Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [76]
“Damn!” he said fiercely. “Damnation!”
Pitt spent the next day trying to discover the identity of the woman in the photograph. If she was a person of social standing at all, the picture alone was motive for murder. He gave the sergeant a copy and had him try all the police stations in the inner city to see if anyone recognized her, and he took another copy himself, this time with the body carefully blocked out, to see if anyone in society knew her. She did not have to be a lady; even a maid, seeking to make a little money on the side with such things, would lose not only her present employment but any hope of future employment with all its security, clothes, regular meals, companionship, and certain status of belonging. That, too, could be cause for murder.
Of course, he went back to Vespasia.
She hesitated a long time before replying, weighing her answer so carefully he was more than half prepared for a lie.
“She reminds me of someone,” she said slowly, her head a little to one side, still considering it. “The hair is not right; I seem to feel it was done differently, if indeed I do know her. And perhaps it was a little darker.”
“Who is it?” he demanded, impatience boiling inside him. She might actually have the last clue to murder on the back of her tongue, and she was havering like a nervous bride.
She shook her head. “I don’t know—I just feel a certain familiarity.”
He let out his breath in a sigh of exasperation.
“There’s no use trying to goad me, Thomas,” she replied. “I am an old woman—”
“Rubbish!” he snapped. “If you are going to plead infirmity of mind—I’ll charge you with perjury!”
She smiled at him bleakly. “I do not know who it is, Thomas. Perhaps it is someone’s daughter, or even someone’s maid. Maybe I have normally seen that face under a lace cap? Hair makes a lot of difference, you know. But if I see her again, I shall send a messenger to you within the hour. You said you found this photograph in Godolphin Jones’s house, in his camera? Why is it so important?” She glanced at the picture still in her hand. “Is the rest of it indecent? Or is there some other person in it? Or perhaps both?”
“It is indecent,” he replied.
“Indeed.” She raised her eyebrows a little and handed it back to him. “Motive for murder then. I presumed so. Poor creature.”
“I must know who it is!”
“I appreciate your desire,” she said calmly. “You have not need to reinforce it.”
“If everyone were to go around murdering witnesses to indiscretion—” He was frustrated almost beyond the stretch of his temper. He was now nearly sure she was concealing something from him, if not knowledge, at least strong suspicion.
She cut across him. “I do not approve of murder, Thomas,” she said staring up at him. “If I remember who it is, I shall say so.”
He had to be content with that. He knew perfectly well she would say no more. He took his leave with as much grace as he could muster and went out into the thickening fog.
He spent most of the rest of the day inquiring, with the picture in his hand, but no one else was prepared to admit having known the woman, and by dusk he was cold, his legs and feet ached, there was a blister on his heel, and he was hungry and thoroughly miserable.
Then, as the fourth hansom cab passed him without stopping and left him islanded under the gas lamp in a sea of icy vapor, he had a sudden idea. He had temporarily forgotten all about the other corpses, presuming them incidental. They had all died naturally; only Godolphin Jones was murdered. But perhaps there was some bizarre connection? Horatio Snipe had been a procurer of women. Could his clientele have included Godolphin Jones—either for his own appetite or as subjects to photograph? Perhaps that was his particular fetish—lewd photography.
He ran out into the street, shouting at the next cab as it approached, and reluctantly it pulled to