“I don’t,” Pitt interrupted impatiently. “But I think your girls might have seen something. And more than that, they might know if there is someone strange around, someone with bizarre tastes, someone who carries a large blade.”
“No. No one any odder than always. Gents what comes into the park looking fer a bit o’ fun often ’as their own tastes.”
“Which might go too far?” Pitt said with eyebrows raised questioningly. “Which a new girl might resent?”
“Oh yeah? So she chops ’is ’ead orf?”
“Not personally.”
“Well I don’t follow me girls around. Gents don’t like it.” He laughed in a soft, whispering falsetto. “Daft bastards, think no one knows about ’em, so they like to keep things private.” He grimaced, showing dark teeth. “And ’ow would I do that anyway? I don’t carry an ax wi’ me.” He struck an absurd pose. “Pardon me, sir, but me girls don’t like that sort of thing and would yer mind just bending down on the grass, like, so I can chop yer ’ead orf—just ter teach other gents wi’ nasty ideas as it don’t pay.”
“They were hit on the head first,” Pitt said sourly, but he could see the reason in the man’s words.
“If I’d knocked ’im senseless, why cut ’is ’ead orf?” The man curled his lip with contempt.
“Someone did!” Pitt said. “Tell me which of your girls was in the park on those nights?”
“Marie, Gert, Cissy and Kate,” he answered readily enough.
“Fetch them,” Pitt said tersely.
The man hesitated only a moment, then disappeared, and a few moments later four women came in looking tired and drab in the daylight. By moonlight or gaslight they may have had a certain glamour, but now their skins were pasty, their hair lusterless and full of knots, their teeth stained and chipped, several gaps showing when they opened their lips. Kate, seemingly the leader, was a tall thin woman with red hair, and looked at Pitt with dislike. She appeared about forty, but she may well have been no more than twenty-five.
“Bert says as yer looking for the geezer what done them murders in the park. Well we dunno nuffink about it.”
The other three nodded in agreement, one pulling her soiled robe around herself, another pushing a mane of fair hair away from her eyes.
“But you were in the park those nights.” Pitt made it a statement.
“Some o’ the time, yeah,” Kate conceded.
“Did you see anyone on the Serpentine around midnight?”
“No.” Her face filled with amusement. Pitt had spoken to her several times before over one thing or another. She had been a seamstress until she became pregnant. Sewing coats at sevenpence ha’penny for a coat and by working a fifteen-hour day she could make two shillings and sixpence; but out of this she had to pay threepence for getting the buttonholes worked and fourpence for trimmings. Even eighteen hours a day was not enough to keep herself and her child. She had taken to the streets to earn a day’s wages in an hour. Let the future take care of itself. As she had said to Pitt, what was the use of a future if you didn’t live beyond today?
“Gents like ter be a bit more private, like, even if they’ve a fancy for the open an’ in an ’urry. Yer ever tried it in one of them little boats? They tip over awful easy.”
Pitt smiled back at her. “I had to ask. Have you ever seen Captain Winthrop?”
“Yer mean was ’e a customer?”
“If you like. Or even just seen him walking?”
“Yeah—I’ve seen ’im a couple o’ times, but ’e weren’t a customer.”
Pitt grunted. He had no idea if she was telling the truth or not. She had looked at him with total candor, and that in itself made him vaguely dubious.
“Look, Mr. Pitt,” she said, suddenly serious, “it weren’t nothink to do with any o’ us, and that’s Gawd’s truth. Yer might get the odd bloke what gets stuck wi’ a shiv. Wee Georgie’s good at that, but it ain’t no good for business ter get violent. Puts people orf, and then we don’t eat. This ain’t one o’ us, it’s some geezer wot’s a real nutter. An’ it’s no use asking us ’oo, ’cos we don’t know.” She looked at the other girls.
Cissy pushed her blond hair out of her eyes again and nodded in agreement.
“We don’t like it no more’n you do,” she said, sucking on a rotten tooth and wincing, putting her hand up to her jaw. “Makes people un’appy about goin’ out, it does. They’re all spooked. And that’s our patch.”
“Yeah,” one of the other two agreed. “It in’t as if we could just move uptown, like. Fat George’d do us if we got onto ’is girls’ patch.” She shivered. “I in’t scared o’ Fat George. ’E’s just a bucket o’ lard. But that Wee Georgie, ’e scares the ’ell out o’ me. ’E’s a real evil little swine. I reckon as ’e in’t right in the ’ead. The way ’e looks at yer.”
“Eeurgh.” Cissy pulled a face and hugged herself.
“But it don’t make no sense fer ’im to cut nobody’s ’ead orf,” Kate insisted. “An’ ’onest, Mr. Pitt, we don’t know nothink about anyone around what’s a real nutter. There in’t nobody sleeps out that we knows of. Is there?” She looked at the others.
They all shook their heads, eyes on Pitt.
“Sleeping rough in the park?” Pitt suggested
“Nah. There’s them as sleeps rough, or tries ter,” Kate agreed. “But the park keeper is pretty ’ard. Comes and moves ’em on. And o’ course there’s rozzers ’round every now and again. That’s another reason why most gents don’t fancy doing their business in the park. Makes yer look a right fool ter get caught by a passin’ rozzer. We just makes acquaintance there.”
There was no point in asking if they had seen Aidan Arledge. His description was that of a hundred men who
