Resurrection Row (27 page)

But if they were customers for his pornographic pictures, they would be the last people to wish him dead! One did not cut off one’s source of supply, especially of something that one desperately wished to be kept secret and that was presumably, in its own way, addictive.

There was, of course, another possibility: a rival in the market. That was a thought that had not occurred to him before. Jones’s work was good; at least he had a better eye than most practitioners in the field that Pitt had come across, although admittedly his experience was slight. He had not worked in the vice areas by choice, but it fell to the lot of every policeman now and again. And all the photographs he had seen before had been pathetic and obvious in their banality: portrayals of nakedness, and very little more. These of Jones’s had at least some pretensions to art, of a decadent sort. There was a little subtlety in them, a use of light and shade, even a certain wit.

Yes, very possibly some other merchant in the same trade had found himself squeezed out of the market and had rebelled in the only way he knew how; effective—and permanent.

Pitt spent the rest of that day and all the following one questioning his colleagues in all of the stations within three or four miles of either Gadstone Park or Resurrection Row to catch up on whatever was known about current dealers in pornographic pictures. When he finally reached home after seven o’clock and found Charlotte waiting for him a little anxiously, he was beyond giving her an explanation and inside himself blessed her for not asking one. Her silence was the most companionable thing he could think of. He sat all evening in front of the fire without speaking. She was wise enough to occupy herself with knitting, making no sound but the clicking of her needles. He did not wish to relive the squalor he had seen, the twisting of minds and emotions until all affections became mere appetites, and the titillation of those appetites for financial gain. So many sad little people clutching paper women, fornicating in and dominated by fantasies: all flesh and prurient, frightened mind, and no heart at all. And he had learned nothing of use, except that no one knew of a rival with either the need or the imagination to have killed Godolphin Jones and buried him in Albert Wilson’s grave.

In the morning he set out again with nothing left but to return to the shop in Resurrection Row and the photographs. The two constables were there when he arrived. Both of them leaped up, red-faced, as he opened the door.

“Oh! It’s you, Mr. Pitt,” one of them said hastily. “Didn’t know who it might be!”

“Does anyone else have a key?” Pitt asked with a twisted smile, holding up the one he had had cut.

“No, sir, not exceptin’ us, o’ course. But you never know. “ ’E might ’ave ’ad—” He trailed off; the idea of an accomplice was never likely, and the look on Pitt’s face told him it was useless. “Yes, sir.” He sat down again.

“We just about got ’em all sorted,” his companion said proudly. “I reckon as there’s about fifty-three different girls, all told. Lot of ’em ’e used a fair number o’ times. I suppose there aren’t that many women as can do this sort o’ thing.”

“And not for long,” Pitt agreed, his amusement vanishing. “A few years on the streets, a few children, and you can’t strip off in front of the camera any more. Unkind thing, the camera; doesn’t tell any comfortable lies. Do you know any of the girls?”

The constable’s back went rigid and his ears burned red. “Who, me, sir?”

“Professionally.” Pitt coughed. “Your profession, not theirs!”

“Oh.” The other constable ran his fingers round his collar. “Yes, sir, I ’ave seen one or two. Cautioned ’em, like. Told ’em to move on, or go ’ome and be’ave theirselves.”

“Good.” Pitt smiled discreetly. “Put them on one side, with names if you remember them. Then give me the best picture of each, and I’ll start checking.”

“The best one, sir?” The constable’s eyes opened wide, his eyebrows almost to the roots of his hair.

“The clearest face!” Pitt snapped.

“Oh—yes, sir.” They both started sorting rapidly and in a few moments handed Pitt about thirty photographs. “That’s all we’re sure of so far, sir. We should ’ave ’em all by lunchtime.”

“Good. Then you can start round the brothels and rooming houses as well. I’ll begin in Resurrection Row, going north. You can go south. Be back here by six o’clock, and we’ll see what we have.”

“Yes, sir. What are we looking for, sir, really?”

“A jealous lover or husband, or more likely a woman who had a great deal to lose if people found out she posed for this sort of picture.”

