Cater Street Hangman (21 page)

Charlotte put out her hand instinctively.

“I know. Let us not think of it. We cannot alter it now. I’ll find you the recipe for the fricandeau.” She pulled her hand away quickly and stood up. Martha followed her and Charlotte moved round the other side of the table. She wanted the interview to end. It was embarrassing. She had handled it badly. She was deeply sorry for Martha, both particularly because of her distress for the dead girls, and generally because of her life with the vicar, a fate which right now seemed quite as bad as anything Pitt had spoken of.

“Here,” she held out a slip of paper. “I have already copied the fricandeau. I can easily do another one. Please? And I insist that Maddock walk home with you.”

“It’s not necessary.” Martha took the recipe without looking at it. “I assure you!”

“I refuse to permit you to leave my house alone,” Charlotte said firmly. She reached for the bell rope. “I should be guilty all evening. I should worry myself sick!”

And so Martha had no choice but to accept, and ten minutes later she took her departure with Maddock trailing dutifully behind.

Charlotte was not permitted to have a peaceful evening in which to sort out her chaotic feelings. Emily arrived home from visiting with the bombshell that she had invited Lord George Ashworth to dinner, and would be expecting him a little after seven o’clock.

Emily’s news drove the entire household into immediate panic. Only Grandmama seemed to derive any unalloyed pleasure from it. She was delighted to observe the frenzy, and gave a running monologue on the proper way to order a house in such a fashion that even an unexpected visit from royalty itself could be managed with dignity and at least an adequate table. Emily was too excited and Caroline too worried—and Charlotte too overwhelmed by her own problems to reply to her. It was eventually Sarah who told her sharply to hold her tongue, and thus sent Grandmama into a paroxysm of righteous rage so severe she had to go upstairs and lie down.

“Well done,” Charlotte said laconically. Sarah gave her the first real smile she had offered in weeks.

Everything was calm, at least on the surface, a full five minutes before George Ashworth arrived. They were all sitting in the withdrawing room, Emily dressed in rose pink which suited her very well, even if the extravagance of another new gown had not suited Papa. Sarah was dressed in green, also very becoming, and Charlotte in dull slate blue, a colour she had disliked until she caught sight of herself in the glass and saw how it flattered her eyes and the warm tones of her skin and hair.

She blushed uncomfortably when Ashworth bowed over her hand and his eyes lingered on her with approval. She disliked him, and thought him to be trifling with Emily. She replied to him formally with no more warmth than courtesy demanded.

Throughout the evening, however, she was obliged to revise her opinion to some extent. He behaved without appreciable fault; in fact, if he had not been in danger of hurting Emily, both publicly and privately, she could have quite sincerely liked him. He had wit and a certain outspokenness, although, no doubt, in his social position he could afford to say what he chose without fearing the consequences. He even flattered Grandmama, which was not difficult since she loved a handsome man, and loved a title even more.

Charlotte looked across and saw Emily’s face pucker in a little smile. Apparently she knew perfectly well what he was doing, and it suited her. Once again Charlotte’s anger rose. Damn the man for hurting Emily. She was a child in the ways of the world, compared to him!

The next time Charlotte spoke to him it was with a considerable chill in her voice. She saw Dominic staring at her in bewilderment, but she was too angry to care. And then all her old confusion about Dominic returned. She had loved him so much, and now all she could feel was a heart-sickening urge to protect him from—from what? From Pitt, the police—or himself?

It seemed as if the evening stretched forever. It was only eleven however, when George Ashworth took his leave and Charlotte excused herself and gratefully escaped to bed. She had expected to lie awake in a fever of thought all night, but she was hardly aware of lying down before the sleep of exhaustion overtook her.

The following day something infinitely worse awaited her. It was no more than ten o’clock in the morning when Maddock came to say that Inspector Pitt was in the hall and wished to see her.

“Me?” She tried to fend it off, hoping he would see someone else, perhaps that he had even come to see Papa, and was here now only to ensure that Papa would be in that evening.

“Yes, ma’am,” Maddock said firmly. “He especially asked for you.”

