out.
It took him until after six to get back to Whitechapel and the church of St. Mary’s. When he did, the verger told him the vicar was out, somewhere down Coke Street way, helping the sick. If Pitt did not find him there, he could go in the other direction and try Chicksand Street.
The lowering sun was hidden by the high, grimy tenement houses, but the pavements still gave back the claustrophobic heat and the sour smells of the day. The gutters ran sluggish trickles of waste. This was Whitechapel, where two years ago, about this season, a madman had murdered and ripped open five women, leaving their bleeding bodies in the street. No one had ever found him. He had disappeared as completely as if hell had opened up and swallowed him back.
Yet walking towards Coke Street Pitt could see women standing in doorways and alleyway entrances with that peculiar air of readiness that marked them as prostitutes. It was a directness in their eyes, an angle to the hips quite different from the weary dejection of women at the end of a day’s labor in a sweatshop or factory, or bringing wet laundry in and out of boilers, twisting the dolly, and heaving and wringing the sheets.
Were they afraid, but so hungry they did not care? Or had they already forgotten the Ripper and the terror of him which had paralyzed London?
A young woman approached him, her wide brown eyes looking him up and down, her skin still country fresh. He felt suddenly sick and angry for her that she was reduced to this, whether by circumstances beyond her or immorality within. He controlled himself with an effort.
“I’m looking for the Reverend Jones,” he said grimly. “Have you seen him?”
Her face settled in resignation. “Yeah, ’e’s ’round the corner.” She jerked her hand to indicate the direction. “Want your soul saved too, do you? Good luck to yer-I can earn me own dinner, and cheaper at the price.” And with that he lost her attention and she sauntered off towards the Whitechapel Road, and some likely custom.
Pitt did not know what he expected of Jago Jones-perhaps some dilettante priest, seeking a dramatic gesture; or a younger son unsuited for the military who had chosen the Church instead. This might be a first step towards a major preferment in the future.
Whatever dim prejudgment had been in his mind, he was unprepared for the man he met in Coke Street, ladling hot, thick soup out of a churn into tin mugs for a crowd of skinny children, several of them dancing from one foot to the other in anticipation.
Jago Jones was dressed in shapeless black clothes. No flash of white clerical collar was visible, but such things were immaterial anyway. His face was too arresting for a uniform of any sort to matter. He was lean to the point of being almost gaunt. His thick hair swept back above dark brows and eyes of extraordinary intensity. His nose was strong, high-bridged; his cheekbones accentuated by the deep lines around his mouth. It was the face of a man burning with his own emotions, and so certain of his course that nothing would deflect him. He looked across at Pitt with interest.
“Jago Jones?” Pitt asked, although he had no doubt.
“Yes. What can I do for you?” He did not stop ladling the soup and passing the full tin mugs to the children. “Are you hungry?” It was an offer, but not really an enquiry. One glance at Pitt’s clothes, not only their quality but their cleanliness and the fact that they were in good repair, placed him beyond the kind of need Jones’s parishioners knew.
“Thank you,” Pitt said. “But it would be better used as it is.”
Jago smiled and continued. He was nearly at the bottom of his supply and the end of his queue. “Then what is it you need me for?”
“My name is Thomas Pitt.” Then the minute he had said it he wondered why he had introduced himself that way, as if it were a friendship he was expecting, not a policeman on duty interviewing a witness, possibly a suspect.
“How do you do?” Jago Jones bowed very slightly. “Jago Jones. Reverend, at least in spirit, if not in manner. You don’t belong here. What brings you?”
“The murder of Ada McKinley in Pentecost Alley last night,” Pitt replied, watching his face.
Jago sighed and dispensed the last of the soup to a grateful urchin. The boy’s large eyes were on Pitt’s face, but hunger was more pressing than curiosity, even though he could sense a rozzer when he saw one.
“I was afraid so,” Jago said sadly, seeing the urchin off. “Poor creature. It’s a hard occupation, destructive of both body and soul, although not usually as quickly or as violently as this. And it seems on this occasion, at least, as if it were someone else’s soul in greater jeopardy than hers. She was not a bad woman. A little greedy at times, but she had courage, and laughter, and a kind of loyalty to her own. I’ll see she has a decent burial.”
“You’ll bury her from Saint Mary’s?” Pitt said with surprise.
Jago’s face hardened. “If you object to that, Mr. Pitt, I suggest you take it up with God. He will decide who can be forgiven their faults and weaknesses and who cannot. It is not your prerogative, and I know it is not mine.”
Pitt smiled quite honestly. “For which I am profoundly grateful,” he said. “But you are unusual, Mr. Jones. I hope your parishioners will not cause you difficulty. But perhaps they are too close to the questionable lines of survival and morality to judge one another.”
Jago snorted and made no comment, but his anger softened and he released the tension in his body as he put away the ladle and the soup container into the handcart behind him. Half a dozen urchins, mugs in hand, were creeping back to stand on the corner staring. The word had gone out there was a rozzer asking questions. Information was precious.
“Did you come to ask me about Ada?” Jago said after a moment or two. “I don’t know what I can tell you that would be of use. It was probably some customer whose own inner devils broke from their usual control and temporarily overcame him. Many of us deal badly with our pain or our need to feel as if we are in control of the world, even if we cannot control ourselves.”
Pitt was taken aback, not by the remark, but by the fierceness with which it had been made. There was a depth of feeling behind it, a perception, as if he were not angry with such a man for the senseless moment’s outrage but from a deep thought which had lain within him a long time. Was it perhaps a self-examination? The idea was suddenly and violently repugnant to Pitt, but he could not avoid it.
“It could have been,” he said quietly.
Jago was still looking at him, his eyes steady.
“Is that what you’re following?”
“It seems the most likely.”
“But not the only possibility?” Jago leaned against the cart. “Why are you telling me this, Mr. Pitt? All I can tell you about Ada is what you probably already guess. She was an ordinary prostitute, like a hundred thousand others in London. When girls are thrown out of domestic work, or unfit for it in the first place, can’t take the sweatshops and match factories, or don’t want to, then they sell the only thing they’ve got, their bodies.” His eyes did not waver from Pitt’s. “It’s a sin to me, a crime to you: but to them it’s survival. I don’t know whose fault this is, and frankly I’m too close to it to care. All I see is individual women battling for the next meal, this week’s roof, and not to get beaten by their customers or their pimps, or slashed by a rival from another patch, hope to God they can put off the time they get some disease. They’ll probably die young and they know it. Society despises them, half the time they despise themselves. Ada was just one more.”
A woman walked past with a bag of laundry on her hip.
“Did you know her personally?” Pitt moved over and leaned on his elbow, resting his weight on the other end of the barrow. He was appallingly tired. He should have accepted the soup.
“Yes.” Jago gave a tight smile. “But I’m not privy to her client list. Most of them are casual anyway. The one you’re looking for could be from anywhere. Occasionally she’d go to the West End. It’s not so far. She was handsome. She could have picked up someone from Piccadilly, or the Haymarket. Or for that matter it could be a sailor from the Port of London, passing through.”
“Thank you!” Pitt said tartly. It was time he said what he had really come for. The longer he evaded it, the harder it would be. “Actually, I came to you because you used to belong to a gentleman’s association called the Hellfire Club….”
Underneath his shapeless jacket Jago was rigid. His face in the waning light was curiously stiff.
“That was a long time ago,” he said quietly. “And not something of which I am proud. What has it to do with Ada’s death? The club disbanded six or seven years back. Ada wasn’t even here then.”
