Hyde Park Headsman

by Anne Perry

  “It was the first thing I did, sir,” Tellman replied.

  “Pitt?” Farnsworth’s voice was rising with anger and there was a sharp note of anxiety in it.

  “I wanted to see if Dr. Melchett could tell me what sort of a man we are looking for,” Pitt replied, biting his lip to keep from losing his own temper.

  “It’s damned simple what we’re looking for!” Farnsworth said tartly, beginning to move towards the hall and the stairs up to Pitt’s office. “Jerome Carvell! The man has motive, can’t account for his whereabouts, and we’ll find the weapon sooner or later. What else do you need?”

  “A reason for him to have killed Winthrop and the omnibus conductor,” Pitt replied between his teeth. “There’s no connection so far to suggest he even met either of them, let alone had any cause to hate or fear them.”

  “If he killed Arledge, of course he killed the other two.” Famsworth stared at him. “We don’t need to prove it. Perhaps he made some wretched advance to Winthrop and was rebuffed. Winthrop may even have threatened to make it public. That would be enough to send the fellow off his head.” His voice gained in conviction. “Had to kill him to keep him quiet. Sodomy is not only a crime, man, it’s social ruin.” He snorted very slightly through his nose and looked at Tellman.

  Tellman’s lantern face was sardonic. He looked at Pitt with a smile, and for the first time Pitt could recall, there was no animosity in it at all. On the contrary, it was faintly conspiratorial.

  “Well?” Farnsworth demanded.

  “I don’t think so, sir,” Tellman replied, standing to attention.

  “Don’t you, indeed!” Farnsworth turned back at Pitt. “And why not? I assume you have a reason, some evidence you have not yet shared?”

  Pitt concealed a smile with difficulty. There was nothing remotely amusing in the situation. It added to the tragedy that it should also be absurd.

  “Place,” he said simply.

  “What?”

  “If Winthrop was disinclined, why would he be in a pleasure boat on the Serpentine at midnight? And would Carvell really bring along an ax on the off chance he was rebuffed?”

  Farnsworth’s face flamed. “What in God’s name was anybody doing on the Serpentine with an ax?” he said furiously. “You cannot explain that for anyone at all. In fact you haven’t answered very much, have you? I assume you read the newspapers? Have you seen what this damned fellow Uttley is saying about you in particular, and by extension about all of us?” His voice was rising and there was a thread of panic in it now. “I resent it, Pitt! I resent it deeply, and I am not alone. Every policeman in London is being tarred by the same brush as you, and blamed for your incompetence. What’s happened to you, Pitt? You used to be a damned good policeman.” He abandoned his decision to go upstairs to the privacy of Pitt’s office. He was aware of le Grange and the desk sergeant listening to his own humiliation, and now Bailey as well was standing on the edge of the group. He would retaliate equally in public. “There’s enough evidence. For Heaven’s sake use it! Before the bloody madman kills again.” He stared at Pitt. “I shall hold you responsible if you don’t arrest him and we have another murder.”

  There was a moment’s bristling silence. Farnsworth stood defiantly, unwilling to withdraw a word. Le Grange looked acutely unhappy, but for once there was no indecision in him. The accusation was unfair, and he backed Pitt.

  “We can’t arrest him, sir,” Tellman said distinctly. “He’d have us for false charges, because there’s no proof. We’d have to let him go again straightaway, and we’d only look even stupider.”

  “That would be hard,” Farnsworth said grimly. “What about this omnibus conductor? What do you know about him? Any criminal record? Does he owe money? Gamble? Drink? Fornicate? Keep bad company?”

  “No criminal record,” Tellman replied. “As far as anyone in the neighborhood knows, he is a perfectly ordinary, respectable, rather self-important little omnibus conductor.”

  “What’s an omnibus conductor got to be important about?” Farnsworth asked derisively.

  “Touch of authority, I suppose,” Tellman replied. “Tell people whether they can get on or not, where they can sit or if they have to stand.”

  Farnsworth rolled his eyes and his face expressed his contempt.

  “Indeed. No secret vices?”

