Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [1]
Published in the United States by Fawcett Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Fawcett Books and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-90697
eISBN: 978-0-307-76776-9
v3.1
To Jonathan, Sylvia, Frances and Henry, with love.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
1
“SORRY SIR,” Inspector Ewart said quietly as Pitt stared down at the woman’s body sprawled across the big bed, at her face swollen in the asphyxia of death. “But this one you ought to see.”
“So I assume,” Pitt said wryly. Since his promotion to command of the Bow Street Station, he no longer dealt with ordinary episodes of violence, theft and fraud. The assistant commissioner had directed that he reserve his attention for those crimes which had, or threatened to have, political implications; those which involved persons of social prominence and might provoke embarrassment in high places if not dealt with both rapidly and tactfully.
So his being sent for at two in the morning to come to this Whitechapel slum over the murder of a prostitute required some explanation. The pale-faced constable who had ridden with him in the hansom had said nothing as they clattered through the August night, the streets narrowing, becoming meaner, the smell of sour smoke, crowded middens and the sharp odor of the river stronger as they moved eastwards.
They had stopped at Old Montague Street opposite the cul-de-sac of Pentecost Alley. The light from the gas lamp on the corner did not reach this far. Holding his bull’s-eye lantern high, the constable had led Pitt past refuse and sleeping beggars, up the steep, creaking steps of the tenement building, in through the deep-stained wooden door, and along the passage to where Ewart was waiting. The sound of weeping came from somewhere farther back, sounding frightened and carrying a rising note of hysteria.
Pitt knew Ewart by reputation, and he nurtured no doubts that there was some very real reason why he had been sent for, and so urgently. If nothing else, Ewart would be highly unwilling to yield command of his case to another officer, especially one who had risen from the ranks as Pitt had and who only a short while ago had been his equal. Like many regulars in the police force, Ewart believed that the only man with a right to such a position was one born to it, as had been Pitt’s predecessor, Micah Drummond, a man of independent wealth and military experience.
Pitt looked at the woman. She was young. It was difficult to tell a prostitute’s age. The life was harsh, often short. But the skin on her bosom where her dress was torn open was still unmarred by drink or disease, and the flesh was firm on her thighs where her red-and-black skirt had been lifted. Her left wrist was tied to the bedpost with a stocking, and there was a garter around her arm just above the elbow, a blue satin rose stitched to it. The other stocking was tied in a noose around her neck, tight, biting into it, almost cutting. The top half of her body, and all the bed around it, was drenched with water.
The sound of weeping was still audible, but it was quieter now, and there were other voices as well, and footsteps in the passage, light and quick.
Pitt looked around the room. It was surprisingly well furnished. The walls had been papered a long time ago, and though they were marked by the incessant damp and mold, and faded where the light had struck them, there was still a recognizable pattern. The fireplace was small, the dead ashes in it gray-white. The fire had been a gesture, something flickering and alive rather than a source of heat. The one chair was a cheerful red with a hand-stitched cushion on it, and there was a rag mat on the floor.