CHARLOTTE WAS STUNNED when Pitt told her that Albie was dead; it was something she had not even considered, in spite of the terrifying number of deaths she had heard of among such people. Somehow it had not occurred to her that Albie, whose face and even something of his feelings she knew, would the within the space of her brief acquaintance with his life.
“How?” she demanded furiously, caught by surprise as well as pain. “What happened to him?”
Pitt looked tired; there were fine lines of strain on his face that she knew were not usually pronounced enough to see. He sat down heavily, close to the kitchen fire as though he had no warmth within.
She controlled the words that flew to her lips, and forced herself to wait. There was a wound inside him. She knew it as she did when Jemima cried, wordlessly clinging to her, trusting her to understand what was beyond explaining.
“He was murdered,” he said at last. “Strangled, and then put in the river.” His face twisted. “Irony in that, of a sort. All that water, dirty river water, not like Arthur Waybourne’s nice clean bath. They pulled him out at Deptford.”
There was no point in making it worse. She pulled herself together and concentrated on the practical. After all, she consciously reminded herself, people like Albie died all over London all the time. The only difference with Albie was that they had perceived him as an individual; they knew he understood what he was as clearly as they did—surely even more so—and shared some of their disgust.
“Are they going to let you investigate?” she asked. She was pleased with herself; her voice showed none of the struggle inside her, of her image of the wet body. “Or do the Deptford police want it? There is a station at Deptford, isn’t there?”
Tired enough to sleep even crumpled where he sat, he looked up at her. But if she dropped the spoon she held, turned, and took him in her arms, she knew it would only make it worse. She would be treating it like a tragedy, and him like a child, instead of a man. She continued stirring the soup she was making.
“Yes, there is,” he replied, unaware of her crowding thoughts. “And no, they don’t want it—they’ll send it to us. He lived in Bluegate Fields, and he was part of one of our cases. And no, we’re not going to investigate it. Athelstan says that if you are a prostitute, then murder is to be expected, and hardly to be remarked on. Certainly it is not worth police time to look into. It would be wasted. Customers kill people like that, or procurers do, or they die of disease. It happens every day. And God help us, he’s right.”
She absorbed the news in silence. Abigail Winters had gone, and now Albie was murdered. Very soon, if they did not manage to find something new and radical enough to justify an appeal, Jerome would hang.
And Athelstan had closed the murder of Albie as insoluble—and irrelevant.
“Do you want some soup?” she asked without looking at him.
“What?”
“Do you want some soup? It’s hot.”
He glanced down at his hands. He had not even realized how cold he was. She noticed the gesture and turned back to the stove to ladle out a bowlful without waiting. She handed it to him and he took it in silence.
“What are you going to do?” she asked, dishing out her own soup and sitting down opposite him. She was afraid—afraid he would defy Athelstan and go ahead with an inquiry on his own, and perhaps be demoted, or even dismissed. They would have no money coming in. She had never been poor in her life, not really poor. After Cater Street and her parents’ home, this was almost poverty—or so it had seemed the first year. Now she was used to it, and only thought about it as different when she visited Emily, and had to borrow clothes to go calling in. She had no idea what they would do if Pitt were to lose his job.
But she was equally afraid that he would not fight Athelstan, that he would accept Albie’s death and disregard his own conscience because of her and the children, knowing their security depended on him. And Jerome would hang, and Eugenie would be alone. They would never know whether he had killed Arthur Waybourne, or if he had been telling the truth all the time and the murderer was someone else, someone still alive and still abusing young boys.
And that too would lie between them like a cold ghost, a deceit, because they had been afraid to risk the price of uncovering the truth. Would he hold back from doing what he believed right because he would not ask her to pay the price—and ever afterward feel in his heart that she had robbed him of integrity?
She kept her head down as she ate the soup so he could not read her thoughts in her eyes and base any judgment on them. She would be no part of this; he must do it alone.
The soup was too hot; she put it aside and went back to the stove. Absentmindedly she stirred the potatoes and salted them for the third time.
“Damn!” she said under her breath, and poured the water off quickly down the sink, filled up the pan again, and replaced it on the stove. Fortunately, she thought he was too preoccupied to ask her what on earth she was doing.
“I’ll tell Deptford they can keep him,” he said at last. “I’ll say we don’t need him after all. But I’ll also tell them all I know about him, and hope they treat it as murder. After all, he lived in Bluegate Fields, but there’s nothing to say he was killed there. He could still have been in Deptford. What on earth are you doing with the potatoes, Charlotte?”
