Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [168]
He read the statements of witnesses, but they conveyed little. They had seen men come and go, but what else were they to expect in the room of a prostitute. There were no personal details, only that they were fairly young.
It was all insubstantial. No wonder the officer in charge had failed to find the killer. And the officers were Constable Trask, and Constable Porter, with Ewart the inspector in charge. The surgeon who had examined the body both at the scene of the crime and later was Lennox.
Why had neither of them mentioned it to Pitt? He could think of no justifiable answer.
“I don’t remember this in the papers,” he said to Forrest, who had sat silent throughout, his face furrowed with anxiety.
“It wasn’t in,” he replied. “Only ’er death, that’s all. None o’ the details. You know how it is: keep it back, might help to trap someone. They knew something, let something slip….”
“Yes, I know,” Pitt agreed, but the answer troubled him deeply. It made inescapable the darkest fears in his mind.
When he faced Ewart with it in his office in Whitechapel two hours later, Ewart stared at him blankly, his face stunned, eyes as if mesmerized.
“Well?” Pitt demanded. “For God’s sake, man, why didn’t you tell me about the first case?”
“We didn’t solve it,” Ewart said desperately. “There wasn’t anything in it that could have helped.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Pitt turned on his heel and walked over to the window, then swung around and stared back at Ewart. “You can’t know whether it would have helped or not! Why would you conceal it?”
“Because it only obscures the present.” Ewart’s voice was rising too. “There’s nothing to say it was the same person. It was Mile End, and six years ago. People copy crimes, especially mad people, wicked, stupid people who read about something and it sits in their brains, and they—”
“What newspapers?” Pitt asked curtly. “Most of those details were never released to the papers, which you know as well as I do. I never heard of the case, neither had any of the other people here working on this one. Nobody in Whitechapel connected it with the first one—but you must have. And Lennox!”
“Well, they weren’t related, were they?” Ewart said with triumph of logic. “Are you saying now that you aren’t sure it was Ella Baker who killed the Gough woman?”
“No I’m not.” Pitt swung around and gazed out of the window again, at the gray buildings and the darkening October sky. “She confessed to it. And I found her hair in Nora’s bed, long fair hair. Nora must have pulled it out when they struggled.”
“So what’s the matter?” Ewart demanded with growing confidence. “I was right. The two cases are unconnected.”
“How do you know that Ella Baker didn’t kill the first girl, Mary Smith, or whatever her name really was?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she did. It hardly matters. We can’t prove the first one was her, and she’ll hang for this one anyhow.”
“And she says she’s never heard of Finlay FitzJames,” Pitt added.
Ewart hesitated. “She’s lying,” he said after a moment.
“And Augustus FitzJames says he’s never heard of her, either,” Pitt went on.
Ewart said nothing. He drew in his breath, and then let it out again silently.
“Was there anything at the scene of the first murder to incriminate Finlay?” Pitt asked curtly.
Ewart looked straight back at him. “No, of course not. If there had been I’d have mentioned it. That would have been relevant. We never had any idea who did it. There was nothing to go on … nothing at all.”
“I see.”
But Pitt did not see. He traveled from Whitechapel back to the center of the City, and went straight to Cornwallis’s office.
Cornwallis welcomed him, striding forwards with his hand out, his face alight.
“Well done, Pitt. This is brilliant! I admit, I had lost hope we should have such a satisfactory outcome—and a confession, to boot.” He dropped his hand, suddenly realizing something was wrong. The smile faded from his lips. His eyes clouded. “What is it, man? What now? Sit! Sit down.” He gestured to one of the large, leather-covered