Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [118]
“Mrs. Mapes has told me a young woman came here about three weeks ago wanting a baby girl, and became very upset when she couldn’t have a particular one. Does anybody remember that?”
Their faces were blank, eyes wide.
“She was nice-looking,” he went on, trying to keep the anger out of his voice, the rasping edge of desperation. He had never wanted to convict anyone more than Clarabelle Mapes, and she would escape him if he did not prove murder. The story of self-defense he was almost sure was a complete fiction, but it was not impossible. A jury might believe it. His superiors would know that as much as Clarabelle herself. She might never even be charged. The thought burned like acid inside him. Seldom had he given in to personal hatred in his work, but this time he could not suppress it. If he was honest with himself, he was no longer trying.
“Please think,” he urged. “She was young and quite tall, with fair hair and a pretty skin. She didn’t come from round here.”
One of the girls nudged the girl next to her, avoiding Pitt’s eyes.
“Fanny ... !” she whispered tentatively.
Fanny looked at the floor.
Pitt knew what troubled her. Had he been a child in Mrs. Mapes’s care he would not have dared risk her anger.
“Mrs. Mapes told me she came here,” he said gently. “I believe her. But it would help if someone else could remember.” He waited.
Fanny twisted her fingers together and breathed deeply. Someone coughed.
“I remember ‘er, mister,” Fanny said at last. “She came ter the door an’ I let ‘er in.” She shook her head. “She weren’t from ’ere—she were all ‘andsome and clean. But terrible upset she was when she couldn’t ’ave the little girl. Said as she were ’er own, but Mrs. Mapes said she were mad, poor thing.”
“What little girl?” Pitt asked. “Do you know which one.
“Yes, mister. I remember ’cos she was real pretty, all fair ’air and such a smile. Called ’er Faith, they did.”
Pitt took a deep breath. “What happened to her?” he said so quietly he had to repeat it.
“She were adopted, mister. A lady wiv no children come and took ’er.”
“I see. And was this young woman who asked after Faith still upset when she left here?”
“Dunno, mister. None of us saw ’er go.”
Pitt tried to make his voice sound casual, gentle, so as not to frighten her, but he knew the edge was still there. “Did she tell you her name, Fanny?”
Fanny’s face remained glazed, her eyes faraway.
Pitt looked at the floor, willing her to remember, clenching his hands inside his pockets where she could not see.
“Prudence,” Fanny said clearly. “She said as ’er name were Prudence Wilson. I let ’er in an’ told Mrs. Mapes as she was ’ere. Mrs. Mapes sent me back ter aks ’er business.”
“And what was her business?” Pitt was buoyed up by a surge of hope, and yet at the same time, giving a name to the hideously used corpse, learning of her loves and hopes, made her death so much deeper an offense.
Fanny shook her head. “I dunno, mister, she wouldn’t say, ’cept to Mrs. Mapes.”
“And Mrs. Mapes didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
Pitt stood up. “That’s fine. Thank you, Fanny. Stay here and look after the little ones. The constable will stay too.”
“’Oo are yer, mister, an’ wot’s ’appenin’?” the eldest girl asked with her face screwed up. They were frightened of change; it usually meant the loss of something, the beginning of new struggle.
Pitt would like to have thought this time would be different, but he could not delude himself. They were too young to earn their way in any legal occupation—not that there were many for women except domestic service, for which they had no references; sweatshops barely afforded survival. And without Clarabelle Mapes to connive and cheat monthly money out of desperate women, on the pretense of minding children they were unable to keep themselves, there was no means to support this present group of infants in Tortoise Lane. It would probably mean the workhouse for most of them.
He did not know whether to lie to them and keep fear at bay a little longer, or if that only added to the patronage, the robbery of dignity. In the end cowardice