“Like a society woman?” The constable was dubious, picking up one of the photographs and squinting at it.

“I doubt it,” Pitt agreed. “Possibly middle-class, after something a little daring to do, more likely respectable working-class hard up, or a servant with aspirations.”

“Right, sir. We’ll get this lot sorted and be on our way.”

Pitt left them to it and went out into the Row to begin. The first rooming house got rid of three on his list. They were handsome, professional prostitutes who had been glad of the extra money and rather amused by the whole thing. He was about to leave when, on a sudden chance, he decided to show them the rest of the pictures.

“Oh, now, love.” A big blond one shook her head at him. “You wouldn’t expect me to go around naming other people, would you? What I do meself is one thing, but talkin’ about other girls is something else.”

“I’m going to find them, anyway,” he pointed out.

She grinned. “Then good luck to you, love. You ’ave fun lookin’.”

He did not want to say anything about murder. He had not said anything about it to the landlady, either. It was a crime for hanging, and everyone knew it. The shadow of the gallows closed even the most garrulous moths. If they did not know, so much the better.

“I’m only looking for one girl,” he said reasonably. “Just have to eliminate all the rest.”

She narrowed bright blue painted eyes at him. “Why? What’s she done? Somebody made a complaint?”

“No.” He was perfectly honest, and he hoped it showed. “Not at all. As far as I know, all your customers are perfectly satisfied.”

She gave him a wide smile. “You got a quid to spare then, love?”

“No.” He smiled back good-naturedly. “I want to know how many of the rest of these are regular working girls who don’t have any objection to anyone knowing what they do.”

She was quick. “A touch o’ the black, is it?”

“That’s right.” He was startled by her perception. He must not underrate her again. “Blackmail. Don’t like blackmailers.”

She screwed up her face. “Give us them again, then.”

He passed one over hopefully, then another.

She looked at it, then reached for the next.

“Cor!” She let out her breath. “Bit much of ’er, ain’t there? Don’t ’ardly need a bustle, do she? Backside like the Battersea gasworks!”

“Who is she?” He tried to keep a straight face.

“Dunno. Gimme the next one. Ah, that’s Gertie Tiller. She’d a done that for a laugh. Nobody’ll black ’er for it. Tell ’em where to go, she would.” She handed it back, and Pitt put it in his left pocket with the others he had dismissed. “And that’s Elsie Biddock. Looks better without ’er clothes on than she does with ’em! That’s Ena Jessel. Although that’s never all ’er ’air. Must be a wig. She looks damn silly in all them feathers.”

“Could you put the black on her?” Pitt inquired.

“Never! Proud of it, like as not. Never seen ’er, reckon she’s an amateur. You could try ’er. Amateurs is scared rotten, some of ’em. Poor bleeders just tryin’ to get a bit on the side to make ends meet, pay the rent an’ feed theirselves.”

Pitt put it back in his right pocket.

“And ’er, don’t know ’er neither.”

Another for the right pocket.

“She’s a looney, daft as a brush, she is. Couldn’t black ’er; she ’asn’t the sense to be scared of anything! Goes with all sorts. And ’er, two for a pair, they are.”

“Thank you.” Two more disposed of.

She took the rest, one by one. “You’re goin’ to be busy, aren’t you, love? Sorry. Know a few o’ their faces but can’t remember where, and don’t know their names or anythin’ about them. That all?”

“That’s a great help. Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome. Could you put in a good word for me with the local rozzers?”

Pitt smiled. “Least said the better,” he replied. “I dare say if you don’t bother them, they’ll be happy enough to pretend they don’t see you either.”

“Live and let live,” she agreed. “Ta, love. Find your own way out?”

“I’ll manage.” He gave her a little salute with his hand and went back out into the street.

The next three places enabled him to write off a dozen more. This list was going down rapidly. So far there was no one who would be likely to be greatly concerned by any part of the affair, least of all their own involvement in it.

By the end of the day, the three of them had identified and dismissed all but half a dozen of the faces.

