Pentecost Alley (25 page)

“I wanted to help Finlay,” Tallulah answered after only a moment.

Emily longed to tell her to be quiet. Jago Jones would not approve of their going to see Rose Burke about her testimony. She pretended to trip, and caught hold of Tallulah’s sleeve, jerking her hard.

“Are you all right?” Jago said quickly, putting out his hand to steady her.

“Yes, thank you.” She stood upright again, smiling, although they were past the lamp now. “It wasn’t a very clever idea really. There isn’t anything we can do. But we thought if we saw the place, we might think of something.”

Jago shook his head but forbore from comment. He could be tactful when he chose.

Tallulah glanced at Emily as they moved under the next light. She seemed to have understood the hint.

Jago found them a hansom on Commercial Road, and after helping them in, bade them good-bye and thanked them with a wry smile, then turned and walked away without looking back.

Tallulah swiveled to face Emily, although they could barely see each other in the darkness inside the cab.

“I know even less than I did before,” she said, her voice tight with confusion and weariness. “I know I love Jago, but I don’t think I could live here. It smells so
awful! Everything is so … dirty! Who could I even talk to? How can he bear it?”

Emily did not answer, because there really was nothing to say, nothing to argue about or rationalize. There was only the decision to be made, and no one could help with that.

Emily collected the new Hellfire Club badge and met Tallulah, by arrangement, at a dog show held by the members of the Ladies’ Kennel Club. It was somewhere they could both go quite comfortably without comment, and meet and compare notes, as if on the scores of dogs of every breed and color and size. Tallulah was in a gorgeous gown of daisy-patterned muslin with white satin ribbon trim. No one would have recognized her as the woman who had helped ladle soup in Coke Street the previous evening. She looked carefree, full of laughter and grace, until she saw Emily. Then she excused herself from her friends and came over, her hand held out, her face tense and shadows of unhappiness in her eyes.

Without comment Emily put her hand into Tallulah’s and passed over the badge, then as quickly withdrew. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Has something new happened?”

“No. I …” Tallulah shook her head. “I just love this dog show. Look at them all. Aren’t they beautiful and intelligent?”

“The people or the dogs?”

“The dogs, of course!” She brushed her fingers against the soft fabric of her skirt. “And I love this dress.”

“You look wonderful in it,” Emily said honestly.

“Can you see me wearing it in Whitechapel? It probably cost more than Jago makes in a year. Maybe two years.”

“Nobody can decide for you,” Emily replied under her breath, smiling and nodding to the wife of another member of Parliament who walked by leading a Great Dane and trying to look as if it were not leading her.
“The one thing you must never do is blame someone else because you have chosen the wrong way. Be honest with yourself. If you want your life as it is, with money, fashion, a husband you may not love, then take it.” She smiled and lifted her hand in a gesture of acknowledgment to the wife of a cabinet minister she loathed. “But if you want Jago, with all that that means, don’t attempt to change him or blame him for being what he is.”

“Don’t you expect to change a husband a little?” Tallulah said reasonably. “Why should I be the one to make all the accommodations?”

“Because that way doesn’t work,” Emily said with eminent practicality. “It is no good dealing with what you think is fair, only with what is real. Anyhow, would you want Jago to accommodate you by changing his beliefs? What would that make of him?”

“I thought marriage was supposed to improve men, at least a little,” Tallulah protested. “Are we not meant to be a gentler and civilizing influence? Isn’t that what we are for? To have children and to provide an island of peace and purity and high ideals away from the clamor and conflict of the world?”

Emily bit her tongue so she did not reply too savagely.

“Did you ever know a man who wished to be civilized and improved?”

“No,” Tallulah said with some surprise. “All the men I know wish to be supported, admired and obeyed. That is certainly what Papa wants and insists on. In return he provides for us, advises us and, on occasion, protects us.”

“Of course,” Emily countered with a smile. “Sometimes we may behave in such a way as to cause a man to wish to civilize and improve himself. But that is a different proposal altogether. It is one thing to ask for something, it is quite different to accept when offered it.”

Tallulah was prevented from continuing the discussion by the intervention of a group of ladies who came across to them, leading two spaniels and a setter. The conversation was turned over to dogs.

Emily remained only another ten minutes or so, then excused herself and went to her carriage. It was agreed that Tallulah would place the badge immediately on her return home. Now it was necessary for someone to provoke Pitt into searching again, in order for it to be found. She gave her coachman Charlotte’s address in Bloomsbury and sat back to compose some sensible way of introducing such a suggestion into a conversation. Naturally she would not tell Charlotte why; that would place too great a strain on her loyalties, and Emily had no wish for Pitt to be told. At this point it could defeat everything.

It was a beautiful afternoon, warm and still with that mellow tone of sunshine one gets only in the late summer, a sort of gold in the air, a heavy perfume of flowers, and the knowledge that in a month’s time the first leaves would yellow, but would ripen and the nights begin to chill, and to darken earlier.

Charlotte was in the garden inspecting the young chrysanthemum plants and admiring the asters in bloom, great shaggy heads of purple and magenta. “It’s perfectly beautiful,” Emily said sincerely.

Charlotte looked at her skeptically. “Is that what you came to say?”

