Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [130]
“I only learned it when it seemed already irrelevant,” Pitt replied, and saw Charlotte blush.
Cornwallis observed the exchange, as did Vespasia, but neither of them made comment.
“At least it solves one question,” Cornwallis resumed, sitting back and taking up his fork again.
“Now it remains to discover why someone placed his belongings at the scene, and of course who, but those two are basically the same question. The answer to one will provide the answer to the other. Surely that must be one man.”
He looked at Vespasia, then Pitt. “I find it hard to imagine it could be someone living in Whitechapel and an associate of either woman. It must be someone who hates FitzJames profoundly, a personal enemy of an extraordinary nature. Which brings us back to investigating FitzJames, but that is unavoidable.”
“Could it be some form of conspiracy?” Vespasia asked, also now eating her steak-and-kidney pie. Charlotte was very good at a suet crust.
Both men looked at her.
“You mean one person to kill the woman, the other to provide the evidence, and perhaps even to place it?”
Pitt did not believe it. It was too complicated, and far too dangerous. If there had been anyone else involved that Costigan knew of, he would have said so. He would not have gone to the rope alone.
But Cornwallis’s eyes were on Vespasia.
Charlotte cleared her throat.
“Yes?” Pitt asked.
She was acutely uncomfortable, but there was no escape. Now they were all looking at her.
“It isn’t really proof that Finlay was at the party,” she said very slowly, her face pink. She avoided Pitt’s eyes. “You see … I think almost everyone there was so preoccupied with their own enjoyment, and so … so affected by whatever they were drinking, or otherwise taking, that the evidence would not really be a great deal of use. One could have taken a troop of dancing horses through there and no one would have been sure afterwards whether it happened or they had imagined it.”
“I see.” Cornwallis accepted it with good grace but could not mask his disappointment. “But you believe the sister? She was sober enough to be sure she saw him there?”
This time she met his eyes.
“Oh, yes. She was only there for a very short while. When she realized what was going on, she left.”
“And did Emily tell you all this?” Vespasia enquired innocently.
Charlotte hesitated.
“I see.” Vespasia said nothing more.
Charlotte kept her gaze on her plate and began to eat again, very slowly.
Gracie had retreated into the kitchen.
“I must answer this question of having Costigan pardoned,” Cornwallis said grimly. “Although I am not sure how much of it rests upon me, other than to take the blame for the prosecution. A pardon will be up to the judge and the Home Secretary, possibly the Queen. I wish to God we’d waited another week. Then the poor devil would still be alive and we could pardon him to some effect!”
Pitt did not approach the subject of hanging. It was one about which he felt profoundly, but this was not the time. And no doubt others would do so in the all-too-near future.
“Could Costigan be guilty, and this be a second murderer, copying the method of the first?” Cornwallis asked, looking at Pitt but without any hope or belief.
“No,” Pitt answered unhesitatingly. “Unless it is one of us, and that is as close to impossible as matters. Only Constable Binns, Inspector Ewart, and Lennox, the police surgeon, knew the details of the first.”
They all waited expectantly, Cornwallis leaning forward, back stiff, Vespasia with her hands resting on the table edge.
“Binns was patrolling his usual beat and was attracted by the panic of a witness leaving Pentecost Alley,” Pitt said in answer to the unspoken question. “Ewart was at home with his wife and family, and Lennox was called from another case he’d been attending. It was close by, but he’d been with the patient all evening. Hadn’t left them at all until he was sent for.”
“That seems to make it plain,” Cornwallis said bleakly.
Charlotte stood up and cleared away the plates, some unfinished. Then, with