and tomorrow.”
Nellie simply stared at him.
He collected a constable from the local beat and co-opted him into going from one door to another yet again. All afternoon they worked the areas within five hundred yards of where the hideous parcels had been found-first in the approaches to the Bloomsbury churchyard, then closer to the outskirts of St. Giles, where the later discoveries were made. He had given the constable a precise description of Septimus Wigge, both his person and the clothes he had seen him wearing in his cellar storehouse.
By six o’clock in the evening they met again at the churchyard gate.
“Well?” Pitt asked, although the answer mattered little; he already had what he needed. He had been too impatient, too angry, to be subtle. But in spite of his unusual clumsiness he had found a footman who had been up early returning from an assignation and had seen a scraggy, lantern-jawed old man in a stovepipe hat a hundred yards from the church, hurrying along, pushing a small handcart with one fairly large parcel in it. He had not mentioned it at the time of the torso’s discovery because he did not wish to admit being out; it would almost certainly mean his dismissal from his position, and he had thought the old man merely a peddlar, probably with something stolen, to be about at such an hour. It was too early even for costers in from the outlying districts with vegetables, or up from the docks or the river with winkles, eels, or other such delicacies.
But Pitt had bullied him into believing that to hide such knowledge now would make him accomplice to the murder, and that was infinitely worse than losing a position over a bit of flirtation with a housemaid a mile away.
And he had also chanced on a prostitute further toward St. Giles, where one of the gruesome parcels, a leg, had been found. Now that he could describe Septimus Wigge so precisely he knew what to ask, and, after several girls, he came upon one who had seen him with his handcart. She remembered the fine stovepipe hat, its sheen gleaming in the moonlight as he turned the corner. She had noticed it then but not considered the three paper-and- string-wrapped parcels in his cart.
And there had been others-men he would not like to call to a witness stand, but nonetheless all helping to seal the certainty: a squint-eyed little fence who had been keeping an eye open for dealers, a pimp in a knife fight over one of his whores, and a burglar busy star-glazing a window to break into a house.
“Two,” the constable answered. He was good at his job and knew the crime, but he had not Pitt’s anger and had been more circumspect in his threats. He looked disappointed, feeling he had let down his superior. “Not much use in court. A rat-faced little magsman coming home after a night cheating at cards, and a twelve-year-old snakesman, thin as a wire, on his way to climb in through someone’s back windows and let his master in. I know where to find them both again.”
“What did they see?” Pitt was not disconcerted; no citizen would be about respectable business at that time of night in St. Giles, except perhaps a priest or a midwife, and the first was little wished for, the second little afforded. God knew how many children died at the moment of birth through dirt and ignorance, and their mothers with them.
“A spindly old man with scruffy hair under a shiny stovepipe hat, wheeling a handcart and hurrying,” the constable answered. “The snakesman certainly saw him coming out of the alley where the head was found.”
“Good. Then we’ll go and arrest Septimus Wigge,” Pitt replied decisively.
“But we can’t call them to a court!” the constable protested, running a step or two to keep up with him. “No judge in London will take their word.”
“Won’t need to,” Pitt replied. “I don’t think Wigge killed the woman, he simply disposed of the parcels. If we arrest him and frighten the living daylights out of him, he’ll tell us who did-although I’m pretty sure I know. But I want him to swear it.”
The constable understood little of what Pitt was referring to, but he was satisfied if Pitt was. They strode rapidly along the narrow, refuse-strewn streets past sweatshops, tenements, and huddles of collapsing houses. Beggars stood idle or sat in doorways; children labored in endless dreary jobs, picking rags, running errands, stealing from pockets or barrows; women begged, toiled, and drank.
Pitt made only one wrong turn before finding Septimus Wigge’s cellar again, with its piles of junk and its furnace. He told the constable to wait out of sight while he made sure the old man was in, and that there was no back way out for him to escape, through a warren of passages heaven knew where.
