Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [145]
“I don’t know,” Ewart said. “Because they saw Costigan and they want to think he’s been topped, finished, out of the way! Whatever they think, it doesn’t matter a toss. Somebody was there, a youngish man with thick hair that waves, and no one else came or went, so it has to be him. God knows who he is … I don’t!”
“No one else came or went?” Pitt repeated.
“That’s right.” Ewart sounded utterly wretched, as if it were his own personal tragedy he spoke of, not just one more of the regular occurrences he must have seen throughout his career. “Can’t get them to move on that.”
“Anything else about the man?” Pitt persisted. “Build? Way he walked? Ears? People’s ears vary very much. Did anyone notice anything at all? Make them think, remember back.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job!” Ewart said angrily. “I have asked them all those things. Nobody took any notice of him. He was just another client.”
“Doesn’t anybody keep a watch?” Pitt could not afford to let it go. He had nothing else. “Don’t these girls have any protection? Even someone to count the customers and make sure they get their fair share of the earnings?”
“Yes … and they can only say he was well dressed and had thick hair. Look, Pitt.” He forgot Pitt’s new rank and addressed him as he used to be, an equal. “I’ve been over the ground again and again. I’ve got men out searching for this man, with descriptions. They’ve tried every other brothel and bawdy house from Mile End to the north, Limehouse to the east, and the Tower to the west. Everybody’s seen half a dozen men who answer the description, at least.” He started to add something, then changed his mind and bit it off. “There’s nothing.”
Pitt leaned back, worn out himself. Was it Finlay FitzJames after all? Or was it Jago Jones, in some insane, bitter mixture of hatred of prostitutes, of Finlay, of all his past life and whatever he used to be, and of Finlay’s knowledge of him? Or perhaps it was even that Finlay had introduced him to it? Was that the core of his madness—the conviction that somehow Finlay was the one who had led him to discover the sinner within himself, the uncontrollable appetite?
“What is it?” Ewart asked, sitting upright suddenly, knocking a pile of papers with his elbow. “What do you know?”
“Nothing,” Pitt answered. “But I shall have to go and speak to the Reverend Jago Jones again.”
“Jones?” Ewart said in surprise, leaving the papers where they were. “You think he knows something? I doubt it. Good man, but not worldly-wise. If he knew anything, he’d have told us already.” His voice fell flat again, the moment’s hope gone out of it. “Anyway, it’s a waste of time your going to see him. He won’t betray a parishioner, even if he knows for certain who it is. Priest’s vows, and all that. Better to compare between Ada and Nora, see who might have known both of them. I’ve already started.” He fished among the fallen papers and pulled out a few. He pushed them across at Pitt. “These are the people who know both the women and dealt with them, one way or another: clothes, hosiery, cosmetics, medicines, food, shoes, even bed linen.” He grunted. “Never realized a prostitute went through so much bed linen. See, just a few of them are the same.”
“Naturally.” Pitt took the paper, although he did not expect it to reveal anything interesting. “I don’t suppose there are all that many dealers in such things in a small area like this. Any of them answer the description?”
“Not so far. Most of them are middle-aged and were at home with their families at the time.” Ewart relapsed into his hopeless air, leaning back in his chair, slumped over.
“Anything from Lennox?” Pitt asked.
“No. She was killed in exactly the same way,” Ewart answered, his face pinched, pain written all through him, and a driving, consuming anger. “Tortured the same. All the details match, even those no one else knows but us. It had to be the same person.”
“Anything different at all?” Pitt said quietly. The shabby room was claustrophobic, too small to contain the huge emotions within it.