“How on earth would I know? I am not a policeman! But I would have thought if there were more of you, more experienced perhaps-”
“To do what?” Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Ask more questions? We have dug up an incredible number of trivial eccentricities, immoralities, small dishonesties and cruelties, but no clue to murder-at least none that can be recognized as such.” His face became very grave. “We are dealing with insanity, Mr. Corde. It’s no use looking for reasons or patterns that you or I would recognize.”
Dominic stared at him, afraid. This wretched man was speaking about something horrible, something hellish and incomprehensible, and it frightened him.
“What manner of man are we looking for?” Pitt went on. “Does he choose his particular victims for any specific reason? Or is his choice arbitrary? Do they just happen to be at the right place at the right time? Does he even know who they are? What have they in common? They are all young, all pleasing enough to look at, but that is all as far as we know. Two were servants, two daughters of respectable families. The Hiltons’ maid was somewhat loose in her morals, but Lily Mitchell was entirely proper. Chloe Abernathy was a little silly, but no more. Verity Lessing mixed in high society. You tell me what they had in common, apart from being young and living in or near Cater Street!”
“He must be a madman!” Dominic said futilely.
Pitt pulled a bitter smile. “We had already got so far.”
“Robbery?” Dominic suggested, then knew it was silly as soon as he had said it.
Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Of a maid on her evening off?”
“Were they-?” Dominic did not like to use the word.
Pitt had no such scruples. “Raped? No. Verity Lessing’s dress was torn open and her bosom scratched quite deeply, but nothing more.”
“Why?” Dominic shouted, oblivious of the heads turning from the other tables. “He must be a raving-! A-a-” He could think of no word. His anger collapsed. “It doesn’t make any sense!” he said helplessly.
“No,” Pitt agreed. “And while we are trying to understand it, trying to see some sort of pattern in the evidence, we still have to do something about the other crimes.”
“Yes, of course,” Dominic stared into his empty coffee cup. “Can’t you leave that to your sergeant, or something? The street is in a terrible state, everyone is afraid of everyone else.” He thought of Sarah. “It’s affecting even the ways we think of each other.”
“It will,” Pitt agreed. “Nothing strips the soul quite as naked as fear. We see things in ourselves and in others that we would far rather not have known about. But my sergeant is in hospital.”
“Was he taken ill?” Dominic was not really interested, but it was something to say.
“No, he was injured. We went into a slum quarter after a forger.”
“And he attacked you?”
“No,” Pitt said wryly. “Thieves and forgers far more often run than fight. You’ve never been into the vast warrens where these people live and work, or you wouldn’t have asked. Buildings are packed so close together they are indistinguishable: any single row has a dozen entrances and exits. They usually post some sort of watchman-a child or an old woman, a beggar, anyone. And they prepare traps. We’re used to the trapdoors that open up beneath you and drop you into a sort of oubliette, a hole perhaps fifteen or twenty feet deep, possibly even into the sewers. But this was different. This fellow went upwards towards the roof, and we chased him up the stairs. I had been set upon by two other villains and was busy fighting them off. Poor Flack charged up the stairway and the forger disappeared ahead of him, dropping a trapdoor downwards, across the stairs. The thing was fitted with great iron spikes. One sliced through Flack’s shoulder, another missed his face by inches.”
“Oh God!” Dominic was horrified. Pictures swam into his mind of dark and filthy caves and passages smelling of refuse, running with rats; his stomach rose at the thought of entering them. He imagined the ceiling slamming shut in front of him, the iron spikes driving into flesh, the pain and the blood. He thought for a moment he was going to be sick.
Pitt was staring at him. “He’ll likely lose the arm, but unless it becomes gangrenous, he’ll live,” he was saying. He passed over the dish of coffee. “You see, there are other crimes, Mr. Corde.”
“Did you catch him?” Dominic found his voice scratchy. “He ought to be hanged!”
“Yes, we caught him a day later. And he’ll be transported for twenty-five or thirty years. From what I hear that’ll likely be as bad. Maybe he’ll be of some use to someone in Australia.”
“I still say he should be hanged!”
“It’s easy to judge, Mr. Corde, when your father was a gentleman, and you have clothes on your back and food on your plate every day. Williams’s father was a resurrectionist-”
“A churchman!” Dominic was shocked.
Pitt smiled sardonically. “No, Mr. Corde, a man who made his living by stealing corpses to sell to the medical schools, before the law was changed in the ’thirties-”
“Sweet God!”
“Oh, there were plenty of unwanted corpses around the rookeries, the slum areas of the old days. It was a crime, of course, and it demanded a good deal of skill and nerve to smuggle them from wherever they were stolen to wherever they were handed over and the money received. Sometimes they were even dressed and propped up to look like live passengers-”
“Stop it!” Dominic stood up. “I take your point that the wretched man may not know better, but I don’t want to hear about it. It doesn’t excuse him, or help your sergeant. Let the man forge his money. What’s a few guineas more or less in the whole of London? But find our hangman!”
Pitt was still seated. “A few guineas more or less is nothing to you, Mr. Corde, but to a woman with a child, it may be the difference between food and starvation. And if you can tell me what else to do to catch your hangman, I’ll be only too willing to do it.”
Dominic left the coffeehouse feeling miserable, confused, and deeply angry. Pitt had no right to speak to him like that. There was nothing whatsoever he could do about it, and it was unfair he should be forced to listen.
When he arrived home he felt no better. Sarah met him in the hall. He kissed her, putting his arms round her, but she did not relax against him. In irritation he let go of her sharply.
“Sarah, I’ve had enough of this childish attitude of yours. You are behaving stupidly, and it’s time you stopped!”
“Do you know how many nights you have been out this last month?” she countered.
“No, I do not. Do you?”
“Yes, thirteen in the last three weeks.”
“Alone. And if you were to behave yourself with dignity and like a grown woman instead of an undisciplined child, I should take you with me.”
“I hardly think I should care for the places which you have been frequenting.”
He drew breath to say he would change the places, but then his anger hardened and he changed his mind. There was no purpose in arguing with words; it was feelings that mattered, and as long as she felt like this it was pointless. He turned away and went into the withdrawing room. Sarah went back to the kitchen.
Charlotte was in the withdrawing room, standing by the open window painting.
“This is a withdrawing room, Charlotte, not a studio,” he said waspishly.
She looked surprised, and a little hurt.
“I’m sorry. Everyone else is either out or busy, and I was not expecting you home so early, or I would have put it away.” She did not, however, move to close her box.
“I met your damned policeman.”
“Mr. Pitt?”
“Have you another?”
“I haven’t any.”
“Don’t be coy, Charlotte.” He sat down irritably. “You know perfectly well he admires you, indeed is enamoured of you. If you haven’t observed it for yourself, Emily has certainly told you!”
Charlotte flushed with embarrassment.
“Emily was saying it to annoy. And you of all people should know that Emily can say things merely to cause trouble!”
He turned to look at her properly. He had been unfair. He was taking out his anger with Pitt and with Sarah
