Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [176]
“Get me Lennox!” Pitt repeated between his teeth.
White-faced, Ewart went to the door and disappeared along the passage. He came back a moment later. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” he said, uncertain whether to sit or to stand, watching Pitt with apprehension.
“I’ve just been speaking with the Reverend Jago Jones,” Pitt said slowly.
“Oh?” Ewart did not know whether to be interested or not.
“About the murder of Mary Smith,” Pitt went on. “In Globe Road, six years ago.”
Ewart went sheet-white. He struggled for breath and gagged. Very slowly he collapsed back into the chair behind him, feeling for it with fumbling hands.
“Why did you destroy the witnesses’ records?” Pitt asked. “I know the answer, but I’ll give you the chance to say it yourself, if you have that shred of honor left.”
Ewart sat in silence. The torment was plain in his face, as naked as hate and grief and failure and the inner terror that one can never escape, the knowledge of self.
“He offered me money,” he said so quietly Pitt could barely hear him. “Money to make a better life for my family. My sons for his. He said it was an accident. Finlay never meant to kill the girl. When he realized what he had done he tried to revive her. That was why they threw the water over her. But of course he’d gone too far. The game had got out of hand and he had choked the life out of her. He must have gagged her before she screamed. The marks of it were on her cheeks.”
He leaned down and hid his face in his hands. “But he didn’t kill the others.” His voice was thick, half muffled. “You had the right man. Costigan was guilty, I’d swear to that! And Ella Baker too! God knows how Finlay’s things got there. That was one of the worst days of my life, when I saw them. It was like hell opening up in front of me.”
Pitt said nothing. He could imagine it: the sudden, sick horror, the fear, the desperate writhing of the mind to find escape, the relentless terror as fact piled upon fact, and the sheer incomprehensible mystery of it.
There was no sound from the passageway outside, nothing but a blur of sounds from the street.
It was a full fifteen minutes of agonized silence in the room before the door opened and Lennox came in. He looked tired. He saw Ewart first, slumped over the desk, then Pitt in the chair opposite it.
“What is it?” he asked. “Is Inspector Ewart ill?”
“Probably,” Pitt answered. “Come in and close the door.”
Lennox obeyed, still puzzled. Pitt remained where he was.
“You were the first at the scene of Ada McKinley’s death after Constable Binns, weren’t you, Doctor?”
“Yes. Why?” He did not look troubled, only surprised.
“And of Nora Gough’s death also?”
“Yes. You know I was.”
“You examined the bodies before anyone else?”
Lennox stared at him curiously, the dawn of understanding in his weary hazel eyes.
“You know that too.”
“Then you went through to comfort the witnesses before we spoke to them?” Pitt continued.
“Yes. They were … upset. Naturally.”
“Were you first on the scene of Mary Smith’s death also?”
Lennox paled, but he kept his composure.
“Mary Smith?” He frowned.
“In Globe Street, six years ago,” Pitt said softly. “A young girl, only just taken to the streets, about fifteen or sixteen years old. She was killed in exactly the same way. But was she, Dr. Lennox?”
For seconds no one moved. There was not even the sound of breathing. Then Ewart looked up at Lennox, his face haggard.
But the pain in his eyes was a shadow, a ghost compared with that in Lennox’s face, in his whole thin body.
“My sister,” he whispered.