“I’m boiling them!” she said tartly, keeping her back to him to hide the rush of warmth inside her, the pride—probably stupid. He was not going to let it go, and thank heaven, he was not going to defy Athelstan, at least not openly. “What did you think I was doing?”
“Well, what did you pour all the water off for?” he asked.
She swung around and held out the oven cloth and the pan lid.
“Do you want to do it, then?” she demanded.
He smiled slowly and slid farther down in the chair.
“No, thank you—I couldn’t—I’ve no idea what you’re making!”
She threw the cloth at him.
But she was a good deal less light about it when she faced Emily across the porcelain-spread breakfast table the following morning.
“Murdered!” she said sharply, taking the strawberry preserve from Emily’s hand. “Strangled and then put in the river. He could have gone all the way out to sea and nobody would ever have found him.”
Emily took the preserve back.
“You won’t like that—it’s too sweet for you. Have some marmalade. What are you going to do about it?”
“You haven’t been listening!” Charlotte exploded, snatching the marmalade. “There isn’t anything we can do! Athelstan says prostitutes are murdered all the time, and it just has to be accepted! He says it as if it were a cold in the head or something.”
Emily looked at her closely, her face sharp with interest.
“You’re really angry about it, aren’t you?” she observed.
Charlotte was ready to hit her; all the frustration and pity and hopelessness boiled up inside her. But the table was too wide to reach her, and she had the marmalade in her hand. She had to be content with a blistering look.
Emily was quite unscathed. She bit into her toast and spoke with her mouth full.
“We shall have to find out as much about it as we can,” she said in a businesslike manner.
“I beg your pardon?” Charlotte was icy. She wanted to sting Emily into hurting as much as she did herself. “If you would care to swallow your food before attempting to speak, I might know what it is you are saying.”
Emily looked at her impatiently.
“The facts!” she enunciated clearly. “We must find out all the facts—then we can present them to the right people.”
“What right people? The police don’t care who killed Albie! He is only one prostitute more or less, and what does that matter? And anyway we can’t get the facts. Even Thomas can’t get them. Use your head, Emily. Bluegate Fields is a slum, there are hundreds of thousands of slum people, and none of them will tell the police the truth about anything unless they have to.”
“Not who killed Albie, stupid!” Emily was beginning to lose patience. “But how he died. That’s what matters! How old he was, what happened to him. He was strangled, you said, and dropped into the river like rubbish, then washed up at Deptford? And the police aren’t the people who matter, you told me that yourself.” She leaned forward eagerly, toast in the air. “But how about Callantha Swynford? How about Lady Waybourne? Don’t you see? If we can make them envision all that in their minds’ eye, all the obscenity and pathos, then we may draw them into our battle. Albie dead may be no use to Thomas, but he’s excellently useful to us. If you want to appeal to people’s emotions, the story of one person is far more effective than a catalogue of numbers. A thousand people suffering is much too hard to think of, but one is very easy.”
At last Charlotte understood. Of course Emily was right; she had been stupid, allowing herself to wallow in emotion. She should have thought of it herself. She had allowed her feelings to blot out sense, and that was the ultimate uselessness. She must not let it happen again!
“I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “You are quite right. That is definitely the right thing to do. I shall have to find out the details from Thomas. He didn’t really tell the a lot yesterday. I suppose he thought it would upset me.”
Emily looked at her through her eyelashes. “I can’t imagine why,” she said sarcastically.
Charlotte ignored the remark, and stood up. “Well, what are we going to do today? What is Aunt Vespasia planning to do?” she said, tweaking her skirt to make it fall properly.
Emily stood up, too, patted her lips with her napkin, and replaced it on the plate. She reached for the bell to summon the maid.
“We are going to visit Mr. Carlisle, whom I find I like—you didn’t tell me how nice he was! From him I hope we shall learn some more facts—about rates of pay in sweatshops and things—so we know why young women cannot live on them and so take to the streets. Did you know that people who make matches get a disease that rots away their bones till half their faces are destroyed?”
“Yes, I did. Thomas told me about it a long time ago. What about Aunt Vespasia?”
“She is taking luncheon with an old friend, the Duchess of somewhere or other, but someone everybody listens to—I don’t think they dare ignore her! Apparently, she knows absolutely everyone, even the Queen, and hardly anybody knows the Queen these days, since Prince Albert died.”
The maid came in, and Emily told her to order the carriage to be ready in half an hour; then she was to clear the table. No one would be home until late afternoon.
