Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [56]
But like anyone else, even Agnes in the next room, she had heard nothing from Ada the night of her death.
Wayland could be accounted for all that night by one of his new acquisitions, a plain-faced girl of eighteen or so whose extremely handsome figure earned them both a comfortable income. And as Ewart had admitted, he looked nothing whatever like the man Rose and Nan had described. He was small and thin, with dark straight hair like streaks of black paint over his narrow skull.
There had been hasty quarrels in Ada’s life, flares of temper, and then quick forgiveness. She had not been one to hold a grudge. There were impetuous acts of kindness: the sharing of clothes; the gift of a pound when times were hard; praise, sometimes when it was least merited.
She had sat up all night with old Madge when she was sick, fetching and carrying for her, washing her down with clean, hot water, emptying slops, all when she could have been out earning. And sitting back in the kitchen again on the same rickety chair, looking at Madge’s worn-out, red face, Pitt thought that if they found who had killed Ada, he would be better off with the law than left to Madge.
“Looked arter me good, she did,” she said, staring at Pitt fixedly. “I should ’ave ’eard ’er! W’y din’t I ’ear ’er call out, eh? I’d ’a’ killed the swine afore I’d ’a’ let ’im ’urt ’er. I in’t no use no more.” Grief puckered her huge cheeks, and her voice, high for so vast a woman, was thick with guilt. “Look wot I done for ’er—nuffink! W’ere were I w’en she needed me? ’Ere, ’alf asleep, like as not. Great useless mare!”
“She didn’t cry out,” Pitt said quietly. “And it could all have been over quite quickly anyway.”
“Yer lying ter me,” she said, forcing a smile. “Yer mean ter be kind, which in’t nuffink bad, but I seen folk choked afore. They don’t die that quick. An’ leastways I might’ve caught the bastard. I’d ’ave finished ’im with me pin.” She gestured towards the rolling pin on the table near her right hand. “Then you could’ve topped me fer it, an’ I’d’ve gorn glad.”
“I wouldn’t have topped you for it, Madge,” he said honestly. “I’d have called it self-defense and looked the other way.”
“Yeah, mebbe yer would an’ all.”
But even though he also went and found Albert Costigan—a brash man of about thirty, sharply dressed and with thick, brown hair—Pitt learned nothing either to confirm or disprove his belief in Finlay FitzJames’s guilt.
* * *
Pitt decided to learn all he could about Finlay himself. It would be difficult, and he was afraid of prejudicing any information he might acquire simply by the act of having sought it. Had there been time, it was the type of investigation Charlotte would have helped with, and had done so excellently in the past. It needed subtlety and acute observation. Simple questions were not going to uncover what he wanted to know.
Pitt had already asked discreetly in the Force about Finlay—and learned nothing. Other police superintendents knew only his name, and then only in connection with his father. Pitt had made an appointment to see Micah Drummond, who had been his superior before he had inherited the position. Drummond had gone to live abroad with his new wife, finding London social life intolerable for her after the scandal of her first husband’s death. Micah returned home from time to time, and fortunately this investigation coincided with one of those occasions. He would at