ignored it. “He takes off the stocking and strangles her with it,” he went on. “He ties her garter ’round her arm and then, after she is dead, buttons her boots to each other, throws a pitcher of cold water over her, and leaves?”
Ewart opened his mouth to protest, but was too filled with disgust and confusion to find the words.
“Or alternatively,” Pitt suggested, “a customer does these things as part of his particular fetish. He likes to threaten, cause a little pain or fear. That’s what excites him. But this time it goes too far, and the girl is really dead. He panics and leaves. What do you think?”
Ewart’s face was sullen and there was a flicker of unmistakable fear in his dark eyes. The passageway was hot and the air close. There was sweat on his skin, and on Pitt’s also.
“I think we’ve got to be damned careful we don’t make a mistake,” he said harshly. “FitzJames won’t deny he was here sometime, if it comes to facing him with it. His lawyer’ll advise him to do that. Lots of respectable men use prostitutes. We all know it. You can’t expect a young man to curb his natural feelings all his youth, and he might not be able to afford a good marriage until he’s in his late thirties, or more. It’s better not talked about, but if we force it into the open, no one’ll be surprised, just angered by the bad taste of speaking about it.” He took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his hand across his brow. The carter was still shouting outside.
“He’ll say he was here, but not that night. She must have stolen the badge. He’d not be the first man to have something pretty stolen at a brothel. Good God, man, in times past there were places in Bluegate Fields and Saint Giles where a man’d be lucky to get out with his skin whole!” He gestured sharply with his arm. “I’ve seen ’em running out without shirt or trousers, naked as a jaybird and scared out of their wits. Covered in bruises and scars.”
“Nor would he be the first to go back in a temper and beat the thief,” Pitt pointed out. “I don’t think he’d be well advised to try that story.”
“But there wasn’t a fight,” Ewart said with a sudden smile. “Lennox said that, and we saw it for ourselves.”
“Which proves what?”
Ewart’s eyes opened wide.
“That … that he took her by surprise, of course. That he was someone she knew and wasn’t afraid of.”
“Not a customer from whom she’d just stolen something.”
Ewart was losing his patience. “I don’t know what it proves, except we’ve a long way to go yet.” He turned away and pushed the door to Ada’s room. It swung open and Pitt followed him inside. It was exactly the same as when they had first come, except that the body of Ada was no longer there. The window was closed and it was oppressively hot.
“I’ve searched right through it,” Ewart said wearily. “There’s nothing here except exactly what you’d expect. It doesn’t tell us anything about her. No letters. If she had anyone, either they didn’t write or she didn’t keep them.”
Pitt stood in the middle of the floor.
“They probably couldn’t write,” he said sadly. “Many people can’t. No way to keep in touch. Any pictures?” That was a forlorn hope too. People like Ada would have little money for photographs or portraits.
“No.” Ewart shook his head. “Oh, there’s a pencil sketch of a woman, but it’s fairly rough. It could be anyone. There’s nothing written on it.” He walked over and took it out of a small case inside the chest where it was kept with a few handkerchiefs, pins and a comb. He gave it to Pitt.
Pitt looked at the piece of paper. It was bent around the edges, a little scarred across one corner. The sketch was simple, as Ewart had said, of a woman of perhaps thirty with a gentle face, half smiling, her hair piled on her head. It had a grace in the lines, but it was only a rough sketch, the work of a few moments by an unskilled hand. Perhaps it was Ada’s mother … all she had of her past, of a time and place where she belonged.
Suddenly he was so choked with anger he could have beaten Finlay FitzJames black and blue himself, whether he had killed Ada or not, simply because he did not care.
“Sir?” Ewart’s voice broke across his thoughts.
“What?” he said, looking up sharply.
“I’ve already asked around and learned a lot about her life, the sort of customers she had, where she went regular, if she could have crossed up someone. It’s always possible, you know, that the boots and the garter were from her last customer, and not necessarily to do with whoever killed her.”
“Have you!” Pitt asked. “And what did you discover?”
Ewart looked profoundly unhappy. His face was puckered and the sweat on his skin gleamed wet.
“She was cheeky. A bit too much brass for her own good,” he said slowly. “Changed her pimp a short while ago. Chucked him over and got someone new. Now he could be taking it hard. She was a nice bit of income for him. And he could have had a personal interest. Not impossible. She was handsome.”
“What did he look like?” Pitt asked, trying to quell the flicker of hope inside him.
Ewart’s eyes avoided his. “Thin,” he answered. “Dark …” He tailed off; the pimp was nothing at all like the man Rose Burke and Nan Sullivan had described. It was pointless to discuss it any further. Of course they must know all they could about Ada’s life, and then about Finlay FitzJames’s as well.
“Well, you’d better follow up the new pimp,” Pitt said wearily. “I’ll speak to these women again.”
In fact, Pitt had considerable trouble raising anyone, but a quarter of an hour later he was sitting on a hard- backed wooden chair in the kitchen with Nan Sullivan, who looked exhausted, blowsy and bleary-eyed. Every time he changed his balance the chair tilted and threatened to tip over. He asked her to tell him again what she remembered of the night Ada had been killed. It was not that he expected any new evidence; he wanted to weigh up what impression she might make on a jury and whether anyone would believe her rather than Finlay FitzJames.
She stared at Pitt, her eyes blinking, unfocused.
“Describe the man you saw going into Ada’s room,” Pitt prompted, steadying himself on the chair again. A couple of flies droned lazily around the window. There were two pails standing with cloths over them. Probably water.
“Fair hair, he had,” Nan answered him. “Thick. And a good coat, that’s all I can say for sure.” She looked away, avoiding Pitt’s eyes. “Wouldn’t know him again. Only saw his back. Expensive sort of coat. I do know a good coat.” She bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears. “I used to work in a shop, making coats, after me man died. But you can’t keep two little ones alive on what they pay you. Worked all day and half into the night, I did, but still only made six shillin’s a week, an’ what’ll that get you? Could’ve kept me virtue, an’ put the baby to one o’ them farms, but I know what happens to them. Sell ’em they do, into Holy Mother knows what! Or if they’re sickly, let the poor souls die. Leave them to starve, so they do.”
Pitt said nothing. He knew what she said was true. He knew sweatshop wages, and he had seen baby farms.
There was no sound in the rest of the house. The other women were out or asleep. From outside in the street came the distant noise of wheels and hooves on the stones, and a man calling out. The sweatshop opposite was busy, all heads bent over the needle. They were already five hours into their day.
“Or I could have gone to the workhouse,” Nan went on slowly. “But then they’d have taken the little ones away from me. I couldn’t bear that. If I went on the streets I could feed us all.”
“What happened to your children?” he asked gently, then instantly wished he had not. He did not want to be compelled to share her tragedy.
She smiled, looking up at him. “Grew up,” she answered. “Mary went into service and done well for herself. Bridget got married to a butcher out Camden way.”
Pitt did not ask any more. He could imagine for himself what two girls would do to keep the precious gift their mother had given them. They might think of her now and again, might even have some idea of what their well-being had cost, but nothing would bring them back here to Pentecost Alley. And it was probably better so. She could imagine their happiness, and they could carry only early memories of her, before she became worn out, shabby and stained by life.
“Well done,” he said, and meant it profoundly, steadying himself on the chair as it tilted dangerously.
“Ada’s child died, poor thing.” She did not say whether her pity was for the child or for Ada herself. “I’d tell you who did it, if I knew, mister, but I don’t. Anyway”-she shrugged her wide shoulders-“as Mr. Ewart said, who’d believe me anyway?”
Pitt felt a wave of anger again.
