“She told the whole story the first time,” Pitt pointed out. “What had she to gain from telling it again?”
“Revenge,” Ewart replied, as if the answer were obvious. “He was responsible for her ruin. Oldest motive in the world.”
Pitt looked sideways at him. Ewart was a good policeman. His record was excellent. He was in line for more promotion. This was an extraordinary lapse in his thinking. He had been laboring under some emotion right from the start. Was it pity or disgust? Or was it some fear that Augustus FitzJames would set out to ruin whoever accused his son of such a crime, guilty or innocent, and even Ewart’s long-standing reputation would not be enough to save him?
Of course it would be unpleasant. But bringing a charge against anyone had its tragedy. There were always innocent people hurt, people who simply loved a husband or a son. They would be overwhelmed by events, and then when all the tumult and the public pain was over, they would be left with its grief.
“What good would that do?” Pitt asked him, watching Ewart’s face with its black eyes and the lines of anxiety around his mouth. “Ada had already told her story. Dead, she simply reinforces it. If he killed anyone, it would be the present girl, before she tells her employer. The judgment had already been made between Ada and this man, and she had lost. She might have killed him, but he had no cause to kill her.”
Ewart’s expression hardened, and a flicker of something like fear shadowed across his features, or perhaps it was anger. He was very tired. His hands shook a little. He must hate having a superior like Pitt put in to take over his case because he was deemed incapable of handling a politically sensitive case. Any man would, and Pitt would have himself.
And Ewart was doing a better job of being politically appropriate than Pitt was. He was searching for any answer but the explosive one.
In his position Pitt would have resented both the man who was brought in and the superior who made the decision.
“I agree with you,” he said quietly. “The evidence against FitzJames is poor. The identification is useless. The cuff links were lost years ago, and the club badge is suspect. It won’t stand alone, now we’ve found a second one in his possession. We’ve got to go back to the beginning. We should look more closely at Ada’s life, and also at FitzJames’s, to see who could be implicated.”
Ewart turned to face him. “Implicated?” he asked slowly. He seemed almost too tired, too stunned by blow after blow to think.
“If FitzJames has enemies so virulent they would put evidence at the scene of the murder to incriminate him,” Pitt started to explain, “then …”
Ewart straightened up a little, realization in his face.
“Oh yes. Of course. Do you want me to do that? I’ll start tomorrow.”
“Good,” Pitt agreed. “I’ll continue with Ada.” It was all ugly, and confusing. He must, as he had said, go right back to the beginning.
Pitt arrived home late, and was startled to find Emily’s great-aunt by her first marriage, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, sitting in his parlor sipping a tisane and talking to Charlotte. He had flung the door open, about to speak, until he saw her, and he stopped.
“Good evening, Thomas,” Aunt Vespasia said coolly, her silver eyebrows raised. As always, she looked exquisite; her face, with its marvelous bones and hooded eyes, had been refined by time and her character marked into it. It was no longer the mere loveliness of youth but a beauty which was the whole structure of a life, fascinating and unique.
She had given him permission to call her by name as a relative. He used it with pleasure.
“Good evening, Aunt Vespasia. How very pleasant to see you.”
“And surprising also, to judge by the expression upon your face,” she retorted. “No doubt you are hungry, and would like to dine. I believe Gracie has your meal prepared.”
He closed the door and came into the room. He was hungry and extremely tired, but he was not willing to forgo the pleasure of her company, nor the interest of her conversation. She would not simply have called because she was passing by. Vespasia never did anything casually, and she did not pass by Bloomsbury on the way to anywhere. He sat down, glanced at Charlotte, then faced Vespasia.
“Are you acquainted with Augustus FitzJames?” he said candidly.
She smiled. “No, Thomas, I am not. I should be offended if you imagined I had called upon you because I was a friend of his and aware that you were investigating that sordid affair in Whitechapel which seems to implicate his son.”
“No one who knew you would suppose you would try to exert influence, Aunt Vespasia,” he said honestly.
Her silver-gray eyes widened. “My dear Thomas, no one who knew me would suppose me a friend of a nouveau riche bully like Augustus FitzJames. Please do sit down. I find it most uncomfortable staring up at you.”
He found himself smiling in spite of his weariness and the confusion in his mind, the sense of having achieved nothing in all the time and effort he had spent. He sat down opposite her.
“But I do have some compassion for his wife,” she went on. “Although that is not why I called. My principal interest is in you, and after that, in John Cornwallis.” She frowned very slightly. “Thomas, if you charge Finlay FitzJames, be extremely careful that you can prove your case. His father is a man of great power and no clemency at all.”
Pitt had judged as much, but it was chilling to hear it from Vespasia. She was not a woman too arrogant or too foolish to be afraid, but it was a very rare occurrence indeed, and when he had seen it in the past, it had been of the power of secret societies rather than of individuals. It increased his sense of misery and the darkness of thought which surrounded the murder in Pentecost Alley.
Charlotte was looking at him anxiously.
“It begins to appear,” he began carefully, “as if Finlay FitzJames may not be guilty. Certainly the evidence against him has largely been withdrawn, or explained away.”
“That is very unclear. I think you had better say what you mean,” Vespasia commanded.
He told her about the badge, and then finding the second one in Finlay’s possession, and his inability to obtain any of the other original ones with which to compare them to identify the copy. He did not notice Charlotte’s pink cheeks or averted eyes, he was too absorbed with laying out the evidence for Vespasia.
“Hmm,” she said as he concluded. “Not very satisfactory, but I suppose rather obvious, except for one thing.”
“What thing?” Charlotte said quickly.
“One wonders why Augustus did not have the copy made immediately,” Vespasia answered. “And then require a more thorough search. It could have been done within the first couple of days. If he were going to do it at all, why wait until the discomfort increased? Unless, of course, it was to teach Finlay a lesson, make him thoroughly frightened for a while, and so perhaps more obedient.”
“Why couldn’t Finlay have done it himself?” Charlotte asked, then looked down as if she regretted having spoken.
“Because he panicked and hasn’t the brains,” Vespasia replied simply.
Pitt recalled his first meeting with Finlay.
“But he didn’t seem panicked,” he said honestly. “He was startled, upset, even shocked, but he didn’t seem in a sweat of fear at all. If anything, I would say his fear grew as time went by, and we continued to suspect him.”
“Curious,” Vespasia admitted. “What other evidence had you?”
Pitt noted that she spoke of it in the past, and smiled ruefully.
“Identification by witness,” he replied, then told her the story of Nan Sullivan and Rose Burke and their subsequent retraction.
Vespasia considered for several moments before she commented.
“Not very satisfactory,” she agreed. “That could mean any of several things: possibly she spoke the truth in the beginning and has been persuaded to withdraw it by pressure from someone else, threat of injury or promise of reward; or that her own sense of self-preservation has overcome her hatred or her anger; or conceivably she has decided the information is worth more if kept to herself and used at some future date for profit.” She frowned. “Or it
