Resurrection Row (28 page)

Charlotte had long ago disciplined herself to accept Pitt’s late and erratic hours, but when he was not home by eleven o’clock she could no longer pretend to herself that she was not worried. All sorts of people had accidents, were struck down in the street; policemen especially invited attack by interfering in the affairs of those who made a business of violence. A murdered body could be dumped in the river, dropped down a sewer, or simply left in the rookeries where it might never be found. Who would know one pauper corpse from another?

She had almost convinced herself that something appalling had happened when at midnight she heard the door. She flew down the hallway and flung herself at him. He was thoroughly wet.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “It’s the middle of the night! Are you hurt? What happened to you?”

He heard the rising fear in her voice and swallowed back his instinctive answer. He put both arms around her and held her close, ignoring the fact that he was wetting her dress with the rain still sliding off him.

“Watching a very high-class brothel,” he replied, smiling into her hair. “And you’d be surprised who I saw going in there.”

She pushed him away but still gripped his shoulders. “Why do you care?” she demanded. “What case are you on now?”

“Still Godolphin Jones. Can we go into the kitchen? I’m frozen.”

“Oh!” She looked at herself in disgust. “And you’re soaking!” She turned and led the way smartly back to the kitchen and threw another piece of coal on the stove. One by one she took his wet outer clothes, then his boots and his new socks. Lastly, she made tea with the kettle that had been simmering all evening. Five times she had got up and put more water in it, waiting his return.

“What has Godolphin Jones got to do with brothels?” she asked when she sat down opposite him at last.

“I don’t know, except that most of the women he photographed also work in brothels.”

“You think one of them killed him?” Her face was full of doubt. “Wouldn’t it be pretty hard for a woman to strangle a man, unless she drugged him or hit him first? And why should she, anyway? Didn’t he pay them?”

“He was a blackmailer.” He had not told her about Gwendoline Cantlay or Major Rodney. “Blackmailers often get killed.”

“I’m not surprised. Do you think one of them might have received an offer of marriage, or something of that sort, and wanted her pictures destroyed?”

It was a motive that had not occurred to him. Prostitutes quite often did marry, in their heyday, before their looks were gone and they slowly drifted to lower and lower brothels, earning less and less, and disease began to catch up with them. It was a decided possibility.

“Why were you watching a brothel?” she continued. “What could that tell you?”

“First of all, I wasn’t sure that it was a brothel—”

“But it was?”

“Yes, or, more correctly, a set of apartments used for that purpose; rather more luxurious than a regular brothel, less communal.”

She screwed up her face but said nothing. “I thought I might find a procurer, or a pimp. He could have an excellent motive for getting rid of Godolphin Jones. Maybe Jones was poaching on his women, paying them higher rates and not giving the pimp his cut.”

She looked at him very steadily. The polished pans gleamed on the dresser behind her. One of them was a little askew, and she had missed the handle.

“I think that’s where we’ll find the murderer.” He stretched and stood up, easing his feet now that they were free of their boots. “It’ll have nothing to do with Gadstone Park at all. Or the grave robbers, for that matter, except that he made use of them. Come on up to bed. Tomorrow’ll come too soon as it is.”

In the morning she dished the porridge solemnly, then sat down opposite him instead of getting her own or bothering with Jemima.

“Thomas?”

He poured milk on the porridge and began to eat; there was no time to waste. They had been a little late up anyway.

“What?”

“You said Godolphin Jones was a blackmailer?”

“So he was.”

“Whom did he blackmail, and over what?”

“They didn’t kill him.”

“Who?”

The porridge was too hot, and he was obliged to wait. He wondered if she had done that on purpose.

“Gwendoline Cantlay, over an
affaire,
and Major Rodney because he was a customer. Why?”

“Could he blackmail a pimp or a procurer? I mean, what would they be afraid of?”

“I don’t know. I should think greed, professional rivalry is far more likely.” He tried the porridge again, a smaller spoonful.

“You said the houses where these women worked were better than ordinary brothels?”

“So they were. Pretty good addresses. What are you getting at, Charlotte?”

She opened her eyes very wide and clear. “Who owns them, Thomas?”

He stopped with the spoon halfway to his mouth.

