the cup with its dark tea and odor of whiskey.
“I dunno.” Madge shrugged her huge shoulders. “I thought as it were Bert Costigan, but I s’pose it couldn’t ’a’ bin, now Nora got done the same.”
“So it could have been a gentleman?” Emily looked from one to the other of them. “But would it be likely? Wouldn’t it maybe be someone who knew them both?”
“Maybe it was a gentleman who knew them both.” Charlotte took it a step further. “One who was a bit bent in his ways.”
Madge finished the last of her tea and set the mug down with a bang on the hard tabletop.
“Don’t you go startin’ talk like that ’round ’ere,” she said sharply, pointing her finger. “Yer’ll only get everyone all scared witless, an’ it don’t do no good. We all gotta work whether there’s a lunatic out there er not. Yer go see Ma Baines. She knows ’er job. She’ll find yer a place. An’ don’t yer go makin’ a noise as you leave. My girls is still sleepin’, like yer’d be if you’d worked all night.” She looked at Emily. “Ta fer the drink. That were nice manners of you.” Her face softened as she looked lastly at Tallulah. “I’ll ’old the room for yer till termorrer, duck. Can’t ’old it arter that, if I gets an offer.”
“Thank you,” Tallulah answered, but as soon as they were outside beyond the alley she shivered violently, and walked so close to Emily she almost pushed her off the narrow footpath into the street.
They followed directions up to Chicksand Street and found the huge shambling tenement where Ma Baines kept her establishment. They had expected someone else like Madge-obese, red-faced, suspicious. Instead they found a cheerful woman with a large bosom, but narrow hips and long legs. She had rather a plain face and a mass of fading yellow hair tied up loosely in pins which were in imminent danger of falling out.
“Yeah?” she said when she saw the three young women.
“We understand you might have rooms,” Charlotte began without hesitation. It was getting towards the time in the afternoon when women began to work.
“This is a workin’ ’ouse,” Ma Baines said warningly. “Rent is ’igh. I got no place fer sweatshop girls. In’t even enough fer a night, let alone a week.”
“We know that,” Charlotte replied, making herself smile. “Do we look like seamstresses?”
Ma Baines laughed, a sound of generous amusement without bitterness.
“You look like West End tarts ter me, ’cept fer yer dress. They look like maids on their day orff. Terrible respectable, an’ abaht as darin’ as a vicar’s wife.”
“We’re off duty,” Emily explained.
“Aren’t never orff duty, luv,” Ma Baines responded.
“Are if you haven’t a room,” Charlotte pointed out. “I don’t do my business in the street.”
Ma Baines stepped back. “Then yer’d better come in.”
They followed her. The place was narrow and stale-smelling, but quite clean, and there was an old carpet on the floor, making their footsteps quiet as they were led to a small sitting room at the back of the house, again reminding Charlotte ridiculously of the housekeeper’s room in the house where she had grown up.
Ma Baines invited them to sit, and she herself took the largest and most comfortable chair. It was as if she were interviewing prospective servants. Charlotte felt the desire to giggle coming back, a sort of wild hysteria at the insanity of it. A few years ago her mother would have fainted at the very thought of her daughter’s even knowing about such a place, let alone being there. Now she might conceivably understand. Her father would simply have refused to believe it. Heaven only knew what Aloysia FitzJames would think if she knew Tallulah was here.
Ma Baines was talking about rent and rules, and Charlotte had not been listening. She tried to look as if she were paying attention, fixing her eyes on Ma’s face.
“That sounds all right,” Emily said dubiously. “Although we’re not absolutely sure about the area.”
“Cost yer more up west,” Ma pointed out. “Yer can always go up west from ’ere, long as yer bring back yer share o’ yer take an’ don’ cheat.” Her face was still pleasant, but there was a relentless ice-gray in her eyes, cold as a winter sea.
