Death in the Devil's Acre - Anne Perry [83]
“Of course we have doctors sometimes.” Victoria took charge again. “But we have not used Pinchin. He has never had anything to do with this establishment.”
Pitt actually believed her, but he wanted to stay in the warmth a little longer, and he had not finished his tea. “Can you give me any reason I should believe that?” he asked. “The man was murdered. You would not wish to admit acquaintance with him.”
Victoria glanced at her sister, then at Pitt’s cup. She reached for the pot and filled it without asking him. “None at all,” she said with an expression Pitt could not fathom. “Except that he was a butcher, and I don’t want my girls cut about so they either bleed to death or are too mutilated ever to work again. Believe that!”
Pitt found himself apologizing. It was ridiculous. He was taking tea with a brothel-keeper and telling her he was sorry because some doctor had aborted whores so clumsily that they never recovered—and they were not even her whores! ... Or was she a brilliant liar?
“I’ll ask them myself.” He drank the rest of his tea and stood up. “Especially those who’ve come to you most recently.”
Mary stood up too, hands clenched in her skirt. “You can’t!”
“Don’t be silly,” Victoria said briskly. “Of course he can, if he wants to. We’ve never had Pinchin in this house, unless he’s come as a customer. I’d be obliged to you, Mr. Pitt, if you’d not be abusive to our girls. I won’t permit it.” She fixed him with a firm eye, and Pitt was reminded of governesses he had met in great houses. She did not wait for his answer, but led him into the upper part of the house and began knocking on one door after another.
Pitt went through the routine of asking questions and showing Pinchin’s picture to plump and giggling prostitutes. The rooms were warm and smelled of cheap perfume and body odors, but the colors were gay and the rooms cleaner than he had expected.
After the fourth one, Victoria was called away to attend to some domestic crisis, and he was left with Mary. He was speaking to the last girl, skinny, not more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and plainly frightened. She looked at Pinchin’s face on the paper, and instantly Pitt knew she was lying when she said she had never seen him.
“Think hard,” Pitt warned. “Be very careful. You can be put in prison for lying to the police.”
The girl went pasty white.
“That’s enough!” Mary said sharply. “She’s only a housemaid—what would she want with the likes of him? Leave her alone. She just dusts and sweeps. She has nothing to do with that side of things.”
The girl started to move away. Pitt caught hold of her arm, not roughly, but hard enough to prevent her going. She began to cry, great shuddering sobs as if she were overtaken with some desperate, animal grief.
Instantly, in the bottom of his stomach, Pitt knew she must be one of Pinchin’s “butcheries,” one who had lived, but so damaged she would never be a normal woman. At her age, she should have been laughing, dreaming of romance, looking forward to marriage. He wanted to comfort her, and there was nothing he could say or do, nothing anyone could.
“Elsie!” It was Mary’s voice, loud and frightened. “Elsie!” The little maid was still weeping, clinging now to Mary’s arm.
From the end of the passage came the sound of a low singing snarl. Pitt swung around. There, under the gas lamp, stood a squat, white, rat-faced bullterrier, with teeth bared and bow legs quivering. Behind him was the most enormous woman he had ever seen, her bare arms hanging loosely, her flat face like a suet pudding, with eyes shrouded in creases of fat.
“Never you mind, Miss Mary,” the woman said, in a soft, high voice like that of a little girl. “I won’t let ’im ’urt yer. Yer just leavin’, ain’t yer, mister?” She took a step forward, and the dog, bristling, lurched a step forward with her.
Pitt felt horror flood through him. Was he looking at the Devil’s Acre slasher? Was it this woman mountain and her dog? His