Mostly the same, but I turned up a couple o’ really experienced bits, addresses what I wouldn’t mind even visitin’, let alone livin’ in. Reckon any feller what goes to them for ’is fun must ’ave money to burn.”
Pitt stared at him, one wet sock in his hand, the dry ones in the drawer forgotten. “What addresses?” he demanded.
The constable recited them. One was the same as that of the women Pitt had found; the other was different, but in the same area. Three prostitutes in business for themselves, and a coincidence? Or at least one very discreet bawdy house?
Up to that point Pitt had had every intention of going straight home. In half his mind he was already there, feet dry, hot soup in his hand, Charlotte smiling at him.
The constables saw the change in his face and resigned themselves. They were constables and he was an inspector; there was nothing else they could do. Brothels did their trade largely at night.
Charlotte had long ago disciplined herself to accept Pitt’s late and erratic hours, but when he was not home by eleven o’clock she could no longer pretend to herself that she was not worried. All sorts of people had accidents, were struck down in the street; policemen especially invited attack by interfering in the affairs of those who made a business of violence. A murdered body could be dumped in the river, dropped down a sewer, or simply left in the rookeries where it might never be found. Who would know one pauper corpse from another?
She had almost convinced herself that something appalling had happened when at midnight she heard the door. She flew down the hallway and flung herself at him. He was thoroughly wet.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “It’s the middle of the night! Are you hurt? What happened to you?”
He heard the rising fear in her voice and swallowed back his instinctive answer. He put both arms around her and held her close, ignoring the fact that he was wetting her dress with the rain still sliding off him.
“Watching a very high-class brothel,” he replied, smiling into her hair. “And you’d be surprised who I saw going in there.”
She pushed him away but still gripped his should
ers. “Why do you care?” she demanded. “What case are you on now?”
“Still Godolphin Jones. Can we go into the kitchen? I’m frozen.”
“Oh!” She looked at herself in disgust. “And you’re soaking!” She turned and led the way smartly back to the kitchen and threw another piece of coal on the stove. One by one she took his wet outer clothes, then his boots and his new socks. Lastly, she made tea with the kettle that had been simmering all evening. Five times she had got up and put more water in it, waiting his return.
“What has Godolphin Jones got to do with brothels?” she asked when she sat down opposite him at last.
“I don’t know, except that most of the women he photographed also work in brothels.”
“You think one of them killed him?” Her face was full of doubt. “Wouldn’t it be pretty hard for a woman to strangle a man, unless she drugged him or hit him first? And why should she, anyway? Didn’t he pay them?”
“He was a blackmailer.” He had not told her about Gwendoline Cantlay or Major Rodney. “Blackmailers often get killed.”
“I’m not surprised. Do you think one of them might have received an offer of marriage, or something of that sort, and wanted her pictures destroyed?”
It was a motive that had not occurred to him. Prostitutes quite often did marry, in their heyday, before their looks were gone and they slowly drifted to lower and lower brothels, earning less and less, and disease began to catch up with them. It was a decided possibility.
“Why were you watching a brothel?” she continued. “What could that tell you?”
“First of all, I wasn’t sure that it was a brothel—”
“But it was?”
“Yes, or, more correctly, a set of apartments used for that purpose; rather more luxurious than a regular brothel, less communal.”
She screwed up her face but said nothing. “I thought I might find a procurer, or a pimp. He could have an excellent motive for getting rid of Godolphin Jones. Maybe Jones was poaching on his women, paying them higher rates and not giving the pimp his cut.”
She looked at him very steadily. The polished pans gleamed on the dresser behind her. One of them was a little askew, and she had missed the handle.
“I think that’s where we’ll find the murderer.” He stretched and stood up, easing his feet now that they were free of their boots. “It’ll have nothing to do with Gadstone Park at all. Or the grave robbers, for that matter, except that he made use of them. Come on up to bed. Tomorrow’ll come too soon as it is.”
In the morning she dished the porridge solemnly, then sat down opposite him instead of getting her own or bothering with Jemima.
“Thomas?”
He poured milk on the porridge and began to eat; there was no time to waste. They had been a little late up anyway.
“What?”
“You said Godolphin Jones was a blackmailer?”
“So he was.”
“Whom did he blackmail, and over what?”
“They didn’t kill him.”
“Who?”
The porridge was too hot, and he was obliged to wait. He wondered if she had done that on purpose.
“Gwendoline Cantlay, over an affaire, and Major Rodney because he was a customer. Why?”
“Could he blackmail a pimp or a procurer? I mean, what would they be afraid of?”
“I don’t know. I should think greed, professional rivalry is far more likely.” He tried the porridge again, a smaller spoonful.
“You said the houses where these women worked were better than ordinary brothels?”
“So they were. Pretty good addresses. What are you getting at, Charlotte?”
She opened her eyes very wide and clear. “Who owns them, Thomas?”
He stopped with the spoon halfway to his mouth.
“Owns them?” he said very slowly, the thought mushrooming in his mind as he stared at her.