“We shall take luncheon at Deptford,” Emily said, answering Charlotte’s look of surprise. “Or else we shall go without.” She surveyed Charlotte’s figure with a mixture of envy and distaste. “A little self-denial will not harm us in the least. And we shall inquire of the Deptford policemen as to the state of the body of Albie Frobisher. Perhaps we may even be permitted to see it.”
“Emily! You can’t! Whatever reason could we give for such a bizarre thing? Ladies do not go to view the corpses of prostitutes pulled out of the river! They wouldn’t allow us.”
“You will tell them who you are,” Emily replied, crossing the hall and beginning up the stairs so they could prepare their appearance for the day. “And I shall tell them who I am, and what my purpose is. I am collecting information on social conditions because it is desired that there should be reform.”
“Is it?” Charlotte was not put off; it was merely a remark. “I thought it wasn’t. That is why we must excite people’s sympathy—and anger.”
“It is desired by me,” Emily replied with literal truth. “That is sufficient for a policeman in Deptford!”
Somerset Carlisle received them without surprise. Apparently, Emily had had the forethought to warn him of their coming, and he was at home with the fire piled high and hot chocolate prepared. The study was littered with papers, and in the best chair a long, lean black cat with topaz eyes lay stretched, blinking unconcernedly. It seemed to have no intention of moving even when Emily nearly sat on it. It simply allowed her to push it to one side, then rearranged itself across her knee. Carlisle was so accustomed to the creature he did not even notice.
Charlotte sat in the chair near the fire, determined that Emily should not dictate this conversation.
“Albie Frobisher has been murdered,” she said before Emily had time to approach the subject with any delicacy.” He was strangled and put in the river. Now we shall never be able to question him again to see if he changes his testimony at all. But Emily has pointed out”—she must be fair, or she would make a fool of herself—“that his death will be an excellent tool to engage the sympathy of the people whose influence we wish for.”
Carlisle’s face showed his disgust at the event, and an unusually personal anger.
“Not much use to Jerome!” he said harshly. “Unfortunately, people like Albie are murdered for too many reasons, and most of them perfectly obvious, to assume it related to any particular incident.”
“The girl prostitute has gone, too,” Charlotte continued. “Abigail Winters. She’s disappeared, so we can’t ask her either. But Thomas did say that he thinks neither Jerome nor Arthur Waybourne ever went there, to her rooms, because there is an old woman at the door who watches everyone like a rat, and she makes them all pay her to pass. She never saw them, and neither did any of the other girls.”
Emily’s mouth curled in revulsion as her imagination conjured up the place for her. She put out her hand and stroked the black cat.
“There would be a procuress,” Carlisle said, “and no doubt a few strong men around to deal with anyone who caused trouble. It’s all part of the mutual arrangement. It would be a very sly girl indeed who managed to smuggle in private customers—and a brave one. Or else a fool!”
“We need more facts.” Emily would not allow herself to be excluded from the conversation any longer. “Can you tell us how a girl who begins as respectable ends up on the streets in places like these? If we are to move people, we must tell them about the ones they can feel sorry for, not just the ones born in Bluegate Fields and St. Giles, whom they imagine never desire anything else.”
“Of course.” He turned to his desk and shuffled through piles of papers and loose sheets, coming up at last with the ones he wanted. “These are rates of pay in match factories and furniture shops, and pictures of necrosis of the jaw caused by handling phosphorus. Here are the piecework rates for stitching shirts and ragpicking. These are conditions for entry into a workhouse, and what they are like inside. And this is the poor law with regard to children. Don’t forget a lot of women who are on the streets are there because they have children to support, and not necessarily illegitimate by any means. Some are widows, and the husbands of some have just left, either for another woman or simply because they couldn’t stand the responsibility.”
Emily took the papers and Charlotte moved beside her to read over her shoulder. The black cat stretched luxuriously, kneading its claws in the arm of the chair, pulling the threads, then curled up in a ball again and went back to sleep with a small sigh.
“May we keep these?” Emily asked. “I want to learn them by heart.”
“Of course,” he said. He poured the chocolate and passed it to them, his wry face showing he was not unaware of the irony of the situation: sitting by the blazing fire in this infinitely comfortable room, with its superb Dutch scene on the wall and hot chocolate in their hands, while they talked about horrendous squalor.
As if reading Charlotte’s thoughts, Carlisle turned to her.