  “If he had, they are still secret,” Tellman replied.

  “Well, there was something! What does the local station say?”

  “Nothing known. He was a regular churchgoer, sidesman, or something of the sort.” Tellman pulled a lugubrious face, bitter humor in his eyes. “Obviously liked telling people where to sit,” he finished. “Had to do it on Sundays as well.”

  Farnsworth looked at him. “Nobody’s going to cut his head off just because he’s an officious little swine,” he said, then moved back towards the door out again. “I must do something about this Uttley chap.” He looked at Pitt, dropping his voice. “You should have listened to me, Pitt. I made you a good offer, and if you had taken my advice you wouldn’t be in this predicament now.”

  Tellman looked from Farnsworth to Pitt and back again; he had only caught half of what had been said, and obviously did not comprehend the meaning. Bailey was still as amused as he dared to be at the vision of Winthrop and Carvell in the boat, the oars and the ax between them. He disliked Farnsworth and always had done. Le Grange was waiting for orders from someone and moved from one foot to the other in uncertainty.

  Pitt knew precisely what Farnsworth was referring to. It was the Inner Circle again, this time torn in its loyalties. Micah Drummond’s words came back to his mind with added chill. But surely Farnsworth knew Uttley was a member himself? And Jack was not?

  Or perhaps with all the secrecy, the different levels and rings, he did not? And even if he attacked, and drew on those loyal to him, perhaps he could not predict the outcome of such a test of strength. And far more dangerous, the trial of loyalty, the blooded knights against the tyros. Who else was bought by covenant, committed to a battle in which they had no interest and no gain but would be punished mortally if they backed the losing side?

  Farnsworth was waiting, as if he thought even at this point Pitt might have changed his mind.

  Pitt faced him blankly. “Perhaps not,” he said pleasantly, but with finality in his voice.

  Farnsworth hesitated only a moment longer, then swung around and went out.

  Bailey let his breath out in a sigh and le Grange relaxed visibly.

  Tellman turned to Pitt.

  “We can’t arrest Carvell yet, sir, but if we pushed a little harder we would get a damned sight more out of him. As Mr. Farnsworth says, there’s a connection somewhere, and I’ll swear he knows what it is, or he can guess.”

  Le Grange looked attentive.

  “What have you in mind?” Pitt asked very slowly.

  Tellman’s chin came up. “He’s guilty of one crime, by his own admission. You can get several years for sodomy. He may not realize we can’t prove it. We can pursue him on that.” His lip curled very slightly in unspoken contempt. “Mr. Carvell isn’t the sort to take well to a term in somewhere like Pentonville or the Coldbath Fields.”

  “That’s right, sir,” le Grange said hopefully.

  Pitt ignored him. He looked at Tellman with dislike.

  “You have no evidence.”

  “He admitted it,” Tellman said reasonably.

  “Not to you, Inspector.”

  Tellman’s face hardened and he stood facing Pitt squarely. “Are you saying you would deny it, sir?”

  Pitt smiled very slightly. “I should say nothing at all, Inspector. All he told me was that he loved Arledge. That may be interpreted as you please. The emotion is not a crime. I imagine Carvell will say precisely that, and have his lawyers sue you for harassment.”

  “You’re too squeamish,” Tellman said, disgust written large in his face. “If you pander to these people you’ll never learn anything. They’ll run rings �
��round you.”

  Bailey coughed loudly.

  Tellman ignored him, still staring at Pitt. “We can’t afford your delicate conscience if we want to catch this bastard who’s cutting people’s heads off and terrifying half of London. People daren’t go out after dark unless they’re in twos or threes. There are cartoons all over the place. He’s making a laughingstock of us. Doesn’t that bother you?” He looked at Pitt with something close to loathing. “Doesn’t it make you angry?”

  Le Grange nodded his head up and down, his eyes on Tellman.

  “That’s just what it sounds like,” Pitt replied coldly. “The reaction of anger—not of thought or judgment: the instinctive lashing out of someone who’s afraid for his own reputation and works with one eye over his shoulder to see what others think of him.”

