Pentecost Alley (6 page)

It was no more than ten minutes before the butler returned, still smiling.

“Mr. FitzJames regrets he is extremely busy this morning, sir, but if the matter is as pressing as you say, perhaps you would care to join him in the dining room?”

It was not at all what Pitt wanted, but he had little alternative. Perhaps when he realized the nature of the enquiry, FitzJames would elect to discuss the matter alone.

“Thank you,” Pitt accepted reluctantly.

The dining room was splendid, obviously designed to accommodate at least twenty people with ease. The velvet curtains framed three deep windows, all looking out on to a small, very formal garden. Pitt glimpsed topiary hedges and box trees, and a walkway paved in an exact pattern. The table was laid with silver, porcelain and crisp, white linen. On the sideboard were dishes of kedgeree; another of bacon, sausage and kidney; and a variety of eggs, any one of which would have fed half a dozen people. The aroma of them filled Pitt’s nostrils, but his mind was forced back to Pentecost Alley, and he
wondered if Ada McKinley had ever seen as much food as this at one time in her life.

He must remember FitzJames was not necessarily guilty.

There were four people at the table, and they commanded his attention. At the head sat a man of perhaps sixty years, narrow-headed with powerful features. It was the face of a self-made man, owing no obligation to the past and possibly little to the future. It was a face of courage and intolerance. He regarded Pitt with challenge for having interrupted the domestic peace of his breakfast.

At his side was a handsome woman, also of about sixty. Her features were marked by patience and a degree of inner control. She understood myriad rules and was used to obeying them. She might have assumed Pitt was a banker or dealer in some commodity. She inclined her head courteously, but there was no interest whatever in her wide-set eyes.

Her son resembled her physically. He had the same broad brow, wide mouth and squared jaw. He was about thirty, and already there was the beginning of extra weight about him, a fading of the leanness of youth. This must be Finlay, and his magnificent fair, wavy hair fitted exactly the description both Rose and Nan had given.

The last member of the party was quite different. The daughter must have inherited her looks from some ancestor further back. She had nothing of her mother in her, and little of her father except a rather long nose, but on her it was slender, giving her face just enough eccentricity to stop it from being ordinarily pretty. She had an air of daring and vitality. She regarded Pitt with acute interest, although that might be simply because he had interrupted the usual monotony of breakfast.

“Good morning, Mr. Pitt,” the senior FitzJames said coolly, looking at Pitt’s card, which the butler had offered him. “What is it that is so urgent you need to address it at this hour?”

“It is Mr. Finlay FitzJames I wish to see, sir,” Pitt replied, still standing, since he had not been invited to sit.

“You may address him through me,” the father replied without reference to Finlay. Possibly he had consulted him before Pitt was admitted.

Pitt controlled an impulse to anger. He could not yet afford to offend the man. This was just conceivably some form of error, although he doubted it. And if it should prove as he feared, and Finlay was guilty, it must be handled so that there would be not the slightest ground for complaint. He had no illusion that FitzJames would not fight to the bitter end to protect his only son, and his family name, and therein also himself.

Pitt began very carefully. He understood only too well why Ewart clung to the hope that some other evidence would be turned up to indicate any other answer.

“Are you acquainted with a group calling themselves the Hellfire Club?” he asked politely.

“Why do you wish to know, Mr. Pitt?” FitzJames’s eyebrows rose. “I think you had better explain yourself. Why should we give you any information about our business? This … card … offers your name and no more. Yet you say your business is urgent and unpleasant. Who are you?”

“Has there been an accident?” Mrs. FitzJames asked with concern. “Someone we know?”

FitzJames silenced her with a glare and she looked away, as though to tell Pitt she did not expect to be answered.

“I am a superintendent in the Metropolitan Police Force,” Pitt replied. “Presently in charge of the Bow Street Station.”

“Oh my goodness!” Mrs. FitzJames was startled and uncertain what she should say. She had obviously never been faced with such a situation before. She wanted to speak, and was afraid to. She looked at Pitt without seeming to see him.

Finlay was also quite openly amazed.

“I used to be a member of a club which used that name,” he said slowly, his brow furrowed. “But that was years ago. There were only four of us, and we disbanded about, oh, ’eighty-four, somewhere about then.”

