Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [86]
He looked at her. She was dressed in white with ribbons and an underskirt of pale blue. She was a trifle thin, and it made her look fragile and very feminine, until one saw the strength of her features and the burning will in her eyes.
“Do you really believe your father has enemies who would murder a woman in order to revenge themselves on him?” he asked.
Apparently she had already considered the question. Her answer was quiet, her voice grating with pent-up emotion, but nonetheless unhesitating.
“Yes, Superintendent, I do. I think perhaps you do not realize quite how powerful he is, or how much money he has made in the last thirty years. Envy can be very cruel. It can take you over and swallow up any decent judgment and feeling you have. And … and some people do not …” She bit her lip. “Do not consider the death of a prostitute to be a great sin. I’m sorry, that is a horrible thing to say.” She winced, and he had a sudden conviction that she meant it. “But it is true,” she finished.
He knew it was true. Had it not been in Whitechapel, so soon after those other, most fearful of all murders, the newspapers would hardly have bothered with it.
“Perhaps you had better make a list of these people, Miss FitzJames, and what you know, or believe, of their reasons. I shall ask your father also for a similar list.”
“Of course.”
Pitt thanked the two constables who had helped in the search, then left the FitzJames house and walked along Devonshire Street towards the Park. He bought two ham sandwiches from a seller on the corner and ate them as he crossed the Marylebone Road and turned up York Gate, across the Outer Circle and through the trees. It was a balmy day. The Park was full of people strolling and fashionable ladies parading, and courting couples. Children were playing with hoops and riding sticks with horses’ heads and several tried to fly kites in the lazy air, but there was too little wind to lift them.
Nursemaids in prim uniforms wheeled perambulators or took their small charges by the hand. Some of them sat on seats together, swapping gossip while children ran around. Old gentlemen sat in the sun and relived past glories. Young girls giggled and talked about each other. In the distance a band was playing songs from the music halls.
Pitt could not have argued with Ewart as to why he found it hard to believe that any enemy of Augustus FitzJames should murder a prostitute and lay the blame on Finlay in order to exact a revenge on his father. There was no single argument against it. He simply did not believe in such deliberate machination. In his experience robberies were sometimes carried out this way, but not murder. With violence, the convolutions, the attempts to lay blame elsewhere, came afterwards. However callous this supposed enemy, Pitt found it hard to conceive of him deliberately committing a crime for which he himself could be hanged, could it be traced to him.
And yet he also had to admit that there was something deliberate about it. The badge and the cuff link were extraordinary. How could a man be careless enough to leave two such pieces of evidence behind him?
He must try harder with Helliwell and Thirlstone and, much against his will, with Jago Jones. Finding another badge to compare with the two he had now might be crucial to Finlay’s guilt or innocence.
“Good heavens, Superintendent!” Helliwell said irritably when Pitt approached him as he was walking down Birdcage Walk after a long and excellent luncheon in Great George Street. “I really cannot help you. I have no idea about Finlay FitzJames and his current behavior.” His expression darkened. “I thought I had already explained to you that we were friends in the past, but the present is an entirely different matter. I wish I could tell you some definitive fact that would clear his name, but I am not in a position to. Now I have business for which I am a trifle late. You must excuse me.” He quickened his pace.
Pitt quickened his also.
“I have found a second Hellfire Club badge,” he said at Helliwell’s elbow.
“Indeed.” Helliwell kept on walking