Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [114]
“Come on, Wigge. If she was dead and you didn’t kill her, why would you slash her to bits and wrap her up, and put the parcels round in the middle of the night? And don’t try to deny that—we’ve got at least seven people who saw you and will swear to it. Took us a little while, but we’ve got them now. I can arrest you this minute and take you to Newgate, or Coldbath Fields.”
“No!” The little man shrieked and squirmed, glaring up at Pitt with a mixture of fury and impotence. “I’m an old man!—them places’d kill me! There ain’t no decent food, an’ the jail fever’d kill me, it would.”
“Maybe,” Pitt said dispassionately. “But they’ll probably top you before that. You don’t always get jail fever immediately, it’s only a few weeks before a hanging.”
“Gawd ’elp me, I didn’t kill ’er!”
“So why did you cut up the body and get rid of it?” Pitt persisted.
“I didn’t!” he squealed. “I didn’t cut ’er up! She come that way, I swear ter Gawd!”
“Why did you put her all round Bloomsbury and St. Giles?” Pitt glanced at the furnace. “Why didn’t you burn her? You must have known we’d find her. In a churchyard! Really, Wigge. Not very clever.”
“Course I knew yer’d find ’er, yer fool!” A shadow of his old contempt came back, quickly erased by the terror crawling in his belly. “But adult bones don’t burn away—not even in an ’ole ’ouse afire, let alone a furnace like mine.”
Pitt felt sick. “But infant bones do, of course,” he said very quietly. He gripped Wigge’s shoulder so hard he could feel the scrawny flesh crumple under his hands and the hard, flat old bones grind together underneath, but Wigge was too terrified to scream.
Wigge nodded. “I never took a live one, I swear ter Gawd! I just got rid o’ them as ’ad died, poor little things.”
“Suffocated. Or starved.” Pitt looked at him as one might the germs of some disease.
“I dunno, I just done it fer a favor. I’m innocent!”
“The word’s a blasphemy from you.” Pitt shook him till his feet lifted off the ground and his boots jittered on the floor. “You knew this wasn’t a child! Did you open the parcels to see?”
“No! Stop ’urtin’ me! Yer breakin’ me bones! Two o’ them parcels was all over blood when I went to put ’em in the fire. Fair gave me a turn, it did! Near killed me, wiv me ’eart! ’Twas then I knew as I ’ad ter get rid o’ them. Can’t bear things like that, and I don’t want nuffin ter do wiv ’em, not keepin’ ’em ’ere in my furnace for the pigs ter find, if they do me over fer loot. I gets some very good fings in ’ere, I do!” It was a grotesque moment for such perverse pride. “Real gold and siller, sometimes!”
“So you didn’t want to keep the bones in your furnace,” Pitt said viciously. “Very wise. We pigs take nastily to things like that—it needs a lot of explaining. In fact, as much as dumping bits of corpse round Blooms-bury.” His grip tightened so hard Wigge practically lifted himself off the ground again by his contortions to free himself without actually fighting back. “Where did they come from?”
“I ... I, er ...”
“I’m going to hang somebody for it,” Pitt said between his teeth. “If it isn’t whoever sent you those parcels, then you’ll do.”
“I didn’t kill ’er! It was Clarabelle Mapes! Swear ter Gawd! Number three, Tortoise Lane. She’s a baby farmer. Advertises fer infants to raise, illegitimate and the like. Says as she’ll raise ’em as ’er own, if she’s paid right fer their keep. Only sometimes they dies. Proper weakly, infants is. I jus’ get rid o’ the corpuses for ’er. Can’t afford no burials. We’re poor ’ere in St. Giles, you know that!”
“You’ll swear to that, before the judge? Clarabelle Mapes sent you those parcels?”
“Yeah! Yeah! I’ll swear. It’s Gawd’s truth, swelpme it is!”
“Good. I believe you. However, I wouldn’t want you disappearing when I need you. And it’s a crime to dispose of a human body, even if it is dead. So I’ll take you in charge anyway. Constable!”
The constable appeared down the steps, his face pale, rubbing the sweat off his hands on his trouser legs.
“Yes, Mr. Pitt, sir?”
“Take Mr. Septimus Wigge to