Ashworth Hall

by Anne Perry

  “I know,” she said softly, her face bleak with sadness and anger. “It will be hard for her for a while. I think the best thing we can do is say as little as possible. It will just take time.”

  “By the way, Charlotte.” He looked very directly at her. “Where did you get the newspaper cuttings that Gracie showed to Hennessey?”

  “Oh …” She colored uncomfortably. “I think … all things considered … you might prefer not to know that. Please don’t ask, then I shall not have to tell you.”

  “Charlotte …”

  She smiled at him dazzlingly, and before he could argue, she touched his hand, then turned and went downstairs.

  Charlotte turned in the hall and watched him disappear around the newel at the top. Her momentary happiness vanished. She felt so alone she could have cried, which was ridiculous. She was tired. She seemed to have spent weeks trying to make things run smoothly, to prevent quarrels from becoming permanent rifts, trying to make light conversation when all any of them wanted to do was scream at each other, or weep with grief and fear, and now confusion and anxiety as well, and the dark pain of disillusion as things they thought they had known fell apart.

  Emily was still terrified for Jack, and she had good cause. She was looking paler and more tired with each day. It was all pointless anyway; nobody was going to solve the Irish Problem. They would probably still be hating each other in fifty years. Was it worth one more life lost or broken?

  And what about Eudora? How was she going to find the strength to comfort Piers when he heard the truth about Justine … whatever that truth was? Could he ever find peace within himself once he knew the woman he loved so much now had been his own father’s mistress—and then murdered him? His world was about to end.

  And Eudora had not been close enough to him to give the gentleness, the silent understanding he would need. She had not been a large enough part of his experiences in the past to travel through this with him. He would not be able to allow her. Charlotte knew it already from the small things Eudora had said, but more from the way Eudora had watched him with Justine and not known how he would react, what would make him laugh or touch his emotions. Charlotte had felt Eudora’s sense of exclusion, as she felt the sudden chill of her own now.

  She watched Pitt’s back as he reached the top of the stairs and wondered if he would turn and look at her. He must know she was still standing by the newel at the bottom.

  But he did not. His mind was on Eudora and Piers, and what he must ask of them. So it should be. Perhaps hers was at least in part on Emily.

  Aunt Vespasia’s advice seemed hollow. There was probably honor in it, but very little comfort. She turned away and went back to the withdrawing room. Kezia was alone. She ought to talk to her, not simply leave her.

  “What do you need to look at him again for?” Piers asked with a shiver. He looked pale and tired, like everyone else, but in no sense afraid. It was perhaps the last evening he was going to have such an innocence.

  “I would prefer to see if I am correct before I tell you,” Pitt replied, looking apologetically at Eudora, who had risen and was standing in front of the boudoir fire. She had not taken her eyes from Pitt’s face since he had come in. Thank heaven Justine was not there. She had apparently chosen to retire early.

  “I suppose,” she said slowly. “If you must?”

  “It matters, Mrs. Greville, or I would not ask,” he assured her. “I really am very sorry.” He was apologizing not only for the present, but for the future as well.

  “I know.” She smiled at him, and there was a warmth in her he found it impossible to disbelieve. If it was indeed Doyle behind Finn Hennessey and the bomb, she was never going to heal from this. It would be a mortal wound. Half of him wanted to stay and offer whatever understanding or compassion was possible, the other half wanted to escape before he said or did something, or what he feared for her was betrayed in his face. He hesitated a moment.

  She looked at him with increasing anxiety, as if she read his indecision and perceived the reasons.

  He turned to Piers.

  “There is no point in delaying what must be done,” he said grimly. “It is best to begin.”

  Piers took a deep breath. “Yes, of course.” He glanced at his mother, seemed on the edge of saying something, then it eluded him. He moved to the door ahead of Pitt and held it open for him.

