Death On Blackheath (Thomas Pitt 29)

by Anne Perry

  What were Vespasia’s feelings for him, more than friendship, interest, affection? No man, especially one so sensitive under the shell as Victor Narraway, could settle happily for that! If you love you want it all.

  None of that should affect Pitt. Why should he interfere, except to make the decision not to place Narraway into such temptation again regarding the Kynaston case?

  Pitt was alone in whatever action he took, or refrained from. He was more truly alone than he could ever recall. Whatever he did about Somerset Carlisle, it was solely his judgement to make. Was he really the right man for this job? He had the intelligence and the experience to detect. He had pursued and found the truth on many occasions where others had failed. On that his promotion was deserved. But had he the wisdom? Did he understand people with money and power, ancient privilege of history and title, pride and loyalty stretching intricate webs into all the great families in the land, and in some cases beyond into Europe?

  Was he himself free from all debt and loyalty, all emotional pity that could corrupt? He looked at his family around him in the twilight. And it reached much further than that: to Vespasia, Narraway, Jack and Emily; further still to Charlotte’s mother and her husband. To Somerset Carlisle, even. To all the people who had shared the moments of his life, helped or hurt, to whom he owed if not compassion, then at least honesty.

  He did not want to know if Carlisle had placed those dead women in the gravel pit, but he knew he could no longer evade the issue.

  If Carlisle had placed the bodies, then where had he obtained them? Pitt refused even to imagine that he had killed them himself, or for that matter paid someone else to. That meant they were already dead. Where would he find corpses that he could take? Not a hospital. He could hardly claim to be a relative because that was unbelievable. Nor, for that matter, could he prove he was an employer or other benefactor.

  Therefore he had done it secretly, but certainly with some help. Possibly he had a manservant of some sort that he trusted, or even more likely, someone much closer to the edge of the law whom he had helped in the past, and who was now willing to return the favour.

  There were always unclaimed bodies in a morgue, people who had no close relative willing to bury them. It would not be difficult to claim some past association, or previous servant, or relative of a servant, and offer to provide a decent burial, out of pity. Then what? Bury a coffin full of bags of sand, or anything else of the appropriate weight.

  That would answer the question of where the bodies had been kept so chilled and clean. It would also explain the timing of discovery of them – only when Carlisle could find one that was suitable. They needed to be young women of the servant class, unclaimed by anyone else, and who had died violently. He must have combed all London for them!

  If, of course, he had done it at all!

  There was no evidence, only Pitt’s previous knowledge of Carlisle and his belief about his character.

  What proof could he find? He could have his men look through all the records of recent deaths of women in the London area, those that were violent and resulted in the kind of injuries the gravel pit corpses had sustained. Then see which were unclaimed by family, and if some benefactor had offered to pay for a funeral.

  Then what? Exhume them to see if the corpses were there, or bags of sand instead? Perhaps, but only as a last resort, and he would need far more to justify it than a desperate imagination.

  He would have the enquiries made, discreetly. No exhumations until he had evidence.

  He must learn more about Carlisle, the opinions of people who had encountered him in other contexts than those Pitt knew for himself. What were the man’s private interests apart from politics and social reform, the numerous battles against injustice. Who were his friends, other than Vespasia? Was there anyone in particular he might have turned to for help in this extraordinary undertaking? Did he know Kynaston personally? Were there any other connections that were worth exploring?

  He must do it with great care, and disguise his reasons for asking. If he spoke to more than a very few, Carlisle would undoubtedly hear of it and know exactly what he was doing.

  One friend of Carlisle’s whom Pitt spoke to was a highly respected architect by the name of Rawlins. Pitt took him to luncheon at a discreet and expensive restaurant. He gave the pretext of making a check on Carlisle in order to trust him with Special Branch information in order to engage his help in Parliament. Asking about Carlisle’s friends in the past came quite naturally.

