Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [124]
“People don’t murder women in order to make fools of the police,” Pitt answered, remaining on his feet. “There’s a personal reason for killing her, very personal indeed. Her fingers and toes were dislocated or broken, Mr. FitzJames. That is acutely painful. It is a form of torture.” He ignored Augustus’s wince of distaste. “It was done while she was tied up with her own stocking. Then she was doused with water, and her boots were buttoned together, and her garter slid up onto her arm. You don’t do that to someone without a very violent passion burning inside you, not some secondhand reason of wanting to make someone else look foolish.”
Augustus’s face was very pale, almost gray, and his heavy nose and narrow mouth were pinched, as though in a matter of hours he had aged a decade.
“I agree, Superintendent, it is obscene. Not the behavior of a civilized man. You are looking for some animal who is less than human. I wish I were able to help you more than I can, but it is not my area of knowledge. I assume this time you did not find anything belonging to my son?” There was certainty in his voice. The question was rhetorical.
“I am sorry, Mr. FitzJames, but we found this.” Pitt pulled the monogrammed handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out so Augustus could see the lettering.
For a moment he thought Augustus was going to faint. He swayed a little on his feet and let go his clasped hands to grasp the handkerchief in one hand, then had to extend the other hand also, to maintain his balance. He did not touch it.
“I … I see the letters, Superintendent,” he said in a hard, tight voice. “I acknowledge they are unusual. That does not mean the article belongs to my son. It most certainly does not mean that he was the person who placed it there. I hope you perceive that as clearly as I do?” For once there was no threat in his tone, instead a mixture of pleading and defiance, a will to do all he could to avert the disaster which now hung so closely over his family.
Pitt had it in his heart to be sorry for him, despite his own personal dislike. He wished he could be surer of what he felt about Finlay’s guilt.
“I know that, Mr. FitzJames,” he acknowledged quietly. “The difficulty is to discover who could have put your son’s possessions so deliberately first at the scene of Ada McKinley’s murder, and now at the scene of Nora Gough’s … and why. I am afraid it may be necessary to look far more closely at those people who consider themselves your enemies. It is beyond reason to suppose your son was selected by chance.”
Augustus drew in his breath, then let it out again in a sigh.
“If you say so, Superintendent.” Then his eyes narrowed. “May I ask you how it has happened that you were able to obtain a conviction against Albert Costigan when it now appears he cannot have been guilty? I … I do not mean to imply criticism. I believe it is something we require to know … I require to know. This tragedy now threatens my family imminently.”
“I am afraid it does.” Pitt took the button out of his pocket and proffered that also.
Augustus picked it up and examined it.
“Very ordinary,” he pronounced, looking up at Pitt. “I don’t think I have any like that myself, but I know a dozen men who do. It proves nothing, except possibly that someone of good taste was there.” His face tightened. “Sartorial good taste, anyway.”
“There were also witnesses,” Pitt said, adding the final blow. “The dead woman’s last customer was a young man of average height with thick, fair hair, and he was well dressed.”
Augustus did not bother to argue or point out how many young men might answer that description.
“I see. Naturally I have already asked my son where he was yesterday late afternoon. I assume you will wish to hear it from him in person?”
“If you please.”
Augustus rang the bell and, when the butler appeared, sent him to fetch Finlay.
They waited in silence.
Finlay arrived within moments. He came in and closed the door behind him. He was casually dressed; obviously he had changed since