Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [95]
Pitt repeated their names.
Vespasia looked blank. “Thirlstone means nothing to me. I have heard of a James Helliwell. He might have a son by the name of Herbert….”
“Norbert,” Pitt corrected.
“Indeed. Or Norbert either,” she conceded. “But he is a very pedestrian sort of man. Sufficient means to be comfortable, and too little imagination to be uncomfortable, unless he sat upon a tack! And Heaven knows, there are as many Joneses as there are Browns or Robinsons. Jago Jones could be anyone at all … or no one.”
Pitt found himself smiling. “Helliwell sounds like the man I met, very concerned with how he was perceived by others, particularly his parents-in-law, and as you say, beginning to be very comfortable, and unwilling to let anything disturb that. He is no longer so keen to defend Finlay, in case some of the notoriety sticks to him as well. Although he certainly did not wish me to continue investigating Finlay.”
“An enemy?” Charlotte said dubiously.
“Insufficient nerve,” Vespasia dismissed him, looking at Pitt, her eyes wide.
“I think so,” Pitt agreed, remembering Helliwell’s red face and his fidgeting manner, his keenness to disclaim any association. “Certainly he hasn’t the honor to be loyal once it becomes costly.”
“Thirlstone?” Charlotte asked.
“Possibly.” As he said it he was seeing Jago Jones’s passionate face. He was a man who had the courage, the fire and the conviction. But had he the cause? “I think …” he said slowly, “that I should look more closely into why Ada was the victim. Why was it someone in Whitechapel, rather than the West End? It seems irrational. Perhaps there is a reason there which may lead us to who it was.”
Vespasia rose to her feet, and Pitt stood instantly also, offering her his hand.
She accepted it, but leaned no weight on it at all.
“Thank you, my dear. I wish I could say I felt easier in my mind, but I do not.” She regarded him very gravely, searching his eyes. “I fear this is a most ugly case. Be careful, Thomas. You may trust John Cornwallis’s honor and his courage absolutely, but I suspect that his understanding of the deviousness of the political mind has a long way to go. Do not allow him to let you down by expecting of him a skill he does not possess and a loyalty which he does. Good night, my dear.”
“Good night, Aunt Vespasia,” he replied as he stood watching while she kissed Charlotte lightly on the cheek. Then, head high, she swept through the parlor door towards the front entrance and her waiting carriage.
He began early the next morning, not exactly with enthusiasm, but with a renewed determination. Ewart was already directed to pursue further details of both Augustus and Finlay FitzJames. Tellman was investigating the other members of the Hellfire Club. Pitt himself went back to Pentecost Alley to speak again with the women who had known Ada last.
It was an inappropriate hour of the morning to find them, but he could not afford the time or the patience to wait until the afternoon, when they would naturally get up to begin the day.
Of course, the sweatshop over the road was thrumming with industry, doors open because they had been at work for several hours by nine o’clock, and it was already hot.
Pitt went up the steps to the wooden door of the tenement and knocked. He had to repeat it several times before the door was finally opened by a bad-tempered-looking Madge, her large face creased with irritation and weariness, her eyes almost disappeared in the folds of fat in her cheeks.
“What the ’ell time o’ day jer think this is?” she demanded. “Ain’t yer got no …” She squinted at him. “Oh, it’s you! Wotjer want this time? I dunno nuffink more ter tell yer. An’ neither do Rose ner Nan, ner Agnes.”
“You might do.” Pitt pushed against the door, but her