  ‘Erratic,’ Rawlins agreed. ‘I wanted to build towers and spires that reached to the sky,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Somerset wanted to climb them! I liked him enormously; still do, although I don’t see him so often. But I never understood him. Never knew what he was thinking.’ He sipped the very good red wine they were having with their roast beef.

  Pitt waited. He knew from the look of inner concentration on Rawlins’ face that he was searching memory, struggling to understand something that had long eluded him.

  ‘Then he went off to Italy without finishing his degree,’ Rawlins spoke slowly. ‘Couldn’t understand why at the time. He was in line for a first; he could have been an academic.’

  ‘A woman?’ Pitt suggested. So far there had been no mention of any love affair, only dalliances, nothing to capture the heart.

  ‘I thought so at the time,’ Rawlins conceded. He gave a slight shrug and sipped at the wine again. ‘I learned long after that it was to fight with some partisans who were struggling for Italian unification. He never spoke of it himself. I only heard it from a woman I met in Rome, years later. She spoke of him as if his exploits were woven through the best and most fulfilling part of his life. I think she might have been in love with him.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘I remember I was jealous. In her words, he sounded funny, impossibly brave, absolutely hare-brained – but not unrecognisable as the man I had known.’

  He sighed and took another mouthful of the excellent meal. ‘He ended up in an Italian prison somewhere in the north, with both his shoulders dislocated. Must have hurt like hell. He never spoke of it. If you need to know, I’m afraid I can’t help you. I haven’t any idea what happened, or who did it. I could give half a dozen guesses as to why.’

  Pitt avoided Rawlins’ eyes, looking instead down at his own plate. ‘Did you ever know him to commit violence against anyone?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps in the conviction that the end justified the means?’ He did not want the answer, and he almost denied the question in the next breath. He could feel his muscles tense, as though he were waiting for a blow.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ Rawlins said quietly. ‘Not in a way that would be of any value. I never knew him choose violence, in fact as a student I saw him go to some lengths to avoid it. He was argumentative, but never quarrelsome. But I do know that he was a man of intense passions. I don’t believe anything would stop him doing something he believed to be necessary in a cause he cared about. He had too much imagination, and not enough sense of fear. He was an all-or-nothing sort of man. Judging by his speeches in Parliament, and the little I know of him now, he still is. Actually, I don’t think that kind of thing changes. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.’

  ‘Any friends I should worry about?’ Pitt asked casually.

  ‘Worry?’

  ‘Fringes of the communal underworld, that sort of thing?’

  Rawlins smiled. ‘Carlisle? Quite possibly. He’s a man of eclectic tastes and peculiar loyalties. But if he makes a promise, he won’t break it.’

  ‘That’s rather what I thought,’ Pitt agreed.

  They finished the meal speaking of other things. Rawlins was a pleasant man, intelligent and courteous. Pitt found him not only easy to like, but easier to believe than he would have wished.

  Nothing he had heard in the course of the whole two days had painted a picture of Somerset Carlisle that was in any way different from the man he already knew, the man who had played such a grotesque and dangerous game with
the corpses in Resurrection Row.

  If anything, he was worse off, because it drew a picture of a man he not only liked, and was now compelled to admire, but one very capable of doing precisely what Pitt had feared.

  Chapter Thirteen

  PITT ARRIVED late at his office on the following morning, having been held up by a traffic accident on Euston Road. The whole thing had turned into chaos as everyone tried to find a way around it, and ended by getting jammed in a total impasse where no one had room to turn and extricate themselves.

  Stoker was waiting for him, looking grave. ‘Don’t bother taking your coat off,’ he said as soon as Pitt was in through the door.

  Pitt stopped. ‘Not another body!’

  ‘No, sir, still the same one. Whistler wants to see you. And if you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to come along too.’

  Pitt had no objection to Stoker coming, but he was curious, and desperate for a little hope. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  Stoker stared back at him, his dark grey eyes clear. ‘I want to know more about what kind of a man does this to a woman. I want to know who it is that Kitty Ryder thinks she’s running away from.’

