Death On Blackheath tp-29

by Anne Perry

  That same evening, Pitt was sitting by the fire in his home on Keppel Street. The long curtains across the french windows on to the garden were closed, but he could hear the wind and rain beating against the glass. The children were in bed. He and Charlotte were sitting quietly by the fire.

  It was Charlotte who raised the subject of the unidentified woman in the gravel pit again.

  ‘Do you think it’s over?’ she asked, putting her embroidery aside.

  Pitt liked watching her sew. The light flashed on the needle as it moved in her hands, weaving in and out, and the faint click of it against the thimble on her finger was rhythmic and comforting.

  ‘What’s over?’ He had not been paying attention. To be honest he was nearly asleep in the warmth of his home, with Charlotte so close he could have leaned forward and touched her.

  ‘The Dudley Kynaston case,’ she answered. ‘I keep waiting every day for Somerset Carlisle to raise it again in the House. You know the hat wasn’t Kitty’s, but you don’t know that the body wasn’t — do you?’

  He sighed, forcing his attention back to the issue. ‘No, and there’s no further evidence, so there’s nothing to pursue. We have to let it go.’

  ‘But you do know there’s something wrong!’ she protested. ‘Didn’t Kynaston admit to you that he had a mistress?’

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t Kitty Ryder.’

  ‘You believe him?’ Her brow was puckered.

  ‘Yes, I do.’ He sat up a little straighter. ‘From everything the other servants say, Kitty was a handsome girl, ambitious to better herself, not to have an affair that could cost her her job. Or worse than that, get her with child, and then out on the street with no money, no position and no future. I believe Kynaston. I really don’t think a quick fumble with his wife’s maid would be worth killing her to keep secret. I don’t know why Kitty went, but I can’t see her succeeding in blackmailing him or — from what the other servants say of her — even trying it. It looks as if she ran off with Dobson and then perhaps was too ashamed to come home again.’

  ‘Maybe she was with child already, and she married him?’ Charlotte suggested. ‘I suppose you looked at all the marriage registers?’

  Pitt smiled. ‘Yes, my darling, we did.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was silent for several minutes. There was no sound but the flickering of the fire and the rain against the windows.

  ‘Then what is Somerset Carlisle doing?’ she said at last. ‘Why did he raise the question in the House? He must have had a reason. For that matter, how did he even know so much about it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pitt confessed. ‘He must be aware of something, or at least believe it. The information is not so difficult to get; he may have friends in the police, or in the newspapers.’

  She frowned. ‘What could he know that we don’t? It has to be about Kynaston, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Or his mistress,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He may have ways of finding out, on a personal level, that we don’t.’

  ‘Would it matter?’ She was puzzled, her embroidery still ignored. ‘I mean would it matter to Somerset? If it were someone he knew, or cared about, surely it would be the last thing he would want exposed publicly, wouldn’t it?’

  Pitt considered the possibility of the woman being someone Carlisle disliked, but as soon as the thought formed in his mind he discarded it. Carlisle was unpredictable in many ways — eccentric at times, to say the least — but he would not have descended to using his privilege of parliamentary questions for the purpose of conducting a private vendetta.

  Charlotte was watching him. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Talbot’s involvement troubles me, but I can’t put my finger on it. Carlisle dislikes him profoundly. It’s there in his manners and his voice, polite and perfectly controlled so there’s nothing to get hold of. I don’t like Talbot either, and I’m perfectly sure he doesn’t like me. But as far as I know, it’s just because I’m not the sort of gentleman he thinks should hold this position.’ He felt suddenly self-conscious saying this. Charlotte was the daughter of a family of both very comfortable means and long accepted social position — not high society like Vespasia, but far beyond the servant status of his own family. A generation earlier he would have been her footman, not her husband. He was more conscious of it than she. Talbot’s attitude had brought it back again to the forefront of his mind.

  ‘Then he’s a fool,’ Charlotte said angrily. ‘It is too important a position to appoint people because of who their fathers were. We can’t afford anything but the best. To try to undermine that is disloyal to the country. Of which I shall remind him, should he be rash enough to make such a remark in my presence.’

