“I don’t want it,” he repeated.
Very carefully she reached out her hand and picked it up, still watching him.
“Have you been on this street long?” he asked, knowing as he said it that she was probably too young to be any help to him. But he had bought the soup without thinking of Cerise.
“Two year,” she replied, sipping soup with a slurp and sucking it round her mouth.
“Is it busy in the evenings?”
“Fair.”
“Are there other traders here?”
“Some. ’Bout two or free.”
“Who? What do they sell?”
“There’s a woman wot sells combs, but she goes early. Girl wot sells matches sometimes. An’ o’ course there’s ’im wot sells ’ot plum duff; ’e’s ’ere of an evenin’. An’ sometimes there’s patterers. They moves abaht, mostly from Seven Dials way, ’cause vat’s w’ere the printers is.”
He did not need to question her, he knew what running patterers were: men of prodigious memory and usually a nice turn of humor, who sold red-hot news, generally of crime and seduction. And if there was nothing sufficiently grisly in truth, then they were not above inventing something, replete with detail, and frequently showing pictures.
“Thank you,” he said civilly, picking up the empty cup. “I’ll come back this evening.”
He went home for dinner and gave Charlotte, to her surprise and delight, both bunches of violets. Then at about ten o’clock he forced himself to go out again into the freezing fog.
It was a vile night, and there was no one in the street outside the hotel except a fat, pasty-faced youth selling hot plum duff, a cooked dough filled with sultanas and kept at a good temperature with layers of steaming cloth. The youth was well patronized by the men leaving the hotel, but after half an hour of standing and stamping his feet to keep the circulation going and a couple of brisk turns round the block, Pitt had seen none of the women who used the hotel rooms for their trade.
He questioned the plum duff boy and learned nothing at all. The boy had been there five years, he thought, but he had never noticed a woman in cerise.
The following night he came again, but he was no more successful, and the night after that he went instead to the Lyceum Theatre. He spoke to a seller of peppermint water who had seen someone in brilliant pink but could not recall her height, and rather thought she had had red hair.
Then after midnight, angry with the futility of it all, his feet numb in the settling snow and with his collar up round his ears, he moved forward amid the din of shouting, laughter, and occasional jeers as the theater turned out. He saw a youth selling ham sandwiches and decided to buy one. He was not hungry, but he liked ham. He pushed his way through the throng, jostled by elbows and plump bustles, assaulted by the smell of perfume, sweat, and beery breath till he reached the sandwich man in the street beyond. There was a threepence in his pocket but his fingers were too cold to grasp it.
The youth looked at him expectantly. He was thin and there were hectic spots of color in his cheeks. It was a wretched living and Pitt knew it, standing outside in all weather, often half the night, and to make enough to survive they had to buy the meat on the bone and cook it themselves, then cut the sandwiches. He made less than a halfpenny profit on each sandwich sold, and Pitt knew that anything spoiled or lost could wipe out the day’s takings.
“I’ll have two, please.” He gripped the threepenny bit at last and produced it. The youth gave him two sandwiches and a penny change.
“Thank you.” Pitt bit into the first sandwich and found it surprisingly good. “Have you been here long?”
“Abaht eight hour,” the boy replied. “But they’re fresh, guv, I made ’em meself!” He looked anxious.
“They’re excellent,” Pitt agreed with more enthusiasm than he felt for anything except the idea of going home. “I meant, have you had this patch for long? For example, were you here three or four years ago?”
“Oh. Yeah, I bin ’ere since I were fourteen.”
“Do you ever remember seeing a very beautiful woman in a dark, very bright plum pink dress, about three years ago? Very striking woman, tall, with dark hair. Please think carefully, it’s very important.”
“What sort o’ woman, guv? Yer mean one o’ them?” He inclined his head very slightly towards a lush-looking woman with a pile of loose fair hair and rouge on her plump cheeks.
“Yes, but more expensive, more class.”
“One as I saw like that, wearing that sort o’ color, looked more like a lady ter me—though she were with a gent as was never ’er ’usband.”
Pitt deliberately quelled his feeling of excitement.
“How do you know?”
“Gam!” The boy pulled a face of disbelief. “ ’E were all over ’er. Eyes like limpets, ’e ’ad. An’ she were leading ’im on proper; all very tasteful like, but I seen too many not ter know. Some folks ’as class, and some ’asn’t, but it’s all the same in the end. Proper beauty, she were, though.”
“Was she buxom?” Pitt made an hourglass in the air with his hands, almost losing his sandwich in the process.
“No.” The youth’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “No, she weren’t. It were summer an’ she ’ad a real low gown an’ she were right scrawny! But ever so elegant!”
“Tall or short?” Pitt could not keep his voice from rising.
