would clarify his own mind, as it had so often before. There was no better way to learn what one meant than by trying to explain it to someone else who was not afraid to say they did not understand.
Carefully, hating every detail, he told her about finding the body of Ada McKinley, what it was like, what had been done to her. He watched her face, and saw the pain in it, but she did not look away.
“And this time?” she asked. “What was her name?”
“Nora Gough.”
“And it was exactly the same?”
“Yes. Broken fingers and toes. Water. Garter with the ribbon ’round her arm, the boots buttoned together.”
“That couldn’t be chance,” she said. “Who knew about all those things, apart from whoever did it?”
“Ewart, Lennox, he’s the police surgeon, Cornwallis, and the constable who was first called. And Tellman,” he answered. “No one else.”
“Newspapers?”
“No.”
“The women in the same house could have talked,” she pointed out. “People do, especially about something that frightens them. To share it diminishes it … sometimes.”
“Even they didn’t have all the details,” he said, remembering what Rose Burke had actually seen. “They didn’t know about the fingers and toes. In fact, Binns and Tellman didn’t either.”
She was sitting forward also, her knees close to his, her hands only inches away.
“Then it was the same person, wasn’t it,” she said softly. There was no criticism in her voice, nor did he see fear in her eyes, only sorrow.
“Yes,” he answered, biting his lip. “It must have been.” Neither of them added that it could not then have been Costigan, but it hung in the air between them, with all its dark pain and guilt.
Charlotte put her hands over his and held them.
“Was it Finlay FitzJames?” she asked, searching his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said frankly. “I found a handkerchief under Nora Gough’s pillow with his initials on it. They aren’t common. But it doesn’t prove he was there tonight.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “But her one customer tonight was seen. He was fair-haired and well-dressed. In other words, a gentleman.”
“Does Finlay FitzJames have fair hair?”
“Yes. Very handsome hair, thick and waving. And they mentioned that particularly tonight.”
“Thomas …”
Her voice had changed. He was aware she was about to tell him something he would not like, something which she found extremely difficult.
“What?”
“Emily was absolutely sure Finlay FitzJames was innocent. She knows his sister….”
He waited.
“She saw him the night Ada was killed, you know?” She looked up, her brow furrowed, her eyes dark and wide.
“Emily saw Finlay?” He was incredulous. “Why on earth didn’t she say so?”
“No … no, Tallulah saw him!” she corrected him. “She couldn’t say so because she had already lied to her father about where she was, saying she was somewhere else!” She was speaking more and more rapidly. “It was a pretty debauched affair. People were drinking too much and smoking opium, or taking cocaine and things like that. It was in Chelsea, on Beaufort Street. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Her father would have taken an apoplexy if he’d known.”
“That I can believe,” Pitt said fervently. “But Tallulah saw Finlay there? Are you sure?”
“Well, Emily is sure. But Tallulah didn’t think anyone would believe her anyway, when she is his sister and had already told everyone she was at Lady Swaffham’s party.”
“But someone else must have seen him!” Pitt said with a strange, almost frightening sense of exhilaration. Perhaps at least he had not been wrong about Finlay. “Who else was there?”
“That’s it. Tallulah didn’t know anyone, except the person she went with, and she hardly knew him. He was drunk half out of his senses, and doesn’t even remember going.”
“Well, people must have seen Tallulah!” he insisted, gripping her hands without realizing it.
“She doesn’t know who to ask. Parties like that are … well, they are held in private houses. Apparently people drift from one room to another. There are screens for privacy, potted palms, people half drunk … you could come and go and no one would know who you were, or care. Even the host himself didn’t know who was there.”
“How on earth do you know that?” he demanded, trying to envision such an affair. “Did Emily tell you? And I suppose Tallulah FitzJames told her?”
Her face fell. “You don’t believe it, do you?”
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I believe Tallulah could have been to such an affair, and so could Finlay. But I don’t believe she saw him at one the night Ada McKinley was killed. As proof of his innocence, it’s worth nothing.”
“That’s what Tallulah thought. But it proved it to Emily.”
Suspicion in his mind was sharpening.
“Why are you telling me this now, Charlotte? Are you saying Finlay has to be innocent? You said it proved it to Emily-not to you!”
“I don’t know,” she said candidly, looking down and then up at him again. She was very pale, very unhappy. “Thomas … it was Emily who had the second Hellfire Club badge made, and Tallulah put it in Finlay’s belongings so you would find it.”
“She did what?” His voice rose to a shout. “What did you say?”
She was very pale, but her eyes did not waver. She spoke very quietly indeed, almost a whisper.
“Emily had a second badge made so Tallulah could put it in Finlay’s wardrobe.”
“God Almighty!” he exploded. “And you helped her! And then had me go and look for it! How could you be so deceitful?” That was what hurt, not the laying of false evidence, the muddying of a case, but the way she had deliberately deceived him. She had never done such a thing before. It was a betrayal from the one place he had never expected it.
Her eyes widened in horror, almost as if he had slapped her.
“I didn’t know she’d done that!” she protested.
He was too tired to be angry, and too aware of his own guilt over Costigan, and his need for Charlotte and the loyalty, the comfort, she could give him, even the sheer warmth of her physical presence.
She was waiting, watching his face. She was not afraid, but there was hurt and anxiety in her eyes. She understood the pain in him. Her fingers crept over his, soft and strong.
He leaned forward and kissed her, and then again, and again, and she answered him with the confidence and the generosity she had always had.
He sighed. “Even if I’d known, it wouldn’t have altered the evidence against Costigan,” he said at last. “Actually, Augustus FitzJames said he’d had the damn thing made. I wish I knew why he said that.”
“To stop you investigating any further,” she answered, sitting back again.
“But why?” He was puzzled. To him it made no sense.
“Scandal.” She shook her head. “It’s scandalous having the police in the house, whatever they are doing there. I suppose you have to go back and see him tomorrow?”
“Yes.” He did not want to think of it.
She rose to her feet. “Then we’d better go to bed while there’s still some of tonight left. Come …”
He rose also and turned off the gas, then put his arm around her, and together they went up the stairs. At least for a few hours he did not have to think of it.
In the morning Pitt got up early and went to the kitchen while Charlotte woke the children and began the chores of her own day. Gracie cooked him breakfast, glancing at him every now and then, her eyes narrowed, her little face pinched with anxiety. She had already seen the morning newspapers and heard there had been a second murder in Whitechapel. Charlotte had quite recently taught her to read, so she also knew most of what was being written, and she was ready to defend Pitt against anyone and everyone.
The afternoon editions would probably be worse, when there was more news to relate, more details, more
