customer were still there. Edie went inter Nora’s room an’ saw ’er there, an’ Mabel still yellin’. Edie ’it ’er rahnd the face ter stop ’er, then come out an’ sent Kate fer the rozzers.”
“Did you see Nora’s customer?”
“Nah. I were busy meself.”
“Where is your room, compared with hers?”
“Next ter it.”
“What did you hear?”
“ ’Ear? Everythink! ’Eard Syd wheezin’ an’ groanin’ like ’e was climbin’ a mountain. ’Eard them two bloody cats fightin’ in the alley-”
“Do you mean cats or women?” Pitt interrupted.
She glared at him. “Cats! Furry thin’s wot eat mice an’ squeals like all the devils in ’ell ’alf the night. Geez! Don’t they ’ave cats up west w’ere you come from? ’Ow d’yer keep the mice down? Or don’t you ’ave them neither?”
“Yes, we have them. I have two cats, actually.” He thought with a sudden surge of pleasure of Angus and Archie curled up asleep in their basket by the kitchen range. But they didn’t have to battle anyone for their food and milk. “What else?”
“ ’Eard Shirl upstairs screamin’ at someone out the front,” Pearl replied. “Yellin’ like a stuck pig, she were. Worse’n the cats. Reckon someone bilked ’er. An’ someone dropped a tray down the stairs. ’Ell of a row. Then there was Mabel an’ ’er customer, laughin’ like fools they was. Reckon as ’e were drunk out o’ ’is wits. ’Ope yer got paid well, Mabel?”
“Course,” Mabel said with conviction.
It flicked through Pitt’s mind that she had probably taken all the man had, but that was his affair, if he chose to take chances. He imagined the cacophony of sound that must have gone on during the hour Nora Gough was murdered. She could probably have screamed herself hoarse and been lucky to have been heard above the general clamor.
And yet Mabel’s screams of horror had been distinguished quickly enough.
He looked at Lennox.
Lennox pursed his lips and shook his head very slightly.
“No way to tell,” he said quietly. “She may have known him, and by the time she realized what was happening, it was too late.”
Pitt said nothing. He turned to the other girls.
“The names of your customers?” he asked. “Kate?”
“Bert Moss come just before five. Early, but Sundays is different. ’As ter get ’orne fer ’is tea. Then Joe ’Edges. ’E were still ’ere, like, w’en Mabel started to yell.”
“With you at that moment?”
“Yeah. Look, ’e din’t do it! I brung ’im in! ’E weren’t never by ’isself ’ere!”
Pitt nodded and turned to Mabel.
“Dunno. I never asked.” She shrugged. “Don’t matter.”
“He wasn’t anybody you’ve had before?”
“No. Never seen ’im in me life.”
“When did he come, and when did he leave?”
“ ’E come at quarter after four, near enough, an’ left abaht ten minutes afore five. I were jus’ takin’ ’im aht an’ goin’ back ter the street w’en I saw Nora’s customer goin’….” Her face blanched. “Gawd Almighty! D’yer think that were …”
She slumped forward suddenly and Pitt thought she was going to be sick. She started to gasp for breath and her chest heaved.
“Stop it!” Lennox said smartly. “There!” He grabbed the tea from Pearl and thrust it into Mabel’s hands. “Drink it slowly. Don’t gulp it.”
She tried to take it but she was shaking so badly, her fingers stiff, that she could not hold it.
Lennox steadied it, his hands over hers, keeping it from spilling.
“Drink it,” he told her firmly. “Concentrate, or you’ll get it all over you. Hold it still!”
She obeyed, sipping slowly, focusing her attention on it. Gradually her breathing began to subside and become normal again. After several minutes she sat up and put the now empty mug on the table in front of her.
“What did he look like?” Pitt asked her more gently.
“Look like?” She stared across the table at him. “ ’E were, I dunno. Orn’ry. ’E ’ad fair ’air, all sort o’ wavy.”
“What kind of clothes?” Pitt could feel himself cold inside. “What was he wearing, Mabel?”
“Din’t really look much.” She stared at him in horror, and he knew the other pictures that were in her mind, herself on the bed in Nora’s place.
“Expensive?” Lennox said, his voice cutting the silence.
Pitt glanced at him, but it was the same question he would have asked. It was in all their minds, it had to be.
“Yeah. Men around ’ere in’t got nuffink like that.”
“Would you know him if you saw him again?” Pitt asked, thinking back to Rose Burke, and her face as she had stared at Finlay FitzJames coming out of the front door in Devonshire Street.
“I dunno.” Mabel was terrified. It was there in her white, clammy skin and shivering body. “I sees ’undreds o’ men. In’t their faces wot I look at. It’s money wot matters at the end, i’n it? It’s only money as gets yer food an’ yer rent.”
“Thank you,” Pitt acknowledged, rising to his feet and pacing three steps across the kitchen floor, and back again. “Do you know anything else about your regular customers? Where do they live? What do they do? How can I find them?”
“Wo’ for?” Kate looked at him narrowly.
“In case they seen ’oo done Nora, yer stupid cow!” Edie said. “Wot yer think?” She swung around to Pitt. “It’s yer job to get this bastard wot’s doin’ girls ’round ’ere! Please, mister! First ’e done poor Ada over on Pentecost Alley, now ’e done Nora. ’Oo’s next? An’ next arter that?”
Pearl began to cry again, softly, like a lost child.
“Geez, Edie!” Mabel said desperately. “Why yer gotter say summink like that?”
Edie swung around. “Well, it weren’t that rotten little swine Costigan, were it? ’E bin ’anged by the neck till ’e were dead and stuck six feet under, in’t ’e?” She jabbed her fingers towards the wall and the darkness outside. “It’s some bastard wot’s still aht there, i’n it? Some bastard wot could come in ’ere an’ be yer next customer, eh? Poor Nora’s, weren’t it? ’Oo’s gonner ’elp us if the rozzers don’t, eh? I dunno ’oo ’e is. D’you?”
“Did anybody see anyone else here this afternoon?” Pitt asked one more time. “Anyone at all?”
Pitt took down everything else they had to say, but it added nothing more. At midnight he left Ewart and a white-faced Constable Binns to continue searching for the customers the women had named and question them as to who they had seen and what they had heard. That was work for the local station.
Lennox had taken the body of Nora Gough in the mortuary wagon, and tomorrow he would perform an autopsy on her. Not that Pitt expected it to tell him anything different from the brief, sad story he already knew.
He arrived home at five minutes to one to find Charlotte standing in the hall, the parlor door open behind her, her face pale, eyes wide.
He closed the door. He had forgotten until this moment that he was still dressed in his Sunday best and had no coat with him. He had expected to be home long before this. Neither had he eaten.
“Was it the same?” she asked huskily.
He nodded. “Exactly the same.” He walked past her into the parlor and sat down in his easy chair, but forward, leaning on his knees, not relaxing.
She came in and closed the door with a click, then sat opposite him.
“You never told me what the first was like,” she said quietly. “Perhaps you should.”
He knew she did not mean that she could see any answer he did not, simply that the process of explaining
