“Anything?” Ewart asked him.
Pitt held out the buttons.
“Shirt,” Ewart said to the first. “Could belong to anyone at all. And it could have been there for months.” He took the second, rolled it between his fingers and thumb, then looked up and met Pitt’s eyes. “Quality,” he said dubiously. “But again, could be anybody’s. Could be a tramp in a charity coat.” There was a challenge in his voice, daring Pitt to say it was FitzJames’s. “Are you going to see the women here? They seem to be in control of themselves now.”
Indeed it was considerably quieter. The light had almost gone and there was no sound from the bottle factory over the road. A horse and trap went by. Someone shouted.
“Yes,” Pitt replied. “We’ll see what they know.”
He led the way along the passage to the kitchen at the back of the house. It was surprisingly large with a black stove in the center of the far wall and a grimy window facing straight onto the backs of houses in the next street. There was a table with odd legs in the center, patched together from two previous pieces of furniture, and half a dozen assorted chairs. Four of them were now occupied by women ranging in age from approximately twenty to over fifty, although with age, drink and paint, it was impossible to be sure. They all looked tragic and absurd, with powder and rouge streaked by tears, hair falling out of pins, eyes swollen with weeping. And at the same time they looked younger, and more human and individual with the shell of business cracked away.
Lennox was standing half behind one of the women, one hand on her shoulder, a cup of tea in the other, holding it out for her. He looked pale and tired, his nose accentuated by the deep lines scored down the sides of his mouth. He stared at Pitt warningly. His voice was hoarse when he spoke.
“Good evening, Superintendent. If you want to question these women, they are ready to answer you. Just don’t tell them details you don’t have to, and be a little patient. It isn’t easy to remember, or to find words, when you are terrified.”
Pitt nodded and turned to Ewart. “You could try the neighborhood. See if anyone else has noticed anything unusual, if they can remember a face, someone coming or going at about …?” He looked at Lennox enquiringly.
“Between four and five,” Lennox answered, then smiled in bitter mockery of himself. “Not medical brilliance, Superintendent. Observation of witnesses. Pearl heard Nora calling out in the corridor at about four o’clock. She’d just got up and was asking Edie if she could borrow a petticoat.”
Pitt looked at the women Lennox indicated. Pearl was pale-faced with flaxen hair of extraordinary beauty, sheer as spun glass and reflecting the light of the candles like wheatsilk, a patch of luminosity in the room. Edie was heavy and dark with olive skin and handsome, liquid brown eyes.
“And you lent her a petticoat?” Pitt asked.
Edie nodded. “She ’ad ter pin it, as she in’t ’alf my size, but she took it any’ow.” She sniffed and controlled herself with an effort.
“And the other time?” Pitt asked Lennox.
Lennox turned to another woman, dark, narrow-eyed, with a pretty mouth. She looked ashen, the rouge standing out on her cheeks, her hair lopsided where she had run her fingers through it, pins sliding out.
“Mabel can answer that.”
“Me first customer’d just gorn,” Mabel replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper. “I were goin’ past Nora’s door an’ I looked in. Dunno ’ow I knew she were by ’erself. Quiet, I s’pose.” She frowned, as though the puzzle mattered. “I saw ’er lyin’ on the bed wif ’er ’and up ter the post. I reckoned as ’er customer’d bin keen on that kind o’ thing, an’ left ’er like that. I even said summink to ’er….” She sniffed and swallowed with a painful constriction of her throat. Her body was shaking so uncontrollably her fingers skittered on the table.
Lennox moved across behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, holding her against him as if to give her of his own strength. It was a gesture of extraordinary gentleness. She might have been a friend of long standing, not a street woman he had only just met.
It steadied her, like a ray of sanity in the chaos.
“Then I saw ’er face,” she said quietly. “An’ I know as it ’ad ’appened to ’er too. The same one as got Ada McKinley’d got ’er too. I s’pose I must ’a’ yelled. Next thing everyone were there, an’ all yellin’ an’ callin’ out.”
“I see. Thank you.” Pitt turned to Ewart. “You’d better find out what men were seen coming or going from this building between four and five. Get descriptions of all of them and compare them with each woman and her customers. Get times as near as you can. Any man at all. I don’t care if they’re residents, pimps, or the lamplighter! Everyone.”
“Yes sir.”
Ewart departed and Pitt concentrated on the four women present. The last one, Kate, was still sobbing, pushing a wet handkerchief into her mouth and gasping for breath. Lennox went back to the stove and made another cup of tea, passing it to her, closing her stiff fingers around it awkwardly as Pitt began questioning Pearl, sitting on a rickety chair at right angles over the table from her.
“Tell me all you can remember from just before you saw Nora at almost four o’clock,” he prompted.
She stared at him, then began hesitantly.
“I ’eard Nora come inter ’er room an’ call ter Edie abaht a petticoat, but I din’ ’ear wot Edie said. I were busy doin’ me ’air ready fer the evenin’. I finished, and went aht. I got a customer real quick, one o’ me reg’lars….”
“Who was that?”
“Wot?”
“Who was he? What does he look like?”
She hesitated only a moment, glancing at Edie, then at Mabel.
“Jimmy Kale,” she answered. “ ’E come ’ere most Sundays. Not always ter me. Sometimes one o’ the other girls.”
“And what does he look like?”
“Tall, skinny. Got a long nose. Always sniffin’.”
“Did he come to Nora?” Pitt asked.
“Yeah, I reckon so. But ’e wouldn’t’ve ’urt ’er! W’y would ’e? ’E don’t even know ’er, ’cepting ter …” She stopped.
Pitt accepted that that was not knowing her in any sense that mattered.
“Go on. How long was Jimmy Kale with you?”
“ ’Alf hour.”
“Then what?”
“I ’ad a cup o’ tea wi’ Marge over the road. She come ’ere sometimes. ’Er old man knocks ’er around summink terrible.”
“Was she here between four and five o’clock? Would she come in through the door at the front and past Nora’s room?”
She shook her head.
“Nah, she come across the wall an’ up them areaway steps on the outside. That way ’er ’usband don’ see ’er, and nob’dy takes ’er for one o’ us.” She laughed abruptly. “Poor cow. She’d be better orff if she was! Anybody beat me like ’e do ’er, I’d stick a shiv in ’is guts.”
“When did she go?” Pitt ignored the reference to knives.
“When Mabel started ter yell. Rest o’ the noise don’t matter, but she knew that were different. We all did….”
She swallowed and her throat tightened. She started to cough and Lennox moved to her side, taking her hand and patting her firmly on the back. The human contact seemed to comfort her, the warmth of touch which demanded nothing of her. She took a shuddery breath. For a moment she hovered on the edge of abandoning herself to the comfort of weeping and clinging to someone.
Lennox removed his hand and passed over the cup of tea.
She straightened up again.
“We knew as summink were terrible wrong,” she said levelly. “Nora ’ad Syd Allerdyce wif ’er. ’E come ter the door wif ’is pants rahnd ’is ankles. Proper fool ’e looked too, fat as a pig and red in the face. In’t ’alf so la-di-da caught like that, ’e weren’t.” The dislike was heavy in her face. She did not forget a condescension, or forgive it. “Angie from upstairs were at the end o’ the alley wi’ a pail o’ water. She dropped it and it went all over the place. I suppose someone cleared it up. I dunno. I din’t. An’ Kate come out o’ ’er room wif a shawl rahnd ’er. S’pose ’er