  They went together, without speaking again, down the stairs, across the hall, through the baize door and along the passage past the kitchens and servants’ hall. Pitt collected the lanterns and led the way past the stillroom, gameroom, coal room, knife room, and general other storage and workplaces to the icehouse. He put the lantern down and took out the keys. Beside him Piers was standing rigidly, as though his muscles were locked. Perhaps Pitt should not have asked this of him? He hesitated with his hand on the key.

  “What is it?” Piers asked.

  Pitt still could not make a certain decision.

  “What’s wrong?” Piers said again.

  “Nothing.” It would not make any difference in the end. He put the key in the lock and turned it, then bent and picked up the lantern and went in. The cold hit him immediately, and the damp, slightly sickly smell. Or perhaps it was his imagination, knowing what was there.

  “Is there a light?” Piers asked with a tremor in his voice.

  “No, only the lanterns. I suppose they usually get the meat out during daylight,” Pitt replied. “And I expect leave the door open.”

  Piers closed it and held the other lantern high. The room was quite large, stacked with blocks of ice. The floor was stone tile, with drains to carry off the surplus water. Carcasses of meat hung on hooks from the ceiling: beef, mutton, veal and pork. Offal sat in trays, and several strings of sausages looped over other hooks.

  A large trestle table had been moved in, and the outlines of two human bodies were plainly visible under an old velvet dining room curtain, faded now.

  Pitt took the curtain off and saw the white, oddly waxy face of Ainsley Greville. The other face, Lorcan McGinley’s, was so swathed in the remains of the study curtain to hide the blood and the injuries that it looked far less obviously human.

  Piers took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “What am I looking for?” he asked.

  “His neck,” Pitt replied. “The angle of his head.”

  “But he’s been moved. What does it matter now? He was hit from behind. We already know that.” Piers frowned. “What are you thinking, Mr. Pitt? What do you know now that we didn’t then?”

  “Please look at his neck.”

  “That blow wouldn’t break it.” Piers was puzzled. “But if it had, how does that alter anything?”

  Pitt looked down at the body and nodded very slightly.

  Piers obeyed. There was a very slight moment of reluctance, the knowledge of who it was he was touching so professionally, then he placed his fingers on the skull and moved it gently, then again, exploring, concentrating.

  Pitt waited. The cold seemed to eat into him. No wonder meat kept well here. It was not far above freezing, if at all. The damp from the ice seemed to penetrate the flesh. The taste of dead things filled his mouth and nose.

  The lanterns burned absolutely steadily. It was totally windless, almost airless in there.

  “You’re right!” Piers looked up, his eyes wide and dark in the uncertain light. “His neck is broken. I don’t understand it. That blow shouldn’t have done that. It’s in the wrong place, and at the wrong angle.”

  “Would that blow at the back have killed him?” Pitt asked.

  Piers looked unhappy. “I’m not absolutely certain, but I don’t think so. I don’t see how it could.” He swallowed, and Pitt could see his throat jerk. “There would be no way of knowing if he was dead when he slid under the water ….”

  Pitt waited.

  “I could find out if there is water in the lungs. If there isn’t, then the broken neck killed him and he was already dead be
fore he went under.”

  “And the blow at the back?” Pitt asked again.

  “I might be able to tell from that if it happened when he was alive, or dead, by the blood and the bruising. The bathwater washed the outside clean, of course.” Piers seemed hunched into himself, his face shadowed starkly in the lanternlight. “But if I … if I did a postmortem examination … at least … I don’t know if I … I am really qualified to give an opinion. I couldn’t in court, of course …. They wouldn’t accept my judgment.”

  “Then you had better be very careful how you treat the evidence,” Pitt said with a bleak smile. “It could make a lot of difference, one way or the other.”

  “Could it?” Piers sounded disbelieving.

  Pitt thought of Justine, of Doll, and of Lorcan McGinley.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I can’t do it here,” Piers said grimly. “I can’t see, for a start. And I’m so cold I can’t hold my hands still.”