He walked smartly across the yard and down the steps, keeping as quiet as he could. He came upon the old man going through a box of spoons, his head bent to pore over them, a huge smile on his face.
“Glad to find you in, Mr. Wigge,” Pitt said softly, waiting till he was within a yard before he spoke.
Wigge jerked up, startled and amazed until he saw it was a customer. His face ironed out and he smiled with brown, irregular teeth, more missing than present.
“Well, sir, an’ wot can I do for yer this time? I got some luvly siller spoons ’ere.”
“I daresay, but I don’t want them at the moment.” He moved to stand between Wigge and the back of the shop; the constable should be at the top of the steps and would prevent escape that way.
“Wotcher want then? I got all kinds o’ fings.”
“Have you got any brown paper parcels with bits of a woman’s body in them?”
Wigge’s face went slack, bloodless with terror, so the gray dirt stood out on it in smears. He tried to speak and his voice failed. His throat contracted, his larynx bobbed up and down. He gulped, choked, and gulped again. The smell of sweat was strong in the close, hot air.
“That ain’t f-funny!” he said hoarsely, trying desperately to control the panic racing through him. “It ain’t f- funny at all!”
“I know,” Pitt agreed, “I found one of them. The upper half of the torso, to be precise. Soaked with blood. Did you have a mother, Mr. Wigge?”
Wigge wanted to take offense, but the power did not reach his lips.
“Course I did!” he said wretchedly. “No call f-fer … I …” He subsided, staring at Pitt in mesmerized horror.
“She had a child,” Pitt answered, gripping his skinny shoulder. “That woman whose body you hacked to pieces and dropped around.”
“I didn’t!” Wigge wriggled under Pitt’s hand and his voice rose so high and shrill it was painful to hear. “Swelpme Gawd I didn’t! You gotta b’lieve me, I didn’t kill ’er!”
“I don’t believe you,” Pitt lied badly. “If you didn’t kill her you wouldn’t have cut her up and distributed her round half of London.”
“I didn’t kill ’er! She were already dead, I swear!” Wigge was so terrified Pitt was afraid he might have a seizure and pass out altogether, even die. He modified his expression to one of dawning interest.
“Come on, Wigge. If she was dead and you didn’t kill her, why would you slash her to bits and wrap her up, and put the parcels round in the middle of the night? And don’t try to deny that-we’ve got at least seven people who saw you and will swear to it. Took us a little while, but we’ve got them now. I can arrest you this minute and take you to Newgate, or Coldbath Fields.”
“No!” The little man shrieked and squirmed, glaring up at Pitt with a mixture of fury and impotence. “I’m an old man! — them places’d kill me! There ain’t no decent food, an’ the jail fever’d kill me, it would.”
“Maybe,” Pitt said dispassionately. “But they’ll probably top you before that. You don’t always get jail fever immediately, it’s only a few weeks before a hanging.”
“Gawd ’elp me, I didn’t kill ’er!”
“So why did you cut up the body and get rid of it?” Pitt persisted.
“I didn’t!” he squealed. “I didn’t cut ’er up! She come that way, I swear ter Gawd!”
“Why did you put her all round Bloomsbury and St. Giles?” Pitt glanced at the furnace. “Why didn’t you burn her? You must have known we’d find her. In a churchyard! Really, Wigge. Not very clever.”
“Course I knew yer’d find ’er, yer fool!” A shadow of his old contempt came back, quickly erased by the terror crawling in his belly. “But adult bones don’t burn away-not even in an ’ole ’ouse afire, let alone a furnace like mine.”
Pitt felt sick. “But infant bones do, of course,” he said very quietly. He gripped Wigge’s shoulder so hard he could feel the scrawny flesh crumple under his hands and the hard, flat old bones grind together underneath, but Wigge was too terrified to scream.
Wigge nodded. “I never took a live one, I swear ter Gawd! I just got rid o’ them as ’ad died, poor little