  ‘You still think it has something to do with Kynaston?’ Pitt felt the knot tighten in his stomach.

  ‘I don’t know, sir, but it appears she thinks it has. If I could find her, I’d ask her why.’

  ‘No more progress with that?’ Pitt asked.

  ‘Not much.’ Stoker stopped, took a deep breath, and went on, ‘But I’m not giving up.’ There was a faint colour in his bony face, just a smudge of pink across his cheeks. He looked at Pitt defiantly, offering no explanations.

  ‘Well, if you succeed, you can ask her.’ Pitt jammed his hat on again. ‘But we can’t wait for that. We’d better go and see Whistler. Just what I feel like first thing on a cold wet morning, get stuck in a traffic jam, then a visit to the morgue. Come on!’ He led the way back out into the rain.

  Pitt and Stoker had to wait several minutes to find a hansom. It was always like this on wet days. No one was willing to walk.

  Finally they found a cab and splashed through the puddles to scramble inside, their sodden trouser legs flapping, coats flying open in the wind.

  It was a long way from Lisson Grove to Blackheath, on the other side of the river and considerably further east.

  ‘If someone’s trying to make Kynaston look guilty of this, even if he isn’t, then it’s someone with a pretty good knowledge of his household,’ Stoker said after a few minutes. ‘And he knows Kynaston himself too. Either he knows why Kynaston keeps on lying, or he’s got some kind of a hold over him so he doesn’t tell us the truth.’ He sat huddled in his damp coat, looking sideways at Pitt in the grey daylight.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s unarguable,’ Pitt agreed. ‘What I need to know is, why? To what end? I wish I could think it was personal vengeance of some sort, but we haven’t found any kind of reason for it.’

  They turned from Seymour Place right into Edgware Road then left and right again into Park Lane.

  ‘Well, I dare say Rosalind Kynaston would be pretty angry if she knew about the mistress,’ Stoker pointed out. ‘And she could have taken the watch and fob easily enough.’

  ‘She might hate him,’ Pitt replied reasonably, ‘but she wouldn’t ruin him. If she did, she’d be ruining herself at the same time. His disgrace would be hers as well. And if he lost his income, that’s also hers! You told me she comes from a respectable background, but she has no independent wealth. Unless you think she’s got a lover too! One who would marry her, in spite of whatever this does to her reputation? I suppose it’s possible, but I can’t see it as likely, can you?’

  Stoker thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know women that well, sir. Not as you must, with a wife and a daughter …’

  ‘I’m not sure any man knows women,’ Pitt said drily. ‘Let us agree that perhaps my ignorance is not as total as yours. What about it?’

  ‘Mrs Kynaston doesn’t look to me like a woman who’s got a secret lover, sir.’ Stoker assiduously avoided his eyes. ‘I remember when my sister Gwen was first in love with her husband, didn’t know that much about him, but by heck, I knew she had something going on. Little things, like the way she did her hair, the way she took care with what she wore, not just some of the time, but all of it. That little secret smile, like the cat that got the cream. And even the way she walked with a little swish of her skirts, as if she knew she was going somewhere special.’

  Pitt couldn’t help laughing, in spite of the cold and the discomfort inside the rattling hansom squashing them together. He had seen exactly what Stoker was describing in Charlotte, years ago when he had been courting her. He hadn’t understood it then: the happiness one moment, despair the next, but always the vitality. She had seemed to glow with life.

  He had seen it in Emily too, when she was beginning to think seriously about Jack Radley. But that was another subject, and at the moment one of more pain than pleasure.

  And, of course, now it was also beginning in Jemima. How quickly she was growing up. Pitt knew which young men she liked, and which held no interest for her. She was so pretty, brave and vulnerable, like her mother, imagining she was sophisticated, and as easy to read as an open book. Or was that only so to him, because he loved her, and would have protected her from every pain, if that were possible?

