Anne Perry: Pentecost Alley

“It’s irrelevant,” Pitt cut across them. “No one would have taken her word against his. Not now.” In a sentence he had reduced her to what she was, and he knew it. The only reason he had been called to her murder was because of Finlay FitzJames’s name on the badge. Some men in Ewart’s position would have suppressed it and gone through the motions of searching for her killer, then simply marked the case unsolved and left it. Perhaps if Lennox had not been there he would have. But Lennox had seen him find the badge under the body, and he would not have remained silent. There was no discretion in his face, no cynicism, only an aching, worn-out hurt.

There was silence in the rest of the house, but the sound of the first traffic could be heard in the street outside, and the smear of dawn paled a little beyond the windows.

Pitt turned to Binns. “Is that all?”

“Yessir. I waited till Mr. Ewart come, then I told ’im what I saw an’ done, an’ ’anded it over to ’im. That were a little arter one o’clock.”

“Thank you. You acted well.”

“Thank you, sir.” He turned to leave with straighter shoulders, his head high, his feet still numb.

“We’d better see the witness.” Pitt nodded to Ewart. “In here.”

A few moments later another constable escorted in a lean, narrow-shouldered man with a brown jacket and dark trousers concertinaed over his boots, hand-me-downs from someone taller. His face was gray-white and twitching with fear. Whatever the pleasure he had purchased that night, it had been at a price he would never willingly have paid.

“What’s your name?” Pitt asked him.

“Ob-badiah S-Skeggs,” he stuttered, his face twitching. “I never touched ’er. I swear to Gawd I never did!” His voice was rising in what he intended to be sincerity, and was all too obviously terror. “Ask Rosie!” He gestured to where he imagined Rosie was. “She’ll tell yer. Honest, Rosie is. She’d never lie fer me. She don’t know me from nuffink.” He looked at Pitt, then at Ewart. “I swear.”

Pitt smiled in spite of himself. “Rosie doesn’t know you?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know her?”

“I don’t! I mean …” He saw the trap, but he had already stepped into it. He breathed in and tried to swallow, choking himself.

“You don’t have to make up your mind,” Pitt said dryly. “I’ll ask Rosie anyway. She’ll no doubt know whether you’re a regular or not.”

“She wouldn’t lie fer me,” Skeggs said desperately, gasping between splutters. “She don’t even like me.”

“No, I don’t suppose she does,” Pitt agreed. “Do you know what time you got here?”

“No.” He was not going to risk any more traps. “No. I were leavin’ w’en that rozzer nabbed me. An’ that were unjust, it were. I never done nuffink as is agin’ the law.” He became plaintive. “A man’s allowed a little pleasure. An’ I always paid fair. Rosie’ll tell yer that.”

“How would she know?” Pitt raised his eyebrows.

Skeggs’s face tightened venomously.

“You thought you’d entertain yourself a little more,” Pitt continued. “So when you saw Ada’s door open, you peeped ’round. Only instead of finding her fornicating with a customer, you saw her lying dead, sprawled over the bed, tied to it, her stocking wound ’round her throat and the garter on her arm.”

Skeggs let out an agonized blasphemy.

“And you fled, when Constable Binns caught you,” Pitt finished.

“I were going ter raise the alarm,” Skeggs protested, glaring at Pitt, and then at Ewart, as if to bear out his story. “Call the p’lice, like I should! Fast as me legs’d carry me. That’s why I were runnin’!”

“So why didn’t you tell Constable Binns about Ada?” Pitt enquired.

Skeggs looked at him with murder in his eyes.

“Did you see anyone else?” Pitt went on.

Outside the light was broadening. There was more noise in the street. People coming and going, calling to each other. The sweatshop opposite was opening up.

“Yer mean like ’im wot done it?” Skeggs demanded indignantly. “Course I didn’t, or I’d ’a’ told yer. Fink I’d stand ’ere bein’ suspected if I knew ’oo’d really done it? Wot yer fink I am, stupid?”

Pitt forbore from answering, but Skeggs read the silence as affirmative and bristled with offense. He followed the constable out, glancing over his shoulder still searching for something cutting to say.

Pitt saw Rose Burke in her own room, two doors farther along. It was a different shape, and perhaps a foot or two wider, but essentially similar. A large bed occupied most of the space, also rumpled and obviously lately used. The sheets had a gray look down the center and were heavily creased. There was a stale smell of sweat and body dirt. Apparently Skeggs had had his money’s worth, at least up to that point.

Lennox looked ashen-faced. There was no need for him to have followed, and Pitt wondered why he had. Perhaps he thought Rose might need him.

But Rose was of sterner stuff. She was broad-shouldered, handsome-bosomed, of no more than average height. Her hair was dark brown but had been bleached in a paler streak across the front. It was startlingly becoming. In fact she was a beautiful woman, even if her skin had coarsened from its youthful duskiness and her teeth were already going. She might have been anything between twenty-five and forty.

She was too composed to offer any remark before she was asked. She stood in the middle of the room ignoring Lennox and looking at Pitt, waiting, arms folded, only a slightly rapid rise and fall of her chest betraying that she was under any stress at all. Pitt did not know if it was indifference to Ada’s fate or courage. He thought perhaps at least some of the latter.

“Rose Burke?”

“Yeah?” Her chin lifted.

“Tell me about your evening from eight o’clock onwards,” Pitt commanded, then as her face lit with a contemptuous smile, “I’m not interested in doing you for prostitution. I’m after who killed Ada. He’s been here once. If we don’t get him, he could come again. You might be next.”

“Jeez.” She sucked in her breath, respect and loathing bright in her eyes.

“Do you want me to tell you it never happens?” he asked more gently. “It’s not true. He broke her fingers and toes, then he strangled her with her own stocking, like a hangman’s noose.” He did not mention the garter or the boots. Better to leave something unspecified. “You think he’ll do it just the once?”

Lennox winced and seemed about to say something, then changed his mind and silently went out, pushing the door closed behind him.

Rose breathed the Lord’s name in what might even have been a prayer, because almost as if she did not register what she was doing, she crossed herself. Now the blood was gone from her face, leaving the rouge garish, though it was skillfully applied.

Pitt waited.

She began slowly. “I ’ad someone at ten. D’jer ’ave ter ’ave ’is name? S’bad fer business.”

“Yes.”

She hesitated only a moment. “Chas Newton. ’E were ’ere till near eleven.”

“Generous, aren’t you?” Pitt said dubiously. “A whole hour? Is business slow lately?”

“ ’E paid double!” she snapped, her pride stung.

He could believe it. She was a handsome woman and there was an air of knowingness about her, as if little in the way of tastes or skills would be outside her capacity.

“And when he’d gone?” he prompted.

“I dressed an’ went out, o’ course,” she said tartly. “Wot jer think I was gonna do? Go ter sleep? I went down ter the alley an’ was turnin’ ter go between the ’ouses ter Whitechapel Road, an’ I saw this geezer comin’ in on the other side-”