Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [146]
“No, not a thing,” Ewart answered.
“Anything at all found, apart from the button and the handkerchief?” Pitt went on.
“No.”
“Odd, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That all the evidence at both scenes implicates Finlay FitzJames …”
“Circumstantial,” Ewart said too quickly, then slipped down in his chair again, white-faced.
“I was going to say,” Pitt continued, puzzled and unhappy, “that it doesn’t seem natural. The more I look at it, the more it seems as if the evidence in both cases was put there by someone specifically so we should find it. Has anyone in either building ever seen Finlay FitzJames before?”
Ewart sat upright with a jolt. “No!” A spark of hope lit in his face. “I’ll ask them all again, but I’m sure they haven’t. You’re right! It’s too much of a coincidence to suppose that he came here for the very first time and killed a woman he’d never even met before. Why would he, unless he’s mad? He might do it once, if …” He swallowed hard, as though his throat were almost closed with the strain. “If he were drunk, or … or crazed with … with lust, or anger, or whatever grips people. But that once would scare him out of his senses. He’d never come back less than two months later and do it again. Especially when he knows we already suspect him.”
He was leaning over the desk now, his face sharp with eagerness. “You’ve met him, Pitt. Did he seem to you like a man possessed by insanity? Or like a young man who’d occasionally behaved like a fool, lost his self-control in the past, drank a bit too much and couldn’t remember the night before, and was terrified he’d be blamed for something he didn’t do? Terrified of letting down his family, of having his father despise him and make life exceedingly unpleasant for him for several months, if not years?”
It was exactly how Finlay had impressed Pitt. He could not have worded it more perfectly himself. It was an acutely perceptive characterization of the man he had seen. He had underrated Ewart’s judgment.
“You’re right,” he said aloud. “It comes back every time to someone else trying to blame him.” He looked at Ewart steadily. “Were we wrong with Costigan? I was so absolutely sure I was right. I couldn’t explain the boots or the garter, but I was sure he killed her.”
“So was I,” Ewart said quickly, seriously. “I still think so. The boots and the garter must have been the customer before.”
“And the second time, with Nora?” Pitt asked. “Not the same customer?”
“No, that’d be done by whoever put the handkerchief and the button there, to add to it looking like the same person.” His mouth tightened. “I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like your Reverend. Bit of a fanatic anyway. I mean … why would a high-living gentleman suddenly give up everything and study to be a minister, then choose to come to work here in Whitechapel?” He shook his head. “People like him don’t have to work at all. Take the rest of the old Hellfire Club members … Helliwell works in the City, but only when he feels like it. Doesn’t really have to. Just likes to live high. Got a wife to keep, and I daresay children now. Runs a carriage, big house, servants, gives parties. His wife’s dress allowance is probably more than Jago Jones makes in a decade.”
Pitt could not argue. Other thoughts raced into his mind.
“And Thirlstone,” Ewart went on, an edge to his voice. “Plays at being an artist. Doesn’t make any money at it. Doesn’t need to. Just enjoys himself. Drifts from one stupid conversation to the next. Walks in the Park, goes to studios and exhibitions. FitzJames wants to be an ambassador or a Member of Parliament, but he doesn’t actually work every day, like you or me. Goes to the Foreign Office when he feels like it. A lot of what he does is cultivate the right people, be seen at the right places.”
Pitt said nothing. He heard the contempt in Ewart’s voice and he understood it, perhaps even shared it.
“But Jones works from morning till night,” Ewart concluded. “Sundays as well. I don’t know what they pay him, but they don’t say ‘poor as a church mouse’ for nothing. Wears old clothes, eats the same as the rest of