Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [166]
“Yes … yes please.” He left her to decide which to bring, and sat hunched in his chair in the slowly increasing warmth while the fire strengthened and flames leaped up the chimney.
In the morning he was in the bitter chill of Newgate asking to see Ella Baker, memories of Costigan’s face, white and frightened, filling his mind. Of all the duties he ever had to perform, this was perhaps the worst. It was a different kind of pain from that of going to tell the relatives of a victim. That was appalling, but it was a cleaner thing. It would eventually heal. This wrenched him in a way that was always sickeningly real and new. Time did not dull it or inure him in any measure at all.
Ella was sitting in her cell, still dressed in her own clothes, although they were not particularly different from prison garb. He had arrested her before she was dressed for work.
“What you want?” she said dully when she saw him. “Come ter gloat, ’ave you?”
“No.” He closed the cell door behind him. He looked at her pale face, hollow hopeless eyes and the glory of hair over her shoulders. Curiously, although he had seen both Ada and Nora, and seen their broken hands, their dead faces, disfigured in the last struggle, all he could see now was Ella and her despair. “I have no pleasure in it,” he told her. “A certain relief because it’s over, but that’s all.”
“So wot yer come for?” she said, still half disbelievingly, although something in his eyes, or his voice, touched her.
“Tell me about the first one, Ella,” he replied. “What did she do to you? She was only young, a beginner. Why did you kill her?”
She stared at him with total incomprehension.
“Yer mad, you are! I dunno wot yer talkin’ abaht! I ’it Nora, then we fought an’ I throttled ’er. I never broke ’er fingers ner toes, ner chucked water over ’er, ner did up ’er boots! I never touched Ada McKinley. I never ’eard of ’er till she were killed. An’ as fer another, I dunno wot yer on abaht. There weren’t no other, far as I knowed.”
“About six years ago, in Mile End,” he elaborated.
“Six year ago!” She was incredulous, then she started to laugh, a high, harsh sound, full of pain, dark with fear beyond control. “Six year ago I were in Manchester. Married an’ went up there. Me ’usband died. I come ome an’ took ter the streets. On’y way ter keep a roof over me ’ead, ’ceptin’ the match factory. ’Ad a cousin ’oo died o’ phossie jaw. Ter ’ell wi’ that. Sooner be ’anged.” Suddenly tears filled her eyes. “Jus’ as well, eh?”
Pitt ached to be able to say something to comfort her. He felt the terrors closing around her, the darkness from which there was no escape, but there was nothing. Pity was no use now and to talk of hope was a mockery.
He smiled in answer to her bitter humor. There was some courage in it. He could admire that.
“What was your husband’s name?” he asked.
“Joe Baker … Joseph. You gonna check on me?” She sniffed. “A good man, Joe were. Drunk too much, but ’e weren’t bad. Never ’it me, jus’ fell over ’isself. Stupid sod!”
“What did he do?”
“ ’E worked the canals till ’e ’ad an accident an’ drowned. Drunk again, I s’pose.”
“I’m sorry,” Pitt said quietly. He meant it.
She shrugged. “Don’ matter now.”
Pitt went from Newgate to the Mile End police station and asked to see the most senior officer present who had been there over six years. He was shown, by a somewhat puzzled young sergeant, up to the cramped office of Inspector Forrest, a lean man with receding black hair and sad, dark eyes.
“Superintendent Pitt,” he said with surprise, rising to his feet. “Good morning, sir. What can we do for you?”
“Good morning, Inspector.” Pitt closed the door behind him and took the proffered seat. “I understand you were here in Mile End six years ago?”
“Yes. I see in the newspapers you got our murderer.” Forrest sat down behind his desk. “Well done. Damn sight more than we ever managed. Mind, I was only a sergeant then.”
“So you did have one exactly the same?” Pitt found it difficult to keep the anger out of his voice.
“Yes. Far as I can tell,” Forrest agreed, sitting