Silence in Hanover Close - Anne Perry [73]
“Did you see her with anyone you can remember? It’s important.”
She considered for several minutes and Pitt did not hurry her.
“Seen ’er once with a real elegant gent, good-looker. One of the other girls said she’d seen ’er with ’im before, because she’d tried to pick ’im up ’erself, but ’e ‘ad eyes for Cerise and no one else.”
“Did you ever learn her name?”
“No.”
“Anything about her?”
“No, ’cept what I told yer.”
“All right, you know the world, and the business. What’s your best guess? What sort of woman was she, and what happened to her?”
The woman laughed abruptly, then the bitterness softened into pity, for herself and all those who shared her lot, even peripherally. “I dunno,” she said. “Could be dead, for all I know, or more like come down in the world. Life in this business can be short. ’Ow the hell do I know what ’appened to ’er, poor bitch?”
“She was different, you said that; so did the others who saw her. What’s your best guess as to where she came from? Come on, Alice, I need to know, and you’ve the best chance of being right.”
She sighed. “My guess is she was Quality out slumming it, God knows why. Maybe she was just bent that way. Some is. Although why any woman that’s got a roof over ’er ’ead and food for the rest of ’er life should want ter risk it is beyond me. Still, I reckon insanity can ’it the Quality like the rest of us. Now that’s all, I in’t got nothing else to add to it. You ’ad your time; I got things to do. I bin more’n fair— an I ’ope you’ll remember that.”
Pitt stood up. “I will,” he promised. “As far as I know, you keep a lodging house. Good day.”
He spent two more days going from one place to another in the haunts of the demimonde, the theaters and restaurants where such women plied their trade, and he heard occasional mention of Cerise or someone who might have been her or might not, but he learned nothing that added to what he already knew. No one remembered who she had been with, whether it was several men or only a few, although it was certainly more than one in every account. No one knew her name nor where she came from. She was tolerated because she came very seldom and robbed them of little business. It was a hard world and they expected competition. If a man preferred one woman to another there was nothing to be done about it except in extreme cases; usually it was better to take defeat gracefully. Scenes embarrassed the clientele.
Whether any of the men with her had been Robert York it was impossible to say. She frequented places where he was likely to have been, but then so had half London Society, at least among the men. The descriptions of her companions were general enough to have fit him, or Julian Danver, or Garrard Danver, or even Felix Asherson—or just about anyone else with elegance and money.
In the early evening of the second day, a little after six, as the fog cleared at last, leaving only a few dark pockets, Pitt took a cab to Hanover Close, this time not to the York house but further along, to where Felix Asherson lived. Pitt had chosen to see him at home in order to form a more complete impression of the man, to make some judgment as to his circumstances and possibly his character. Away from the formal and rather intimidating atmosphere of the Foreign Office he might be more inclined to relax his caution. In his own home he would feel safer and could be certain none of his colleagues would interrupt, perhaps suspecting him of indiscreet disclosures