“Sometimes the oddest people own property like that,” she went on. “I remember Papa knew someone once who made his money from property leased out as a sweatshop. We never had anything to do with him after we found out.”
Pitt poured milk on the rest of the porridge and ate it in five mouthfuls; pulled on his boots, still damp; grabbed his coat, hat, and scarf; and left the house as if it were a sinking ship. Charlotte did not need an explanation. Her mind was with him, and she understood.
It took him three hours to discover who owned those properties, and six more like them.
Edward St. Jermyn.
Lord St. Jermyn made his money from the rent of brothels and a percentage from each prostitute—and Godolphin Jones knew!
Was that the reason St. Jermyn had bought the picture from him? And then refused to pay him again—and again? That was most certainly a motive for murder.
But could Pitt prove it?
They did not even know what day the murder had been committed. Proving St. Jermyn had been in Resurrection Row would mean little. Jones had been strangled—any fit man, and many women, could have done it. There was no weapon to trace.
Jones was a pornographer and a blackmailer; there could be dozens of people with motives. St. Jermyn would know all these things, and Pitt would never even get as far as a warrant.
What he needed was a closer link, something to tie the two men together more irredeemably than Major Rodney or Gwendoline Cantlay or any of the women in the pictures.
The largest house had a landlady, no doubt the madame who kept the money, took the rents and the percentages and passed them to St. Jermyn, or whoever was his agent.
Pitt was outside in the street now, walking briskly. He knew where he was going and what he intended to do. He hailed a cab and climbed in. He gave the driver the address and slammed the door.
Then he sat back in the seat and planned his attack.
The house was silent in the empty street. A rising wind blew sleet out of a gray sky. A maid came up the areaway steps and then disappeared again. It could have been one of any number of well-to-do residences just before the midday meal.
Pitt dismissed the cab and went up to the front door. He had no warrant, and he did not think he could get one merely on the strength of his beliefs. But he did believe, with something growing toward certainty, that St. Jermyn had killed Godolphin Jones, and the reason had been Jones’s knowledge of the source of his income. It was certainly motive enough, especially if St. Jermyn was seeking to earn a high office for himself in government as a great reformer with his workhouse bill.
Pitt lifted his hand and knocked sharply on the door. He did not like what he was about to do; it was not his usual manner. But without it there was no proof, and he could not let St. Jermyn go, in spite of the bill. Although the thought was in his mind to put off collating the final evidence, if he should find it, until after the bill had been through the House. One murderer, even of St. Jermyn’s order, was not worth all the children in all the workhouses in London.
The door was opened by a smart girl in black with a white lace cap and apron.
“Good morning, sir,” she said with total composure, and it flashed through Pitt’s mind that perhaps the place did business even at midday.
“Good morning,” he replied with a bitter smile. “May I speak to your mistress, the landlady of these apartments?”
“None of them are to lease, sir,” she warned, still standing in the doorway.
“I don’t imagine so,” he agreed. “Nevertheless, I wish to speak to her, if you please. It is a matter of business, with regard to the owner of the property. I think you had better permit me to come in. It is not something to be discussed on the front steps.”
She was a girl of some experience. She knew what the house was used for and perceived the possibilities of what Pitt said. She made way for him immediately.
“Yes, sir. If you come this way, I will see if Mrs. Philp is at home.”
“Thank you.” Pitt followed her into a remarkably comfortable room, discreetly furnished, with a strong fir
e burning in the grate. He had only a few minutes to wait before Mrs. Philp appeared. She was buxom, growing a little fat now but handsomely dressed; even at this hour her face was rouged and mascaraed as if for a ball. He did not need to be told she was a successful prostitute a little over the hill, promoted now from worker to management. Her clothes were expensive, her jewelry flashy, but Pitt judged it to be real. She looked at him with hard, shrewd eyes.
“I don’t know you,” she said, coming in and shutting the door with a snick.
“You’re lucky.” He was still standing, back to the fire. “I don’t often work vice, especially not this class.”
“A rozzer,” she said instantly. “You can’t prove anything, and you’d be a fool to try. The sort of gentleman that comes here wouldn’t thank you for it.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he agreed. “I’ve no intention of trying to shut you down.”
“I’m not paying you anything.” She gave him a look of contempt. “You go tell anyone you like. See where it’ll get you!”
“I’m not interested in telling anyone either.”
“Then what do you want? You want something! A little custom on the cheap?”
“No, thank you. A little information.”
“If you think I’m going to tell you who comes here, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for. Blackmail, eh? I’ll have you thrown out and beaten so bad your own mother wouldn’t know you.”
“Possibly. But I don’t give a damn who comes here.”
“Then what do you want? You haven’t come here out of curiosity!”
“Godolphin Jones.”
“Who?” But there was a hesitation, only the fraction of a second, a flicker of an eyelid.
“You heard me. Godolphin Jones. I’m sure you’re very competent to handle anything to do with prostitution— you’ve had enough practice to outwit most of us—but how about murder? Do you feel like fighting me over that? That’s what I’m good at, proving murder.”
Anne Perry - [Thomas Pitt 04] Page 22