occupation like hers it is a natural hazard.”
Pitt waited to allow his anger to subside, to make some remark that would crush the unthinking arrogance of the man and make him see Ada McKinley, and the women like her, as he did himself: not beautiful, not witty or innocent, but at least as human as anyone else. She had been as capable of hope or pain as his own daughter sitting in the dining room in her gorgeous muslin dress with its lace embroidery, her life before her in which she would probably never know hunger or physical fear, and her worst social sin wearing the same gown as her hostess or laughing at the wrong joke.
But there was nothing he could say that would hold any meaning. In all the ways they could understand, Ada McKinley was exactly what FitzJames thought she was.
“Of course,” he said coldly. “But police do not have the luxury of choosing whose murder they will investigate or where that investigation will lead them.” He allowed it to be as double-edged as he intended, even if neither man grasped it.
“Naturally,” FitzJames agreed with a frown. The conversation seemed to have become pointless. It was obvious from his expression. He turned to Finlay. “When did you last see this badge, if you can recollect?”
Finlay looked wretched. His extreme discomfort could be attributed to half a dozen possible reasons: his distress at being drawn into the murder of a woman of the streets, his embarrassment at having been so drunk he could not account for his movements last evening, fear at now being in a position where he was going to have to name his friends and draw them in also. Perhaps it was even the suspicion that one or several of them might actually be involved. Or simply anticipation of what his father would say to him once Pitt had gone.
“I … really … don’t know.” He faced Pitt squarely, but still sitting with his arms folded across his upper stomach. Perhaps it hurt after his indulgence. Certainly the skin around his eyes was puffy and Pitt could well believe his head ached. “It’s years ago. I’m sure of that,” he said unwaveringly. “Five at least.” He avoided his father’s cold gaze. “I lost it then. I doubt any of my friends had it, unless it was accidental, a jape or something.”
Pitt was perfectly sure there was a lie in it somewhere, but when he looked at FitzJames he met a blank wall of denial. There was not a shadow or flicker of surprise in him. He had expected this answer as if he had known the precise words. Was it rehearsed?
“The names of the other members?” Pitt asked wearily. Now his lack of sleep was catching up with him, his inner tiredness from too much misery, dark streets and alleys which smelled of refuse and hopelessness. “I require their names, Mr. FitzJames. Someone had that badge last night and left it under the body of a woman he murdered.”
FitzJames winced with distaste, but he did not move, except his fingers tightened a fraction on the arm of his chair.
Finlay still looked very pale, and white around the mouth, as if he might be sick.
In the corner a standing clock ticked steadily with a heavy, resonant tone. Outside the footsteps of a maid clicked softly across the parquet floor.
“There were only four of us,” Finlay said at last. “Norbert Helliwell, Mortimer Thirlstone, Jago Jones and myself. I can give you Helliwell’s last address, and Thirlstone’s. I have no idea where Jones is. I haven’t seen or heard of him in years. Someone said he’d taken up the church, but they were probably joking. Jago was a damn good fellow, as much fun as anyone. More likely gone abroad to America, maybe. He’s the sort of chap who might go west-Texas or the Barbary Coast.” He tried to laugh, and failed.
“If you would write the other two addresses for me,” Pitt requested.
“I don’t suppose they can help you!”
“Perhaps not, but it will be somewhere to start.” Pitt smiled. “The man was seen, you know? By at least two witnesses.”
He had expected to rattle Finlay, perhaps even to break him. He failed utterly.
Finlay’s eyes widened. “Was he? Then you know it wasn’t me, thank God! Not that I know such a woman,” he added hastily. It was a lie, and not even a good one. This time he colored and seemed about to withdraw it.
It was FitzJames whose face tightened with a lightning flash of uncharacteristic fear, gone again the instant it had come. His look at Pitt now was one of anger, perhaps because he thought Pitt might have recognized it. After all, he had caused it, and that he would not forgive.
“I doubt it was Helliwell or Thirlstone either,” Finlay went on to cover the silence. “But if you insist, then you’ll discover that. Jago Jones I can’t answer for, because you might find him a great deal harder to trace. I don’t even know if he has family. One doesn’t always ask these things, if it isn’t obvious. Kinder not to, if a fellow comes from nowhere in particular, as he seemed to.”
There was not a great deal more Pitt could do. He considered asking to see the coat Finlay had worn yesterday evening, but unless he destroyed it, the valet could always answer that later.
“There is the matter of a cuff link,” he said finally. “A rather distinctive one, dropped down the back of a chair in the woman’s room. It has ‘F.F.J.’ engraved on it, and is hallmarked. Not the sort of thing I think her average customers would possess.”
FitzJames went white, his knuckles shone where he gripped the chair arms. He swallowed with some difficulty. His throat seemed to have contracted as if his collar choked him.
Finlay, on the other hand, was totally at a loss. His handsome, blurred face showed nothing but confusion.
“I used to have a pair like that….” he mumbled. “My sister gave them to me. I lost one … but years ago. Never liked to tell her. Clumsy of me. Felt a fool, because I knew they were expensive. Always meant to get another one made, so she wouldn’t know.”
“How did it get in Ada McKinley’s chair, Mr. FitzJames?” Pitt said with a faint smile.
“God only knows,” Finlay answered. “As I said, I don’t frequent places like that! I’ve never heard of her! She is the woman who was killed, I presume?”
FitzJames’s face was dark with anger and contempt.
“For God’s sake, boy, don’t be such a damn fool. Of course you’ve used women like that in your time!” He turned to Pitt. “But that cuff link could have been there for years! You can’t connect it to last night or anything that happened then. Go and look for these other young men. See if you can find out something about the damned woman. She was probably killed in a quarrel over money, or by a rival in her trade. That’s where your job is.” He rose to his feet, his joints momentarily stiff, as if he had been constricting himself with such a tension of muscles his bones had locked. “We will write these addresses for you. Now I must be about my own affairs. I am overdue in the City. Good day to you, sir.” And he walked out without looking behind him, leaving Pitt alone with Finlay.
Finlay hesitated awkwardly. He was embarrassed by having not only been caught in a lie but reprimanded for it in front of Pitt. It was stupid and he had no excuse. It was an instinctive act of cowardice, the instant will to deny, to escape, not something for which any man could be proud. Now he was about to give his friends’ names and addresses to Pitt, and that also was something he could not avoid, and yet it sat ill with him. It would have been so much more honorable, more gentlemanly, to have been able to refuse.
“I’ve no idea where Jago Jones is,” he said with satisfaction. “Haven’t seen him for years. He could be anywhere. He was always a bit of an odd one.”
“I daresay someone will know,” Pitt replied with a bleak smile. “Army records, or the Foreign Office, perhaps.”
Finlay stared at him, his eyes wide. “Yes, possibly.”
“Mr. Helliwell?” Pitt pressed.
“Oh … yes. Taviton Street. Number seventeen I think, or fifteen.”
“Thank you.” Pitt took out his notebook and pencil and wrote it down. “And Mr. Thirlstone
“Cromer Street. That’s off the Grey’s Inn Road.”
“Number?”
“Forty-something. Can’t recall what. Sorry.”
Pitt wrote that as well. “Thank you.”
Finlay swallowed. “But they won’t have had anything to do with this, you know. I don’t know where that damned badge came from, but… but I’ll swear it wasn’t anything to do with them. It was a damn stupid club in the first place. A young man’s idea of a devilish good time, but all very silly, really. No harm in it, just … oh …” He shrugged rather exaggeratedly. “A little too much to drink, gambling rather more than we could afford to lose,
