The Hyde Park Headsman

by Anne Perry

  “I don’t know Mr. Carvell,” Pitt confessed. “The more I learn of the facts, the less I feel I grasp the elements of it.” There was nothing more to add, no questions he could think of that would have any meaning, even if he received an honest answer. He had come looking for a mistress, a cause for jealousy, a link with Winthrop. He had found instead a gentle, articulate man devastated with a very private and personal grief.

  He excused himself and went out into the spring evening under a calm sky where an early moon had risen even before the sun had set.

  “You’ve found her!” Farnsworth said the following morning, sitting bolt upright in the chair in Pitt’s office. “What about the husband? What is he like? What did he say? Did he admit any connection with Winthrop? Never mind, you’ll find it. Have you arrested him yet? When shall we have something to tell the public?”

  “His name is Jerome Carvell, and he’s a quiet, respectable businessman,” Pitt began.

  “For Heaven’s sake, Pitt!” Farnsworth exploded, his cheeks suffusing with color. “I don’t care if he’s an archdeacon of the church! His wife was having an affair with Arledge, and he found out about it and took his revenge. You’ll find the proof if you look for it.”

  “There is no Mrs. Carvell.”

  Farnsworth’s face fell. “Then what on earth are you telling me for? I thought you said you found the place where these alternative keys fitted? If he wasn’t having an affair, what on earth did he have keys to the house for?”

  “He was having an affair,” Pitt said slowly, hating having to try to explain this to Farnsworth.

  “Make sense, Pitt,” Farnsworth said between his teeth. “Was he having an affair with Carvell’s wife, or sister or whatever she is, or was he not? You are trying my patience too far.”

  “He was having an affair with Carvell himself,” Pitt replied quietly. “If affair is the right word. It seemed they have loved each other for over thirty years.”

  Farnsworth was dumbfounded, then as the full meaning of what Pitt had said dawned on him, he was filled with anger and outrage.

  “Good God, man, you’re talking about it as if—as if it were …”

  Pitt said nothing, but stared at Farnsworth with cold eyes, his mind filled with the tortured face of Jerome Carvell.

  Farnsworth stopped, the words dying on his lips without his knowing why.

  “Well you’d better get on and arrest him!” he said, rising to his feet. “I don’t know what you’re doing sitting around here.”

  “I can’t arrest him,” Pitt replied. “There’s no evidence that he killed Arledge, and none at all that he even knew Winthrop.”

  “For God’s sake, man, he was having an illegal relationship with Arledge.” He leaned over the desk, glaring at Pitt. “What more do you want? They quarreled and this man—what’s his name—killed him. You can’t need me to remind you how many murders are domestic—or spring from lovers’ quarrels. You’ve got your man. Arrest him before he kills again.” He straightened up as if preparing to leave, the matter settled.

  “I can’t,” Pitt repeated. “There is no evidence.”

  “What do you want, an eyewitness?” Farnsworth demanded, his face darkening with anger. “He probably killed him in his house, which is why you couldn’t find the site of the crime before. You have searched his premises, Pitt?”

  “No.”

  “You blithering incompetent!” Farnsworth exploded. “What’s the matter with you, man? Are you ill? I feared you were promoted beyond your ability, but this is absurd. Get Tellman to search the place immediately, and then arrest the man.”

  Pitt felt his face burn with anger and a kind of embarrassment for both Farnsworth’s ignorance and assumption, and for Carvell’s crippling and so obvious emotion.

  “I have no grounds for searching his house,” he said coldly. “Arledge stayed there sometimes. That is not a crime. And there is nothing whatever to connect Carvell with Winthrop or the omnibus conductor.”

  Farnsworth’s lip curled.

  “If the man is a sodomite he probably approached Winthrop, and when Winthrop rebuffed him he flew into a rage and killed him,” he said with conviction. “And as for Yeats, perhaps he knew something. He might have been in the park and witnessed the quarrel. He tried blackmail and was killed for his pains. Lose no sleep over that. Filthy crime, blackmail.”