  He laughed, but it was a little lopsided. He knew that she was perfectly capable of doing exactly that.

  ‘Are you going back to Carlisle?’ she asked.

  ‘Not until I have something specific to ask him,’ he answered. ‘We know each other too well for me to fool him for an instant. I wish I were as good a judge of him!’

  ‘I’m glad you’re not much like him,’ she said gently.

  Pitt was in his office in the morning, reading through reports from various officers around the country, when, after a brisk knock on the door, Stoker came in. Today there was nothing stoic about him. His usually bleak, rather bony face was alight with satisfaction. His eyes shone.

  Pitt was in no mood for preamble. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

  ‘I found Harry Dobson,’ Stoker said immediately. ‘He’s set up in his own workshop now, that’s why we couldn’t find him. Ordinary sort of bloke, but decent. I checked on him. No record with the police. Pays all his debts. Nothing bad known about him-’

  ‘Get to the point, Stoker. Where is Kitty Ryder?’ Pitt interrupted.

  ‘That’s it. She ran off from Shooters Hill with Dobson because she knew something that scared her so badly she thought she’d be killed if she stayed. Wouldn’t tell Dobson what it was, but it was bad enough that when the hat with the red feather in it was found, she thought someone was after her again and she moved off. Wouldn’t tell him where she was going. Maybe she hadn’t decided.’ His face tightened. ‘Or she meant to keep on moving, too scared to stay in one place.’

  ‘That’s what Dobson told you?’ Pitt asked.

  ‘I believe him,’ Stoker insisted. There was absolute certainty in his voice, in his face and in the way he stood square in front of Pitt’s desk. ‘I think he cares about her, and to be honest I don’t think he’s got the wits to lie anyway. It fits in with everything else we know.’

  ‘Still leaves a lot unanswered,’ Pitt said unhappily. What was she frightened of? Who did she think was pursuing her? Like Stoker, he wanted to believe that she was alive. He also wanted to believe that Kynaston had not harmed her, and the body in the gravel pit was someone they did not know — and, of course, if he were honest with himself, something that the local police could deal with.

  ‘Sir?’ Stoker said a little sharply.

  Pitt brought his attention back to the moment. ‘I suppose you checked with the locals that at least some of them had seen her with Dobson after the night she disappeared?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Only got one, but I didn’t find Dobson till yesterday late afternoon. I was lucky he was still working.’

  ‘Late?’ Pitt said curiously.

  ‘Yes, sir. About seven o’clock.’ There was a very faint colour in Stoker’s lean cheeks.

  ‘Your own time,’ Pitt remarked.

  Now the colour was deeper. ‘I thought it mattered, sir,’ he said a little defensively.

  Pitt leaned back in his chair and regarded Stoker with interest and a growing sense of sympathy. This need to follow up a missing person, even in his own time, was a side of Stoker he had not seen before. It was interesting that Stoker was embarrassed about it, too. Far from feeling irritation or contempt for him, Pitt liked him the better for it. It showed a gentleness, a vulnerability he had not thought Stoker possess
ed.

  ‘It probably does,’ he agreed. ‘Then the question is, what did she learn that was so terrible, or she thought was so terrible, that she fled without taking anything with her, or giving notice to anyone? And why has she not got in touch with the Kynaston house, or the police, to say that she’s alive and well?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ Stoker said, regaining a little of his composure. ‘It’s pretty plain from what she said to Dobson that she thought someone had come after her, and she wouldn’t tell Dobson who. But nobody does that about an affair, whoever it’s with.’

  ‘No,’ Pitt conceded. ‘In fact I wonder now if Kynaston confessed to one at all only in order to satisfy our curiosity and get us to stop looking for anything further.’

  Stoker bit his lip. ‘Can’t get away from that one, sir.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, sit down!’ Pitt told him. ‘We’ve got to go back to the beginning on this. Did Dobson say if the blood and hair on the areaway steps were hers? If they were, how did they get there? I assume he didn’t fight with her? Were they put there to mislead? Did someone try to stop her? Who? It’s hard to believe it was any kind of coincidence.’

