Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [173]
Jago closed his eyes very slowly. He was controlling himself with a supreme effort. He looked as if he might fall if for an instant he let go.
“I will answer for myself, Superintendent, but for no one else.” He swallowed hard. His clenched hands shook. “Yes, I was there. In my younger days I did many things of which I am ashamed, but none as much as that. I drank too much, I wasted my time and valued things which were of no worth. I cared what people thought of me, not for love. Not respect or honor.” He said the words bitterly. “Not whether I hurt people. Not whether my example was good or bad, only to posture and parade, wanting to be smarter and wittier than the next man.”
Tallulah was still staring at him, but he seemed oblivious of her, drenched in loathing of the man he had been. She moved a step closer, but still he was unaware.
“Globe Road,” Pitt said, bringing him back to the issue, not only because it was what mattered to him but because Jago’s other sins, whatever they had been, were not his to judge, nor did he wish to know them.
“I was there,” Jago admitted again. “I did not kill Mary Smith.” His voice sank to a whisper, hoarse, as if the memory of it were still before his eyes. “But I know what was done to her, God forgive me. I have spent the rest of my life since then trying to repay—”
“Who killed her?” Pitt said gently. He believed it was not Jago, not only because he wanted to, but there was a passion in his face, a torture of guilt and memory, a self-disgust, but also a courage that he had at last spoken the truth and at the same time kept his own kind of honor.
“I will not tell you, Superintendent. I’m sorry.”
Pitt hesitated only a moment. There was no real decision to make.
“Reverend …” He used the title intentionally. “Mary Smith was not only killed, she was tortured first and humiliated. She was tied to her own bed, with her stocking, intimate garments …” He saw the naked pain in Jago’s face, but he did not stop. “She was terrified and hurt. Her fingers and toes were either wrenched out of their joints or the bones were broken. She wasn’t a practiced whore!” He heard his own voice grating hard. “She was a young girl, just started—”
“Superintendent!” The cry was wrung from Tallulah. She stepped forward and was standing beside Jago, staring at Pitt. “You don’t need to go on. We know what happened to the girls in Whitechapel. We accept that Mary Smith was the same, and that it was very terrible. Nobody, no living creature, should be treated that way, and you must find out who did it, and they must be punished—”
“Tallulah!” Jago gasped, trying to push her away. His face was streaked in the damp of the evening, or in the sweat of inner pain. “You don’t …” He stopped, unable to go on. “You …” He drew in a long, shuddering breath, then turned to Pitt. “Superintendent, I understand what you are saying, and I know even better than you do just how … how fearful it was. I admit my part in it. I was there, and I helped conceal what was done. For that I am guilty. But I will not say more than that.
“I have done all I can in the years since then to become a man worthy of forgiveness. I began from my own sense of remorse. Now I do it for the love of the task itself. Someone has to care for these people, and my reward in it has been greater than any bound or measure. But I understand that I was an accessory after the fact in a murder, and an accomplice in concealing the truth. There is always a price. May I please take the cart back to the kitchen before I come with you? They will need it tomorrow. Someone will take over what I cannot.”
“I will,” Tallulah said immediately. “Billy Shaw will help me, if I ask him, and Mrs. Moss.”
“Thank you.” Jago acknowledged this without looking at her.
“I am not taking you, Reverend,” Pitt said slowly. “I don’t believe you murdered Mary Smith, and I know you didn’t murder either of the two women here at Whitechapel.”
Jago stood without moving, confused. Still, he