Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [111]
Pitt felt a chill run through him, but knew of no reason why he should be afraid.
Cornwallis reached them.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Pitt,” he apologized to Charlotte, then looked at Pitt, his face pale and tight. “I’m afraid I must interrupt your Sunday afternoon.” He obviously intended it to be the cue for Charlotte to excuse herself and leave them alone, withdraw to a discreet distance, out of earshot.
She did not do so, but instead held more tightly to Pitt’s arm, her fingers curling around and gripping.
“Is it a matter of confidence of state?” Pitt enquired.
“Dear God, I wish it were!” Cornwallis said with passion. “I am afraid by tomorrow everyone else in London will know.”
“Know what?” Charlotte whispered.
Cornwallis hesitated, looking at Pitt with concern. He wanted to protect Charlotte. He was unused to women. Pitt guessed he was acquainted with them only at a distance. He did not know other than convention taught him to expect.
“Know what?” Pitt repeated.
“Another prostitute has been murdered,” Cornwallis said huskily. “Exactly like the first … in every particular.”
Pitt was stunned. It was as if suddenly he had lost his balance, and the grass and trees and sky dissolved and shifted around him.
“In a tenement on Myrdle Street,” Cornwallis finished. “In Whitechapel. I think you had better go there, immediately. Ewart is on the scene. I shall find Mrs. Pitt a hansom to take her home.” His face was ashen. “I’m so sorry.”
8
PITT STOOD in the doorway of the room where the body had been found. Ewart, gray-faced, was already there. From down the corridor came the sound of hysterical weeping, shock and terror still in the rising, desperate tones, long drawn out as a woman lost control.
Pitt met Ewart’s eyes and saw in them reflection of the horror he felt himself, and the sudden knowledge of guilt. He looked away.
On the bed lay a young woman, small, almost like a child. Her hair spilled out around her, one arm flung over her head, her wrist tied With a stocking to the left corner bedpost. There was a garter with a blue ribbon around her arm. Her yellow-and-orange dress was drawn up, exposing her thighs. Her legs were naked. Like Ada McKinley, there was a stocking knotted tightly around her throat. Her face was purple, mottled and swollen. And like Ada, the top half of her body and the bed around it was soaked with water.
With knowledge sick in his stomach, Pitt looked down at the floor. Her boots, black and polished, were buttoned to each other.
He lifted his eyes and met Ewart’s.
The weeping along the corridor was calmer, the fear subsiding into the long, broken sobs of grief.
Ewart looked like a man who awoke from a nightmare only to find the same events playing themselves out in reality, from which there is no more awakening. There was a muscle twitching in his temple, and he clenched his hands to keep them from shaking.
“Are her fingers and toes broken?” Pitt found his voice creaking, his throat was tight, his mouth dry.
Ewart swallowed. He nodded imperceptibly, not trusting himself to speak.
“Any … other evidence?” Pitt asked.
Ewart took a deep breath, his eyes on Pitt’s, wide, filled with knowledge of what they both dreaded.
“I … I haven’t looked.” His voice shook. “I sent for you straightaway. As soon as Lennox told me it was the same, I … I just left it. I …” He took another breath. “I went outside. I felt sick. If there’s anything here, I want you to be the one to find it, not me. At least … not me alone. I …” Again his eyes searched Pitt’s. There was a sheen of sweat on his upper lip and on his brow. “I did look around a bit. I didn’t see anything. But I haven’t searched, not properly, not combed it, down the backs of chairs, under the bed.”
The unasked questions hung in the air between them, the consuming fear and guilt that they had made an appalling, irretrievable mistake, and Costigan had not killed Ada, and whoever had had struck again, here in this room. Was it