Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [121]
Out of the front door past a knot of idlers, Pitt saw her still running swiftly towards a side alley opposite, no more than a slit in the gray walls between houses. She was going deeper into the labyrinth of sweatshops, gin mills, and tenements, and if he did not catch her soon she would find a hundred natural allies and he would be lucky if he returned at all, let alone having captured her.
At the end of the alley was a flight of steps down into a wide, ill-lit room where women sat sewing by oil lamps. Clarabelle had no care whom she spilled onto the floor, whose shirts she tore or sent flying into the dust, and Pitt could not afford to look either. Outraged cries rang in his ears.
At the far side the door caught him in the chest and checked him for a moment, knocking the breath out of his lungs. But he was too hot in pursuit to care about pain; his mind was filled and possessed with the hunger to capture her, to feel her physically under his hand and to force her to walk ahead of him, hands manacled behind her, drenched in the knowledge she was on the last length of the unalterable journey towards the gallows.
In the areaway three old women shared a bottle of gin, and a child played with two stones.
“Help!” Clarabelle Mapes shouted piercingly. “Stop ’im! ’E’s after me!”
But the old women were too rubber-legged and bleary-eyed to respond as she wanted, and Pitt jumped over them without their offering any serious resistance. He was gaining on Clarabelle; another few yards at this pace and he would catch her. His legs were far longer, and he had no skirts to trammel him.
But she was among her own kind now, and she knew the way. The next door was slammed in his face and would not open when he pushed it. He was obliged to hurl his weight against it, bruising his shoulder. It was not till the sergeant caught up with him that they were able to force it together.
The room beyond was dimly lit and packed with humanity of all ages and both sexes; the smell of sweat, stale food, and animal grime caught in his throat.
They ran through, leaping and kicking at sprawled bodies, and out of the far door into a crumbling street so narrow the jettied upper stories almost met. The open drain down the middle was crusted with dry sewage. A score of squat doorways—she might have gone into any one of them. All the doors were closed. There were huddles of people already half asleep or sodden with drink propped up here and there. None of them took the slightest notice of him or the sergeant, except one old man who, watching the situation, yelled encouragement to Pitt, imagining him the fugitive. He threw an empty bottle at the sergeant, which missed him and shattered on the wall behind, sending splinters in an arc ten feet wide.
“Which way did she go?” Pitt shouted furiously. “There’s sixpence for anyone who helps me get her.”
Two or three stirred, but no one spoke.
He was so angry, so scalded with frustration he would have attacked them even in their stupor if he had thought it would achieve anything at all.
Then another, far brighter thought came to him. He had been only a couple of yards behind Clarabelle when she had gone into the large dormitory. Even with the few moments it had taken to break in the door he should have seen the far door swing, and caught a glimpse of her fuchsia skirt in this frowsy street.
He spun round and charged back into the great room, seizing the first person he could reach, hauling him up by the lapels and glaring at him. “Where did she go?” he said gratingly between his teeth. “If she’s still here I’ll charge you all with being accessory to murder, do you hear me?”
“She ain’t ’ere!” the man squeaked. “Let go o’ me, yer bleedin’ pig! She’s gawn, Gawd ’elp ’er! Fooled yer, yer swine!”
Pitt dropped him and stumbled back to the broken door, the sergeant still on