  “The ‘others’ pay our bloody wages!” Tellman said, still staring icily and undeviatingly at Pitt. Neither Bailey nor le Grange interested him in the slightest, and the desk sergeant had faded from his awareness completely. “Yours as much as mine,” he went on. He had committed himself too far to turn back. “And they are not pleased with you.” His voice was rising. “Nobody cares how brilliant you may have been in the past—it’s now that matters. You are leaving their lordships’ reputations in tatters. They look like fools, and they won’t forgive you for that.”

  “If you want me to arrest Carvell, prove he had something to do with it,” Pitt demanded, his own voice angry and hard. “Where was he when Yeats was killed?”

  “At a concert, sir,” le Grange chipped in. “But he can’t find anyone who saw him there. He can tell us what the music was, but anyone could get that from a program.”

  “And when Arledge was killed?” Pitt went on.

  “Home alone.”

  “Servants?”

  “No point. There’s a French door in the study. He could have gone out that way and none of the servants would have known. Come back the same way.”

  “And Winthrop?”

  “For a walk in the park, so he says,” Tellman replied with heavy disbelief.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pass anyone?”

  “Not that he can recall. Anyway, he’d have to pass pretty close for anyone to recognize him at midnight. People don’t hang around the park at night these days—not as they used to.”

  “Not even the women?” Pitt asked.

  Tellman shrugged. “They’ve got to, poor cows. Can’t afford to stay in. But they’re scared.”

  “Well go and see if you can find anyone who saw Carvell,” Pitt said. “Try some of the women. What about in the street on the way home? Someone might be able to place him at a particular time. Don’t his servants remember his coming home?”

  “No sir. He kept rather odd hours, and preferred the servants to go to bed and leave him to it.” Tellman’s lips lifted in a faint sneer of distaste. “Presumably he preferred they did not see Arledge coming and going. Caught him out last time—if he was really there.”

  “Try the other people in the park,” Pitt repeated. “Try Fat George’s girls. They work that end.”

  “What’d that prove?” Tellman said with open disgust. “If no one saw him, that doesn’t prove he wasn’t there. And we can’t find anyone who will say they saw him in Shepherd’s Bush. Tried all the passengers on that last bus.”

  “And I suppose you haven’t yet found where Arledge was killed either?” Pitt asked sardonically. “Seems you have quite a lot to do. You’d better get on with it.”

  And with that he went up to his office and closed the door, but Tellman’s charges lingered with him. Was he being too fastidious in his prosecution of this case? Was he allowing the fact that he liked Carvell to influence his judgment as to the weight of the evidence? Pity, no matter how real, was not a factor he should allow to blind him. If it were not Carvell, then who? Bart Mitchell, over Winthrop’s abuse of his sister? But why kill Arledge? And why Yeats?

  Or was it really some obsessed lunatic who killed seemingly at random from the dark chaos in his own mind?

  He must learn more about Winthrop, and his marriage, and Bart Mitchell.

  Emily looked at Charlotte’s new house with growing approval. There was something acutely satisfying about finding a house in a dilapidated state, then repairing it and decorating it to suit your own tastes. When she had married George she had moved into Ashworth House and found it in perfect order, everything maintained as it had been for generations. Every room had been added to by each succeeding chatelaine until by 1882 there had been little room for improvement or individual expression in any part of it. Even her own bedroom was curtained and mirrored in the taste of the previous incumbent, and it would have been wasteful to have altered it. Indeed, it was so lavish and so beautiful it could not have been bettered, it would simply have been Emily’s own choice rather than someone else’s.

  Now, of course, Ashworth House was hers, and she shared it with Jack, but it still contained little that was of her creation or taste, even though she could find no fault with any of it. She was delighted for Charlotte, and also just a very little bit envious.

  They were in the bedroom which overlooked the garden. Charlotte had chosen green after all, and today with a bright sun and the trees in full leaf, the whole room had the feeling of a shaded bower, full of light and shadow and the soft sound of moving leaves. What it would be like in winter remained to be seen, but at this moment it could hardly have been lovelier.