“Owns them?” he said very slowly, the thought mushrooming in his mind as he stared at her.

“Sometimes the oddest people own property like that,” she went on. “I remember Papa knew someone once who made his money from property leased out as a sweatshop. We never had anything to do with him after we found out.”

Pitt poured milk on the rest of the porridge and ate it in five mouthfuls; pulled on his boots, still damp; grabbed his coat, hat, and scarf; and left the house as if it were a sinking ship. Charlotte did not need an explanation. Her mind was with him, and she understood.

It took him three hours to discover who owned those properties, and six more like them.

Edward St. Jermyn.

Lord St. Jermyn made his money from the rent of brothels and a percentage from each prostitute—and Godolphin Jones knew!

Was that the reason St. Jermyn had bought the picture from him? And then refused to pay him again—and again? That was most certainly a motive for murder.

But could Pitt prove it?

They did not even know what day the murder had been committed. Proving St. Jermyn had been in Resurrection Row would mean little. Jones had been strangled—any fit man, and many women, could have done it. There was no weapon to trace.

Jones was a pornographer and a blackmailer; there could be dozens of people with motives. St. Jermyn would know all these things, and Pitt would never even get as far as a warrant.

What he needed was a closer link, something to tie the two men together more irredeemably than Major Rodney or Gwendoline Cantlay or any of the women in the pictures.

The largest house had a landlady, no doubt the madame who kept the money, took the rents and the percentages and passed them to St. Jermyn, or whoever was his agent.

Pitt was outside in the street now, walking briskly. He knew where he was going and what he intended to do. He hailed a cab and climbed in. He gave the driver the address and slammed the door.

Then he sat back in the seat and planned his attack.

The house was silent in the empty street. A rising wind blew sleet out of a gray sky. A maid came up the areaway steps and then disappeared again. It could have been one of any number of well-to-do residences just before the midday meal.

Pitt dismissed the cab and went up to the front door. He had no warrant, and he did not think he could get one merely on the strength of his beliefs. But he did believe, with something growing toward certainty, that St. Jermyn had killed Godolphin Jones, and the reason had been Jones’s knowledge of the source of his income. It was certainly motive enough, especially if St. Jermyn was seeking to earn a high office for himself in government as a great reformer with his workhouse bill.

Pitt lifted his hand and knocked sharply on the door. He did not like what he was about to do; it was not his usual manner. But without it there was no proof, and he could not let St. Jermyn go, in spite of the bill. Although the thought was in his mind to put off collating the final evidence, if he should find it, until after the bill had been through the House. One murderer, even of St. Jermyn’s order, was not worth all the children in all the workhouses in London.

The door was opened by a smart girl in black with a white lace cap and apron.

“Good morning, sir,” she said with total composure, and it flashed through Pitt’s mind that perhaps the place did business even at midday.

“Good morning,” he replied with a bitter smile. “May I speak to your mistress, the landlady of these apartments?”

“None of them are to lease, sir,” she warned, still standing in the doorway.

“I don’t imagine so,” he agreed. “Nevertheless, I wish to speak to her, if you please. It is a matter of business, with regard to the owner of the property. I think you had better permit me to come in. It is not something to be discussed on the front steps.”

She was a girl of some experience. She knew what the house was used for and perceived the possibilities of what Pitt said. She made way for him immediately.

“Yes, sir. If you come this way, I will see if Mrs. Philp is at home.”

“Thank you.” Pitt followed her into a remarkably comfortable room, discreetly furnished, with a strong fire burning in the grate. He had only a few minutes to wait before Mrs. Philp appeared. She was buxom, growing a little fat now but handsomely dressed; even at this hour her face was rouged and mascaraed as if for a ball. He did not need to be told she was a successful prostitute a little over the hill, promoted now from worker to management. Her clothes were expensive, her jewelry flashy, but Pitt judged it to be real. She looked at him with hard, shrewd eyes.

“I don’t know you,” she said, coming in and shutting the door with a snick.

“You’re lucky.” He was still standing, back to the fire. “I don’t often work vice, especially not this class.”

“A rozzer,” she said instantly. “You can’t prove anything, and you’d be a fool to try. The sort of gentleman that comes here wouldn’t thank you for it.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he agreed. “I’ve no intention of trying to shut you down.”