  “We’ll use one of the laundry rooms,” Pitt decided. “There’s running water and a good wooden scrubbing table. I don’t suppose you have any instruments with you?”

  “I’m only a student.” Piers’s voice was tight and a little high. “But I’m very nearly qualified. I take my final exams this year.”

  “Can you do this? I don’t want to send for the village doctor. He won’t be trained for this kind of thing either. To send to London for someone I would have to do it through the assistant commissioner, and it will take too long.”

  “I understand.” Piers looked at him unwaveringly in the lanternlight. “You think it was my Uncle Padraig, and you want the proof before he leaves.”

  There was no purpose in denying it.

  “Can you work with the best kitchen knives, if they are sharpened?” Pitt said instead.

  Piers flinched. “Yes.”

  Carrying the body from the icehouse was a miserable and exceedingly awkward matter. It must not be handled roughly, or damage might be done which would destroy the very evidence they were looking for. Geville had been a large man, tall and well built. To place him on a door would make him impossibly heavy for Pitt, Tellman and Piers to carry unassisted.

  “Well, we can’t get anyone else,” Tellman said tartly. “We’ll have to think of another way. I’ve seen enough of these servants to know what would happen if we used a footman. We’d be branded ghouls or resurrectionists by tomorrow morning.”

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” Piers agreed. “We could try boards. There’ll be some in one of the outbuildings, like the ones they used for the study window.”

  “We’d never balance him on boards,” Pitt dismissed the idea. The thought of struggling along the passageway in the half dark trying to keep a corpse from falling off a plank was grotesque. “The door is the only thing.”

  “It’s too heavy!” Tellman protested.

  “Laundry basket,” Piers said suddenly. “If we’re really careful how we put him in it, we won’t disturb the evidence.”

  Pitt and Tellman both looked at him with approval.

  “Excellent,” Pitt agreed. “I’ll fetch one. You get him ready.”

  * * *

  It was after eleven o’clock by the time Tellman stood by the laundry door, which naturally did not lock, and Pitt watched as Piers Greville very slowly began cutting into the body of his father, holding Mrs. Williams’s best kitchen knife in his right hand. The ordinary lights were turned up as high as they could go, and there were three extra lanterns placed so as to cast as little shadow as possible.

  It seemed to take hours. He worked slowly and extremely carefully, cutting tissue, hesitating, looking, cutting again. He obviously loathed the necessity of what he was doing. But once he had become engrossed in it, his professionalism asserted itself. He was a man who loved his calling and took a kind of joy in the delicate skill of his hands. Never once did he complain or suggest that it was unfair of Pitt to have asked him. Whatever fears he had as to what the evidence might show, he hid them.

  It was warm in the laundry, and damp from the steam of the coppers boiling heavy linen and towels. It smelled of soap, carbolic, and wet cloth.

  Tellman stood with his back to the door. No one in the house had been told what they were doing. They had brought the body themselves, after making sure all the servants were elsewhere. Most had already gone upstairs. If they heard even a whisper that there had been a body cut up in the laundry, the stories would grow until they were monstrous, and no servant would come to work in Ashworth Hall ever again.

  It was now half past eleven.

  “Will you hold that, please?” Piers asked, indicating the bones of the chest he had cut with Mrs. Williams’s meat cleaver. Pitt obeyed. It seemed callous to be holding a part of a man’s body, and yet he knew as well as anyone that it was no longer animate, but it still seemed peculiarly personal.

  Another ten minutes went by. No one spoke again.

  There was no sound but the hissing of the gas. The entire house seemed silent, almost as if there was no one else in all the dozens of rooms.

  “There is no water in the lungs,” Piers said at last, looking up at Pitt. “He didn’t drown.”

  “Did the blow to the back of the head kill him?”

  Piers did not answer, but closed up the chest as well as he could. He wiped the blood off his hands, then, after Pitt had helped him roll the body over so he could see, he turned his attention to the wound at the back of the neck.

  Another twenty minutes passed.

