Resurrection Row

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.

Charlotte had long ago disciplined herself to accept Pitt’s late and erratic hours, but when he was not home by eleven o’clock she could no longer pretend to herself that she was not worried. All sorts of people had accidents, were struck down in the street; policemen especially invited attack by interfering in the affairs of those who made a business of violence. A murdered body could be dumped in the river, dropped down a sewer, or simply left in the rookeries where it might never be found. Who would know one pauper corpse from another?

She had almost convinced herself that something appalling had happened when at midnight she heard the door. She flew down the hallway and flung herself at him. He was thoroughly wet.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “It’s the middle of the night! Are you hurt? What happened to you?”

He heard the rising fear in her voice and swallowed back his instinctive answer. He put both arms around her and held her close, ignoring the fact that he was wetting her dress with the rain still sliding off him.

“Watching a very high-class brothel,” he replied, smiling into her hair. “And you’d be surprised who I saw going in there.”

She pushed him away but still gripped his shoulders. “Why do you care?” she demanded. “What case are you on now?”

“Still Godolphin Jones. Can we go into the kitchen? I’m frozen.”

“Oh!” She looked at herself in disgust. “And you’re soaking!” She turned and led the way smartly back to the kitchen and threw another piece of coal on the stove. One by one she took his wet outer clothes, then his boots and his new socks. Lastly, she made tea with the kettle that had been simmering all evening. Five times she had got up and put more water in it, waiting his return.

“What has Godolphin Jones got to do with brothels?” she asked when she sat down opposite him at last.

“I don’t know, except that most of the women he photographed also work in brothels.”

“You think one of them killed him?” Her face was full of doubt. “Wouldn’t it be pretty hard for a woman to strangle a man, unless she drugged him or hit him first? And why should she, anyway? Didn’t he pay them?”

“He was a blackmailer.” He had not told her about Gwendoline Cantlay or Major Rodney. “Blackmailers often get killed.”

“I’m not surprised. Do you think one of them might have received an offer of marriage, or something of that sort, and wanted her pictures destroyed?”

It was a motive that had not occurred to him. Prostitutes quite often did marry, in their heyday, before their looks were gone and they slowly drifted to lower and lower brothels, earning less and less, and disease began to catch up with them. It was a decided possibility.

“Why were you watching a brothel?” she continued. “What could that tell you?”

“First of all, I wasn’t sure that it was a brothel—”

“But it was?”

“Yes, or, more correctly, a set of apartments used for that purpose; rather more luxurious than a regular brothel, less communal.”

She screwed up her face but said nothing. “I thought I might find a procurer, or a pimp. He could have an excellent motive for getting rid of Godolphin Jones. Maybe Jones was poaching on his women, paying them higher rates and not giving the pimp his cut.”

She looked at him very steadily. The polished pans gleamed on the dresser behind her. One of them was a little askew, and she had missed the handle.

“I think that’s where we’ll find the murderer.” He stretched and stood up, easing his feet now that they were free of their boots. “It’ll have nothing to do with Gadstone Park at all. Or the grave robbers, for that matter, except that he made use of them. Come on up to bed. Tomorrow’ll come too soon as it is.”

In the morning she dished the porridge solemnly, then sat down opposite him instead of getting her own or bothering with Jemima.

“Thomas?”

He poured milk on the porridge and began to eat; there was no time to waste. They had been a little late up anyway.

“What?”

“You said Godolphin Jones was a blackmailer?”

“So he was.”

“Whom did he blackmail, and over what?”

“They didn’t kill him.”

“Who?”

The porridge was too hot, and he was obliged to wait. He wondered if she had done that on purpose.

“Gwendoline Cantlay, over an affaire, and Major Rodney because he was a customer. Why?”

“Could he blackmail a pimp or a procurer? I mean, what would they be afraid of?”

“I don’t know. I should think greed, professional rivalry is far more likely.” He tried the porridge again, a smaller spoonful.

“You said the houses where these women worked were better than ordinary brothels?”

“So they were. Pretty good addresses. What are you getting at, Charlotte?”

She opened her eyes very wide and clear. “Who owns them, Thomas?”

He stopped with the spoon halfway to his mouth.

“Owns them?” he said very slowly, the thought mushrooming in his mind as he stared at her.

“Sometimes the oddest people own property like that,” she went on. “I remember Papa knew someone once who made his money from property leased out as a sweatshop. We never had anything to do with him after we found out.”

Pitt poured milk on the rest of the porridge and ate it in five mouthfuls; pulled on his boots, still damp; grabbed his coat, hat, and scarf; and left the house as if it were a sinking ship. Charlotte did not need an explanation. Her mind was with him, and she understood.

It took him three hours to discover who owned those properties, and six more like them.

Edward St. Jermyn.

