Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [53]
Ewart opened his mouth to protest, but was too filled with disgust and confusion to find the words.
“Or alternatively,” Pitt suggested, “a customer does these things as part of his particular fetish. He likes to threaten, cause a little pain or fear. That’s what excites him. But this time it goes too far, and the girl is really dead. He panics and leaves. What do you think?”
Ewart’s face was sullen and there was a flicker of unmistakable fear in his dark eyes. The passageway was hot and the air close. There was sweat on his skin, and on Pitt’s also.
“I think we’ve got to be damned careful we don’t make a mistake,” he said harshly. “FitzJames won’t deny he was here sometime, if it comes to facing him with it. His lawyer’ll advise him to do that. Lots of respectable men use prostitutes. We all know it. You can’t expect a young man to curb his natural feelings all his youth, and he might not be able to afford a good marriage until he’s in his late thirties, or more. It’s better not talked about, but if we force it into the open, no one’ll be surprised, just angered by the bad taste of speaking about it.” He took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his hand across his brow. The carter was still shouting outside.
“He’ll say he was here, but not that night. She must have stolen the badge. He’d not be the first man to have something pretty stolen at a brothel. Good God, man, in times past there were places in Bluegate Fields and Saint Giles where a man’d be lucky to get out with his skin whole!” He gestured sharply with his arm. “I’ve seen ’em running out without shirt or trousers, naked as a jaybird and scared out of their wits. Covered in bruises and scars.”
“Nor would he be the first to go back in a temper and beat the thief,” Pitt pointed out. “I don’t think he’d be well advised to try that story.”
“But there wasn’t a fight,” Ewart said with a sudden smile. “Lennox said that, and we saw it for ourselves.”
“Which proves what?”
Ewart’s eyes opened wide.
“That … that he took her by surprise, of course. That he was someone she knew and wasn’t afraid of.”
“Not a customer from whom she’d just stolen something.”
Ewart was losing his patience. “I don’t know what it proves, except we’ve a long way to go yet.” He turned away and pushed the door to Ada’s room. It swung open and Pitt followed him inside. It was exactly the same as when they had first come, except that the body of Ada was no longer there. The window was closed and it was oppressively hot.
“I’ve searched right through it,” Ewart said wearily. “There’s nothing here except exactly what you’d expect. It doesn’t tell us anything about her. No letters. If she had anyone, either they didn’t write or she didn’t keep them.”
Pitt stood in the middle of the floor.
“They probably couldn’t write,” he said sadly. “Many people can’t. No way to keep in touch. Any pictures?” That was a forlorn hope too. People like Ada would have little money for photographs or portraits.
“No.” Ewart shook his head. “Oh, there’s a pencil sketch of a woman, but it’s fairly rough. It could be anyone. There’s nothing written on it.” He walked over and took it out of a small case inside the chest where it was kept with a few handkerchiefs, pins and a comb. He gave it to Pitt.
Pitt looked at the piece of paper. It was bent around the edges, a little scarred across one corner. The sketch was simple, as Ewart had said, of a woman of perhaps thirty with a gentle face, half smiling, her hair piled on her head. It had a grace in the lines, but it was only a rough sketch, the work of a few moments by an unskilled hand. Perhaps it was Ada’s mother … all she had of her past, of a time and place where she belonged.
Suddenly he was so choked with anger he could have beaten Finlay FitzJames black and blue himself, whether he had killed Ada or not, simply because he did not care.
“Sir?” Ewart’s voice broke across his thoughts.
“What?” he said, looking up sharply.
“I’ve already asked around and learned a lot about her life, the sort of customers she had, where she