Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [3]
She was handsomely built, of roughly average height. As far as he could tell her features had been regular, pleasing in their way. The bones under the puffy flesh were difficult to see, but the brow was good, the nose neat, the hairline gently curved. Her teeth were even and only just beginning to discolor. In another walk of life she might have been a married woman looking forward to a comfortable maturity, perhaps with three or four children and thinking of more.
“What is this evidence?” he asked, still looking down at her. Nothing he had seen so far suggested anything more than some man’s taste for pain and fear having gone too far.
“A badge from a gentleman’s private club,” Ewart answered, then stopped and drew in his breath. “With a name on it. And a pair of cuff links.”
Pitt swiveled around to look at him.
Lennox was watching, his eyes wide, almost mesmerized.
“What name?” Pitt’s voice fell into the silence.
Ewart put up his finger and eased his collar, his face white.
“Finlay FitzJames.”
Outside the constable’s footsteps creaked on the floorboards and river fog dripped beyond the dark windows. The weeping in the other room had started again, but fainter, muffled.
Pitt said nothing. He had heard the name. Augustus FitzJames was a man of considerable influence, a merchant banker with political ambitions, and a close friend of several noble families who had held high office. Finlay was his only son, a young diplomat rumored to be in line for an embassy in Europe in the not-too-distant future.
“And witnesses,” Ewart added, his eyes on Pitt’s face.
Pitt stared back at him. “To what?” he asked guardedly.
Ewart was obviously profoundly unhappy. His body was tense, his shoulders tight, his mouth dragged down at the corners.
“He was seen,” he answered. “Not by people who know him, of course, and the description could fit more than him. Ordinary enough. But it was obviously someone of position….” He seemed about to add something more, perhaps about gentlemen who frequented such places, then decided it did not matter. They both knew there were men bored with their wives, frightened of censure or commitment if they used women nearer their own class, or simply excited by the forbidden, the frisson of danger. Or there were a hundred other reasons why they might choose to purchase their pleasures in alleys and rooms like this.
“And the cuff links as well,” Lennox added from the doorway, his voice still husky. “Gold.” He laughed abruptly. “Hallmarked.”
Pitt looked slowly around the room, trying to imagine what had happened here only a few hours ago. The bed was rumpled, as though it had been used, but nothing was torn that he could see. There was a slight smear of blood close to the center, but it could have come from anyone, tonight or a week ago. He would ask Lennox, after he had examined it, if he thought it meant anything.
His gaze moved around the walls and the sparse furniture. Nothing else was disturbed. But unless a fight was very violent, and between people of something like equal weight or strength, it would hardly mark this ancient wallpaper or overturn the chair or the wooden washstand with its bowl and cracked and mended blue jug.
As if reading his thoughts, Ewart broke in.
“There’s nothing interesting in the wardrobe, just half a dozen dresses, petticoats and an outdoor cape. There are underclothes, two towels, and a clean pair of sheets and pillow covers in the chest. Chamber pot under the bed, and one black stocking. Daresay she dropped it some time ago and couldn’t see it in the dark. We wouldn’t have found it without two of us, and the bull’s-eye.”
“Where did you find the cuff links and the badge?” Pitt asked. “Not under the bed?”
Ewart pushed out his lip. “One cuff link, actually—at least the two halves for one sleeve. Behind the cushion in the chair.” He pointed towards it. “Jammed down between the seat and the upright. Suppose he took off his shirt and put it over the