“You must use your chance to convince as many other people as possible. The only way we’ll change anything is to alter the social climate till child prostitution becomes so abhorred that it withers of itself. Of course we’ll never get rid of it altogether, any more than any other vice, but we might reduce it massively.”
“We will!” Emily said with a deeper anger than Charlotte had heard in her before. “I’ll see that every society woman in London is so sickened by it she’ll make it impossible for any man with ambition to practice it. We may not have a vote or pass any laws in Parliament, but we can certainly make the laws of society and freeze to death anyone who wants to flout them for long, I promise you!”
Carlisle smiled. “I’m sure,” he said. “I never underestimated the power of public disapproval, informed or uninformed.”
Emily stood up, carefully depositing the cat in the round hollow she had left. It barely stirred to rearrange itself.
“I intend to inform the public.” She folded the papers and slipped them into her embroidered reticule. “Now we shall go to Deptford and look at this corpse. Are you ready, Charlotte? Thank you so much, Mr. Carlisle.”
The Deptford police station was not easy to find. Quite naturally, neither Emily’s footman nor her coachman was acquainted with the area, and it took several wrong turnings on seemingly identical corners before they drew up in front of the entrance.
Inside was the potbellied stove, and the same constable sat at the desk writing up a report, an enamel mug of tea steaming at his elbow. He looked startled when he saw Emily in her green morning dress and feathered hat, and although he knew Pitt, he did not know Charlotte. For a moment he was at a loss for words.
“Good morning, Constable,” Emily said cheerfully.
He snapped to attention, slid off his seat, and stood up. That at least had to be correct; one did not sit on one’s behind to speak with ladies of quality.
“Good morning, ma’am.” His eye took in Charlotte. “Ma’am. Are you lost, ladies? Can I ’elp you?”
“No, thank you, we are not lost,” Emily replied briskly, with a smile so dazzling the constable was completely disconcerted again. “I am Lady Ashworth, and this is my sister Mrs. Pitt. I believe you know Inspector Pitt? Good, of course you do. Perhaps you did not know there is a great desire for reform at the moment, especially with regard to the abuse of children in the trade of prostitution.”
The constable blanched at a lady using so vulgar a term, and was embarrassed by it, although he frequently heard far coarser expressions used by others.
But she did not give him time to protest, or even to cogitate upon it.
“A great desire,” she continued. “And for this, of course, a certain amount of correct information is required. I know that a young boy prostitute was pulled out of the river here yesterday. I should like to see him.”
Every vestige of color drained out of his face.
“You can’t, ma’am! ’E’s dead!”
“I know he’s dead, Constable,” Emily said patiently. “He would be, having been strangled and dropped into the river. It is the corpse that I wish to see.”
“The corpse?” he repeated, stupefied.
“Exactly,” she said. “If you will be so kind?”
“I can’t! It’s ’orrible, ma’am—quite ’orrible. You can’t ’ave any idea, or you wouldn’t ask. It’s not for any lady at all to see, let alone the likes o’ you!”
Emily opened her mouth to argue, but Charlotte could see that the whole initiative was going to slip away if she did not intervene.
“Of course it is,” she agreed, adding her own smile to Emily’s. “And we appreciate your sensitivity to our feelings. But we have both seen death before, Constable. And if we are to fight for reform, we must make people aware that it is not pleasant—indeed as long as they are permitted to deceive themselves that it is unimportant, so long will they fail to do anything about it. Do you not agree?”
“Well—well put like that, ma’am—but I can’t let you go and look at something like that! ’E’s dead, ma’am—very dead indeed!”
“Nonsense!” Emily said sharply. “It’s freezing cold! We have seen bodies before that were far worse than this one can possibly be. Mrs. Pitt once found one over a month old, half burned and full of maggots.”
That left the constable speechless. He stared at Charlotte as if she had produced the article right there in front of him by some abominable sleight of hand.
“So will you be good enough to take us to see poor Albie?” Emily said briskly. “You did not send him back to Bluegate Fields, did you?”
“Oh, no, ma’am. We got a message as they didn’t want ’im after all. Said as ’e’d bin took out o’ the river ’ere, we ’ad as much right to ’im as anyone else.”
“Then let us go.” Emily began to walk toward the only other door, and Charlotte followed her, hoping the constable would not block them.
“I ought to ask my sergeant!” the constable said helplessly. “ ’E’s upstairs. Let the go an’ ask ’im if’n you can!” This was his chance to put the whole ridiculous thing into someone else’s hands. He had been used to all manner of weird affairs coming in through the door, from drunks to terrified girls or practical jokers, but this was the worst of all. He knew they really were ladies; he may work in Deptford, but he knew quality when he saw it!