  Stoker coloured again. ‘I didn’t ask him. I’ll go back and do that. Most likely seems to me that it was some kind of accident. Maybe she tripped.’

  ‘One accident I can believe in,’ Pitt answered. ‘Two I can’t. Whose body was it in the gravel pit? The local police can’t find anyone missing, and they’ve checked for several miles around. Whoever it is, poor woman, she died violently, then was kept somewhere for several days between the time of her death and the time she was found in the gravel pit. And she was appallingly mutilated. There’s no accident whatever in that.’

  ‘No, sir. Someone’s playing a very funny game with us. The stakes must be high.’

  ‘Very high,’ Pitt said gravely. ‘And I’m not sure we even know who the players are.’

  ‘Is Mr Carlisle a player, or a pawn?’ Stoker asked.

  ‘That’s another thing I don’t know,’ Pitt replied. ‘I’ve known him a long time. I think it will be wise to assume he’s a player.’

  ‘On whose side?’

  ‘Ours — I hope.’

  ‘And Mr Kynaston?’

  ‘I think that is where we begin. Delegate everything else for the time being.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Pitt had sat up very late the previous evening, rereading all the papers he had on the Kynaston case. He thought of it in those terms because the root of it lay in Kynaston’s house. He had finally gone to bed at about half-past one, when the pages were swimming before his eyes and he was only wasting time looking at them.

  He was jerked out of sleep by Charlotte’s hand on his shoulder, gentle but quite firm, shaking him. He opened his eyes and saw pale grey daylight in the room. It was the first of March. The sun was rising earlier every day. The equinox was less than three weeks away, the first day of spring.

  ‘Sorry. I slept in,’ he mumbled, sitting up reluctantly. His head felt thick and there was a dull ache at the back of his neck.

  ‘It isn’t all that late,’ she said quietly. Her voice was soft, but he had known her too long and too well to miss the strain in it.

  Suddenly he was truly awake. ‘What’s happened?’ His mind raced over thoughts first of his children, then of Vespasia, or even Charlotte’s mother. Now he was cold, clenched up.

  ‘They’ve found another body in one of the gravel pits up on Shooters Hill,’ she answered. Her face was anxious, her brow furrowed.

  All he felt was a wave of relief, as if the warm blood had started to flow in his body again. He threw off the covers and stood up.

  ‘I’d better get dressed and go. Who called you? I didn’t hear the telephone.’

  ‘Stoker’s here waiting for you, with a hansom. I’ll make him a cup of tea and a slice of toast while you’re dressing, and there’ll be some for you when you come down.’

  He drew in his breath to argue, but she was already at the door.

  ‘And don’t tell me you haven’t time!’ she called. ‘The tea will be ready to drink, and you can carry the toast with you.’

  Fifteen minutes later he was washed, dressed, hastily shaved, and sitting beside Stoker in the cab. They were going as fast as possible through the broadening daylight, rattling over the cobbles heading south.

  ‘Local police called me,’ Stoker told him. ‘Haven’t been there yet, came straight for you. They said this one’s worse. A lot worse.’

  ‘Another woman?’ Pitt asked.

  ‘Yes. But with fair hair.’ Stoker did not look at Pitt as he said it. Perhaps he was ashamed of it, but there was relief in his voice.

  ‘Does anyone know who she is? Any of the local police recognise her?’ Pitt asked.

  Stoker shook his head. ‘Not at the time they called. Maybe they’ve got further now.’

  Neither of them spoke for the rest of the journey as the hansom slowed a little going up the incline through Blackheath and then beyond on to Shooters Hill. Here the countryside was bare, the wind raking the grass between the few clumps of trees, which were none of them yet in leaf. Some of the gravel pits were filled with water after the winter rains.

  Pitt prepared himself for the blast of the wind, which would be heavy and damp when he got out. He tried to imagine the sight that was waiting for them, as if foreknowledge could blunt the edge of the impact.