  “There’s no proof of any of it,” Pitt protested as Farnsworth took another step towards the door. “We don’t know where Carvell was the night Winthrop was killed. He may have been dining with the local vicar.”

  “Well find out, Pitt!” Farnsworth spat between clenched teeth, his voice sharp with his own fear. “That’s your job. I expect you to report an arrest within forty-eight hours at the outside. I shall tell the Home Secretary we have our man, it is just a matter of collecting irrefutable evidence.”

  “It’s a matter of collecting any evidence at all,” Pitt retorted. “All we know so far is that Carvell loved Arledge. For Heaven’s sake, if that were evidence of a murder, we should have to arrest the husband or wife of every victim in the country.”

  “That is hardly the same,” Farnsworth said viciously. “We are talking about unnatural relations, not a normal marriage between husband and wife!”

  “I thought you said most murders were domestic anyway?” Pitt said with a sharp note of sarcasm.

  “Get out and do your job.” Farnsworth pointed his finger at Pitt. “Now.” And without waiting for any further debate he went out of the door and left it wide open.

  Pitt went to the top of the stairs after him.

  “Tellman!” he shouted, more violently than he had intended.

  Le Grange appeared in the passageway at the bottom just as Farnsworth went out into the street.

  “Yes sir? Did you want Mr. Tellman, sir?” he asked with elaborate innocence.

  “Of course I did! What in the hell do you suppose I called him for?” Pitt retorted.

  “Yes sir. He’s working on some papers—I think. I’ll ask him to come up, sir.”

  “Don’t ask him, le Grange, tell him!” Pitt said.

  Le Grange disappeared instantly, but it was another full ten minutes with Pitt pacing the floor before Tellman came in the door and closed it, his face registering bland complacency. No doubt Farnsworth’s exchange with Pitt had been heard, and reported over half the station.

  “Yes sir?” Tellman said inquiringly, and Pitt was positive he knew perfectly well what he was wanted for.

  “Go and get a warrant to search the house and grounds of number twelve Green Street.”

  “Green Street?”

  “Off Park Lane, two south of Oxford Street. It is the residence of a Mr. Jerome Carvell.”

  “Yes sir. What am I looking for, sir?”

  “Evidence that Aidan Arledge was murdered there, or that the owner, Jerome Carvell, knew Winthrop or the bus conductor, Yeats.”

  “Yes sir.” Tellman went to the door, then turned and looked at Pitt with wide eyes. “What would be evidence of knowing a bus conductor, sir?”

  “A letter with his name on it—or a note of his address, any reference to him,” Pitt replied levelly.

  “Yes sir. I’ll get a warrant.” Before Pitt could add anything else, and make the remark that was on his tongue, Tellman was gone. Pitt strode to the door after him and stood on the landing.

  “Tellman!”

  Tellman turned on the stairs and looked up. “Yes, Mr. Pitt?” “You’d better be civil to him. Mr. Carvell is a respected businessman and has not committed any offense so far as we know. Don’t forget that!”

  “No sir, of course not, sir,” Tellman said with a smile, then went on down the stairs.

  Pitt went on the next errand he was loathing. He spent ten minutes in front of the mirror retying his cravat and adjusting his coat and rearranging the things in his pockets, trying to put off the moment. Eventually it became unavoidable, and he took his hat from the stand and went out and down the stair
s. He stopped at the desk and the sergeant looked at his tidy appearance with surprise and some respect.

  “I’m going to see Mrs. Arledge,” Pitt said huskily. “If Inspector Tellman comes back before I do, have him wait for me. I want to know what he found.”

  “Yes sir! Sir …”

  “Yes, Sergeant?”

  “Do you think this Mr. Carvell did it, Mr. Pitt, sir?”

  “No—no I don’t think so, but I suppose it’s possible.”

  “Yes sir. Forgive me, sir, but I had to ask.”

  Pitt smiled at him, and went out to find a hansom.