“I see.” Pitt kept his voice level. “Will you give me the names of these other members please, sir?”

“Have they done something awful?” Miss FitzJames asked, her eyes bright with curiosity. “Why do you want to know, Mr.—Pitt, is it? It must be very terrible to have sent the head of a police station. I think I’ve only ever seen constables before.”

“Be quiet, Tallulah,” FitzJames said grimly. “Or you will excuse yourself and leave the room.”

She drew breath to plead, then saw his expression and changed her mind, her mouth pulled tight, her eyes down.

FitzJames dabbed his lips and laid down his napkin. “I don’t know why on earth you should concern me with such a matter at home, Mr. Pitt, and at this hour of the morning. A letter would have sufficed.” He made as if to stand from the table.

Pitt said with equal sharpness, “The matter is a great deal more severe than you think. I thought it would be more discreet here. But I can deal with it at Bow Street if you prefer. It may possibly be explained without that necessity, although if that is what you wish, of course I shall oblige you.”

The blood darkened FitzJames’s narrow cheeks, and he rose to his feet, as if he could no longer tolerate Pitt’s standing where he was obliged to look up at him. He was a tall man, and now they were almost eye to eye.

“Are you arresting me, sir?” he said through a tight jaw.

“It was not my intention, Mr. FitzJames,” Pitt replied. He would not be intimidated by the man. Once such a pattern was set it would be impossible to break. He was in charge of Bow Street and he owed this man nothing but courtesy and the truth. “But if that is the way you care to view it, then you may take it so.”

FitzJames drew in his breath sharply, was about to retaliate, then realized the matter must be far more serious than he had originally supposed or Pitt could not have had the audacity to speak so.

“I think you had better explain yourself.” He turned to his son. “Finlay! We shall retire to my study. We do not need to trouble your mother and sister with this.”

Mrs. FitzJames shot a pleading look at him, but she had been dismissed, and she knew better than to argue. Tallulah bit her lip in frustration, but she also kept her peace.

Finlay excused himself, then rose and followed his father and Pitt from the dining room, across the picture-hung hall and into a large book-lined study. There oxblood-red leather chairs surrounded a fireplace with a club fender in brass, leather bound also. It was a comfortable place for four or five people to sit, facing each other, and read or talk. There was a silver tantalus on a side table, and half a dozen books out of the glass-fronted cases.

“Well?” FitzJames said as soon as the door was closed. “Why are you here, Mr. Pitt? I assume there has been an offense or a complaint. My son was not involved in it, but if he knows anything that may be of assistance to you, then naturally he will inform you of such details as you require.”

Pitt looked at Finlay and could not tell whether he resented his father’s assumption of control or was grateful for it. His bland, handsome face revealed no deep emotion at all. Certainly he did not seem afraid.

There was no purpose in prevarication any longer. FitzJames had robbed him of any subtlety of approach and the surprise it might have given him. He decided to attack instead.

“There has been a murder—the East End,” he replied calmly, looking at Finlay. “A Hellfire Club badge was found on the site.”

He had expected fear, the flicker of the eyes when the
blow falls, however expected, the sudden involuntary pallor of the skin. He saw none of it. Finlay was emotionally unmoved.

“Could have dropped at any time,” FitzJames said, dismissing the news of murder. He indicated a chair for Pitt to sit in, then himself sat directly opposite. Finlay took a third chair, between them, to Pitt’s left. “I assume you consider it necessary to speak to all those who are, or have been, members,” FitzJames continued coldly. “I dispute the necessity. Do you imagine one of them may have witnessed it?” His flat eyebrows rose slightly. “Surely if that were so they would already have reported the matter to some police station or other?”

“People do not always report what they see, Mr. FitzJames,” Pitt replied. “For various reasons. Sometimes they do not realize that it is important, other times they are reluctant to admit they were present, either because the place itself embarrasses them or else the company with whom they were there—or simply that they had said they were elsewhere.”

“Of course.” FitzJames relaxed a trifle in his chair, but he still sat forward in it, his elbows on either arm, his fingers over the ends. It was a position of command and control, reminiscent of the great statues of the Pharaoh Ramses, drawings and photographs of which were printed in the newspapers. “With what hours are we concerned?”