“I’m not paying you anything.” She gave him a look of contempt. “You go tell anyone you like. See where it’ll get you!”

“I’m not interested in telling anyone either.”

“Then what do you want? You want something! A little custom on the cheap?”

“No, thank you. A little information.”

“If you think I’m going to tell you who comes here, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for. Blackmail, eh? I’ll have you thrown out and beaten so bad your own mother wouldn’t know you.”

“Possibly. But I don’t give a damn who comes here.”

“Then what do you want? You haven’t come here out of curiosity!”

“Godolphin Jones.”

“Who?” But there was a hesitation, only the fraction of a second, a flicker of an eyelid.

“You heard me. Godolphin Jones. I’m sure you’re very competent to handle anything to do with prostitution— you’ve had enough practice to outwit most of us—but how about murder? Do you feel like fighting me over that? That’s what I’m good at, proving murder.”

The painted rouge stood out on her cheeks. Without it she would still have been handsome.

“I don’t know anything about no murder!”

“Godolphin Jones knew about this house and its business because he photographed a few of your girls.”

“So what if he did?”

“Blackmail, Mrs. Philp.”

“He couldn’t blackmail me! What for? Whom would he tell? You? What can you do about it? You’re not going to shut me down. Too many rich and powerful people come here, and you know it.”

“Not blackmail you, Mrs. Philp. You are what you are and don’t pretend to be anything else. But who owns this building, Mrs. Philp?”

Her face went white, but she said nothing.

“Whom do you pay rent to, Mrs. Philp?” he went on. “How much do you take from the girls? Fifty percent? More? And how much do you give him at the end of the week, or the month?”

She swallowed and stared at him. “I dunno! I dunno ’is name!”

“Liar! It’s St. Jermyn, and you know it as well as I do. You wouldn’t pay a landlord you didn’t know; you’re too fly by half to do that. You’ll have an agreement all detailed out, even if it isn’t written.”

She swallowed again. “So?” she demanded. “What if it is? What about? You can’t do nothing!”

“Blackmail, Mrs. Philp.”

“You goin’ to blackmail ’im? St. Jermyn? You’re a fool, a crazy man!”

“Why? Because I’d wind up dead? Like Godolphin Jones?”

Her eyes widened, and for a moment he thought she might faint. There was a funny dry rattle in her throat, a gasping.

“Did you kill Jones, Mrs. Philp? You look strong enough. He was strangled, you know.” He looked at her broad, well-padded shoulders and her fat arms.

“Mother of God—so I did not!”

“I wonder.”

“I swear! I never went near the little sod, except to give him the money. Why would I kill him? I keep a house, it’s my business, but I swear to God I never killed anyone!”

“What money, Mrs. Philp? Money from St. Jermyn to keep him quiet?”

A look of cunning came into her face, then vanished again in uncertainty. “No, I didn’t say that. Far as I know, it was money for a whole lot o’ pictures Jones was going to paint, all of St. Jermyn’s children and himself. ’Alf a dozen or more. Jones wanted the money in advance, and this was the best place to get the ready cash. It was several weeks’ earnings. St. Jermyn couldn’t get all of that much out of ’is regular bank.”

“No,” Pitt agreed. “I’ll bet he couldn’t, nor would he want to. But you see, we never found it on Jones’s body or in his shop in Resurrection Row or in his house, nor was it paid into his bank.”

“What do you mean? He spent it?”

“I doubt it. How much was it?—and you’d better be right. One lie, and I’ll arrest you as an accessory to murder. You know what that means—the rope.”

“Five thousand pounds!” she said instantly. “Five thousand, I swear, and that’s God’s truth!”

“When? Exactly?”

“Twelfth of January, midday. ’E was here. Then ’e went straight to Resurrection Row.”

“And was murdered by St. Jermyn, who took back the five thousand pounds. I think if I check with his bank, which will be easy to do now with your information, I shall find that five thousand pounds, or something near it, was deposited again, which will prove beyond any reasonable man’s doubt that his lordship murdered Godolphin Jones, and why. Thank you, Mrs. Philp. And unless you want to dance at the end of a rope with him, you’ll be prepared to come into court and tell the same story on oath.”