  “Yes, Superintendent?” Dulcie Arledge said with her characteristic courtesy, and no apparent surprise. She was still dressed in total black, and as before it was beautifully cut, this time the full sleeves were decorated with black velvet bows at the shoulders, flat and neat and unostentatious. Her face pinched a little as she recognized him, a shadow crossing her eyes. “Have you learned something?”

  He hated having to tell her, but there were questions he had to ask, and from their nature she would know there was ugliness and suspicion behind them. The fact that she had already guessed, at least in part, made it easier. They were in the withdrawing room and he waited for her to resume her seat, then sat on the elegant overstuffed sofa opposite her.

  “I have found the doors for the keys, Mrs. Arledge,” he began.

  She took a deep breath. “Yes?” she said huskily.

  “I am sorry, it is another house.”

  She looked at him without blinking. Her eyes were very steady and very blue. In her lap her hands were clasped together till the knuckles were white.

  “A woman?” she asked very quietly, her voice little more than a whisper.

  He wished he could have said that it was. It would have been better than what he had to say. He would like to have avoided telling her altogether but there was every possibility it was going to become public, and very soon, if Farnsworth had his way.

  “Did you think that your husband might have been—might have cared for someone else?” he asked.

  She was very pale and she avoided his eyes, staring down at the bright pattern of the carpet.

  “It is something a woman has to learn to resign herself to, Mr. Pitt. One tries not to believe it, but …” She looked up at him suddenly. “Yes, if I am honest, it had occurred to me. There were small things, absences that he did not explain, gifts, things I had not given him. I wondered …”

  There was no need to tell her it had lasted thirty years. He could at least spare her that.

  “Superintendent.”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  She was searching his face. “Is she—married?”

  The reason for her question was obvious; it was the same thought which had driven Farnsworth.

  “Why do you hesitate, Superintendent?” she asked, anxiety in her voice now. “Is she—very young?” She stumbled over the word. “She has a father, perhaps? Or a brother …” She trailed off.

  “The house belongs to a man, Mrs. Arledge.”

  Her brow puckered.

  “I don’t understand. I thought you said—” She stopped.

  He could no longer evade the issue.

  “The person your husband loved is a man.”

  She was totally confounded.

  “A—a man …?”

  “I am sorry.” He felt brutal and guilty of a terrible intrusion.

  “But that’s—impossible!” Suddenly her face flushed scarlet and her eyes were wide, stunned. “It cannot be. You made a mistake. It’s—no—no!”

  “I wish I had, ma’am, but I have not.”

  “You must have,” she repeated foolishly. “It cannot be….”

  “He admitted it readily, and your husband’s belongings, among them a silver-backed hairbrush, a pair to the one upstairs, were in the dressing room.”

  “It’s—horrible,” she said, shaking her head repeatedly, fiercely. “Why have you told me this—this—monstrosity?”

  “I would much rather not have, Mrs. Arledge,” he said with intense feeling. “If I could have allowed his secret to die with him, I would have done so. But I need to ask a great many more questions, and from them you would have known that there was something.” He looked at her earnestly, willing her to believe him. “You would have been left with all the horror and the fears, until perhaps you would have read about it in the newspapers instead.”

  She stared at him helplessly, her face still full of denial.

  “What questions?” she said at last. Her voice caught in her throat, but it was obvious that at last her intelligence was reasserting itself, in spite of the horror and her new, unimagined pain.

  “Any other friends to whom your husband was extremely close?” he said gently. “Perhaps you could show me all the gifts he received that you did not give him, or know where they came from. Can you recall any occasions on which he was distressed in the last three or four weeks? When you think perhaps he may have been involved in a quarrel or a situation of high emotional anxiety or trouble.”

  “You mean—you mean he may have quarreled with this man … over some other person?” She was quick to seize the point and all its implications.

  “It is possible, Mrs. Arledge.”

  She was very pale. “Yes—yes I suppose it is. And when I look back, how dreadfully it makes sense.” She covered her face with her hands and sat motionless. He saw her shoulders rise and fall as she breathed deeply, in and out, in an effort to retain control of herself.

