Death in the Devil's Acre by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online Page A

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
    T HE 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