might have been in the park.
“See anything unusual the night of the second murder?” he asked, without any real hope of a useful answer.
Kate shrugged. “Some amateur tried to get on our patch and Cissy pulled ’er ’air out …”
“I did not!” Cissy protested. “I just give ’er a nice civil warning, like.”
“Sure she was an amateur?” Pitt asked. “She wouldn’t have had a pimp somewhere behind, who’d—” He stopped. It was too unlikely to be worth pursuing.
Kate gave him a wry glance.
“Seen no one else ’cept the usual gents,” she said, pulling a face.
“No one else at all?” he insisted.
“A rozzer a couple o’ times, but ’e don’t bother us if we behave proper and don’t accost”—she used the word with heavy sarcasm—“any gentlemen what’s taking a quiet respectable stroll by ’isself. ’E in’t a bad sort. ’E knows we gotter eat like anyone else. An’ the gentlemen wot pays ’is wages wouldn’t like to be driven out o’ their bit o’ pleasure.”
“Who else? Think, Kate! There is someone—someone with an ax or a cutlass …”
“Gawd!” She shivered. “Will yer quit yappin’ on about it! I jus’ saw ordinary-lookin’ gents, one or two wi’ a skinful, the rozzer, the park keeper goin’ ’ome wi’ ’is machine, or somethink. It were real quiet.”
“It’ll be a bloody sight quieter now,” Gert said angrily. She looked up at Pitt. “Why the ’ell can’t yer catch the bleedin’ lunatic wot’s doin’ this and let us get on wi’ our business? It ain’t safe for no one anymore. I thought that was what the bleedin’ crushers were supposed to be for? To make the place safe!”
“I don’t think making it safe for ladies of trade was what the gentlemen of the government had in mind at the time,” Pitt said wryly. “Then—on the other hand …”
Kate gave a sharp laugh. Gert pulled a face.
“Were you anywhere near the bandstand?” Pitt asked, looking at them one at a time.
They all shook their heads. Again there was no way of telling whether they were speaking the truth, but he thought they probably were. If anyone had seen the corpse there would have been screams, a commotion. Word would have spread.
“I see.”
He thanked them and left, walking out past a sour and uncharacteristically curious Bert. He was afraid for business, the only sensitive area in his soul. Pitt ignored him and went out into the street. He did not dislike the women. He knew too many of their stories, and even the knowledge of drink and disease, vulgarity, manipulation and greed did not alter the fact that for almost all of them, there was little other chance of survival in London. They were unemployable as domestic servants, although that was how many of them had begun. One had to have references. A charge of immorality, true or not, an accusation of thieving, even if the mistress had merely mislaid an ornament or a pin, a comb, an earring—any of a dozen tiny items, it made no difference; a girl without a character reference would get no other post. There was no redress, and seldom a second chance. More than one handsome parlormaid had found herself on the streets because the master would not keep his hands off her.
Others found the sweatshops, match factories or markets too hard, far too little reward. The risk of disease on the streets was high, but then it was high anyway. At least they were less likely to starve to death.
Men like Bert, or the other pimp, Fat George, he regarded in a totally different light. And the sadistic and perverted Wee Georgie he would have seen dead with pleasure.
But what the women said made sense. He thought about it as he went back down the Edgware Road, passing peddlers and costermongers and a woman selling peppermint drink. He stopped and bought a sandwich from a stall, and a mug of tea. He walked on slowly, listening to the chatter, gossip, haggling and abuse that ebbed and flowed around him. Occasionally he was greeted by name, and he replied briefly.
Twice he heard someone say “The Headsman,” and knew whom they meant. Already the horror was there, the sudden silence and the chill, even in the sun and the bustle of the streets. There was fear—cold, gray fear— underneath the banter and the attempts to make a joke of it.
Was there a madman loose? Or was there some connection between Captain the Honorable Oakley Winthrop, R.N., and the conductor Aidan Arledge, something personal and so dreadful it had brought them both to their deaths?
He increased his pace till he was striding along the footpath so swiftly people scattered in front of him, grumbling about his manners.
“Hey?” one man yelled indignantly. “They put out the fire in 1660! Yer too late!”
“It was 1666!” Pitt yelled back at him, correcting his history with satisfaction.
Back in the office in Bow Street, le Grange was waiting for him. As soon as he saw Pitt’s attire his ingenuous face filled with surprise and incomprehension.
“Are you all right, sir? You look—well …”
“Yes I am quite all right, thank you,” Pitt answered, going around him and sitting down at the desk. “Have you something to report?”
“Yes sir. At least, Mr. Tellman said as I should come and say as there isn’t really anything new … sir.”
“Did he?” Pitt was irritated. That was one slip of protocol he had never indulged in, sending a sergeant to Micah Drummond to report progress. Either he had ignored him completely or he had come himself. “So Mr. Tellman has achieved nothing at all?”
“Oh no, sir.” Le Grange looked upset. “That ain’t what I mean, sir, not at all. ’E’s been very busy. Never stopped, in fact. ’E’s seen the bandsman what found Arledge, but ’e don’t know nothing. Just unfortunate, you might say. And o’ course ’e did question the park keeper, same as before, but ’e don’t know nothing either. Thoroughly scared he were.”
