Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [147]
“I don’t know.” Pitt stood up. “But you’re right, it requires an answer. You had better keep on looking for this man who last saw Nora.”
“I don’t know who else to question,” Ewart protested. “We’ve spoken to all the women in the building, the people in the bottle factory, local residents, shopkeepers.”
“Even the beggars and workers in the street,” Pitt said from the doorway. “Keep on trying them. Someone must have seen him. He didn’t walk out of there and disappear.” He turned the handle. “Unless you’ve got any better ideas?”
He left Ewart in the dark, untidy office and went back to Myrdle Street. The question of the customer who had disappeared nagged at his mind. He had to be the one who killed her, but the fact that no one admitted seeing him leave was significant. In fact, no one even admitted seeing him arrive. The house was a brothel. There were always people about. It was not only a fact of business, it was part of their safety. Every woman who worked the streets was aware of the dangers of a client who was violent, abusive, refused to pay, or had tastes and demands beyond those she was willing to satisfy.
He walked briskly from the police station along the gray streets filled with traffic: men and women bustling along the pavements, tradesmen, petty clerks, errand boys, deliverymen, peddlers and news sellers. Nora’s death was still on every front page, along with protests of Costigan’s innocence and the call for reform. Some even asked for abolition of the police because of their failure to catch the first Whitechapel mass murderer, and now a second.
Pitt hurried by, wanting to look the other way and yet drawn to them against his will. His imagination painted lurid headlines. What he saw was even worse. He was spared nothing.
“Police getting nowhere!” screamed one. “Whitechapel lives in terror again!” And another sandwich board read, “Has Jack the Ripper returned? Police helpless!” “Senior policeman Pitt going ’round in circles! Or is he? Does he know something he dare not tell? Who is the Whitechapel murderer?”
He arrived at the house in Myrdle Street tense, miserable and out of breath. No one was up yet. Business had resumed as usual. The demands of debt do not wait upon a decent mourning period, and the fact that a murder had been committed on the premises had not apparently deterred the clientele.
He roused Edie with some difficulty, and she came into the kitchen at the back, her long black hair tangled, her face puffed with sleep, a loose robe wrapped around herself. Her trade had robbed her of any pretension to modesty.
“Yer wastin’ yer time,” she said sourly, sitting down on one of the hard-backed chairs. “We don’t none of us know nuffink as we ’aven’t already told yer. We saw no one else come nor go that night ’cept our own customers. We dunno ’oo the geezer was wif the fair ’air wot went inter Nora’s room, an’ we didn’t ’ear nuffink.”
“I know.” Pitt tried to be patient. “Nobody outside saw him either. Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar?”
“Yeah. So wot? Yer sayin’ as we got a ghost wot comes in ’ere, strangles Nora, an’ goes aht agin?” She shivered, her heavy flesh dragging at her robe. “Yer mad! In’t no such fing. Someone’s lyin’, that’s all. Somebody seen ’im. They just in’t sayin’.”
“Several people,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “Why?”
“I dunno. It don’t make no sense. I want the bastard caught and topped!” She put her slender-fingered hands up to her face. “Nora were a cheeky bitch, but nobody deserved wot ’appened to ’er. Could’ve slapped ’er meself a few times. But then reckon as we all get across each other some days.”
“Why did Nora get across you?”
Edie pulled a face of self-mockery touched with a kind of humor.
“ ’Cos she were pretty, I suppose. An’ she could really get the men. ’Ad a way wif ’er.” She looked at Pitt with contempt. “I don’ mean nicked yer customers. I mean yer own men. Took a few as I fancied.”
“Not customers?” Pitt asked. “Not paying men?”
“Geez. Yer can do it for fun too, yer know,” she