“No, of course not.” She wondered for an instant if picking a quarrel might divert Charlotte’s attention from what she had come to say, and decided it would not. It was extremely difficult to think of a way of having Charlotte persuade Pitt to search again for the badge without Charlotte’s realizing exactly what Emily was doing, and why.

“I’ve just come from the dog show,” she said tentatively. “I saw Tallulah FitzJames there. She looks terribly worried. I feel so helpless to know what to say to her. Does Thomas really think her brother is guilty? Did you mention …” She stopped.

“That we went to Beaufort Street?” Charlotte said with wide eyes. “No, of course I didn’t! What could I say? That Finlay’s sister says she saw him at a party, but she
can’t remember who else was there because nobody remembers anything about the whole event, except where it was held, and when?”

“I suppose it wouldn’t help,” Emily agreed unhappily.

They walked side by side very gently down the lawn towards the apple tree and past the honeysuckle, which was still in bloom. The late afternoon began to send a heavy sweetness into the air.

“All it would really do,” Charlotte said gently, “is show that Tallulah is a loyal sister.”

“It’s the badge, isn’t it?” Emily seized her opportunity. “That’s what makes it look so bad for him. How could it be there if he wasn’t?”

They had reached the end of the lawn and stood together in the sheltered sun.

“If he’s not guilty,” Emily continued, as though thinking aloud, “then either this is a most hideous mischance or he has a terrible enemy. And from what Tallulah says, that is not impossible. At least,” she hurried on to prevent Charlotte from interrupting, “they are Augustus’s enemies.”

“You think they stole his badge, murdered someone, and left it at the scene?” Charlotte asked with incredulity. “Isn’t that a terrible risk to take with your own life, simply to injure someone else? What if they were caught and hanged themselves?”

Emily drew in her breath and let it out slowly.

“Someone so very arrogant is probably quite sure in their own minds that they will not be caught. And I hadn’t thought of their stealing Finlay’s badge … why not simply have another one made? It wouldn’t be very difficult. Then leave that one there.”

“But what if the police found the original? Or Finlay did himself?” Charlotte reasoned.

“The club disbanded years ago. He probably hasn’t any idea even when he last had it, let alone where.”

“But they looked for it…. Thomas did.”

“Did he look for it himself?” Emily pressed. “Or did
he simply have a constable do it, thinking that if Finlay knew where it was he would produce it quickly enough?”

“Perhaps a constable, I don’t know.”

Late swallows dipped and darted after tiny flies. The light was lengthening and turning gold, casting heavy shadows from the apple tree.

“Well, ask him,” Emily said, trying not to sound desperate. “After all, if he found another badge, it would make things much easier, wouldn’t it? For Thomas, I mean. Then he wouldn’t have any real evidence against Finlay, and he wouldn’t be in the wretched position of having to charge him! He wouldn’t be caught between the pressure from the establishment and the Home Office, and it would stop the newspapers suggesting that he is letting Finlay off because of who he is. I know the sort of thing they will say.”

“I suppose you might be right,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “I’ll mention it to him.”

Emily linked her arm in Charlotte’s and they began to walk back up the lawn towards the house. She did not trust herself to say anything further.

6

W
HILE EMILY
was involved with helping Tallulah, Pitt had been searching further into the character and associations of the FitzJames family. He had sent Tellman to learn what he could to add to their knowledge of the history of the other members of the Hellfire Club, as being those most likely to have had the badge, either intentionally or by accident. In spite of their appearance of a life far removed from frequenting the brothels of Whitechapel, it was quite possible that they did so. Married men of Helliwell’s status had been known to. Thirlstone was certainly not beyond suspicion.

And much as Pitt would like to have believed that Jago Jones was all he proclaimed, he might have all too human weaknesses, and if he gave in to them, where better to turn than to a prostitute whose company would be so natural in his pastoral labors; no one would question it. He could explain it even to himself. He would be far from the first man of the cloth to find his relationship with a beautiful and intelligent parishioner slipping helplessly beyond the bounds of propriety into a physical hunger which he had not denied. He lived an abstemious life, lonely and full of hardship and self-discipline. It was not difficult to understand. He had been a man of both appetite and indulgence in his Hellfire days. What had changed him, and so completely?

And what had gone so hideously wrong that he had
killed Ada? Had she said or done something unforgivable? Had she laughed at him … mocked him with his own frailty? Was she the instrument by which he had betrayed himself, the serpent and Eve in one? Or had she simply threatened to expose him? Had she asked for money, continuous blackmail money? Rose Burke and Nan Sullivan had both said she was greedy, with an eye to opportunity.

It was possible, and the more Pitt thought about it, the more the idea hurt him. He had liked Jago Jones, admired him, but the possibility could not be ignored. He had liked other men before and found them guilty.

He could not like Augustus FitzJames, and the further he delved into the probability of his having enemies who might hate him enough to have gone to these lengths to ruin him, the less did he find to like.

The further back Pitt went in the search into Augustus’s past, the less easy it became to trace with any clarity. He had apparently inherited no money from his father, a somewhat feckless landowner in Lincolnshire who had mortgaged his holdings to the hilt. Augustus had served a short time in the merchant navy, largely on the Far Eastern routes. He had returned home shortly after the Second Opium War in 1860 with sufficient money to begin investing, an art which he exercised with skill amounting at times to genius.