Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [42]
It would not be long before the first maids were up to clear out the stove and black it and light it ready for Cook to begin breakfast.
The same would shortly be happening in Emily’s own home.
Tallulah took a deep breath and let it out soundlessly. She turned to lead the way up towards the stairs. Emily followed, tiptoeing, so as not to be heard by the early-waking servants.
On the landing Tallulah stopped outside a guest room door.
“I’ll lend you a gown,” she said very quietly. “And I’ll send my maid in the morning.” She winced. “At least about eight o’clock. Nobody’ll breakfast very early … I don’t think. Actually …” She looked at Emily with a sudden misery in her face. “Actually, it’s not a very good time, at the moment. Something rather wretched has happened.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “A woman of the streets was murdered off the Whitechapel Road somewhere, and the police found an old club badge there that belonged to my brother. They actually came to the house asking questions.” She shuddered. “Of course he didn’t have anything to do with it, but I’m terrified they won’t believe him.” She stared at Emily, waiting for her to say something.
“I’m sorry,” Emily said sincerely. “It must be awful for you. Perhaps they’ll discover the real person quickly.” Then her habitual curiosity broke through. “Where did they find the badge?”
“In her room, where she was killed.” Tallulah bit her lip and her fear was naked in her face, accentuated in the sharp shadows cast by the faint light of a gas lamp glowing dimly at the stairhead and the daylight beginning to show through the landing windows.
“Oh.” There was nothing comforting Emily could say to that. She was not shocked that Tallulah’s brother should use a prostitute. She was worldly enough to have known such things for years. It was not even impossible that he had actually killed her. Somebody had. Perhaps he had not meant to. It could have been a quarrel over money. She might have attempted to rob him. Emily knew from Pitt that such things happened. It did not take a great deal of imagination to think how it could come about: a rich young man, expensively dressed, gold cuff links, gold watch, perhaps cigar cutter, card case, studs, money in his pocket to spend on satisfying his appetites … and a desperate woman who was tired, hungry and not even certain of a roof over her head next week. She might even have had a child to feed. It was only surprising it did not happen more often.
But that was hardly the thing to say to Tallulah. Although perhaps—looking at her pale face, tiredness smudging shadows under her eyes, fear bleaching the vitality and the spark from her—it was something she already knew.
Emily forced a smile, bleak and a little shaky.
“There must have been lots of other people there too,” she said hopefully. “It was probably someone she knew. They have men who take their money and look after them, you know. It was more likely he. The police will know that. I expect they only came here as a matter of form.”
“Do you?” Tallulah asked. “He was very polite. He spoke beautifully, I mean like a gentleman, but he was rather scruffy to look at. His collar was very clean, but crooked, and his hair was all over the place. If I didn’t know he was a policeman, I would have thought he could have been an artist, or a writer. But I don’t think he was a fool. He wasn’t afraid of Papa, and most people are.”
Emily had a sudden feeling of chill, a ripple of familiarity, like a scene from a dream, when you know what is going to happen before it does.
“Don’t worry,” she said as confidently as she could. “He’ll find the truth. He’ll never charge the wrong person. Your brother will be all right.”
Tallulah stood motionless.