“I wouldn’t dream of putting you to the trouble,” Emily said. “Or your sergeant either. We shall only be a moment. Will you be kind enough to show us the way? We should dislike to find the wrong corpse.”
“Lord! We only got the one!” He dived through the doorway after her and trotted behind them exactly where Pitt had gone the day before, into the small, cold room with its sheet-covered table.
Emily strode in and whipped off the cover. She looked down at the stiff, bleached, puffed corpse, and for a moment she went as white as it was; then, with a supreme effort, she controlled herself long enough to allow Charlotte to look also, but she was unable to speak.
Charlotte saw an almost unrecognizable head and shoulders. Death and the water had robbed Albie of all the anger that had made him individual. Staring at him now, the emptiness lying on the table, she realized how much the will to fight had been part of him. What was left was like a house without furniture, after the inhabitants have taken away the things that marked their presence.
“Put it back,” she said to Emily quietly. They walked out past the constable, close to each other, arm in arm, avoiding his eyes so he would not see how much it had shocked them and taken all their confidence.
He was a tactful man, and whatever he saw or guessed he made no mention of.
“Thank you,” Emily said at the street door. “You have been most courteous.”
“Yes, thank you,” Charlotte added, doing her best to smile at him; she did not succeed, but he took the intention for the deed.
“You’re welcome, ma’am,” he replied. “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” he added, because he did not know what else to say.
Outside in the carriage, Emily accepted the rug from the footman and allowed him to wrap it around her feet and Charlotte’s.
“Where to, milady?” he asked without expression. After the Deptford police station, nothing else she could say would surprise him.
“What time is it?” she inquired.
“A little after noon, milady.”
“Then it is too early to go calling upon Callantha Swynford. We must find something to do in the meanwhile.”
“Would you care for luncheon, milady?” The footman tried not to make it too obvious that he cared for it himself. Of course, he had not just viewed a drowned corpse.
Emily lifted her chin and swallowed.
“What an excellent idea. You had better find us somewhere pleasant, John, if you please. I do not know where such a place may be, but no doubt there is a holstelry of some sort that serves ladies.”
“Yes, milady, I’m sure there is.” He closed the door and went back to tell the coachman that he had succeeded in obtaining luncheon, and implied by his expression what he thought of it all.
“Oh, my God!” Emily sat back into the upholstery as soon as the door was closed. “How does Thomas bear it? Why do birth and death have to be so awfully—physical? They seem to reduce us to such a level of extremity there is no room to think of the spiritual!” She gulped again, hard. “Poor little creature. I have to believe in God, of some sort. It would be intolerable to think that was all there was—just to be born and live and die like that, and nothing before or after. It’s too trivial and disgusting. It’s like a joke in the worst possible taste.”
“It’s not very funny,” Charlotte said somberly.
“Jokes in bad taste aren’t!” Emily snapped. “I couldn’t face eating, but I certainly don’t intend to allow John to know that! We’ll have to order something, and of course we shall eat separately. Please do not be clumsy enough to allow him to learn of it! He is my footman and I shall have to live with him in the house—not to mention whatever he might say to the rest of the servants.”
“I have no intention of doing so,” Charlotte replied. “And not eating will not help Albie.” She had seen and heard of more violence and more pain than Emily, cushioned by Paragon Walk and the Ashworth world. “And of course there’s a God, and probably heaven, too. And I most sincerely hope there is hell also. I have a great desire to see several people in it!”
“Hell for the wicked?” Emily said tartly, stung by Charlotte’s apparent composure. “How very puritan of you.”
“No—hell for the indifferent,” Charlotte corrected. “God can do as He pleases with the wicked. It is the ones who don’t damn well care that I want to see burn!”
Emily pulled the rug a little tighter.
“I’ll help,” she offered.
Callantha Swynford was not in the least surprised to see them; in fact, the usual etiquette of afternoon calling was not observed at all. There was no exchange of polite observations and trivia. Instead, they were conducted immediately into the withdrawing room set for tea and conversation.
Without preamble Emily launched into a frank description of conditions in workhouses and sweatshops, the details of which she and Charlotte had learned from Somerset Carlisle. They were gratified to see Callantha’s distress as there opened up before her a whole world of misery that she had never conceived of before.
