Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [92]
“You sayin’ as I bin paid ter lie?” she asked angrily.
“No.” Ewart was placating. “Nobody’s saying you’re lying, Rose. We simply have to be sure. Nothing can bring back Ada, and it’s a man’s life we are talking about. A wrongful accusation would be in its way a second murder.”
“Well, mebbe I could lie ’baht somethin’ as don’t matter,” she said carefully, this time looking at Ewart. “But not ter get some poor sod cropped, ’ooever ’e is. Ter tell the truth, I were upset that Ada were killed.” She lifted her shoulders very slightly, a gesture of apology and resignation. “I were sort o’ angry an’ scared, an’ too quick ter make up me mind. I wanted someone caught an’ topped, ’cos it made it feel better fer the rest o’ us. Safer, like.” She took a breath and turned to Pitt again. “I wan’ed ter think as I knew ’oo it were. Now I’ve ’ad time ter think better, I can see as that’s stupid. It’s gotta be the right sod, not just any poor bastard as looks a bit like ’im. ’Asn’t it?”
“Yes,” Pitt conceded grimly. “Yes, it has to be the right one.”
“Of course.” Ewart moved his arm as if to pat her shoulder, then changed his mind. “Of course it has,” he added gently.
They left Pentecost Alley and Pitt rode back in the hansom with Ewart.
“We’d better find this butler,” he said wearily. “Even if it is only to eliminate him.”
“I think he’s our man,” Ewart replied, his voice loud with conviction, his face set hard, staring straight ahead as they moved west along the Whitechapel High Street. “Stands to reason. He got Ada with child. That time he got away with it. Lied to his employers. Now he’s done it again and she was going to come back and tell the whole story. Finish him.”
“She told the whole story the first time,” Pitt pointed out. “What had she to gain from telling it again?”
“Revenge,” Ewart replied, as if the answer were obvious. “He was responsible for her ruin. Oldest motive in the world.”
Pitt looked sideways at him. Ewart was a good policeman. His record was excellent. He was in line for more promotion. This was an extraordinary lapse in his thinking. He had been laboring under some emotion right from the start. Was it pity or disgust? Or was it some fear that Augustus FitzJames would set out to ruin whoever accused his son of such a crime, guilty or innocent, and even Ewart’s long-standing reputation would not be enough to save him?
Of course it would be unpleasant. But bringing a charge against anyone had its tragedy. There were always innocent people hurt, people who simply loved a husband or a son. They would be overwhelmed by events, and then when all the tumult and the public pain was over, they would be left with its grief.
“What good would that do?” Pitt asked him, watching Ewart’s face with its black eyes and the lines of anxiety around his mouth. “Ada had already told her story. Dead, she simply reinforces it. If he killed anyone, it would be the present girl, before she tells her employer. The judgment had already been made between Ada and this man, and she had lost. She might have killed him, but he had no cause to kill her.”
Ewart’s expression hardened, and a flicker of something like fear shadowed across his features, or perhaps it was anger. He was very tired. His hands shook a little. He must hate having a superior like Pitt put in to take over his case because he was deemed incapable of handling a politically sensitive case. Any man would, and Pitt would have himself.
And Ewart was doing a better job of being politically appropriate than Pitt was. He was searching for any answer but the explosive one.
In his position Pitt would have resented both the man who was brought in and the superior who made the decision.
“I agree with you,” he said quietly. “The evidence against FitzJames is poor. The identification is useless. The cuff links were lost years ago, and the club badge is suspect. It won’t stand alone,