which could be called a clue. Certainly there was nothing belonging to Finlay FitzJames, or any other gentleman.
He read the statements of witnesses, but they conveyed little. They had seen men come and go, but what else were they to expect in the room of a prostitute. There were no personal details, only that they were fairly young.
It was all insubstantial. No wonder the officer in charge had failed to find the killer. And the officers were Constable Trask, and Constable Porter, with Ewart the inspector in charge. The surgeon who had examined the body both at the scene of the crime and later was Lennox.
Why had neither of them mentioned it to Pitt? He could think of no justifiable answer.
“I don’t remember this in the papers,” he said to Forrest, who had sat silent throughout, his face furrowed with anxiety.
“It wasn’t in,” he replied. “Only ’er death, that’s all. None o’ the details. You know how it is: keep it back, might help to trap someone. They knew something, let something slip….”
“Yes, I know,” Pitt agreed, but the answer troubled him deeply. It made inescapable the darkest fears in his mind.
When he faced Ewart with it in his office in Whitechapel two hours later, Ewart stared at him blankly, his face stunned, eyes as if mesmerized.
“Well?” Pitt demanded. “For God’s sake, man, why didn’t you tell me about the first case?”
“We didn’t solve it,” Ewart said desperately. “There wasn’t anything in it that could have helped.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Pitt turned on his heel and walked over to the window, then swung around and stared back at Ewart. “You can’t know whether it would have helped or not! Why would you conceal it?”
“Because it only obscures the present.” Ewart’s voice was rising too. “There’s nothing to say it was the same person. It was Mile End, and six years ago. People copy crimes, especially mad people, wicked, stupid people who read about something and it sits in their brains, and they-”
“What newspapers?” Pitt asked curtly. “Most of those details were never released to the papers, which you know as well as I do. I never heard of the case, neither had any of the other people here working on this one. Nobody in Whitechapel connected it with the first one-but you must have. And Lennox!”
“Well, they weren’t related, were they?” Ewart said with triumph of logic. “Are you saying now that you aren’t sure it was Ella Baker who killed the Gough woman?”
“No I’m not.” Pitt swung around and gazed out of the window again, at the gray buildings and the darkening October sky. “She confessed to it. And I found her hair in Nora’s bed, long fair hair. Nora must have pulled it out when they struggled.”
“So what’s the matter?” Ewart demanded with growing confidence. “I was right. The two cases are unconnected.”
“How do you know that Ella Baker didn’t kill the first girl, Mary Smith, or whatever her name really was?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she did. It hardly matters. We can’t prove the first one was her, and she’ll hang for this one anyhow.”
“And she says she’s never heard of Finlay FitzJames,” Pitt added.
Ewart hesitated. “She’s lying,” he said after a moment.
“And Augustus FitzJames says he’s never heard of her, either,” Pitt went on.
Ewart said nothing. He drew in his breath, and then let it out again silently.
“Was there anything at the scene of the first murder to incriminate Finlay?” Pitt asked curtly.
Ewart looked straight back at him. “No, of course not. If there had been I’d have mentioned it. That would have been relevant. We never had any idea who did it. There was nothing to go on … nothing at all.”
“I see.”
But Pitt did not see. He traveled from Whitechapel back to the center of the City, and went straight to Cornwallis’s office.
Cornwallis welcomed him, striding forwards with his hand out, his face alight.
“Well done, Pitt. This is brilliant! I admit, I had lost hope we should have such a satisfactory outcome-and a confession, to boot.” He dropped his hand, suddenly realizing something was wrong. The smile faded from his lips. His eyes clouded. “What is it, man? What now? Sit! Sit down.” He gestured to one of the large, leather-covered easy chairs, and sat in the other himself. He leaned forwards, his face grave, his attention total.
Pitt told him about the crime in Mile End.
Cornwallis was stunned. “And Ewart has only just told you? That’s beyond belief!”
Pitt could think of no easy way to recount what had actually happened without implicating Charlotte, and this was not a time for lies or evasions of any sort.
“Ewart didn’t tell me at all,” he said grimly. “My wife discovered it, and she told me.” He noticed the look on Cornwallis’s face, but perhaps Vespasia had made some reference or other, because he did not question what Pitt said.
“But you have spoken to Ewart?” he affirmed, his eyes dark with foreboding.
“Yes,” Pitt replied. “He said he didn’t mention it because he thought it irrelevant.”
“That is inconceivable.” Cornwallis was very earnest, his whole face filled with distress. “And Lennox was involved as well?”
“Yes. Although that is easier to understand. He may well have assumed Ewart had told me. It was Ewart’s job, not his.”
“But why?” Cornwallis said with exasperation. “I can’t begin to understand it! Why would Ewart hide that first murder?” His hands were clenched, fidgeting. “All right, he failed to solve it, but that’s no shame to him. From what you say, there were no clues to follow. The witnesses saw nothing of value. There was nothing further he could have done. Pitt …” He looked wretched, hardly able to bring himself to say what he meant.
“I don’t know,” Pitt replied to the question that had not been asked. “I can’t believe Ewart was involved in a murder, let alone three. But I have to know. I’m going back to the original witnesses to the Mile End case. I know their names and the address where it happened. But it’s not my station, and it’s not my crime. I need your permission to question Inspector Forrest about Ewart’s duties that night.”
Cornwallis’s face was tight with pain. He had been in command too many years not to know the weaknesses and the fallibilities of man, that courage and temptation can work side by side, and loyalty and self-deceit.
“You have it,” he said quietly. “We must know. Go back to the first murder, Pitt. I can’t believe Ewart is guilty himself. He certainly wasn’t of the second or third, we know that. But if Ella Baker didn’t do it, then for God’s sake, who did?” He frowned. “Do you believe it is really credible that we have three extraordinary murders, all with the same features of torture and fetishism, the cross-buttoned boots, the water, committed by three different people?”
“It looks like it,” Pitt replied. “But no, I don’t believe it. It’s preposterous. There is something fundamental that we don’t yet know, and I have no idea what it is.” He stood up.
Cornwallis rose also and went to his desk, writing Pitt a brief note of permission. He gave it to Pitt wordlessly, gripping his hard hand, his own body stiff. He held Pitt’s eyes, wanting to speak, to communicate some of the emotion he felt, but there was nothing to say. He took a deep breath, hesitated, then let it out again.
Pitt nodded, then turned and left, going out into the sharp October air to hail a hansom and return once again to Mile End. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.
By quarter past five he had seen the duty rosters for the day of Mary Smith’s death. There was no way in which Ewart could have been involved in her murder, just as he could not have been involved in the murders of Ada McKinley and Nora Gough.
Next he left and went to the house in Globe Road where Mary Smith had died. He asked the grayly unshaven landlord for the first witness named in the statements.
“Is Mr. Oliver Stubbs here?”
“Never ’eard of ’im,” the landlord said abruptly. “Try somew’ere else.” He was about to close the door on Pitt when Pitt put his foot in it and glared at him with such ferocity he hesitated.
“ ’Ere, wos’ matter wiv you, then? Get yer foot outer me door or I’ll set the dog on yer!”
“Do that and I’ll close you down,” Pitt said without hesitation. “This is a murder enquiry, and if you want to avoid the rope as an accomplice, you’ll do all you can to help me. Now, if Oliver Stubbs isn’t here, where is