Presently they were joined by other ladies, and the wretched facts were repeated, this time by Callantha herself while Emily and Charlotte merely added assurance that what Callantha said was indeed true. By the time they left, late in the afternoon, they were both satisfied that there were now a number of women of wealth and influence who were sincerely concerned in the matter, and that Callantha herself would not forget, or dismiss easily from her thoughts, the abuse of children such as Albie, however much it distressed her.
While Charlotte was occupied with her crusade against child prostitution in general, trying to inform and horrify those who could change the climate of social opinion, Pitt was still concerned with the murder of Albie.
Athelstan kept him occupied with a case of embezzlement that involved thousands of pounds abstracted from a large company over a period of years. The incessant checking of double entries, receipts, and payments, and the questioning of innumerable frightened and devious clerks, was a kind of punishment to him for having caused so much embarrassment over the Jerome affair.
The body of Albie had not been moved from Deptford, so Pitt had nothing to act on. Deptford still had charge of the case—if there was to be a case. In order to learn even that much, he would have to go to Deptford on his own time, after his duties on the embezzlement were over for the day, and his inquiries would have to be sufficiently discreet that Athelstan would not learn of them.
It was a black evening after one of those flat, lightless days when fires do not draw because the air is too heavy, and every moment one expects the sky to fling a barrage from clouds so leaden they hang low across the city roofs and drown the horizon. Gas lamps flickered uneasily without dispelling the intensity of the darkness, and the drift of air from the river smelled of the incoming tide. There was a rime of ice on the stones of the street; the cab Pitt rode in moved briskly along while the cabbie kept up a steady hacking cough.
He stopped the cab at the Deptford police station, and Pitt had not the heart to ask him to wait, even though he knew he might not be long. No man or beast should be required to stand idle in that bitter street. After the heat of movement it could kill the horse; the cabbie, whose livelihood depended on the animal, would have to walk it around and around at no profit merely to keep the sweat from freezing and chilling the animal to death.
“Night, sir.” The cabbie touched his hat and moved off into the gloom, disappearing before he had passed the third gas lamp.
“Good night.” Pitt turned and walked into the shelter of the station and the frail warmth of the potbellied stove. It was a different constable on duty this time, but the usual steaming mug of tea was by his elbow. Perhaps it was the only way to keep warm in the enforced stillness of desk duty. Pitt introduced himself and mentioned his earlier visit to identify Albie’s body.
“Well, Mr. Pitt, sir,” the constable said cheerfully. “Wot can we do for yer tonight? No more corpses as’d interest you, I reckon.”
“I don’t want any, thank you,” Pitt replied. “I didn’t even get that one. Just wondered how you were doing with it. I might be able to help a little, since I knew him.”
“Then you’d better talk to Sergeant Wittle, sir. ’E’s ’andlin’ the case, such as it is. Although, to be honest, I don’t reckon we’ve much chance of ever knowing who done it. You know yerself, Mr. Pitt, poor little beggars like that get done in every day, fer one reason or another.”
“Get a lot of them, do you?” Pitt asked conversationally. He leaned a little on the desk, as though he were in no hurry to pursue a more senior officer.
The constable warmed to the attention. Most people preferred to ask the opinion of a sergeant at least, and it was very pleasant to be consulted by an inspector.
“Oh, yes, sir, from time to time. River police brings ’em in ’ere quite a lot—’ere an’ Greenwich. And o’course Wapping Stairs—sort o’ natural place, that is.”
“Murdered?” Pitt asked.
“Some o’ them. Although it’s ’ard to tell. A lot o’ them is drowned, and who knows whether they were pushed, or fell, or jumped?”
“Marks?” Pitt raised his eyebrows.
“Gawd ’elp us, most of ’em is pretty marked anyway, long before they gets as far as the water. There’s some people as seems to get their pleasure out o’ beating other people, instead o’ what any natural man would. You should see some o’ the women we get, and no more’n bits o’ kids, lot o’ them—younger than my wife was when I married ’er, and she was seventeen. Then, o’ course, some o’ them girls gets beat by their own pimps, if they’ve bin ’olding back on the money. All that, and wot with the tides and knockin’ around the bridges, some o’ them yer’d ’ardly recernize as they was ’uman bein’s. I tell yer, it’d fair make yer weep sometimes. Turns me stomach, it does, and it takes a deal ter do that.”
“A lot of brothels in the docks,” Pitt said quietly after a moment’s silence while they pursued their private memories of horror. It was more an observation than a question.
