Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [172]
He turned left down Plumbers Row, which led into Coke Street. It was the one time and place he was almost sure of finding Jago Jones, and he had a deep, perhaps irrational belief that Jago would not lie to him if he was faced with the truth.
He swung around the last corner and saw the cart under the gas lamp, the light shining on its handles, polished smooth where hands had gripped it day after day perhaps for generations. Jago Jones’s lean figure in his shabby clothes was still serving hot soup to the last ragged figures. Beside him, working in silent unison, was Tallulah FitzJames.
Pitt watched, leaning against the wall in the shadows, until they were finished and turned to start putting it all away. There was nothing left; there never was.
“Reverend Jones.” Pitt moved forward and spoke softly.
Jago looked up. He was no longer surprised to see Pitt. He had been here too often over the last weeks and months.
“Yes, Superintendent?” he said patiently.
“I’m sorry.” Pitt meant it. Seldom had he regretted any necessity so much. “I cannot let the matter rest.” He glanced at Tallulah, still tidying and packing away.
“What is it now?” Jago asked, his brow furrowed with puzzlement. “I don’t know anything else. I have spoken to Ella Baker once or twice, but she was a very self-sufficient woman. She had no need of my counsel.” He smiled ruefully. “At least, shall I say, she had no desire for it. I did not know her well enough to be aware of her agony. Perhaps that is my shortcoming, but at least for her, it is too late now.”
His face in the lamplight showed nothing but sorrow and a sense of defeat. He moved farther away so Tallulah could not overhear them. “Please don’t ask me to question her, Superintendent. Even if she could speak to me, whatever she said would be between her and God. All I could offer would be some shred of human comfort, and the promise that God is sometimes a kinder judge than we expect, if we are honest. And I think too, perhaps, harsher, if we are not.”
“Honest, Reverend?” Pitt heard the catch in his own voice.
Jago stared at him. Perhaps he heard more of the irony, some deeper understanding, and pain than before. He half turned towards Tallulah, then changed his mind, or perhaps his belief in what he could accomplish.
“What is it, Superintendent? You say the word as if it had some greater meaning for you.”
Pitt had not expected Tallulah to be there. His first instinct had been to have her leave, to face Jago with his knowledge alone. It was a matter of decency, not to confront the man before someone who obviously had the utmost respect for him. Now he realized Tallulah would have to know. It concerned her too closely. Finlay was her brother. Whatever was said here in the dark and the damp of Coke Street would eventually be just as devastating in the withdrawing room of Devonshire Street. The delay would not save her from misery.
“It does, when spoken between the two of us regarding the deaths of Ada McKinley and Nora Gough,” Pitt answered his question.
Jago’s eyes were unwaveringly steady.
“I know nothing about them, Superintendent.”
Tallulah had finished the packing away and moved closer.
“What about Mary Smith?” Pitt asked, and neither did he flinch. “Off Globe Road, in Mile End, about six years ago. Are you going—” He stopped. Jago’s face was ashen. Even in the yellow-white glare of the gas lamp he looked like a death’s-head. There was no point in finishing the sentence. Jago was not going to lie. A lie would have been grotesque now, an indignity beyond redeeming.
“You were there,” Pitt said quietly, trying to ignore Tallulah’s eyes, staring at him with dawning horror. “You, Thirlstone,