Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [91]
The major sniffed. He could not bring himself to thank Pitt.
Pitt let himself out and breathed in the bitter fog with a sense of release, almost of warmth within him.
But it was not a solution. Suddenly the little notebook seemed much less promising. Without searching the drawing rooms of London, he knew of no way of finding all the rest of the pictures that carried the hieroglyphic insects. And there was no proof that the owners were all victims of blackmail, or any other sort of pressure. Possibly they were simply customers for the photographs as well, and Godolphin Jones had chosen this disguised and highly profitable way of collecting his fee. To have his art paid for at such inflated prices was a double reward, because it enhanced his professional reputation in a way his skill never could. Pitt was obliged to admire his ingenuity, if nothing else about him.
But if they were customers for his pornographic pictures, they would be the last people to wish him dead! One did not cut off one’s source of supply, especially of something that one desperately wished to be kept secret and that was presumably, in its own way, addictive.
There was, of course, another possibility: a rival in the market. That was a thought that had not occurred to him before. Jones’s work was good; at least he had a better eye than most practitioners in the field that Pitt had come across, although admittedly his experience was slight. He had not worked in the vice areas by choice, but it fell to the lot of every policeman now and again. And all the photographs he had seen before had been pathetic and obvious in their banality: portrayals of nakedness, and very little more. These of Jones’s had at least some pretensions to art, of a decadent sort. There was a little subtlety in them, a use of light and shade, even a certain wit.
Yes, very possibly some other merchant in the same trade had found himself squeezed out of the market and had rebelled in the only way he knew how; effective—and permanent.
Pitt spent the rest of that day and all the following one questioning his colleagues in all of the stations within three or four miles of either Gadstone Park or Resurrection Row to catch up on whatever was known about current dealers in pornographic pictures. When he finally reached home after seven o’clock and found Charlotte waiting for him a little anxiously, he was beyond giving her an explanation and inside himself blessed her for not asking one. Her silence was the most companionable thing he could think of. He sat all evening in front of the fire without speaking. She was wise enough to occupy herself with knitting, making no sound but the clicking of her needles. He did not wish to relive the squalor he had seen, the twisting of minds and emotions until all affections became mere appetites, and the titillation of those appetites for financial gain. So many sad little people clutching paper women, fornicating in and dominated by fantasies: all flesh and prurient, frightened mind, and no heart at all. And he had learned nothing of use, except that no one knew of a rival with either the need or the imagination to have killed Godolphin Jones and buried him in Albert Wilson’s grave.
In the morning he set out again with nothing left but to return to the shop in Resurrection Row and the photographs. The two constables were there when he arrived. Both of them leaped up, red-faced, as he opened the door.
“Oh! It’s you, Mr. Pitt,” one of them said hastily. “Didn’t know who it might be!”
“Does anyone else have a key?” Pitt asked with a twisted smile, holding up the one he had had cut.
“No, sir, not exceptin’ us, o’ course. But you never know. “ ’E might ’ave ’ad—” He trailed off; the idea of an accomplice was never likely, and the look on Pitt’s face told him it was useless. “Yes, sir.” He sat down again.
“We just about got ’em all sorted,” his companion said proudly. “I reckon as there’s about fifty-three different girls, all told. Lot of ’em ’e used a fair number o’ times. I suppose there aren’t that many women as can do