The following day was harder, as Pitt had known it would be. They had identified the professionals; now they were looking for the women driven to the streets by poverty and fear, those who would be ashamed. It was among these he expected to find the tragedy that had stretched and swelled until the burden was unbearable and had ended in murder.

He had talked to the constables, probably far too long, investing too much of his own feelings of anger and pity in his words. If they did not feel it themselves already, then they were not capable of understanding what his words could only frame. He had been aware of it at the time he was speaking, and yet he had still gone on.

By half-past ten he had found two women who had worked all day in a sweatshop sewing shirts with children pinned to their chairs and walked the streets at night to pay the rent. The sweatshop master looked sideways at him, but he snapped viciously back that all he wanted was to find the witness to an accident, and if he were not prepared to help the police the best he could, Pitt would see to it personally that the shop was turned over at least twice a week to look for stolen goods.

The man asked tartly how, if she was only a witness to an accident, Pitt came to have her photograph.

Pitt could not think of an answer to that, so he glared at the man and told him that it was a secret of police procedure and that unless he wanted a much closer relationship with the police than he already had, he would mind his own business.

That produced the desired silence on the subject and a grudging admission that at least two of the women worked for him and Pitt could speak to them if he must, but to be quick about it because time wasted was money lost, and the women needed all they earned. Policemen might get paid to stand around and talk, but they did not.

The afternoon was much the same: finding one frightened woman after another, ashamed of what she was doing, afraid of being exposed, and yet unable to manage on what sweatshop masters paid and terrified of the workhouse. At all costs they wanted to keep their children out of the institutionalized, regimented despair of the workhouses. They feared losing their children to fostering out, perhaps never to see them again, or even to know if they had survived to adulthood. What was taking off one’s clothes for an hour or two to titillate some anonymous man one would never see again, in exchange for enough money to live for a month?

By the time he came back to the police station at nine o’clock, rain soaking his trousers and boots and running down the back of his neck, he had found only two exceptions. One was an ambitious and rebellious little maid who had dreams of becoming rich and starting her own hat shop. The other was completely different, a very practiced woman of nearer thirty, handsome, cynical, and obviously doing very well at the better end of the professional market. She admitted quite freely to posing for the pictures and defied Pitt to make a crime of it. If certain gentlemen liked pictures, that was their
affaire.
They could well afford it, and if Pitt were foolish enough to pursue the matter and make a nuisance of himself, he would very likely find his fingers burned by some gentlemen of considerable means, not to mention social standing.

She had rooms at a comfortable address; she made no trouble, paid her rent, and if she had gentlemen callers, what of it? She would admit to no husband, lover, or protector, still less to anything resembling a pimp or a procurer, and the confidence with which she said it made it impossible for Pitt seriously to doubt her.

He walked into his own office weary and disappointed. The best hope seemed the ambitious little maid, and she admitted to the existence of no man who might have cared, except perhaps her employer. Certainly she would be anxious, even desperate not to lose her position and the roof over her head.

The constables were waiting for him.

“Well?” Pitt sat down heavily and took his boots off. His socks were wet enough to wring out. He must have trodden in a puddle, or several.

“Not much,” one of them replied grimly. “Only what you’d expect, poor devils. Can’t see any of them murderin’ anyone, least of all the only bloke what paid ’em a decent bit o’ money. Reckon ’e was like Christmas to them.”

The other one sat up a little straighter. “Mostly the same, but I turned up a couple o’ really experienced bits, addresses what I wouldn’t mind even visitin’, let alone livin’ in. Reckon any feller what goes to them for ’is fun must ’ave money to burn.”

Pitt stared at him, one wet sock in his hand, the dry ones in the drawer forgotten. “What addresses?” he demanded.

The constable recited them. One was the same as that of the women Pitt had found; the other was different, but in the same area. Three prostitutes in business for themselves, and a coincidence? Or at least one very discreet bawdy house?

Up to that point Pitt had had every intention of going straight home. In half his mind he was already there, feet dry, hot soup in his hand, Charlotte smiling at him.

The constables saw the change in his face and resigned themselves. They were constables and he was an inspector; there was nothing else they could do. Brothels did their trade largely at night.