  “No,” he said with a lift of surprise. “There’s no bleeding, no real bruise at all, just a crushing of bone … there.” He pointed. “And there.” He screwed up his face in confusion. “He was killed … twice … if you see what I mean? First by breaking the neck, which was a very expert blow, exactly right. It must take some skill, and strength, to break a man’s neck with one blow. And there was only one. There’s no other bruising or damage.”

  Tellman had come inside earlier, silently, and now he came forward from the door, his eyes wide open, looking first at Piers, then at Pitt.

  “Then someone hit him over the back of the head and pushed him under the water,” Piers finished. “I haven’t the faintest idea why. It seems … crazy ….” He looked totally bewildered.

  “Are you sure?” Pitt felt a soaring of spirit that was out of all proportion to any good there could possibly be. “Are you absolutely sure?”

  Piers blinked. “Yes. You can get a proper police surgeon to check after me, but I’m sure. Why? What does it mean? Do you know who killed him?”

  “No,” Pitt said with a catch in his voice. “No … but I think I know who didn’t ….”

  “Well, it looks like two people did.” Tellman stared down at the body on the bench. “Or meant to!”

  Pitt did not move. He was wondering if he could make a case against someone for hitting the head of a corpse and holding it under the water. What could the crime be? Defilement of a dead body? Would the courts bother with it? Did he even want them to?

  “Sir?” Tellman prompted him.

  Pitt jerked his attention back. “Yes … Yes, tidy up here, will you, Tellman. I have something to do upstairs … I think. Thank you.” He looked at Piers. “Thank you, Mr. Greville. I appreciate both your courage and your skill … very much. Put the body back in the icehouse, will you, and for God’s sake, lock the door and don’t leave any traces of what we’ve done here. Good night.” And he went to the door, opened it, and strode back towards the main house and the stairs.

  12

  CHARLOTTE WAS ASLEEP when Pitt reached the bedroom, but just as she had been on her return from London, he was unable to wait until morning to share with her what he had learned. He was less gentle about waking her. He made no pretense at diplomacy. He walked straight in and lit the main gaslamp and turned it up.

  “Charlotte,” he said in a normal voice.

  She grunted at the brightness of the light and turned over slowly, hiding her face under the co
verlet.

  “Charlotte,” he repeated, going over and sitting on the bed. He felt abrupt, but it was not a time for approaching softly. “Wake up. I need to speak to you.”

  She caught the urgency in his voice even through the remnants of sleep. She sat up, blinking and shielding her eyes, her hair too loosely braided to stay in place, and now falling over her shoulders.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” She stared at him, not yet alarmed because there was no fear in him. “Do you know who did it?”

  “No … but it wasn’t Justine.”

  “Yes, it was.” She was awake now, still blinking in the light, but feeling curious. “It had to be. Why else would she be on the landing in a maid’s dress? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “She went in and hit him on the head, then pulled him under the water,” he agreed. “But she didn’t kill him … he was already dead!”

  She glanced at him as if she were not sure if she had grasped what he had said.

  “Already dead? Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “Yes, I am sure, because Piers said so—”

  “Piers?” She was sitting up now. “If he knew, why didn’t he say before?” Her face darkened. “Thomas … maybe he knew it was Justine and he is—”

  “No.” He was quite certain. “No, he does not know what it means. He merely told me the evidence ….”

  “What evidence?” she demanded. “What evidence does he know now that he didn’t know before?” She was shivering as the bedclothes fell from around her.

  “We took the body to the laundry and did something of an autopsy …. Charlotte, Justine had every intention of killing Ainsley Greville, but someone else got there before her and broke his neck … with a single, very expert blow … someone who knows how to kill and has probably done it before.”

  She shuddered, but seemed to have forgotten the bedclothes within a hand’s reach of her.

  “You mean an assassin,” she said in a whisper. “One of the Irishmen here.”

  “Yes, I can think of no other answer,” he agreed.