Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [7]
Pitt turned to Binns. “Is that all?”
“Yessir. I waited till Mr. Ewart come, then I told ’im what I saw an’ done, an’ ’anded it over to ’im. That were a little arter one o’clock.”
“Thank you. You acted well.”
“Thank you, sir.” He turned to leave with straighter shoulders, his head high, his feet still numb.
“We’d better see the witness.” Pitt nodded to Ewart. “In here.”
A few moments later another constable escorted in a lean, narrow-shouldered man with a brown jacket and dark trousers concertinaed over his boots, hand-me-downs from someone taller. His face was gray-white and twitching with fear. Whatever the pleasure he had purchased that night, it had been at a price he would never willingly have paid.
“What’s your name?” Pitt asked him.
“Ob-badiah S-Skeggs,” he stuttered, his face twitching. “I never touched ’er. I swear to Gawd I never did!” His voice was rising in what he intended to be sincerity, and was all too obviously terror. “Ask Rosie!” He gestured to where he imagined Rosie was. “She’ll tell yer. Honest, Rosie is. She’d never lie fer me. She don’t know me from nuffink.” He looked at Pitt, then at Ewart. “I swear.”
Pitt smiled in spite of himself. “Rosie doesn’t know you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know her?”
“I don’t! I mean …” He saw the trap, but he had already stepped into it. He breathed in and tried to swallow, choking himself.
“You don’t have to make up your mind,” Pitt said dryly. “I’ll ask Rosie anyway. She’ll no doubt know whether you’re a regular or not.”
“She wouldn’t lie fer me,” Skeggs said desperately, gasping between splutters. “She don’t even like me.”
“No, I don’t suppose she does,” Pitt agreed. “Do you know what time you got here?”
“No.” He was not going to risk any more traps. “No. I were leavin’ w’en that rozzer nabbed me. An’ that were unjust, it were. I never done nuffink as is agin’ the law.” He became plaintive. “A man’s allowed a little pleasure. An’ I always paid fair. Rosie’ll tell yer that.”
“How would she know?” Pitt raised his eyebrows.
Skeggs’s face tightened venomously.
“You thought you’d entertain yourself a little more,” Pitt continued. “So when you saw Ada’s door open, you peeped ’round. Only instead of finding her fornicating with a customer, you saw her lying dead, sprawled over the bed, tied to it, her stocking wound ’round her throat and the garter on her arm.”
Skeggs let out an agonized blasphemy.
“And you fled, when Constable Binns caught you,” Pitt finished.
“I were going ter raise the alarm,” Skeggs protested, glaring at Pitt, and then at Ewart, as if to bear out his story. “Call the p’lice, like I should! Fast as me legs’d carry me. That’s why I were runnin’!”
“So why didn’t you tell Constable Binns about Ada?” Pitt enquired.
Skeggs looked at him with murder in his eyes.
“Did you see anyone else?” Pitt went on.
Outside the light was broadening. There was more noise in the street. People coming and going, calling to each other. The sweatshop opposite was opening up.
“Yer mean like ’im wot done it?” Skeggs demanded indignantly. “Course I didn’t, or I’d ’a’ told yer. Fink I’d stand ’ere bein’ suspected if I knew ’oo’d really done it? Wot yer fink I am, stupid?”
Pitt forbore from answering, but Skeggs read the silence as affirmative and bristled with offense. He followed the constable out, glancing over his shoulder still searching for something cutting to say.
Pitt saw Rose Burke in her own room, two doors farther along. It was a different shape, and perhaps a foot or two wider, but essentially similar. A large bed occupied most of the space, also rumpled and obviously lately used. The sheets had a gray look down the center and were heavily creased. There was a stale smell of sweat and body dirt. Apparently Skeggs had had his money’s worth, at least up to that point.
Lennox looked ashen-faced. There was no need for him to have followed, and Pitt wondered why he had. Perhaps he thought Rose might need him.
But Rose was of sterner stuff. She was broad-shouldered, handsome-bosomed, of no more than average height.