Silence in Hanover Close - Anne Perry [72]
“I don’t want tales.” Pitt did not waste his time or insult her with flattery they both knew he did not mean. “I want a woman who almost certainly tried putting on the black. That’s bad for your trade; you don’t need that sort.”
She pulled a face and ate another piece of fruit, nibbling all round the edges before putting the center whole into her mouth. Had her walk of life been different, led to different dress, less paint on her skin, the hardness of survival out of her eyes and the small lines now clearly formed round the corners of her lips, she might have been one of her generation’s great beauties. The thought passed through Pitt’s mind with irony and sadness as he watched her eat.
“Go on,” she prompted. “I don’t need telling my business. If I wasn’t the best you wouldn’t be ’ere asking me favors. I don’t need your money. I earn more in a day than you do in a month.”
Pitt did not bother to remark that her risks were higher and her time short. She knew it.
“A woman who always wore a shade of cerise, dark or light, anything from plum to magenta, always something that color. She was tall and slender, not much flesh on her, but loads of style, dark eyes and black hair. Have you ever seen her, or heard your girls mention her?”
“Doesn’t sound like she’d ’ave much to offer. Thin, black ’air?”
“Oh, she had something,” Pitt said with certainty, and in spite of himself Veronica York’s face with its high cheekbones and haunting eyes came back to his mind. Could she have been Cerise, and have killed Robert when he discovered that? He looked at the lush, feminine woman in the pink chair opposite him, with her glowing, almost Titian hair and her apple-blossom skin. “She had fire, and style,” he finished.
The woman’s eyes opened wide. “Know ’er well, did yer?”
Pitt smiled. “I never met her. I’m going on the impression she made on others.”
She gave a little laugh, part derision and part genuine humor. “Well, if she put the black on people she was a fool! That’s a sure way ter kill business. In the long run it’s suicide. I don’t know anything about ’er. Sorry luv.”
Pitt did not know if he was pleased or disappointed. He had to find Cerise, and yet he did not want her to be Veronica York.
“Are you sure?” he said automatically. “It may be three years back.”
“Three years! Well, why didn’t yer say so?” She reached for another piece of fruit and bit into it. She had beautiful teeth, white and even. “I thought yer meant now! There was one like that about three or four years ago. Terrible color she wore, but she could carry it. Black ’air an’ eyes, thin as a washboard, need pounds of ’orse ’air to pad ’er out. But she ’ad fire, the sort that comes from inside; yer can’t get it out of a pot or in a glass. All the champagne in London wouldn’t give it yer. Lit up like she enjoyed ’erself every minute, like she was ’avin’ the time of ’er life, on the edge o’ danger and loved it. Mind, she were a real beauty, none o’ yer powder an’ paint jobs. Bones to break yer ’eart, she ’ad.”
Pitt felt suddenly suffocated in this overstuffed room, and at the same time there was a coldness inside him. “Tell me more about her,” he said quietly. “How often did you see or hear of her; where, who with, and have you any idea what happened to her?”
The woman hesitated, her eyes wary.
“I’ll be very unpleasant if I have to,” Pitt said levelly. “It’s murder. I’ll turn over this entire place and make such a fuss none of your clients will dare come back.”
“All right!” she snapped angrily. But