“Make sure it isn’t really the master he wants to see, this evening, will you, Maddock?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Maddock turned to leave, and as he was at the door, Pitt himself opened it and came in.

“Inspector Pitt!” Charlotte said sharply, intending to embarrass him into withdrawing. He was the last person in the world she wanted to see. Dominic’s tie loomed so large in her mind, it seemed as if Pitt would only have to speak to Millie, go into any part of the kitchen or laundry, and it would stare him in the face with all its appalling implications. She was even more afraid of what she herself might say. The sheer concentration on not mentioning it, the fear, kept it in the forefront of her mind.

“Good morning, Miss Ellison.” He watched Maddock disappear into the hall and closed the door behind him. “Charlotte, I came to tell you about George Ashworth.”

Relief flooded through her. It was nothing to do with Dominic.

“You know?” he said with surprise. What an extraordinary face he had; his feelings were so easily reflected, almost magnified in it.

She was confused.

“No? What about him? Did you discover something?” Again she was afraid, thinking of Emily. Was it Ashworth after all? That would at least mean he would not be able to hurt Emily any more, humiliate her by leaving her for someone else. The thought was touched with deep regret, which was ridiculous. It was only a very small part of her that had liked him.

Pitt was watching her. “You like him,” he observed with a smile. His eyes were gentle.

“I dislike him intensely,” she said with considerable sharpness.

“Why? Because you are afraid for Emily? Afraid he would kill her, or afraid he will eventually get bored with her and move on to someone else, perhaps someone with money, or a title?”

She resented his accuracy, his intrusion. Emily’s humiliation and hurt were none of his business.

“Afraid he might kill her, of course! What is it you came to tell me, Mr. Pitt?”

He ignored her terseness, still smiling. “That he probably did not even know the Hiltons’ maid, and he certainly did not kill Lily Mitchell. His actions are very fully accounted for all that day and night.”

She was pleased, very pleased, which made no sense. It meant Ashworth would remain free to humiliate Emily, and she cared very much that that should not happen.

“So you have eliminated one more person,” she said, looking for words, anything to say to him to banish the silence and avoid his eyes watching her, smiling, seeing every expression, every thought in her face.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Not a very satisfactory method of detection.”

“Is that all you can do?” She meant it as a genuine question, not a criticism.

He smiled a little wryly, a self-deprecating gesture. “Not quite. I’m trying to build up in my mind a picture of the kind of person we’re looking for, of the sort of man driven to do such things.”

Involuntarily she voiced the same thought that had so horrified Dominic. “Do you think perhaps he’s a man—who—doesn’t know
himself
what he’s done, doesn’t know why, doesn’t even remember afterwards? Then he would be just as ignorant and as afraid as the rest of us?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

It was no comfort. She wished he had said no. It brought the person, the hangman, closer; it removed the gulf between them. He could be any one of them. Only God could know how he would feel when he discovered himself!

“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he said quietly. “It frightens me, too. He must be found, but I am not looking forward to doing it.”

She could think of nothing to say. Her mind’s eye could see only Dominic’s black tie, big enough to strangle the world. She wished Pitt would go away, before the very dominance of it in her mind made her tongue slip.

“I saw your brother-in-law the other day,” he went on.

She felt herself tighten. Fortunately she had her back to him and he could not see the spasm in her throat, the terror. She tried to speak, to sound casual, but nothing came. Was that what he had really come for, because he knew or guessed already?

“In a coffeeshop,” he continued.

“Indeed?” she managed to speak at last.

He did not reply. She knew he was looking at her. She could not bear the silence. “I cannot imagine you had a great deal to discuss.”

“The hangman, of course, but not much else, except a few other crimes. He seemed to feel this was the most important.”

“Isn’t it?” She turned back to look at him, to judge from his face what he meant.

“Yes, of course it is, but there are many others. My sergeant lost his arm a week ago.”

“Lost his arm!” she was horrified. “How? What happened?” She remembered the little man vividly. How could he have had such an appalling accident?

