Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [10]
Nan Sullivan was at least ten years older than Rose, and long hours and too many bottles of gin had blurred her features and dulled her hair and eyes. But there was still a softness in her, some spark of memory left a gentleness behind it, and when she spoke there was an echo of the west of Ireland in her voice. She sat on her bed, frowsy, tearstained and too tired to care.
“Sure I was at the other end o’ the alley,” she agreed, looking at Pitt without interest. “Took me a while to find anyone. I had to walk along to Brick Lane.” It was obviously a defeat she no longer bothered to hide. “I got back just as Ada come indoors.”
“So you saw the man who went in?” Pitt said eagerly.
“Sure I did. Least I saw the back of his head, and his coat.” She sighed and the ghost of a smile touched her mouth. “Lovely coat it was. Good gabardine. I know good gabardine when I see it. Used to work in a sweatshop. Master o’ that had a coat o’ gabardine. His was brown, as I recall, but it sat on the shoulder the same way. Neat and sharp it was, no rumples, no folds where there shouldn’t be.”
“What color was this one?” He was sitting in the one chair, about a yard away from her. This room opened onto the midden, and he could not hear the sounds of the street.
“This one?” She thought for a moment, her eyes far away. “Blue. Or mebbe black. Wasn’t brown.”
“Anything about the collar?”
“Sat fine. Sort o’ curve you don’t get in a cheap coat.”
“Not fur, or velvet?” he asked. “Or lambskin?”
She shook her head.
“No, just wool. Can’t see the cut with fur.”
“What about his hair?”
“Thick.” Unconsciously she brushed her fingers through her own hair, thinning with time and abuse. “An’ fair,” she added. “Saw the light on it from the candles in Ada’s room. Poor little bitch.” Her voice dropped. “Nobody should have done that to her.”
“Did you like her?” he asked suddenly.
She was surprised. She had to think for a moment. “I s’pose I did. She brought trouble, but she made me laugh. An’ I had to admire her fight.”
Pitt felt a moment’s irrational hope.
“Who did she fight with?”
“She went up west sometimes. Had nerve, I’ll say that for her. Didn’t often sell herself short.”
“So who did she fight with, Nan?”
She gave a sharp, jerky little laugh.
“Oh, Fat George’s girls, up near the Park. That’s their patch. If it had bin a knife in her, I’d ’ave said Wee Georgie’d done it. But he’d never have strangled her, or done it in her own room either. He’d have done it in the street and left her there. Besides, I know Fat George when I see him, and Wee Georgie.”
That was unarguable. Pitt knew them both too. Fat George was a mountain of a man, unmistakable for anyone else, let alone Finlay FitzJames. And Wee Georgie was a dwarf. Added to which, whatever the trespass into their territory, they would have beaten her, or crippled her, or even disfigured her face, but they would not have brought down the police upon themselves by killing her. It would be bad for business.
“You saw this man going into Ada’s room?” Pitt returned to the subject.
“Yes.”
He frowned. “You mean she opened the door for him. She didn’t take him in? She didn’t bring him from the street?”
Her eyes widened. “No! No, she didn’t, come to think on it. He must have come here on his own—sort of reg’lar, or like that.”
“Do you get many regulars?” Then he saw instantly from her face how tactless the question was. Ada might have, but she did not.
A flicker of understanding crossed her features, and knowledge of all the nuances of failure and his perception of what it meant, and his momentary regret.
She forced herself to smile, made it almost real. “Not reg