“No. Anyone could have had it made.”
“And the button?”
“Expensive, but quite easily obtained if one went to any good tailor.”
“So it doesn’t really mean anything?”
“It doesn’t mean FitzJames was there,” Pitt corrected. “It means someone would like us to think he was. And that someone wasn’t Costigan.”
Cornwallis shook his head a little and his eyes were bright with sadness.
“It comes back to Jones again,” he said quietly. “He seems to be the common factor, Pitt.”
“I know.”
“We must face it. Find out exactly where he was when both women were killed. Stay with the evidence. Forget the reason why. He was a member of this wretched club. He lives and works in Whitechapel. He knew Ada McKinley. Perhaps he knew Nora Gough as well.” He shook his head fractionally. “I know you think it’s out of character with what you have seen of the man, but what do you really know?”
“Not enough,” Pitt confessed, the words dragged out of him. “But then I don’t think I ever do.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll see him tomorrow. After I’ve seen Ewart.” He had not the heart to do it that evening. He knew where Jago would be: handing out soup in Coke Street. He did not want to go and question him while he was doing that. He had never wanted to question a man less, or been less willing to find some other face behind the mask. Tomorrow would be too soon. Tonight was unbearable.
He found Charlotte solicitous but uncommunicative. She had apparently been out all afternoon, and had at last succumbed to taking the children to her mother’s to protect them from the unpleasantness of hearing people’s comments in the streets or the gibes and questions of their schoolfellows.
They did not mention the case. He wanted to forget it for an evening. He had no more thoughts, no more clues to explore, nothing more to wrestle with or try to understand. He was happy to sit quietly, think of something calm and sensible, like the garden, or whether Daniel’s bedroom should be repainted in a more adult fashion now he was growing up. He was no longer really the age for a nursery. And perhaps it was time to give Gracie another raise.
In the morning he went to Whitechapel early and found Ewart still at his desk. He looked tired and unhappy. Pitt did not need to ask if he had discovered anything of value, the denial of it was in every line of his face and body. He had cut himself shaving, and his features looked pinched.
“I haven’t found anything,” he said before Pitt asked. “The evidence means nothing.” He slid back in his chair, his body crumpled, too tired to straighten. He looked strangely beaten, considering it was Pitt who would take the blame. He might be glad now that the case had been removed from his responsibility.
“I know the button and the handkerchief don’t mean anything,” Pitt said, then sat down in the only other available chair. “What else do we have?”
“Nothing.” Ewart spread his hands. “We’ve spoken to all the women again. They say they saw only one man: youngish, with fair, wavy hair. Although they are beginning to be less certain even about that. Some are not sure it was fair. As if that mattered a damn!” His mouth turned down at the corners. “Light plays tricks anyway. We are still looking for him. I’ve got several men on it, but it could be anyone. Could have been some toff from up west, and we’d never find him.”
Pitt stared at him. It was extraordinary to hear a man of Ewart’s rank and experience speaking with such defeat. If that was the man who had tortured and murdered two women, then they must find him, whatever it took. Did Ewart really still fear that it was Finlay FitzJames, with all the ugliness that would mean, the blame, the accusations of dereliction of duty, of bigotry, even of corruption? He could understand his reluctance, even his shrinking from it-but he could not condone it.
He leaned forward with a jerk. “Well, if he is the man who killed Nora Gough, and Ada McKinley, we are bloody well going to find him,” he said more loudly than he had intended. “Someone must have seen him! He came. He went. Have you repeated the descriptions of him from the women in Myrdle Street to the other women in Pentecost Alley?”
“Yes, I have.” Ewart was too miserable to respond with an answering anger. “They just say it sounds like Costigan. Which it does.”
“Well, has Costigan any brothers, cousins, any relatives at all?” Pitt demanded.
Ewart smiled bitterly. “I thought of that. No, he doesn’t. Rose Burke and Nan Sullivan are still convinced Costigan did it.”
“And who do they think killed Nora Gough?” Pitt said sarcastically.
“Don’t know. Some lunatic who copied Costigan.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake. He could hardly hope Costigan would be blamed.”
“I don’t know,” Ewart said. “Because they saw Costigan and they want to think he’s been topped, finished, out of the way! Whatever they think, it doesn’t matter a toss. Somebody was there, a youngish man with thick hair that waves, and no one else came or went, so it has to be him. God knows who he is … I don’t!”
“No one else came or went?” Pitt repeated.
“That’s right.” Ewart sounded utterly wretched, as if it were his own personal tragedy he spoke of, not just one more of the regular occurrences he must have seen throughout his career. “Can’t get them to move on that.”
“Anything else about the man?” Pitt persisted. “Build? Way he walked? Ears? People’s ears vary very much. Did anyone notice anything at all? Make them think, remember back.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job!” Ewart said angrily. “I have asked them all those things. Nobody took any notice of him. He was just another client.”
“Doesn’t anybody keep a watch?” Pitt could not afford to let it go. He had nothing else. “Don’t these girls have any protection? Even someone to count the customers and make sure they get their fair share of the earnings?”
“Yes … and they can only say he was well dressed and had thick hair. Look, Pitt.” He forgot Pitt’s new rank and addressed him as he used to be, an equal. “I’ve been over the ground again and again. I’ve got men out searching for this man, with descriptions. They’ve tried every other brothel and bawdy house from Mile End to the north, Limehouse to the east, and the Tower to the west. Everybody’s seen half a dozen men who answer the description, at least.” He started to add something, then changed his mind and bit it off. “There’s nothing.”
Pitt leaned back, worn out himself. Was it Finlay FitzJames after all? Or was it Jago Jones, in some insane, bitter mixture of hatred of prostitutes, of Finlay, of all his past life and whatever he used to be, and of Finlay’s knowledge of him? Or perhaps it was even that Finlay had introduced him to it? Was that the core of his madness- the conviction that somehow Finlay was the one who had led him to discover the sinner within himself, the uncontrollable appetite?
“What is it?” Ewart asked, sitting upright suddenly, knocking a pile of papers with his elbow. “What do you know?”
“Nothing,” Pitt answered. “But I shall have to go and speak to the Reverend Jago Jones again.”
“Jones?” Ewart said in surprise, leaving the papers where they were. “You think he knows something? I doubt it. Good man, but not worldly-wise. If he knew anything, he’d have told us already.” His voice fell flat again, the moment’s hope gone out of it. “Anyway, it’s a waste of time your going to see him. He won’t betray a parishioner, even if he knows for certain who it is. Priest’s vows, and all that. Better to compare between Ada and Nora, see who might have known both of them. I’ve already started.” He fished among the fallen papers and pulled out a few. He pushed them across at Pitt. “These are the people who know both the women and dealt with them, one way or another: clothes, hosiery, cosmetics, medicines, food, shoes, even bed linen.” He grunted. “Never realized a prostitute went through so much bed linen. See, just a few of them are the same.”
“Naturally.” Pitt took the paper, although he did not expect it to reveal anything interesting. “I don’t suppose there are all that many dealers in such things in a small area like this. Any of them answer the description?”
“Not so far. Most of them are middle-aged and were at home with their families at the time.” Ewart relapsed into his hopeless air, leaning back in his chair, slumped over.
“Anything from Lennox?” Pitt asked.
“No. She was killed in exactly the same way,” Ewart answered, his face pinched, pain written all through him, and a driving, consuming anger. “Tortured the same. All the details match, even those no one else knows but us. It had to be the same person.”