Lord St. Jermyn made his money from the rent of brothels and a percentage from each prostitute—and Godolphin Jones knew!

Was that the reason St. Jermyn had bought the picture from him? And then refused to pay him again—and again? That was most certainly a motive for murder.

But could Pitt prove it?

They did not even know what day the murder had been committed. Proving St. Jermyn had been in Resurrection Row would mean little. Jones had been strangled—any fit man, and many women, could have done it. There was no weapon to trace.

Jones was a pornographer and a blackmailer; there could be dozens of people with motives. St. Jermyn would know all these things, and Pitt would never even get as far as a warrant.

What he needed was a closer link, something to tie the two men together more irredeemably than Major Rodney or Gwendoline Cantlay or any of the women in the pictures.

The largest house had a landlady, no doubt the madame who kept the money, took the rents and the percentages and passed them to St. Jermyn, or whoever was his agent.

Pitt was outside in the street now, walking briskly. He knew where he was going and what he intended to do. He hailed a cab and climbed in. He gave the driver the address and slammed the door.

Then he sat back in the seat and planned his attack.

The house was silent in the empty street. A rising wind blew sleet out of a gray sky. A maid came up the areaway steps and then disappeared again. It could have been one of any number of well-to-do residences just before the midday meal.

Pitt dismissed the cab and went up to the front door. He had no warrant, and he did not think he could get one merely on the strength of his beliefs. But he did believe, with something growing toward certainty, that St. Jermyn had killed Godolphin Jones, and the reason had been Jones’s knowledge of the source of his income. It was certainly motive enough, especially if St. Jermyn was seeking to earn a high office for himself in government as a great reformer with his workhouse bill.

Pitt lifted his hand and knocked sharply on the door. He did not like what he was about to do; it was not his usual manner. But without it there was no proof, and he could not let St. Jermyn go, in spite of the bill. Although the thought was in his mind to put off collating the final evidence, if he should find it, until after the bill had been through the House. One murderer, even of St. Jermyn’s order, was not worth all the children in all the workhouses in London.

The door was opened by a smart girl in black with a white lace cap and apron.

“Good morning, sir,” she said with total composure, and it flashed through Pitt’s mind that perhaps the place did business even at midday.

“Good morning,” he replied with a bitter smile. “May I speak to your mistress, the landlady of these apartments?”

“None of them are to lease, sir,” she warned, still standing in the doorway.

“I don’t imagine so,” he agreed. “Nevertheless, I wish to speak to her, if you please. It is a matter of business, with regard to the owner of the property. I think you had better permit me to come in. It is not something to be discussed on the front steps.”

She was a girl of some experience. She knew what the house was used for and perceived the possibilities of what Pitt said. She made way for him immediately.

“Yes, sir. If you come this way, I will see if Mrs. Philp is at home.”

“Thank you.” Pitt followed her into a remarkably comfortable room, discreetly furnished, with a strong fire burning in the grate. He had only a few minutes to wait before Mrs. Philp appeared. She was buxom, growing a little fat now but handsomely dressed; even at this hour her face was rouged and mascaraed as if for a ball. He did not need to be told she was a successful prostitute a little over the hill, promoted now from worker to management. Her clothes were expensive, her jewelry flashy, but Pitt judged it to be real. She looked at him with hard, shrewd eyes.

“I don’t know you,” she said, coming in and shutting the door with a snick.

“You’re lucky.” He was still standing, back to the fire. “I don’t often work vice, especially not this class.”

“A rozzer,” she said instantly. “You can’t prove anything, and you’d be a fool to try. The sort of gentleman that comes here wouldn’t thank you for it.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he agreed. “I’ve no intention of trying to shut you down.”

“I’m not paying you anything.” She gave him a look of contempt. “You go tell anyone you like. See where it’ll get you!”

“I’m not interested in telling anyone either.”

“Then what do you want? You want something! A little custom on the cheap?”

“No, thank you. A little information.”

“If you think I’m going to tell you who comes here, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for. Blackmail, eh? I’ll have you thrown out and beaten so bad your own mother wouldn’t know you.”

“Possibly. But I don’t give a damn who comes here.”

“Then what do you want? You haven’t come here out of curiosity!”

“Godolphin Jones.”

“Who?” But there was a hesitation, only the fraction of a second, a flicker of an eyelid.

“You heard me. Godolphin Jones. I’m sure you’re very competent to handle anything to do with prostitution— you’ve had enough practice to outwit most of us—but how about murder? Do you feel like fighting me over that? That’s what I’m good at, proving murder.”

The painted rouge stood out on her cheeks. Without it she would still have been handsome.

“I don’t know anything about no murder!”

“Godolphin Jones knew about this house and its business because he photographed a few of your girls.”

“So what if he did?”

“Blackmail, Mrs. Philp.”