  ‘I ain’t waitin’ for yer,’ the cabby said gravely, his face windburned, half hidden by the muffler around his neck and chin. ‘I’nt fair ter me ’orse.’

  ‘Wouldn’t think of asking you.’ Pitt climbed out a little stiffly and paid the man generously more than he had asked for.

  The driver found a sudden change of manner. ‘Thank you,’ he said with surprise. ‘Good o’ yer … sir.’ Then, before Pitt could have the chance to change his mind, he urged his horse on, turned in a circle, and headed back down towards Greenwich to find another fare.

  Pitt and Stoker walked into the wind towards the group of men they could see huddled about a hundred yards away. The tussock grass was rough and the ground between littered with small stones and weeds. In moments their boots were covered with pale, sandy mud.

  Some movement must have caught the eye of one of the men because he turned, and then started to walk towards them, the loose ends of his scarf flapping. Before he reached them he stopped, nodding to Stoker, then speaking to Pitt.

  ‘Sorry, sir. Looks too much like the last one not to let you know. Over this way.’ He started to walk back, head bent, feet making no sound on the spongy earth.

  Pitt and Stoker followed, each consumed in their own thoughts.

  The sergeant in charge was the same man as before. He looked tired and cold. ‘Mind those tracks there,’ he directed, pointing at what there was of a pathway. ‘Looks like a pony and trap, or something of the sort. Might have nothing to do with the body, but more than likely it was what the swine brought her here in.’

  ‘So she didn’t die here?’ Pitt asked.

  The man bit his lip. ‘No, sir. Looks just like the other one back a few weeks ago. Even got the same kind of hair, same sort of build. From what you can tell, she must a’ bin real ’andsome when she were alive. We’ll need the doc to tell us for sure, but I reckon that wasn’t all that lately. Week or two, at any rate.’

  ‘Hidden from view?’ Pitt asked.

  ‘That’s it,’ the sergeant replied, ‘she wasn’t. She was right out there for anyone passing to see. Couldn’t hardly miss her, poor creature.’

  ‘So she was put there very recently?’

  ‘Last night. That’s why the wheel tracks are worth something, or might be.’

  ‘Who found her?’ Pitt asked.

  ‘Young couple.’ The sergeant pulled a grim face. ‘Bin out all night. Walking the girl home so she could pretend as she’d been in ’er own bed, like. Not fooling anyone now!’ He gave a bark of laughter.


  ‘At least they reported it,’ Pitt observed, keeping pace with him. ‘They could have just kept going. Then it might have been a lot longer before we found her. Could have been more wind and rain, and we wouldn’t have found the cart tracks. How far do they go?’

  ‘Far as the main track over there,’ he pointed. ‘Then they get lost in all the gravel ruts. But then it’s reasonable that’s the way he came. Isn’t really any other way.’

  ‘Which means she was deliberately brought here,’ Pitt pointed out just as they reached the group. They were all standing close together giving the illusion of sheltering each other, although the wind managed to pick them out, whip everyone’s scarves and coat tails, and bend the grasses around their feet.

  They parted slightly to allow Pitt to walk through and look down at the corpse that lay in the shallow dip in the ground. Her clothes were spread out around her, dark and lacking any distinguishing shape or colour in the wet early light. Her hair was immediately noticeable because it was thick and fair, a little longer than average. Pitt thought that in life it would have been beautiful.

  Her face was harder to appreciate because it was already distorted by death and, like the earlier corpse, it had been obscenely lacerated by a razor-sharp blade. The eyes, nose and lips were missing. It was worse, because decomposition had begun, and small night animals had already reached her. As the sergeant had told him, she had been dead some time before she was placed here.

  ‘What killed her?’ Pitt straightened up, trying to control the horror and pity that welled up inside him. His whole body was shaking, and he could not control it. He looked from one to another of the men. ‘I can’t see anything obvious.’

  The sergeant spoke quietly, his voice hoarse. ‘We’ll need the police surgeon to tell us for sure, but ’er inside is broken up pretty bad, and both her legs are broke, high up, across the …’ He drew his own hand across his upper thighs. ‘God knows what did that to ’er.’