Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [100]
“Dunno,” she said, squinting at it. “So wot if it is?”
“Fetch me the girl who can read.”
She obeyed, cursing all the way, and brought back a tousle-headed girl, half asleep, still looking like a housemaid in her long white nightshirt. Pitt handed her the picture.
“Is that the man who came to see Abigail, the one who brought the boy she told about in court?”
“You answer ’im, my girl,” the old woman warned. “Or I’ll ’ave Bert tan yer ’ide fer yer till it bleeds, you ’ear me?”
The girl took the picture and looked at it.
“Well?” Pitt asked.
The girl’s face was pale, her fingers shook.
“I don’t know—honest. I never saw them. Abbie just told me about it after.”
“How long after?”
“I dunno. She never said. After it all came out. I s’pose she wanted to keep the money.”
“You never saw them?” Pitt was surprised. “Who did, then?”
“No one that I know of. Just Abbie. She kept them to herself.” She stared at Pitt, her eyes hollow with fear, although he did not know whether it was him she was afraid of or the old woman and the unseen Bert.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, giving her a sad little half smile, all he could afford of pity. To have looked at her closely, thought about her, would have been unbearable. She was only a miniscule part of something he could not change. “Thank you—that was what I wanted to know.”
“Well, I’m damned if I can tell why!” the old woman said derisively. “No use—that is!”
“You’re probably damned anyway,” Pitt replied coldly. “And I’ll have the local rozzers keep an eye on your place—so no beating the girls, or we’ll shut you down. Understand?”
“I’ll beat who the ’ell I want to!” she said, and swore at him, but he knew she would be careful, at least for a while.
Outside in the street, he started back toward the main thoroughfare, and an omnibus that would take him to the station. He did not look for a hansom; he wanted time to think.
Brothels were not private places, and a procuress like the old woman did not allow men to pass in and out without her knowing; she could not afford to. The levy on their passage was her livelihood. If her girls started sneaking in customers and not paying her share of the takings, word would get around and in a month she would be out of business.
So how was it possible that Jerome and Arthur Waybourne had been there and no one had seen them? And would Abigail, with her future to think of, a roof over her head—would she have dared keep a customer secret? Many a girl had been scarred for life for retaining too much of her own earnings. And Abigail had been in the business long enough to know that; she would know of “examples” that had been made of the greedy and the overambitious. She was not stupid; neither was she clever enough to carry off such a fraud, or she would not have been working for that evil old woman.
Which left the question that had been burning at the back of his mind, inching its way forward till it came into sharp, clear focus. Had Jerome and Arthur Waybourne ever been there at all?
The only reason to suppose they had was Abigail’s word. Jerome had denied it, Arthur was dead; and no one else had seen them.
But why should she lie? She had appeared out of nowhere; she had nothing to defend. If Jerome had not been there, then she had had to share with the old woman a good portion of money that she had never received.
Unless, of course, she had received it for something else. For what? And from whom?
For the lie, of course. For saying that Jerome and Arthur Waybourne had been there. But who had wanted her to say that?
The answer would be the name of Arthur’s murderer. Which Pitt now clearly thought was not Maurice Jerome.
But all this conjecture was still not proof. For even a doubt reasonable enough to reopen the case, he must have the name of someone besides Jerome who might have paid Abigail. And of course he would also have to see Albie Frobisher and look a good deal more closely into his testimony.
In fact, he thought, that would be a good thing to