Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [174]
Pitt hesitated.
“Jago,” Tallulah said softly, taking him by the arm. “You cannot protect him anymore. It was Finlay, wasn’t it? Somehow Papa managed to have it hidden, covered over. He must have bought the policeman.”
A rush of memory flooded over Pitt, a score of small impressions. Ewart’s pride in his son, the carefully bought education, the daughter who had married well. Such an achievement! But at what price?
He recalled Ewart’s eagerness to blame someone else, the look on his face when Augustus’s name was mentioned, the strange mixture of fear and hatred. It was hideously obvious now why he had destroyed the statements of the witnesses to the Globe Street murder and marked the case unsolved, and why he had not mentioned it to Pitt. What nightmares he must have endured when he thought Finlay had committed the same crime again, and Ewart again had to conceal it for him, but this time with a superior officer called in and handed the investigation over his head. No wonder he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, came into the station looking like a man who had opened a door on hell.
And then Pitt had arrested Albert Costigan, and it had seemed indubitable that he was guilty. He had not even denied it himself. Ewart must have thought himself free.
Then there was another crime, in Myrdle Street. A second nightmare for Ewart … a second torture of trying to prove Finlay had not done it, of guiding Pitt step by step away from Finlay and towards some other explanation, any other at all!
And Pitt had found Ella Baker. And she too had not denied her guilt.
Tallulah was standing very close to Jago, her arm around him, almost as if she were supporting him. Her face was wet with the settling mist, shadows around her eyes. Shock and misery were stamped deep into the lines of her features. But there was also a strength in her which had never shown itself before, almost a luminosity, as if she had found within herself something which she knew was precious, and indestructible, and, in time, of greater beauty than anything Devonshire Street could give her, or take from her.
“You cannot protect him,” she repeated, searching Jago’s face.
“Neither can I betray him,” Jago whispered, but he leaned a little towards her, half unwillingly, as if he did it against his will but could barely help himself. “I gave my word. I was also to blame. I went. I knew what was in him, the anger, the need for power, and I still went.”
“In Finlay FitzJames?” Pitt said.
Jago did not answer him.
Pitt knew there was no more purpose in pressing him. He had not yet sufficient evidence to arrest Finlay for the murder of Mary Smith, not if Jago would not speak. Margery Williams might recognize the four men, but six years had passed. And what was such a woman’s testimony against that of Finlay FitzJames and the weight of his father’s power?
Would Tallulah go home to Devonshire Street and warn Finlay? Might Pitt even get there and find Finlay gone, possibly to Europe, or even farther? Perhaps to America?
The three of them stood under the gaslight in Coke Street, motionless, Jago and Tallulah close, her arm around him, Pitt opposite. They were all cold. The damp had settled with a clinging, biting chill. Down on the river a foghorn sounded, thin and miserable, echoing across the water.
“Who put Finlay’s cuff link and club badge in Ada McKinley’s room?” Pitt asked curiously. “Was that you? Or one of the other two?”
“It wasn’t me,” Jago said with surprise. “I’d stake all I possess, which admittedly isn’t much, that it wasn’t either of them. Helliwell is terrified he’ll be tarred with the brush of disrepute, never mind murder. Thirlstone simply wants to forget the whole thing. The Hellfire Club broke up, and we swore never to see each other again.”
Tallulah looked from Jago to Pitt, her brow furrowed.
“It doesn’t make sense, Superintendent. The people whom you say killed the women live in Whitechapel. They can’t ever have heard of Finlay,