“Did Mr. Ewart say that?”
“Not in them words, but that’s what he meant. An’ he’s right, in’t he?”
“That depends on several things,” Pitt said, evading the question. He could tell the truth; she would not have thanked him for it. “But if you aren’t sure, then it doesn’t matter anyway. Tell me more about Ada. If it wasn’t FitzJames, who do you think it was?”
She was silent so long he thought she was not going to answer. Flies droned against the glass. There was a banging upstairs and along the corridor someone swore.
Finally she spoke. “Well, if it weren’t for the boots all buttoned up, I’d have said Costigan, he’s her new pimp. Nasty piece of work, he is, an’ no mistake. Pretty.” She said the word with condemnation. “Thinks every woman should want after him. Temper like a mousetrap. All cheese one minute, an’ then bang! Takes off your legs.” She shrugged. “But he’s a coward. I know that sort. The moment he’d seen she was dead, he’d have taken off, scared for his life. He’d never have stopped to do up the boots an’ put the garter ’round her arm.” She looked at Pitt blankly. “So I reckon as it was her customer, FitzJames or not.”
She had not mentioned the broken fingers and toes, but then she did not know about them.
“Perhaps it was the customer who did the boots and the garter?” he suggested. “And then Costigan came in before she had time to undo them?” It was a reasonable thought.
Nan shook her head. “Me or Rosie’d have seen him, if there’d have been two. Or Agnes. It may look as if no one sees who comes and goes in these rooms, but it isn’t that way. We look out for each other. Have to. Mostly it’s old Madge who watches. Never know what a customer might do. Some of them have too much to drink and get nasty. Some want you to do things a sane person wouldn’t ever think of.” She blinked and sniffed hard, wiping her nose on a piece of rag. “That’s what’s funny about it. You’d have thought she’d have shouted out, wouldn’t you? She can’t have had any idea until the stocking was ’round her throat, poor little bitch.”
“That doesn’t sound like a first-time customer,” Pitt reasoned. “Rather someone she’d had before, and expected to do something odd like that. Was Costigan her lover as well as her pimp?” He leaned forward, forgetting the chair, which tipped violently.
“He’d like to have been,” she said with a curl of her lip. She ignored the chair. She was used to it. “Don’t think he was, but then I don’t know everything. Maybe. But if she let him, why’d he kill her?”
“I don’t know. Thank you, Nan. If you think of anything else, tell me-or Mr. Ewart.”
“Yeah, yeah, course I will.” She watched as he stood up and the chair righted itself with a clatter.
Pitt spent several hours tracing all he could of Ada’s daily life, and found nothing different in it from the pattern of most women who made their living on the streets. She rose in the middle of the afternoon, dressed, ate her main meal, then started to walk the pavements. Very often she stayed in the Whitechapel area. There were plenty of customers. But sometimes if it was a fine evening, and especially in the summer, she would go up to the traditional areas for picking up wealthier men: Windmill Street, the Haymarket, Leicester Square. There the theater crowds, elegant ladies and men about town, paraded side by side with prostitutes of all classes and ages, from the well-dressed, expensive courtesans down to the ten- or twelve-year-old children who ran along, tugging at sleeves, whispering obscene offers, desperate for a few pence.
Ada had been beaten the occasional time, usually by her former pimp, a man named Wayland, a mean-faced, part-time drayman who supplemented his income by sometimes bullying, sometimes protecting, girls in the Pentecost Alley area. He had lodgings opposite and spent much of his time lounging around, watching to see that the girls were not actually molested in the open. Once they were inside, any restraint of a violent or dishonest client was up to them. There was a woman, old Madge, the one Nan had referred to, who had been a prostitute herself in her better days and who roomed in the back of the house, and she would come if anyone screamed. Her sight was poor, but her hearing was excellent, and she could wield a rolling pin with accuracy and the full benefit of her twenty stone. She had half killed more than one client whose demands she had considered unreasonable.
But like anyone else, even Agnes in the next room, she had heard nothing from Ada the night of her death.
