Anne Perry: Resurrection Row

It was possible the murderer was one of any number of women whose faces were on those photographs, or perhaps someone else he had blackmailed as he had done Gwendoline Cantlay. But surely the number of affaires he had had must be severely limited by both time and opportunity. By all accounts he was not an abnormally charming man. He might have flattered liberally, but society beauties were used to that. On the whole, Pitt inclined to think his romantic opportunities slight. The blackmail must lie in other areas as well, which brought Pitt back once again to Resurrection Row and the photographs.

He was at Major Rodney’s door. The butler answered and suffered him to enter with the look of weary acceptance of one who is resigned to something unpleasant but inevitable. Pitt had felt the same when toothache had finally driven him to the dentist.

The major received him with ill-concealed impatience.

“I have nothing else to add, Inspector Pitt,” he said, waspishly. “If you cannot do better than to go over and over old ground, pestering people, then it would be better if you were to pass the case over to someone more competent. You are making a nuisance of yourself!”

Pitt would not be pressured to apologize. It stuck in his throat. “Murder is an untidy and annoying business, sir,” he replied.

He towered over the major, putting him at a disadvantage. The major waved to a chair and ordered Pitt to sit down. He sat on a straight-backed chair himself, ramrod-stiff, reversing the advantage so now he could look down on Pitt, sprawled in a deep sofa, his coat falling open and his scarf undone in the warmth of the room.

The major’s confidence was somewhat restored.

“Well, what is it now?” he demanded. “I have told you that I had very little personal acquaintance with Mr. Jones, no more than civility required, and I have shown you the portraits. I really cannot think of anything else. I am not a man to make other people’s business my concern. I do not listen to gossip, and I will not permit my sisters to repeat such as they cannot help overhearing, since it is in the nature of women to talk, mostly upon trivial matters.”

Pitt would like to have argued-he could imagine what Charlotte would have said to such a condemnation of women-but the major would not have understood him, and he had no place to discuss such subjects. This was not a friendship and they were not equals; it was not for him to question the major’s convictions.

“Indeed,” he replied. “Gossip can be a great evil, and much of it is false. Although I have often gained valuable insight into the nature or personality of people by listening to it. What one man says of another may be false, but the fact that he says it at all tells me-”

“That the man is a gossipmonger and a liar to boot!” the major snapped. “I have nothing but contempt for you, or for an occupation which obliges you to indulge in such vices!” He stared at Pitt fiercely, seeming to burn him with indignation.

“Precisely,” Pitt agreed. “What a man says may tell nothing of the object of his speech, but it tells a great deal about him.”

“What?” The major was startled. It took him several moments to digest Pitt’s meaning.

“When you open your mouth you may or may not betray another, but you assuredly betray yourself,” Pitt repeated. A new thought had come to him, about Major Rodney and his feelings towards women.

“Huh!” the major snorted. “Never went in for sophistry. Soldier-all my life. Man for doing things, not sitting around talking about it. Better for you if you’d been in the army, make a man of you.” He looked at Pitt’s clothes, the way he was sitting, and Pitt could almost see in his face the vision of the drill sergeant, the barber, and the parade ground, and the miraculous change that could be wrought in a man. He smiled, blissful that it would never be.

“Of course, there are many women with mischievous tongues,” Pitt observed, feeding the major the thoughts he wanted. “And idleness is a schoolmaster of evil.”

The major was again surprised. He had not expected such perception in a policeman, especially this one. “Quite,” he agreed. “That is why I do all I can to see that my sisters are kept occupied. Good, homely tasks, and of course such study as they are capable of, in the care of homes and gardens, and so forth.”

“What about current affairs, or a little history?” Pitt inquired, leading him gently.

“Current affairs? Don’t be foolish, man. Women have neither the interest nor the capacity for such things. And it is unsuitable in them. I see you don’t know women very well!”

“Not very,” Pitt lied. “I believe you were married, sir?”

The major blinked. He had not anticipated the question. “I was. My wife died a long time ago.”

“Very unfortunate,” Pitt commiserated. “Were you married long?”

“A year.”

“Tragic.”

“All over now. Got over it years ago. Not like getting used to a thing. Hardly knew her, really. I was a soldier-away fighting for my Queen and country. Price of duty.”

“Quite so.” Pitt did not have to affect pity; he was beginning to feel it like a welling, bitter spring inside him as his idea grew stronger. “And women are not always the companions one hopes,” he added.

The major’s face sank into lines of quiet reflection, looking back on disillusions. The reality was unpleasing, but the recognition of it gave him a certain satisfaction in having overcome, even a sense of superiority over those who had yet to face it.

“They are different from men,” he agreed. “Shallow creatures, for the most; nothing to talk about but fashion, the way they look, and other similar foolishness. Always laughing at nothing at all. A man cannot take much of that, unless he’s as big a fool as they are.”

The idea crystallized in Pitt’s brain. Now was the time to put it to the test. “Extraordinary thing about these bodies,” he said casually.

The major’s head jerked up. “Bodies? What bodies?”

“Keep turning up.” Pitt watched him. “First the man on the cab box, then Lord Augustus, then Porteous, then Horatio Snipe.” He saw the major’s eye flicker and his Adam’s apple move. “Did you know Horrie Snipe, sir?”

“Never heard of him.” The major swallowed.

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Do you question my word?”

“Shall we say, your memory, sir?” Pitt hated it, but he had to continue, and the more quickly it was done, the shorter the pain. “He was a procurer of women, and he worked in the Resurrection Row area. The same place Godolphin Jones kept his pornography shop. Perhaps that revives your recollection a bit?” He caught the major’s eye and held it in a hard, candid gaze that allowed no retreat, no mercy of pretended ignorance.

The color wavered, then swept up the major’s mottled skin. He was ugly and pathetic, hurting Pitt in a way perhaps he did not hurt himself. He could not see how fragile, how unused he looked, how much of him had never grown.

He could find no words. He could not admit it, and he dared no longer deny it.

“Was that what Godolphin Jones was blackmailing you with?” Pitt asked quietly. “He knew about Horrie Snipe’s woman, and he sold you photographs?”

The major sniffed. Tears started running down his cheeks, and he was furious with himself for showing weakness, hating Pitt for seeing it.

“I did-I did not kill him!” he said between gulps to control himself. “Before God, I did not kill him!”

Pitt did not doubt it for a moment. The major would never have killed him-he needed him for his private dreams, his pictures and fantasies where he could live out the mastery he could never achieve in life. Jones was doubly precious to him since Horrie Snipe had died just before him, cutting the major off from his brief, wild adventure into the realms of live women.