• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Gents like ter be a bit more private, like, even if they’ve a fancy for the open an’ in an ’urry. Yer ever tried it in one of them little boats? They tip over awful easy.”

Pitt smiled back at her. “I had to ask. Have you ever seen Captain Winthrop?”

“Yer mean was ’e a customer?”

“If you like. Or even just seen him walking?”

“Yeah—I’ve seen ’im a couple o’ times, but ’e weren’t a customer.”

Pitt grunted. He had no idea if she was telling the truth or not. She had looked at him with total candor, and that in itself made him vaguely dubious.

“Look, Mr. Pitt,” she said, suddenly serious, “it weren’t nothink to do with any o’ us, and that’s Gawd’s truth. Yer might get the odd bloke what gets stuck wi’ a shiv. Wee Georgie’s good at that, but it ain’t no good for business ter get violent. Puts people orf, and then we don’t eat. This ain’t one o’ us, it’s some geezer wot’s a real nutter. An’ it’s no use asking us ’oo, ’cos we don’t know.” She looked at the other girls.

Cissy pushed her blond hair out of her eyes again and nodded in agreement.

“We don’t like it no more’n you do,” she said, sucking on a rotten tooth and wincing, putting her hand up to her jaw. “Makes people un’appy about goin’ out, it does. They’re all spooked. And that’s our patch.”

“Yeah,” one of the other two agreed. “It in’t as if we could just move uptown, like. Fat George’d do us if we got onto ’is girls’ patch.” She shivered. “I in’t scared o’ Fat George. ’E’s just a bucket o’ lard. But that Wee Georgie, ’e scares the ’ell out o’ me. ’E’s a real evil little swine. I reckon as ’e in’t right in the ’ead. The way ’e looks at yer.”

“Eeurgh.” Cissy pulled a face and hugged herself.

“But it don’t make no sense fer ’im to cut nobody’s ’ead orf,” Kate insisted. “An’ ’onest, Mr. Pitt, we don’t know nothink about anyone around what’s a real nutter. There in’t nobody sleeps out that we knows of. Is there?” She looked at the others.

They all shook their heads, eyes on Pitt.

“Sleeping rough in the park?” Pitt suggested

“Nah. There’s them as sleeps rough, or tries ter,” Kate agreed. “But the park keeper is pretty ’ard. Comes and moves ’em on. And o’ course there’s rozzers ’round every now and again. That’s another reason why most gents don’t fancy doing their business in the park. Makes yer look a right fool ter get caught by a passin’ rozzer. We just makes acquaintance there.”

There was no point in asking if they had seen Aidan Arledge. His description was that of a hundred men who might have been in the park.

“See anything unusual the night of the second murder?” he asked, without any real hope of a useful answer.

Kate shrugged. “Some amateur tried to get on our patch and Cissy pulled ’er ’air out …”

“I did not!” Cissy protested. “I just give ’er a nice civil warning, like.”

“Sure she was an amateur?” Pitt asked. “She wouldn’t have had a pimp somewhere behind, who’d—” He stopped. It was too unlikely to be worth pursuing.

Kate gave him a wry glance.

“Seen no one else ’cept the usual gents,” she said, pulling a face.

“No one else at all?” he insisted.

“A rozzer a couple o’ times, but ’e don’t bother us if we behave proper and don’t accost”—she used the word with heavy sarcasm—“any gentlemen what’s taking a quiet respectable stroll by ’isself. ’E in’t a bad sort. ’E knows we gotter eat like anyone else. An’ the gentlemen wot pays ’is wages wouldn’t like to be driven out o’ their bit o’ pleasure.”

“Who else? Think, Kate! There is someone—someone with an ax or a cutlass …”

“Gawd!” She shivered. “Will yer quit yappin’ on about it! I jus’ saw ordinary-lookin’ gents, one or two wi’ a skinful, the rozzer, the park keeper goin’ ’ome wi’ ’is machine, or somethink. It were real quiet.”

“It’ll be a bloody sight quieter now,” Gert said angrily. She looked up at Pitt. “Why the ’ell can’t yer catch the bleedin’ lunatic wot’s doin’ this and let us get on wi’ our business? It ain’t safe for no one anymore. I thought that was what the bleedin’ crushers were supposed