“He couldn’t blackmail me! What for? Whom would he tell? You? What can you do about it? You’re not going to shut me down. Too many rich and powerful people come here, and you know it.”

“Not blackmail you, Mrs. Philp. You are what you are and don’t pretend to be anything else. But who owns this building, Mrs. Philp?”

Her face went white, but she said nothing.

“Whom do you pay rent to, Mrs. Philp?” he went on. “How much do you take from the girls? Fifty percent? More? And how much do you give him at the end of the week, or the month?”

She swallowed and stared at him. “I dunno! I dunno ’is name!”

“Liar! It’s St. Jermyn, and you know it as well as I do. You wouldn’t pay a landlord you didn’t know; you’re too fly by half to do that. You’ll have an agreement all detailed out, even if it isn’t written.”

She swallowed again. “So?” she demanded. “What if it is? What about? You can’t do nothing!”

“Blackmail, Mrs. Philp.”

“You goin’ to blackmail ’im? St. Jermyn? You’re a fool, a crazy man!”

“Why? Because I’d wind up dead? Like Godolphin Jones?”

Her eyes widened, and for a moment he thought she might faint. There was a funny dry rattle in her throat, a gasping.

“Did you kill Jones, Mrs. Philp? You look strong enough. He was strangled, you know.” He looked at her broad, well-padded shoulders and her fat arms.

“Mother of God—so I did not!”

“I wonder.”

“I swear! I never went near the little sod, except to give him the money. Why would I kill him? I keep a house, it’s my business, but I swear to God I never killed anyone!”

“What money, Mrs. Philp? Money from St. Jermyn to keep him quiet?”

A look of cunning came into her face, then vanished again in uncertainty. “No, I didn’t say that. Far as I know, it was money for a whole lot o’ pictures Jones was going to paint, all of St. Jermyn’s children and himself. ’Alf a dozen or more. Jones wanted the money in advance, and this was the best place to get the ready cash. It was several weeks’ earnings. St. Jermyn couldn’t get all of that much out of ’is regular bank.”

“No,” Pitt agreed. “I’ll bet he couldn’t, nor would he want to. But you see, we never found it on Jones’s body or in his shop in Resurrection Row or in his house, nor was it paid into his bank.”

“What do you mean? He spent it?”

“I doubt it. How much was it?—and you’d better be right. One lie, and I’ll arrest you as an accessory to murder. You know what that means—the rope.”

“Five thousand pounds!” she said instantly. “Five thousand, I swear, and that’s God’s truth!”

“When? Exactly?”

“Twelfth of January, midday. ’E was here. Then ’e went straight to Resurrection Row.”

“And was murdered by St. Jermyn, who took back the five thousand pounds. I think if I check with his bank, which will be easy to do now with your information, I shall find that five thousand pounds, or something near it, was deposited again, which will prove beyond any reasonable man’s doubt that his lordship murdered Godolphin Jones, and why. Thank you, Mrs. Philp. And unless you want to dance at the end of a rope with him, you’ll be prepared to come into court and tell the same story on oath.”

“If I do, what will you charge me with?”

“Not murder, Mrs. Philp; and if you’re lucky not even keeping a bawdy house. Queen’s evidence, and you might find us prepared to turn a blind eye.”

“You promise?”

“No, I don’t promise. I can’t. But I can promise no charge of murder. As far as I know, there’s nothing at all to prove you ever knew anything about it. I don’t so far intend to look.”

“I didn’t! As God is my judge.”

“I’ll leave that to God, as you suggest. Good day, Mrs. Philp.” And he turned and went out, allowing the maid to open the door for him into the street. The light snow had stopped, but there was a watery, blue-white sunshine.

The next thing he did was return to Gadstone Park, not to St. Jermyn’s house but to Aunt Vespasia’s. He needed only one final piece of evidence, a statement from St. Jermyn’s bank, if the money was there, or alternatively a warrant to search his house, although it was highly unlikely he would keep that amount of cash in a household safe. It was more than most men earned in a decade, more than a good servant would earn in a lifetime.

Also, there would be a withdrawal of capital from the bank before the payment, or the sale of some property; either would be easily traceable. As Mrs. Philp had said, he could not have immediately laid his hands on that kind of cash; he certainly would not have sought a loan.

But before Pitt did anything so final, he wanted to know from Vespasia when, the precise day, the bill was coming up before Parliament. If there was any way at all he could put off his last, irreparable task, he would—at least that long.

She received him without her usual acid humor. “Good afternoon, Thomas,” she said with a touch of weariness. “I presume this is business; you have not called for luncheon?”

“No, ma’am. I apologize for the inconvenient hour.”

She brushed it aside with a slight gesture. “Well, what is it you wish to ask this time?”

