For a moment Pitt felt unclouded pity for her, but he knew the gulf between them was too wide to bridge. His understanding would not ease her pain at all; on the contrary, to her it would be presumptuous.
He stood up. “Thank you, ma’am, for your help. I hope I shall not have to disturb you again. I am sure Mr. Mullen can see to everything else I need to know.”
“Good day, Mr. Pitt.” She regarded him bleakly until he had reached the door. She then lifted the pot and poured herself another cup of tea, dabbing her napkin first to her mouth, then up to catch the tears running down her cheeks.
Pitt went out and closed the door with a faint click.
Mullen was waiting for him in the hallway. “Is there anything else, sir?”
Pitt sighed. “Yes, please. I would like you to show me the household accounts, and your cellar. I presume you have approved all the staff before they were hired, and checked their references?”
Mullen stiffened and his expression became chilly. “Most certainly I have. May I ask what you expect to find, Mr. Pitt? They are entirely in order, I assure you. And the staff are all above question in honesty and morals or they would not remain here! And as for any one of them being out at night, that is impossible.”
Pitt was sorry to have offended him. Actually, he had no suspicions of any of the servants. What he was looking for was evidence of Pinchin’s standard of living, to judge his expenditures. Normally a man of his class would not go to the Acre, even for cheap entertainment. Was he a good deal less well-off than he appeared, or more well-off than his medical practice would account for? Was he spending money in brothels or gambling houses? Or was he earning it? He would not be the first outwardly respectable man to have a source of income in slum property.
“It is merely routine, Mr. Mullen,” he said with a smile. “Just as you check references, even though you believe them.”
Mullen relaxed a little. He respected professional thoroughness. “Quite so, Mr. Pitt. I am familiar with police procedure. If you will come this way …”
After his visit to the Pinchin household, Pitt spent the afternoon checking the Highgate medical practice and talking with shocked and extremely reticent colleagues. By the time he got home, at five past seven, he was tired, cold, and only a little wiser. If Pinchin owned property in the Devil’s Acre, he had hidden all record of it-or any other business transactions outside those of his Highgate practice. His standard of living, however, did suggest he was enjoying an income rather larger than his medical abilities would account for. Inherited money? Savings? Gifts? Even a little juggling of the books? Or perhaps blackmail of patients with indiscretions that required medical help: social diseases, an unwanted child-the possibilities were legion.
Gracie met Pitt at the door and took his coat through to the scullery to dry out. “’Orrible wet night, sir,” she said, shaking the big coat like a blanket and nearly overbalancing with it. She scurried ahead of him, muttering to herself about the hours he was obliged to keep in all weathers. Not once did she meet his eyes. She was sorry for him, for some reason, and her rigid little back was full of disapproval.
It did not take him long to put two and two together when Charlotte was also sweetly attentive, and full of conversation. “Have you been out?” he asked Charlotte.
“Only for a short while,” she said quite casually. “I was home before it began to rain. It was really not unpleasant.”
“And no doubt you came back in the carriage,” he added.
She looked up quickly, a faint color in her cheeks. “Carriage?”
“Didn’t you go to see Emily?”
There was reluctant admiration in her face. “How did you know?”
“Grade’s back.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Grade’s back. It is rigid with disapproval. Since I have only just come home, it cannot be anything I have done. It must be you. I imagine it was a visit to Emily to recount to her everything you know about the murders in the Devil’s Acre-especially since one of them concerns the footman of a previous acquaintance. Now tell me, am I mistaken?”
“I-”
He waited.
“Of course we discussed it!” Her eyes were bright, the blood warm in her cheeks. “But that is all-I swear! Anyway, what more could we do? We can hardly go to such a place. But we did wonder what on earth Dr. Pinchin was doing there. There are much better places for picking up loose women, if that is what he wanted, you know?”
“Yes, I do know, thank you.”
Her eyes met his in a flash, then slid away into a professed candor again. “Have you thought that perhaps he put up the money for Max, Thomas? You know, some unlikely-seeming people go into partnership with-”
“Yes, thank you,” he replied with a smile bubbling up inside him. “I thought of that, too.”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed.
He took her hand and pulled her toward him. “Charlotte,” he said gently.
“What?”
“Mind your own business!”
3
The following day, Pitt pursued the investigation in the next most obvious course. He took his oldest coat and a rather battered hat that normally not even he would have worn and set out in a drizzling rain for the Devil’s Acre, to find Max’s establishments-or at least one of them.
It was an area like many of the older slums of London, a curious mixture of societies that lived quite literally on top of each other. In the highest, handsomest houses with frontages on lighted thoroughfares lived successful merchants and men of private means. Below them, in smaller houses on lesser streets, were lodging-rooms for clerks and tradesmen. Beneath even these, squat and grimy, were the sagging tenements and cellars of the very poor, sometimes packed so full of humanity that two or three families shared one room. The stench of refuse and bodily waste was choking. Rats teemed everywhere, so that an untended baby might well be eaten alive. And more children died of starvation or disease than ever reached an age of six or seven years, when they might profitably join one of the schools for pickpockets and apprentice thieves.
Among this warren of alleys and passageways were the sweatshops, the rooms where broken-down lawyers or clerks drafted false affidavits, account books, and receipts, where forgers practiced their art, and where receivers of stolen goods made bargains. And of course there were the gin mills, doss houses and brothels, and the police snouts.
Over it all loomed the shadow of the great towers of Westminster Abbey, coronation cathedral of kings, the tomb of Edward the Confessor before Norman William ever sailed from France to defeat the Saxon king and take England for himself. And beyond the Abbey was Big Ben, the Palace of Westminster, the Mother of Parliaments since the days of Simon de Montfort six hundred years ago.
There was no point in Pitt’s hoping to receive answers to questions posed in this teeming rats’ nest. The police were the natural enemy, and the swarming population knew an outsider as a dog knows one, by senses far subtler than mere sight. In the past he had made a few arrests here, but had also let a few slip by. He had friends-or, if not friends, at least those who knew what could be to their advantage.
Pitt followed gray alleys past youths idle and sullen, watching him with mean eyes. He hunched his shoulders, aping the furtive gait of the long-abused, but he did not look behind him. They would smell fear and be on him like a hunting pack. He walked as if he knew where he was going, as if the narrow passages-sometimes only wide enough to allow two men to pass each other sidewise-were as familiar to him as his home.
Beams creaked, wood rotted and settled. A dozen rats scattered as he approached, their feet scrabbling on the wet stones. Old men lay in doorways, perhaps in drunken stupor, or maybe they were dead.
It took Pitt half an hour before he found the man he was looking for, in a dilapidated attic where he did his work. Squeaker Harris, so named for his sharp, high-pitched voice. He was a little man with narrow eyes and a pointed nose-not unlike a rat himself, Pitt thought. All he lacked was the long, hairless tail. He was a scrivener, a forger of letters of recommendation, of papers of attorney.