“Gangrene,” he said simply, but she saw the anger in his eyes. For a moment she actually forgot about Dominic. “He got an iron spike through it,” he went on, “when we went into the rookeries after a forger.” He told her what had happened.

“That’s horrible,” she said fiercely. “Does that sort of thing happen to—to many of you?”

She saw the flicker of hope in his face, then self-mockery as he derided his own feelings. Emily was at least partially right. He did care what she thought of him.

“No, not many,” he answered. “It’s as often tragic, pitiful, or even funny, as it is violent. Most people would prefer to serve their sentences and stay alive. The punishments for violence are too savage to be taken lightly. Murder is a hanging offence.”

“Funny?” she said incredulously.

He sat sideways on the arm of one of the chairs. “How do you suppose people stay alive, in the rookeries, without a sense of humour? Without a rather bitter notion of the ludicrous, without wit, one could drown in it. You wouldn’t understand the costermonger, the prostitutes, the dolly-shop owners, but if you did, you’d find them funny sometimes: savage, giving no quarter and expecting none, inventive, greedy, but often funny as well. That’s the sort of world they live in. The weak and the disloyal die.”

“What about the sick, the orphaned, the old?” she demanded. “How can you regard that with humour!”

“They die, just as they often do even at your end of society,” he replied. “Their deaths are different, that’s all. But what happens to a divorced woman in your world, or one who has an illegitimate child, or a woman whose husband dies or can’t meet the bills? He’s politely driven to ruin, and often suicide. As far as you’re concerned, he or she is ruined from the day of their disgrace. You no longer see them in the street. You no longer call on them in the afternoons. There is no possibility of work, of marriage for the daughters, no credit with tradesmen. It’s a different kind of death, but we usually see the end of it, all the same.”

There was nothing to say to him. She would like to have hated him, to have denied it all, or justified it, but she knew inside her it was true. Little bits of memory returned, people whose names were not to be mentioned anymore, people one suddenly did not see again.

He put his hand out and touched her arm gently. She could feel the warmth of him.

“I’m sorry, Charlotte. I had no right to say that as if it were your fault, as if you were part of it willingly or consciously.”

“That doesn’t alter it though, does it?” she said bleakly.

“No.”

“Tell me about some of the things that are funny. I think I need to know.”

He leaned back, taking his hand away. She felt a coldness from the move. She would have expected to find his touch offensive; it surprised her that she did not.

He smiled a little wryly. “You met Willie at the police station?”

Involuntarily she smiled also. She recalled the thin face, the friendly mixture of interest and contempt for her ignorance.

“Yes; yes, I imagine he could tell a few colourful stories.”

“Hundreds, some of them even true. I remember one he told me about a costermonger family, and a long and picturesque revenge against a shofulman—”

“A what?”

“A passer of forged money. And Belle—I was going to say you would like Belle, but she’s a prostitute—”

“I might still be capable of liking her,” Charlotte replied, then wondered if she had committed herself too rashly. “Perhaps. . . . ”

His face softened in amusement. “Belle came from Bournemouth. Her parents were respectable but extremely poor, in service in a middle-class house. Belle was seduced—I understand with more force than charm—by the son of the house, and as a result turned out. She was henceforth marked as soiled. Naturally it was never considered that he should marry her. She came to London and discovered she was pregnant. To begin with she worked as a seamstress, sewing shirts—collars and wristbands stitched, six buttonholes, four rows of stitching down the front, for two and a half pence each. Do you sew, Charlotte? Do you know how long it takes to make a shirt? Do you do household accounts? Do you know what two and a half pence will buy?

“She tried the workhouse, but was turned away because she did not have an official admittance order. At that point she was propositioned by a gentleman not old enough to be rich enough to make an advantageous marriage, but with plenty of natural appetite. It earned her enough to feed her child and buy him a blanket to sleep in.

“And it opened a whole new world to her. She wrote to her parents every week; she still does, and sends them money. They think she earns it dressmaking. And what good would it serve to let them discover otherwise? They don’t know what dressmakers earn in London.