“When does St. Jermyn’s bill go before Parliament?”

She had been staring at the fire; now she turned to face him slowly, her old eyes bright and tired. “Why do you want to know?”

“I believe you already know the answer to that, ma’am,” he said quietly. “I cannot let him get away with it, you know.”

She gave a little shrug. “I suppose not. But can you not leave it at least until after the bill? It will be over by tomorrow evening.”

“That is why I came here to ask you.”

“Can you?”

“Yes, I can leave it that long.”

“Thank you.”

He did not bother to explain that he was doing it because he believed in it and cared just as much as she or Carlisle, and probably more than St. Jermyn himself. He thought she knew that.

He did not stay. She would not do anything, not communicate with St. Jermyn. She would just wait.

He went back to the police station, obtained the warrants for the house and the bank, and contrived to get them too late to execute them that day. He was home by five o’clock and sat by the fire, eating muffins and playing with Jemima.

In the morning he started late, moved slowly, and it was the end of the afternoon before he had assembled all his evidence to his entire satisfaction and made out an appropriate warrant for St. Jermyn’s arrest.

He took only one constable and proceeded to the House of Lords at Westminster to wait in one of the anterooms until the voting was finished and their lordships left for the night.

He saw Vespasia first, dressed in dove gray and silver, head high. But he knew from the tightness in her, the rigid walk, the unblinking eyes that they had failed. He should have had more sense, more knowledge of reality than to hope; it was too early, too soon. Yet the disappointment rose up inside him like sickness, a tangible pain.

They would go on fighting, of course, and in time, five years, ten years, they would win. But he wanted it now, for the children it would be too late to save in ten years’ time.

Behind Vespasia was Somerset Carlisle. As if drawn by the misery Pitt was feeling, he turned and caught Pitt’s eye. Even in this moment of defeat there was a bitter irony in him, something like a smile. Did he, like Vespasia, know what Pitt had come for?

He moved through the crowd toward them, only dimly aware of the constable coming from the other side. St. Jermyn was behind them. He showed the least mark of hurt. He had fought a good battle, and it would be remembered. Perhaps that was all that had ever really mattered to him.

Vespasia was talking to someone, leaning a little. She looked older than Pitt had ever seen her before. Perhaps she knew she would not live to see the bill passed. Ten years for her was too long.

Pitt moved sideways to see whom she was talking to, who held her arm and supported her. He hoped it was not Lady St. Jermyn.

They were within yards now. He could see the constable moving to cut off any retreat.

He was almost in front of them.

Vespasia turned and saw him. It was Charlotte beside her!

Pitt stopped. They were facing each other, the constable and Pitt in front of St. Jermyn, Carlisle, and the two women.

For a wild moment Pitt wondered if Charlotte had known all along who had killed Godolphin Jones. Then he dismissed it. There was no way she could have. If she had guessed lately, then he would never know it.

“My lord,” he said quietly, meeting St. Jermyn’s eyes. He looked surprised; then, reading Pitt’s face, the certainty in it, the relentless, unturnable knowledge, he showed a trace of fear at last.

There was only one thing incomplete in Pitt’s mind. Looking at St. Jermyn—the recognition of defeat in him while the arrogance remained, the hatred, even now a contempt for Pitt, as if it were chance that had beaten him, ill luck and not anyone else’s skill—he could not see in him any trace of the bizarre imagination, the black grave-wit that had draped Horrie Snipe over his own tombstone, or had set old Augustus in his family pew, Porteous on the park bench, and the unfortunate Albert Wilson to drive a hansom. He must have known the grave of Wilson would eventually be found, with Godolphin Jones in it. He could not have hoped to escape forever. And his ambitions were long-term. This bill was only a step on the way to high office and all it meant; he did not care about it for itself.

To have changed those graves required a man of passion, a man who cared enough for the bill to exercise all his black humor to hold off the arrest just long enough—

His eyes move to Carlisle.

Of course.

St. Jermyn had killed Godolphin Jones—but Carlisle had known about it, perhaps even feared it and followed him, finding the body. It was he, after St. Jermyn had gone, who had buried him in Albert Wilson’s grave and moved the bodies one by one, to keep Pitt confounded just long enough. That explained why St. Jermyn had been so confused when Jones had turned up in Wilson’s grave and not Resurrection Row!

Carlisle was staring back at him, a small, bleak smile in his eyes.

Pitt returned the shadow of the smile and then looked back at St. Jermyn. He cleared his throat. He could never prove Carlisle’s part, and he did not wish to.

“Edward St. Jermyn,” he said formally. “In the name of the Queen, I arrest you for the willful murder of one Godolphin Jones, artist, of Resurrection Row.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1981 by Anne Perry

cover design by Jason Gabbert

978-1-4532-2232-4

This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media

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New York, NY 10014

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