“It wasn’t that,” Charlotte explained. “It was the murders you’ve had here. We’d want a place where if we got a bad customer there we could be sure there were other people about to hear us yell.” She did not add that she knew there were other people close enough to have helped Ada and Nora, but no scream was heard, and no one came.
“Don’t make no difference w’ere yer are,” Ma said with a bitter laugh. “There’s lunatics everywhere, all depends on luck.”
“But there’ve been two pretty horrible murders here in Whitechapel,” Tallulah said, staring at Ma Baines, her voice low and shivery. “That hasn’t happened anywhere else.”
“Course it ’as!” Ma said abruptly. “Were one just like these w’en I were in Mile End. Six year ago, mebbe seven.”
“What do you mean … just like these?” Charlotte’s voice came out huskily, as if she had something in her throat.
“Jus’ the same,” Ma repeated. “ ’Ands tied, fingers and toes broke or pulled out o’ joint, garter ’round ’er arm, an’ soaked in cold water … all over the place, ’ead, shoulders, ’air.”
Tallulah gasped as if she had been struck.
Emily turned and stared at Charlotte.
For seconds there was icy, pricking silence. The floorboards creaked overhead as someone walked across them on the story above.
“Who did it?” Charlotte forced the words out at last between frozen lips.
Ma shrugged. “Gawd knows. ’E weren’t never found. Rozzers stopped lookin’ arter a while. Jus’ like they will this time, w’en they don’ find no one.”
“What … what kind of a girl was she?” Emily asked, her voice also hoarse.
Ma shook her head.
“Dunno ’er name. Forget it. Jus’ young, though, a beginner. Probably ’er first week or so, poor little thing. Pretty, ’bout sixteen or seventeen, so they said.” Her face pinched with momentary pity. “Funny, but they never made that much fuss about it. Papers din’t write it up too much. O’ course that were before the Ripper an’ all. Still, they’re sure as ’ell burns takin’ it out on the rozzers this time. Wouldn’t wanna be one o’ them now.” She lifted one broad shoulder. “But then ’oo wants ter be a rozzer anyway?” She looked at Emily. “D’yer want the rooms or not, luv? I in’t got time ter sit an’ talk wif yer.”
“No thank you,” Charlotte answered for them. “Not at the moment. We’ll think a bit harder. Maybe it’s not what we’re looking for right now.” And she rose to her feet, steadying herself on the arm of the chair a moment. Her knees were wobbling. She made her way back along the corridor and out into Chicksand Street with Emily at her elbow and Tallulah, moving as if in a dream, a pace behind. The cold air hit her face like a slap, and she barely noticed it.
Pitt had slept badly the previous night. It seemed as if half the night he lay motionless in bed, afraid to move in case he woke Charlotte. When she was troubled she slept lightly. When one of the children was ill, the slightest noise reached her and she sat up almost immediately. Since the second murder she had been aware of his nightmares and of the fact that he could not rest. Even if he turned over too frequently, she would be disturbed and waken.
He lay in the dark, eyes wide open, watching the faint pattern on the ceiling from the distant gas lamps in the street through the bedroom curtains. If he slept he dreamed of Costigan’s despairing face, his self-loathing and his fear. Why had he all but admitted killing Ada, if he did not? Were his words-“I done ’er”-intended only to mean that in some way he felt responsible for her behavior, and thus for her death, but only indirectly? He had confessed to a quarrel, to striking out at her. Was it possible he had knocked her insensible but not actually been the one to kill her? He had always denied the cruelty, the fingers and toes. He had even denied the garter, which was hardly an offense, and the water.
Why, if it was true? It could hardly make any difference. He would be hanged exactly the same either way. And since the wardens believed it of him, it would not mitigate their treatment of him either.
Certainly he could not have been guilty of killing Nora Gough.
Who was the fair-haired man who had been seen going into Nora’s room shortly before she was killed? How could he possibly have left without any one of the dozen or so people around having seen him?
Jago Jones’s words swirled around in his head. Surely they had to be the answer … either when he left he