Wayland could be accounted for all that night by one of his new acquisitions, a plain-faced girl of eighteen or so whose extremely handsome figure earned them both a comfortable income. And as Ewart had admitted, he looked nothing whatever like the man Rose and Nan had described. He was small and thin, with dark straight hair like streaks of black paint over his narrow skull.
There had been hasty quarrels in Ada’s life, flares of temper, and then quick forgiveness. She had not been one to hold a grudge. There were impetuous acts of kindness: the sharing of clothes; the gift of a pound when times were hard; praise, sometimes when it was least merited.
She had sat up all night with old Madge when she was sick, fetching and carrying for her, washing her down with clean, hot water, emptying slops, all when she could have been out earning. And sitting back in the kitchen again on the same rickety chair, looking at Madge’s worn-out, red face, Pitt thought that if they found who had killed Ada, he would be better off with the law than left to Madge.
“Looked arter me good, she did,” she said, staring at Pitt fixedly. “I should ’ave ’eard ’er! W’y din’t I ’ear ’er call out, eh? I’d ’a’ killed the swine afore I’d ’a’ let ’im ’urt ’er. I in’t no use no more.” Grief puckered her huge cheeks, and her voice, high for so vast a woman, was thick with guilt. “Look wot I done for ’er-nuffink! W’ere were I w’en she needed me? ’Ere, ’alf asleep, like as not. Great useless mare!”
“She didn’t cry out,” Pitt said quietly. “And it could all have been over quite quickly anyway.”
“Yer lying ter me,” she said, forcing a smile. “Yer mean ter be kind, which in’t nuffink bad, but I seen folk choked afore. They don’t die that quick. An’ leastways I might’ve caught the bastard. I’d ’ave finished ’im with me pin.” She gestured towards the rolling pin on the table near her right hand. “Then you could’ve topped me fer it, an’ I’d’ve gorn glad.”
“I wouldn’t have topped you for it, Madge,” he said honestly. “I’d have called it self-defense and looked the other way.”
“Yeah, mebbe yer would an’ all.”
But even though he also went and found Albert Costigan-a brash man of about thirty, sharply dressed and with thick, brown hair-Pitt learned nothing either to confirm or disprove his belief in Finlay FitzJames’s guilt.
Pitt decided to learn all he could about Finlay himself. It would be difficult, and he was afraid of prejudicing any information he might acquire simply by the act of having sought it. Had there been time, it was the type of investigation Charlotte would have helped with, and had done so excellently in the past. It needed subtlety and acute observation. Simple questions were not going to uncover what he wanted to know.
Pitt had already asked discreetly in the Force about Finlay-and learned nothing. Other police superintendents knew only his name, and then only in connection with his father. Pitt had made an appointment to see Micah Drummond, who had been his superior before he had inherited the position. Drummond had gone to live abroad with his new wife, finding London social life intolerable for her after the scandal of her first husband’s death. Micah returned home from time to time, and fortunately this investigation coincided with one of those occasions. He would at least be honest with Pitt and have the courage to disregard the political implications.
Perhaps Emily was the one to ask. She moved in society and might hear whispers which would at least tell him in which direction to look. Jack would not be pleased that she should be given even the slightest encouragement to meddle again. But all Pitt wanted was information.
He thought of Helliwell and Thirlstone. They were the ones who would know Finlay best, but they would close ranks, as they had begun to already. It was part of the creed of a gentleman that he did not betray his friends. Loyalty was the first prerequisite. Pitt was an outsider. They would never speak ill of Finlay to him, no matter what they thought privately, or possibly even knew.
At the Foreign Office he went in and gave the name of the man with whom he had made his first appointment. He was shown upstairs and along a wide, gracious corridor into an outer office where he was obliged to wait for nearly a quarter of an hour.
Eventually a handsome gray-haired man came in, his face composed, his dress faultless. He closed the door behind him.
The room was charming. A French Impressionist painting, all sunlight and shadows, hung on one of the paneled walls. There was a tree beyond the window.
“Do sit down, Superintendent Pitt. I’m so sorry for having kept you waiting, but you explained your errand in your letter, and I wished to have ready for you all the information you could possibly find useful.” He looked at Pitt