  He stood up and went to the chiffonnier to see if he could find a decanter of sherry or Madeira to pour for her. It took him only a moment to see it and return with a glass. He waited until she looked up.

  “Thank you,” she said very quietly, accepting it with trembling hands. “You are most considerate, Superintendent. I am sorry to have so little mastery of myself. I have had a shock I could never have imagined—in my wildest and most fearful dreams. It will take me some little time to—to believe it.” She looked down at the glass in her hands and sipped the sherry, and then her face crumpled. “I suppose I do have to believe it?”

  He was still standing close to her.

  “I am afraid it is true, Mrs. Arledge. But it does not invalidate all that was good in him, his generosity, his love and reverence for what was beautiful, his humor …”

  “How can you …” she began, then bit back the words. “Poor Aidan.” She lifted her eyes. “Superintendent, will this have to be made public? Couldn’t he be allowed to rest in peace? It is not his crime that he was murdered. If he had died in his sleep no one would ever have known.”

  “I wish I could promise it to you,” he said honestly. “But if this man is implicated in his death, then it will become public in all probability as soon as he is arrested. Certainly at his trial.”

  She looked as if he had struck her. It was several moments before she could master concentration to form her next question, and he stood by helplessly, wishing there were anything at all he could do to ease her burden.

  “Do you believe this—this man—killed Aidan, Superintendent?” she said at last, her voice tight with the effort of control.

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I am inclined to think not. There is no evidence that he did, but it seems very likely that it is somehow concerned with their friendship.”

  Her brows furrowed with her effort to grasp the incomprehensible.

  “I don’t understand. What has Captain Winthrop to do with it? Or this other person—the omnibus conductor?”

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “I think there may be someone else involved whose name we do not yet know.”

  She looked away, towards the window and the sunlight in the garden beyond.

  “How hideous. I am afraid it is all beyond my understanding.” Suddenly she shivered convulsively. “But of course I will give you any help I can. I am trying to realize I did not know Aidan nearly as well as I imagined I did. But what I do k
now, you have only to ask me, and I will tell you.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate your candor, ma’am, and your courage.”

  She looked at him, smiling weakly. “Ask what you wish, Superintendent.”

  He spent three more hours asking her gently every detail of Arledge’s life that he could think of and going through his belongings again, taking with him all those few personal items which she said she had not given him, nor, to her knowledge, had he bought for himself.

  She showed him everything he asked to see, and answered all his questions with a simple candor, as if she were too stunned by the fearful revelation he had brought even to protect those few memories which normally would have been dearest and most private.

  “We were married twenty years,” she said thoughtfully, staring at an old theater program. “I didn’t know he had kept this. It was the first concert he took me to. I was very unsophisticated then. I had just come from the country, where I grew up.” She turned the worn piece of paper over and over in her hands. “You would have thought me very naive then, Superintendent.”

  “I doubt it, ma’am,” he said gently. “I grew up in the country also.”

  She looked at him quickly, warmth in her face for the first time. “Did you? Where? Oh, I’m sorry, that is …”

  “Not at all. Hertfordshire, on a large estate. My father was the gamekeeper.” Why had he told her that? It was something he never mentioned, part of a past which included pain and a loss which still hurt, an injustice never remedied.

  “Was he?” Her eyes, clear and dark blue, were full of uncritical interest. “Then you love the land too; you understand its beauty, and sometimes its cruelty, its economy of survival? Of course you do.” She turned away, looking beyond the richly curtained windows to the rooftops and sky. “It seems so much … cleaner … doesn’t it? More honest.”

  He thought how she must feel, the rage and confusion inside her over all the years which now must seem wasted, filled with betrayal, even memories twisted upon themselves and gone sour. She would recover from his death, it was a clean wound, but his deceit would hurt forever, it took away not only the future but the past also. Her whole adult life, twenty years, made a sham.