Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [49]
She said nothing. She would not commit herself to words, but there was the slightest of smiles.
He leaned forward and gave the driver instructions, and when they were at Bow Street he alighted and paid for the rest of the way to Whitechapel.
He had learned nothing more from Rose on the journey. She was frightened. She remembered the outrage of 1888 far too sharply, the fear that had gripped London so tightly that even the music halls, which laughed at everything and everyone, made no jokes about the Whitechapel Murderer. She needed the police, and she hated that. She saw them as part of an establishment which used her and at the same time despised her.
Four years ago new laws had been passed, initially intended to protect women and curb pornography and prostitution. In effect they had only meant that the police had harassed and arrested more women, and while some brothels had been closed down, others opened up. Many men still believed that any woman who walked along in certain areas, including some in the West End, was by definition doing so to invite trade. Pornography flowed as freely as ever. It was all one giant hypocrisy, and Rose saw it as such and hated all those who supported it or benefited from it.
Pitt went into Bow Street Station, nodded to the desk sergeant, and went on up to his office. Tellman was waiting for him, his lantern-jawed face sardonic, his eyes hard.
“Morning, sir. There’s a report from a Dr. Lennox on your desk. Came about fifteen minutes ago. Couldn’t tell him when you’d be in, so he didn’t stay. Looked wretched, like he’d got an invitation to his own funeral. It’s this Whitechapel murder. I s’pose yer toff is guilty?”
“Looks like it,” Pitt agreed, reaching across his desk with its beautiful green leather inlay and picking up the sheet of paper covered in generous, sloping handwriting.
Tellman shrugged. “That’ll be ugly.” There was some satisfaction in his voice, although it was not possible to judge whether it was at Pitt’s discomfort or at the prospect of a family like the FitzJameses being exposed to such a public indignity. Tellman had risen from the ranks and was only too familiar with the bitter reality of hunger, humiliation and the knowledge that life would never offer him its great rewards.
Pitt sat down and looked at the report Lennox had left him. Ada McKinley had died of strangulation between ten o’clock and midnight. There were no bruises or scratches to indicate that she had fought her attacker. Her fingers had been broken, three on her left hand, two on her right. Three toes had been dislocated on her left foot. On her right hand one fingernail was broken, but that was probably from her attempt to tear the stocking from around her neck. The only blood under her fingernails was almost certainly from the scratches on her own throat.
There were stretch marks on her abdomen from the child she had borne, one or two old bruises on her thighs and one on her shoulder which was yellowish green, and obviously had predated the night of her death. Other than that, she was in good enough health. As far as Lennox could judge, she was in her middle twenties. There was little else to say.
Pitt looked up.
Tellman was waiting, his long, harsh face grim.
“You’re still in charge here,” Pitt said dryly. “I’m going to see the assistant commissioner.”
“Enough for an arrest?” Tellman asked, looking very directly at Pitt, an edge of surprise and challenge in his voice.
“Close,” Pitt replied.
“How difficult for you,” Tellman observed without sympathy. He smiled as he turned and went to the door. “I suppose you’d better be sure. Don’t want it to fail in court because you didn’t get everything right.” He went out with his shoulders square and his head high.
John Cornwallis had been assistant commissioner a very short time—in fact, a matter of a month or so. He had been appointed to fill the vacancy left by the dramatic departure of his predecessor, Giles Farnsworth, at the conclusion of the Arthur