Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [27]
“He’s … he’s rather proper, actually. Something of a bore.” She still looked studiously out of the window at the sun on the leaves beyond. “But he couldn’t do anything like that,” she went on. “He’s about Finlay’s age, and when Finlay was in his twenties and I was about sixteen, Jago was fun. He could tell the best jokes, because he could make his face look like all the different characters, and his voice too.” She shrugged elaborately, as if it could be of no possible interest to her. “But he’s religious now. All good works and saving souls.” She swung around to look at Pitt. “Why does the Church make people such crashing bores?”
“The Church?” Pitt did not hide his surprise.
“Didn’t you know? No, I suppose you didn’t. Finlay was stupid, pretending he didn’t know the Hellfire Club anymore. I suppose it might be his idea of protecting them. It must be Norbert Helliwell or Mortimer Thirlstone, if it’s any of them.” She shook her head slightly. “It wouldn’t be Jago, and of course it wasn’t Finlay. Most likely the woman stole it, and then someone else killed her. It seems fairly obvious, doesn’t it?” Her eyes challenged him. “Why would one of the other members have Finlay’s badge, anyway? If they wanted one, they had their own.”
“Not on purpose,” Pitt explained. “But the engraving on the back is very small and very fine. It would be easy enough to pick up someone else’s in error.”
“Oh.” She breathed in deeply, the sheer silk draped across her shoulders and bosom rising, the light gleaming in it. “Yes, of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Where would I find Mr. Jones?”
“Saint Mary’s Church, Whitechapel.”
Pitt drew in his breath sharply. He knew St. Mary’s. It was a few hundred yards from Pentecost Alley. Old Montague Street ran parallel to the Whitechapel Road before it turned into Mile End.
“I see. Thank you, Miss FitzJames.”
“Why do you look like that? Saint Mary’s means something to you, I can see it in your face. You know it!”
There was no point in lying to her.
“The woman was killed in an alley off Old Montague Street.”
“Is that close?” She was too anxious to be offended that he might think her familiar with such an area.
“Yes.”
“Oh.” She turned away again, presenting a silk-swathed shoulder to him. “Well, you won’t find Jago Jones involved. He couldn’t be after a woman like that except to save her soul.” There was a sudden hurt in her voice, almost bitterness. “I presume she wasn’t bored to death?”
“No, Miss FitzJames, she was strangled.”
She winced. “If I could help you, I would,” she said quietly. “But I really don’t know anything.”
“You’ve given me Mr. Jones’s address, which I appreciate. Thank you for seeing me at what must be an inconvenient time. Good evening.”
She did not reply, but stood in the middle of the floor staring at him as he went to the door and let himself out.
It took him until after six to get back to Whitechapel and the church of St. Mary’s. When he did, the verger told him the vicar was out, somewhere down Coke Street way, helping the sick. If Pitt did not find him there, he could go in the other direction and try Chicksand Street.
The lowering sun was hidden by the high, grimy tenement houses, but the pavements still gave back the claustrophobic heat and the sour smells of the day. The gutters ran sluggish trickles of waste. This was Whitechapel, where two years ago, about this season, a madman had murdered and ripped open five women, leaving their bleeding bodies in the street. No one had ever found him. He had disappeared as completely as if hell had opened up and swallowed him back.
Yet walking towards Coke Street Pitt could see women standing in doorways and alleyway entrances with that peculiar air of readiness that marked them as prostitutes. It was a directness in their eyes, an angle to the hips quite different from the weary dejection of women at the end of a day’s labor in a sweatshop or factory, or bringing wet laundry in and out of boilers, twisting the dolly, and heaving and wringing