“Course,” the constable agreed. “Biggest port in the world, London.” He said it with some pride. “What else d’y’expect? Sailors away from ’ome, after a long spell at sea, and the like. An I s’pose when yer gets the supply o’ women, and boys, fer them that’s that way inclined”—he grimaced— “then it’s natural yer gets others come in from outside the harea, knowin’ as they’ll find whatever they wants ’ere. There’s a few times yer’ll see some smart gents get down from a cab outside some very funny ’ouses. But then I reckon yer knows that fer yerself, bein’ near that kind o’ harea, too!”
“Yes,” Pitt said. “Yes.” Although since his promotion to inspector he had had to do with more serious cases, and the ordinary, rather pedestrian duties of keeping a modicum of control over vice had not fallen his way.
The constable nodded. “It’s when I sees children involved that I gets the sickest about it. I reckon most adult people can do as they wants, although I ’ates ter see a woman lower ’erself— always make the think o’ the muvver—but kids is diff’rent. Funny, yet know, they was two ladies—and I mean ladies, all dressed and spoke like real quality they was, and ’andsome as duchesses. They came in ’ere just yesterday, a-sayin’ as they wanted ter do somethin’ about child prostitution. Wanted ter make people sit up and take notice. Don’t reckon as they’ve much chance.” He smiled wanly. “It’s a lot the quality as pays the money that makes it worth the procurer’s while—up the better end, any’ow. No good pretending the gents wot matters don’t already know about it! Still, yer can’t tell ladies as their own kind does that kind o’ thing, can yer? I never saw them meself, but Constable Andrews, as was on duty at the time, ’e said they wanted ter look at the corpse what was brought out o’ the river—the one as yer come about. White as sheets, they went, but never lorst their nerve, nor fainted. Yer’ve gotta admire them. Just looked and thanked ’im, polite as yer like, and went out again. Yer’ve got to ’and it to ’em, they got spirit!”
“Indeed!” Pitt was startled. Half of him was furious, the other half idiotically proud. He did not even bother to ask if the ladies had left any names, or indeed what they had looked like. He would reserve his comments on the matter until he got home.
“Reckon as yer’d like ter see Sergeant Wittle?” the constable said matter-of-factly, unaware of Pitt’s thoughts, or even that they had left the immediate subject. “ ’E’s just up them stairs, first door you comes to, sir. Can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” Pitt said. He smiled and left the constable, who picked up the mug of tea again, before it lost the last of its warmth.
Sergeant Wittle was a sad man, with a dark face and remnants of black hair draped thinly across the top of his head.
“Ah,” he sighed when Pitt explained his call. “Ah—well, I don’t think we’ll get much there. ’Appens all the time, poor sods! Can’t tell you ’ow many I’ve seen, over the years. O’ course, most aren’t murdered, leastways not directly—just sort o’ sideways, like, by life. Sit down, Mr. Pitt. Not that it’ll do you any use.”
“It’s not official,” Pitt said hastily, pushing the chair closer to the stove and settling in it. “The case is yours. Just wondered if I could help—off the books?”
“You know suffin’, then?” Wittle’s eyebrows rose. “We know where ’e lived, but that don’t tell us anything at all. Anonymous sort o’ place. Anyone could come or go—part o’ the whole thing! Nobody wants ter be seen. Who would—frequenting a place like that? An’ all the other residents pretty much mind their own business. Anyway, they’re inside plyin’ their own trade, which by its nature ’as ter be private. Like bitin’ the ’and that feeds you, letting anyone know who goes in and out o’ that place.”
“Do you have anything at all?” Pitt asked, trying not to hope.
Wittle sighed again. “Not much. Treating it as murder, o’ course at least for a while. It’ll probably get filed with all the other unsolveds, but we’ll give it a week or two. Seems like ’e was a plucky little bastard—spoke out more’n most. ’E was known. Kept some ’igh-class company, according to some, if they’re tellin’ the truth.”
“Who?” Pitt leaned forward urgently, his throat tight. “Who was this high-class company?”
Wittle smiled sadly. “Nobody as you’d know, Mr. Pitt. I read the newspapers. If it ’ad bin anyone in your case; I’d ’a’ sent and told you—just a matter o’ politeness, like. Not that I can see as it’d do you any good. Already got yer man. Why d’ya still care?” He screwed up his eyes. “Reckon as there’s more?” He shook his head. “Always is, on these things, but you’ll never find it. Very close, the quality, when it comes to ’iding their family problems. Reckon young Waybourne was doin’ a spot o’ slummin’ of ’is own, do you? Well—what does it matter now? Poor little sod’s dead, an’ provin’ there was a few lies told ’ere an’ there won’t ’elp no one now.”