  “I like it,” Emily said decisively. “In fact I think it is quite marvelous.” She screwed up her face unhappily and her hands with their gorgeous rings were knotted in her muslin skirts.

  “But …” Charlotte said, feeling a sharp disappointment. She was so happy with the room, it was exactly what she had most hoped for, but it hurt her that Emily should have reservations, and to judge from her expression, very serious ones.

  Emily sighed. “But have you seen Mama’s bedroom lately? I called there.” She turned to face Charlotte, her blue eyes very wide. “I had a chance to go upstairs. Have you? It’s—it’s so—I don’t know what to say. It’s just not Mama! It’s as if she were someone totally different. It’s—it’s worse than romantic—it’s lush. Yes, that’s the word, lush.”

  “You are still trying to pretend it is a passing thing,” Charlotte said slowly, going to the window and leaning her elbows on it to stare out at the garden. The lawn, now neatly clipped, stretched away under the trees to the rose-covered wall at the end. “It isn’t, you know. I think I have faced that now. She really loves him.”

  Emily came beside her, also looking down at the garden in the dappled sunlight. “It will still end in tragedy,” she said quietly. “There’s nothing else it can do.”

  “She could marry him.”

  Emily turned to face her. “And do what?” she demanded. “She could hardly remain in society, and she would never fit in with the theater people. She would be neither one thing nor another. And how long could it last—happiness, I mean?”

  “How long does it ever last?” Charlotte replied.

  “Oh come on! I am very happy, and don’t tell me you are not, because I should not believe you.”

  “Certainly I am. And look how many people predicated I should end in disaster.”

  Emily looked back at the garden. “That is rather different.”

  “No it isn’t,” Charlotte argued. “I married someone nearly all my friends said was hopelessly beneath me, and had no money to speak of.”

  “But he is your age. Or at least he is only a few years older, which is precisely as it should be. And he is a Christian!”

  “I admit that is a difficulty, Joshua’s being a Jew,” Charlotte conceded unhappily. “But Mr. Disraeli was a Jew. That didn’t stop him becoming Prime Minister, and the Queen thought he was wonderful. She liked him very much.”

  “Because he flattered her shamelessly, and Mr. Gladstone wouldn’t,” Emily responded. “He was a miserable old man,
always talking about virtue.” Her face lightened. “Although I did hear he was actually very fond of women himself—very fond indeed. In fact I heard it from Eliza Harrogate.” Her voice dropped to little above a whisper. “She said she knew for a fact that he could hardly contain himself when in the presence of a pretty woman, whatever her age or state. That makes him seem a little different, doesn’t it?”

  Charlotte stared at her, uncertain if she were serious or joking. Then she burst into laughter. The thought was delicious, and completely novel.

  “Perhaps he made an intimate suggestion to the Queen?” Emily went on, beginning to giggle as well. “Maybe that is why she didn’t care for him?”

  “You are talking the most arrant rubbish,” Charlotte said at last. “And it has nothing at all to do with what we were discussing.”

  “No, I suppose it doesn’t.” Emily was suddenly solemn again. “What can we do about it? I refuse simply to stand by and watch Mama walk straight into a disaster.”

  “I don’t see that you have a choice,” Charlotte said grimly. “The only thing we can hope for is that it should come to a natural end before irreparable harm has been done.”

  “That’s hopeless. We can’t be so—so ineffectual,” Emily protested, turning away from the window again.

  “It’s not ineffectual; it’s a matter of not interfering, and robbing Mama of the right to choose for herself.” Charlotte turned away as well.

  “But—” Emily began.

  “How is the election progressing?” Charlotte cut across her deliberately, a smile on her face.

  Emily shrugged. “All right, for the moment I give up. Actually, it’s going surprisingly well.” Her delicate eyebrows rose, her eyes wide. “There have been a few extremely good articles in the newspapers in the last two days. I don’t understand it, but someone has obviously changed their views and is now entirely for Jack; or to be more exact, against Mr. Uttley.”

  “How odd,” Charlotte said thoughtfully. “There must be some reason for it.”