“Yes, about that.”
He sighed.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked. “Or cocoa?”
“Yes … yes please.” He left her to decide which to bring, and sat hunched in his chair in the slowly increasing warmth while the fire strengthened and flames leaped up the chimney.
In the morning he was in the bitter chill of Newgate asking to see Ella Baker, memories of Costigan’s face, white and frightened, filling his mind. Of all the duties he ever had to perform, this was perhaps the worst. It was a different kind of pain from that of going to tell the relatives of a victim. That was appalling, but it was a cleaner thing. It would eventually heal. This wrenched him in a way that was always sickeningly real and new. Time did not dull it or inure him in any measure at all.
Ella was sitting in her cell, still dressed in her own clothes, although they were not particularly different from prison garb. He had arrested her before she was dressed for work.
“What you want?” she said dully when she saw him. “Come ter gloat, ’ave you?”
“No.” He closed the cell door behind him. He looked at her pale face, hollow hopeless eyes and the glory of hair over her shoulders. Curiously, although he had seen both Ada and Nora, and seen their broken hands, their dead faces, disfigured in the last struggle, all he could see now was Ella and her despair. “I have no pleasure in it,” he told her. “A certain relief because it’s over, but that’s all.”
“So wot yer come for?” she said, still half disbelievingly, although something in his eyes, or his voice, touched her.
“Tell me about the first one, Ella,” he replied. “What did she do to you? She was only young, a beginner. Why did you kill her?”
She stared at him with total incomprehension.
“Yer mad, you are! I dunno wot yer talkin’ abaht! I ’it Nora, then we fought an’ I throttled ’er. I never broke ’er fingers ner toes, ner chucked water over ’er, ner did up ’er boots! I never touched Ada McKinley. I never ’eard of ’er till she were killed. An’ as fer another, I dunno wot yer on abaht. There weren’t no other, far as I knowed.”
“About six years ago, in Mile End,” he elaborated.
“Six year ago!” She was incredulous, then she started to laugh, a high, harsh sound, full of pain, dark with fear beyond control. “Six year ago I were in Manchester. Married an’ went up there. Me ’usband died. I come ome an’ took ter the streets. On’y way ter keep a roof over me ’ead, ’ceptin’ the match factory. ’Ad a cousin ’oo died o’ phossie jaw. Ter ’ell wi’ that. Sooner be ’anged.” Suddenly tears filled her eyes. “Jus’ as well, eh?”
Pitt ached to be able to say something to comfort her. He felt the terrors closing around her, the darkness from which there was no escape, but there was nothing. Pity was no use now and to talk of hope was a mockery.
He smiled in answer to her bitter humor. There was some courage in it. He could admire that.
“What was your husband’s name?” he asked.
“Joe Baker … Joseph. You gonna check on me?” She sniffed. “A good man, Joe were. Drunk too much, but ’e weren’t bad. Never ’it me, jus’ fell over ’isself. Stupid sod!”
“What did he do?”
“ ’E worked the canals till ’e ’ad an accident an’ drowned. Drunk again, I s’pose.”
“I’m sorry,” Pitt said quietly. He meant it.
She shrugged. “Don’ matter now.”
Pitt went from Newgate to the Mile End police station and asked to see the most senior officer present who had been there over six years. He was shown, by a somewhat puzzled young sergeant, up to the cramped office of Inspector Forrest, a lean man with receding black hair and sad, dark eyes.
“Superintendent Pitt,” he said with surprise, rising to his feet. “Good morning, sir. What can we do for you?”
“Good morning, Inspector.” Pitt closed the door behind him and took the proffered seat. “I understand you were here in Mile End six years ago?”
“Yes. I see in the newspapers you got our murderer.” Forrest sat down behind his desk. “Well done. Damn sight more than we ever managed. Mind, I was only a sergeant then.”
“So you did have one exactly the same?” Pitt found it difficult to keep the anger out of his voice.
“Yes. Far as I can tell,” Forrest agreed, sitting forward in his chair. “Right down to the last detail. Weren’t much in the papers about ours, but I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. Poor little thing. Can’t ’ave been more than fifteen or sixteen. Pretty, they say, before he did that to her.”
“She,” Pitt corrected.
“Oh.” Forrest shook his head. “Yes … she. Sorry, I just had it fixed in my mind all these years that it was a man. Looked like a crime rooted in sex to me, the kind of perverted sex of a man that has to hurt and humiliate before he can get any pleasure. Sort of person who has to have power over someone, see them totally helpless. Evil. Still can’t believe it was a woman. Though, s’pose it must be, if she confessed.”
“No, she didn’t confess, except to the last one, Nora Gough. In fact, she said she was in Manchester six years ago.”
Forrest’s eyes widened. “Well, it has to have been the same person. Even in London, sink that it is, we can’t have two lunatics going around doing that to women.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your case?” Pitt asked, trying not to sound accusatory, and failing.
“Me?” Forrest looked at him with surprise. “Why didn’t I tell you?”
“Yes. For heaven’s sake, it might have helped us! We should at least have known! We could have found out what they had in common and who might have known all three.”
“I didn’t tell you because … Didn’t Inspector Ewart tell you? He was on the case!”
Pitt froze.
“I took it for granted that he’d have told you,” Forrest said reasonably. “You saying he didn’t?” There was disbelief in his face and in his voice. He was watching Pitt as if he could scarcely believe him.
Pitt could scarcely believe it himself. Images of Ewart filled his mind, memories of his anger, his misery, the fear in him.
But there was no point in lying. The truth was obvious anyway.
“No, he never mentioned it.”
Now it was Forrest’s turn to sit in silence.
“Do you know Ella Baker?” Pitt asked him. “Or know of her? Have you ever heard her name?”
Forrest looked blank. “No. And I know most of the women on the streets around here. But I’ll ask Dawkins. He’s been here for years and he knows ’em all.” He rose to his feet and went out, excusing himself, and returned a few minutes later with a large, elderly sergeant with gray hair. “Dawkins, have you ever heard of a woman, a tart around here, called Ella Baker?” He turned to Pitt. “What did she look like, sir?”
“Tall, ordinary sort of face,” Pitt answered. “But very beautiful fair hair, thick and wavy.”
Dawkins thought carefully for a moment, then shook his head. “No sir. Nearest to that description is Lottie Bridger, an’ she died o’ the pox sometime early this year.”
“You’re absolutely sure, Dawkins?” Forrest urged.
“Yes sir. Never ’eard the name Ella Baker, an’ never ’ad a girl on the streets ’round ’ere like you said.”
“Thank you, Dawkins,” Forrest dismissed him. “That’s all.”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.” Dawkins left, looking puzzled, closing the door behind him with a sharp click.
“What does that mean?” Forrest regarded Pitt with open confusion. “Are we saying as this woman didn’t do our killing then?”
“I don’t know what we’re saying,” Pitt confessed. “Have you got records of this case I can look at?”
“Course. I’ll have them sent for.” Forrest excused himself again, and it was a long, frustrating quarter of an hour before he returned with a slim folder of papers. “This is it, sir. Isn’t a lot.”
“Thank you.” Pitt took it, opened it and read. Forrest was right; there was very little indeed, but the details were the same as in the deaths of Ada McKinley and Nora Gough. It was all set out clinically, unemotionally, in fine copperplate handwriting. The name of the victim had an air of unreality: Mary Smith. Was that really her name? Or did they simply not know what to call her? She was new in the area, new to prostitution. There was nothing else said about her, no place of origin, no family mentioned, no possessions listed.
Pitt read carefully from the description of objects found on the premises. No mention was made of anything