“No,” Pitt said with as much grace as he could muster. “But if you find proof he kept company with anyone in our area that you want to know about, there may be something useful I could tell you that is only suspicion—and not on record.”
Wittle smiled, for the first time showing genuine amusement.
“Ever tried proving a gentleman ’ad even a passin’ acquaintance with somebody like Albie Frobisher, Mr. Pitt?”
There was no need for an answer. They both knew that such a piece of professional crassness would be without point; indeed, the officer who made the charges would probably suffer for his foolishness more than the gentleman he made it against. Although of course there would be embarrassment all around, not least to his superiors in the force for having employed so clumsy a man, an oaf so unaware of what may be said, and what may only be supposed, that he would voice such a thought.
“Even if it’s proof you can’t use,” Pitt said at last, “I’d like to know.”
“Just fer interest, like?” Wittle’s smile widened. “Or do you know suffin’ as I don’t?”
“No.” Pitt shook his head. “No, I know frighteningly little. The more I learn, the less I think I really know. But thank you anyway.”
It took him ten minutes’ walking in the cold before he found another cab; he directed it and climbed in, then realized his mind had translated into words the thought that had barely played itself into his consciousness. He was going back to Abigail Winters’s rooms to see if any of the girls knew exactly where she had gone. He was afraid for her, afraid she too was lying dead and bloated in some dark backwater of the river, or perhaps already washed out with the tide into the estuary and the sea.
Three days later, he received word from a police station in a little town in Devon that Abigail Winters had gone there to stay with a cousin, and was alive and in every appearance of health. The one girl at the brothel who could write had told him where she was, but he had not accepted her unsubstantiated word. He had telegraphed six police districts himself, and the second reply gave him the answer he wanted. According to the constable whose careful, unaccustomed wording he read, Abigail had retired to the country for her lungs, which suffered from the London fog. She thought the air in Devon would suit her better, being milder and free from the smoke of industry.
Pitt stared at the paper. It was ridiculous. It came from a small country town; there would be little market there for her trade, and she knew no one but a distant relative—a female at that. Doubtless she would be back in London within a year, as soon as the Waybourne case was forgotten.
Why had she gone? What was she afraid of? That she had lied, and if she stayed in London someone would press her until it was discovered? Pitt felt he knew already; the only thing he did not know was how it had come about. Had someone paid her to lie—or had it been a slow process through questioning by Gillivray? Had she realized—by implication, gesture, guess— what he wanted, and, in trade for some future leniency, given it to him? He was young, keen, more than personable. He needed a prostitute who had venereal disease. How hard had he looked, and how easy had he been to satisfy once he had found someone, anyone—who filled that need?
It was a shocking thought, but Gillivray would not have been the first man to seize a chance for evidence to convict someone he sincerely believed to be guilty of an appalling crime, a crime likely to occur again and again if the offender was not imprisoned. There was a deep, natural desire to prevent hideous crime, especially when one has only recently seen the victims. It was easy to understand. Yet it was also inexcusable.
He called Gillivray into the office and told him to sit down.
“I’ve found Abigail Winters,” he announced, watching Gillivray’s face.
Gillivray’s eyes were suddenly bright and blurry. There was a heat inside him that robbed him of words. It was the guilt Pitt might not have found in an hour of interrogation, no matter how many of his suspicions he pressed or how many verbal traps he laid. Surprise and fear were so much more effective, putting the onus of reply on Gillivray before he had time to conceal the guilt in his eyes, to grasp what it was Pitt was saying.
“I see,” Pitt said quietly. “I would rather not believe you openly bribed her. But you did, tacitly, lead her into perjury, didn’t you? You invited her, and she accepted.”
“Mr. Pitt!” Gillivray’s face was scarlet.
Pitt knew what was coming, the rationalizations. He did not want to hear them because he knew them all, and he did not want Gillivray to make them. He had thought he disliked him, but now that it came to the moment, he wanted to save him from self-degradation.
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “I know all the reasons.”
“But, Mr. Pitt—”
Pitt held up a piece of paper. “There’s been a robbery, a lot of good silver taken. This is the address. Go and see them.”
Silently, Gillivray took it, hesitated a moment as though he would argue again, then turned on his heel and left, closing the door hard behind him.