“Yesterday evening from nine until midnight, or a little later,” Pitt replied.

FitzJames’s face was under tight control, deliberately expressionless. He turned to his son. “We can end this matter very quickly. Where were you yesterday evening, Finlay?”

Finlay looked embarrassed, but resentful rather than afraid, as if he had been caught in an indiscretion, but no more. It was the first thread-thin whisper of doubt in Pitt’s mind as to his involvement.

“Out. I … I went out with Courtney Spender. Went to
a couple of clubs, gambled a bit, not much. Thought of going to a music hall, and changed our minds.” He looked at Pitt ruefully. “Didn’t see any crimes, Inspector. And to be frank, haven’t had anything to do with the other club members in years. I’m sorry to be of no use to you.”

Pitt did not bother to correct him as to his rank. He was almost certain Finlay was lying, not only because of the badge but because he so perfectly answered the description of the man Rose and Nan had both seen. There was a faint flush in his cheeks, and his eyes met Pitt’s, steady and overbright.

FitzJames moved restively, but did not interrupt, and Finlay did not look at him.

“Would you be good enough to give me Mr. Spender’s address, sir?” Pitt asked politely. “Or better still, if he has a telephone, we can clear up the matter instantly.”

Finlay’s mouth fell slack. “I … I … can give you his address. No idea if he has a … if he has a telephone.”

“I daresay your butler would know,” Pitt said quickly. He turned to FitzJames. “May I ask him?”

FitzJames’s face froze.

“Are you saying that my son is telling you less than the truth, Mr. Pitt?”

“I had not thought so,” Pitt said, sitting in a mirror position in his own chair, hands on the arms. Finlay sat upright, on the edge of his seat.

FitzJames drew in his breath sharply, then changed his mind. He reached for the bell.

“I … I think that may have been the day before. Is it yesterday evening we are enquiring about?” Finlay looked confused. His cheeks were red and he clenched his hands, fidgeting and moving uncomfortably.

“Where were you last night, sir?” Pitt could not afford to relent.

“Ah … well … to tell you the truth, Inspector …” He looked away, then back at Pitt again. “I … I drank rather too much, and I can’t remember precisely. Around the
West End. I know that. Weren’t anywhere near the East End. No reason. Not my sort of place, you know?”

“Were you alone?”

“No! No, of course not.”

“Then who was with you, sir?”

Finlay shifted in his seat a little.

“Oh—various people—different times. Good God, I don’t keep a list of everyone I see! Most fellows take a night out occasionally. Do the odd club and hall, you know? No, I don’t suppose you do know.” He was not sure whether he intended it as an insult or not; the uncertainty was clear in his face.

“Perhaps you will let me know if you should be fortunate enough to remember,” Pitt said with controlled politeness.

“Why?” Finlay demanded. “I didn’t see anything.” He laughed a little jerkily. “Wouldn’t make a decent witness in my state, anyway!”

FitzJames finally broke in. “Mr. Pitt, you have come into my home unannounced and at a most inconvenient hour. You said there has been a new murder somewhere in the East End … a large and nonspecific area. You have not told us who is dead nor what it has to do with anyone in this house, beyond the fact that a badge has been found of some club or other of which my son was a member several years ago and is not presently. To the best of our knowledge, it no longer exists. You require some better reason to continue to take of our time.”

“The murder was in Pentecost Alley, in Whitechapel,” Pitt answered. He turned again to Finlay. “When did the Hellfire Club last meet, Mr. FitzJames?”

“For God’s sake, man!” Finlay protested, still no more than irritated. “Years ago! What does it matter? Anyone could have dropped a badge in the street. Or—in a club, for that matter.” He gestured with his hands. “Doesn’t mean a thing! Could have been there for … I don’t know … months … even years!”

“There’s rather a sharp pin on it,” Pitt pointed out. “I
think a prostitute would have noticed it in her bed in quite a short time, say five minutes at the outside. Less, in this particular circumstance, since she was lying on it.”

“Well, where did she say it came from?” FitzJames said angrily. “You aren’t going to take the word of a common whore over that of a gentleman, are you? Any gentleman, let alone my son.”