Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [116]
“I’ve just been to see a friend of yours,” he answered, sidestepping the question. “Or perhaps I should say an associate. In business.”
“I don’t ’ave no associates,” she said carefully, some of the glisten dying from her face. “Though there are some as’d like ter be.”
“This is one who does favors for you now and then—and no doubt you reward him for it.”
“I pays me way,” she agreed cautiously. “No time fer them as doesn’t. Life ain’t like that.”
“A Mr. Septimus Wigge.”
For a moment she was still as stone. Then she caught her breath and continued as though nothing had affected her. “Well, if I got suffin off ’im as was stolen, I bought it honest. I didn’t know the little weasel was bent.”
“I wasn’t thinking of goods, Mrs. Mapes, so much as services,” Pitt said distinctly.
“’E don’t do nobody no service!” Her mouth sloped downwards in disgust.
“He does you a considerable service,” he corrected her, still standing, and keeping himself carefully between her and the door. “He only failed you once.”
Her fat hands beside her monstrous skirt were clenched, but her eyes were still defiant. She stared up at him, her face heavy.
“He did not burn the body of the woman you sent him wrapped up in the usual parcels, which he expected to be babies who had died in your care. By the time he came to put the parcels in his furnace the blood had soaked through, so he undid one and discovered what it really was. Adult bones don’t burn that easily, Mrs. Mapes—not like those of a small child. It takes a very great heat to destroy a human thighbone, or a skull. Wigge knew that, and he didn’t want to be left with those in his furnace, so he dropped the parcels as far away from himself as he could carry them alone, in one night. He thought he would be safe, and he very nearly was.”
She was pale beneath her rouge, but she had not yet realized just how much he knew. Her body was tight, hard under the straining taffeta, and her hands shook a little, so little he could barely see it.
“If ’e’s killed some woman it’s nuffin ter do wiv me—an’ if ’e says it is, ’e’s a liar! You go an’ arrest ’im, don’t come around ’ere, bullyin’ me! You don’t look like no naffin’ rozzer—usually I can smell ’em. ’E ain’t murdered nobody from ’ere, so get on wiv yer business an’ leave me alone—’cept fer Mrs. March’s money. I don’t suppose yer got that, eh?”
“There is no money.”
“You lyin’ bastard!” Her voice rose shrilly and she lurched forward out of the chair to stand opposite him, eyes blazing. “Yer lyin’ son of a bitch! Yer bleedin’ swine!” Her hands came up as if she would strike him, but she recollected herself in time. She was a big woman, vastly heavy, but short; Pitt was a good deal taller than she, and strong. It was not worth the risk. “You lied!” she repeated incredulously.
“That’s right,” he agreed. “At first I simply wanted to find out what you knew about Mrs. March. Then I saw the parcel on the kitchen table, and recognized the paper and the knots. You wrapped the parcels that the pieces of the body were found in, not Septimus Wigge. He says he got them from you, and we believe him. Clarabelle Mapes, I am arresting you for the murder of the woman whose body was found in the churchyard of St. Mary’s in Bloomsbury. And don’t be foolish enough to fight me—I have two other constables in the house.”
She stared at him, a succession of emotions in her face; fear, horror, disbelief, and finally, hardening resolution. She was not yet beaten.
“Yer right,” she conceded grudgingly, “she died ’ere. But it weren’t no murder. It were in defense o’ meself, an’ yer can’t ’ardly blame me fer that! A woman’s entitled ter save ’erself.” Her voice grew more confident. “I’ll ignore yer charges against meself an’ me work carin’ fer infants wot their muvvers can’t keep, ’cos they ain’t married, or already got more’n they can feed. It’s a wicked charge, iggerant of all I do fer ’em.” She saw the look on Pitt’s face and hurried on. “But I ’ad no choice, or it’d be me lyin’ dead on the floor, so help me