  Charlotte’s father would have protected her from the social disasters, not to mention financial, of marrying a policeman! The only fate worse would have been not to marry at all, and that judgement call was a fine thing! Thank heaven her mother had more emotional sense!

  Would he have sense, when it came to Jemima marrying someone?

  Not necessary to think of now. It was years away! Years and years!

  They were moving steadily south towards the river. No doubt the driver would take them along the Embankment, then over one of the bridges on to the south bank.

  Pitt regarded Stoker with a new respect. He had not thought him capable of such human observation. It came to him in a rush of clarity that he did not know Stoker very much at all. Outside his skill and intelligence in the job, and his well-proven loyalty, he was almost unknown!

  ‘So you think Rosalind Kynaston is not having an affair?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right, sir. She looks like a woman who has very little to be happy about,’ Stoker agreed.

  ‘Do you think she knows of Kynaston’s affair?’

  ‘Probably. In my experience people do know, especially women, even if they can’t afford to admit to themselves that they do. Of course, when they’re not in Society, and there’s not much money or a nice house to lose, there’s not the same need to fix a smile on your face and pretend you’ve seen nothing. And I’ll bet you anything you like,’ he added, ‘she’s not the one who killed anyone and laid them out in the gravel pits – or slashed their faces to bits!’

  Pitt shivered. ‘Quite. But you agree that whoever is doing it, the whole thing is connected to the Kynaston house?’

  ‘No question,’ Stoker agreed. ‘I just don’t know how! I’ve been turning it over and over, but nothing makes complete sense. For a start, why these mutilations? What kind of a person cuts the flesh on the face of someone who’s already dead? The only reason I can think of is to disguise who it is. But we’ve got no idea, anyway.’

  ‘Or to draw our attention to it,’ Pitt said, thinking aloud.

  ‘You mean two dead women dumped in a gravel pit isn’t going to make us stop and think?’ Stoker asked with heavy disbelief.

  ‘Doesn’t make as big a headline as two that are mutilated in exactly the same way,’ Pitt pointed out.

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ Stoker was now looking at Pitt curiously, as if he expected an answer. He stared more intently. ‘You mean it’s to draw our attention even more to Kynaston? Like the handkerchiefs?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Why?’ Stoker repeated.

  ‘That’s what I am struggling with,’ Pitt
told him, trying to find words that were honest, and yet did not tell him about Somerset Carlisle. Not naming him would be easy, but Stoker would know the answer was being evaded, and that was an insult he did not deserve. It would also damage the trust between them, which was one of Pitt’s greatest assets. Without the trust of his men he was alone. He was increasingly aware of the lack of confidence from people like Talbot, and possibly others in the Government. Even in Lisson Grove he had yet to earn the kind of respect they had had for Victor Narraway.

  ‘One thought that came to me,’ Pitt went on as they crossed over the river and turned east, ‘is that if Kynaston is suspected and the net seems to be closing around him, he would be extremely grateful to anyone who could prove his innocence …’

  ‘He won’t thank us for long, sir,’ Stoker said with an odd gentleness, as if he were protecting a younger man from disillusion.

  Pitt avoided looking at him, suddenly both moved and amused by his desire to prevent a pain that afflicted everyone from time to time. It was reality, bitter and as sharp as the icy edge of the spring winds that so often take the early flowers.

  Pitt had to speak quickly, dispel the mistake before it had taken shape.

  ‘I know that, Stoker. I was considering the possibility of someone else offering him rescue, at a price – someone who owes him nothing, but to whom he might then owe a very great deal.’

  Stoker’s eyes widened, sharp and bright. ‘I see! At a price he would then go on paying indefinitely! That would be very clever indeed. And we would look stupid. We might find ourselves listened to rather less the next time we suspect someone!’

  Pitt had not even thought of that. He wished that he had. It was a powerful and dangerous possibility.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said softly, barely heard above the noise of the traffic along Rotherhithe Street. ‘It grows uglier, doesn’t it? At least the possibilities do. The question arises again – who?’