“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.