Murder on the Serpentine

by Anne Perry

  But that was for later. He could easily persuade this frail man—who had in one night lost his job, his home, his family, such as it was, and his purpose in getting up every day, knowing that he was valued—to give him the answers he sought.

  He was behaving automatically now, still too stunned at the mention of Narraway’s name to feel the full impact of it.

  “Did he have political enemies?” Pitt asked. “His knowledge gave him great power. There must have been ambitious people in whose path he stood, men he could not let climb upward too far.”

  “Oh, yes,” Robson agreed. “Knowledge is power, especially when the other person is not absolutely certain how much you know. I’ve seen it happen. The hesitation, the moment of fear, the retreat when someone realizes that he doesn’t know. I used to wonder sometimes how much of it was a game, whether he really knew what he implied at all.” He bit his lip. “But he would see fear in others, like a shadow in the eyes. If you know what I mean?” He looked at Pitt quite openly, one man to another, as if there were no difference in rank or power between them.

  “Yes, I do know,” Pitt agreed, almost in a whisper. “Who might they be, these men who could not read him, and needed to so much?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, sir. Except that Sir John wasn’t one of them.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Pitt was confused. Where had he lost the thread of the conversation? Then he knew, like opening the door into the wind. Robson was not talking about Halberd, he was talking about Narraway.

  “Sir John wasn’t one of them,” Robson repeated.

  Pitt thought for an instant. He didn’t want to betray his ignorance, nor did he want to know whatever this man thought of Narraway. But both pride and ignorance were luxuries he could not afford, certainly not now.

  “And had Lord Narraway been useful to Sir John?” he asked.

  Robson blinked. “Oh…yes, of course. I forgot. He got sent up to the House of Lords after that scandal, didn’t he?” He gave a tiny shake of his head. “That’s the thing about scandal: It doesn’t matter if it’s all lies, it still sticks to you. There’s always some fool who will say, ‘There’s no smoke without fire!’ ” He sounded bitter. “There was no fire around Sir John, sir. None at all. He had his faults. Show me the man who doesn’t. And he had enemies, people whose weaknesses he knew, but he couldn’t help that. He was nobody’s fool. He would read people like most men read a page of the newspaper.”

  “An uncomfortable ability,” Pitt observed. “Especially if other people are aware of it.”

  Robson’s chin rose a little. “He did what he had to, in loyalty to Her Majesty, and to the memory of Prince Albert, God save him.”

  “Indeed,” Pitt said, hoping Sir John’s motives were as loyal and as selfless as Robson thought. Most men had few secrets and even fewer heroics in front of their valets, who had seen them unshaved and in their underwear, hungover and bleary-eyed. Seemingly John Halberd was the exception. “If you are right, then it is all the more important that we find out who murdered him that night on the Serpentine, and that no scandal is attached falsely to that.”

  Robson’s face was white. “I’ll do all I can to help, sir.”

  “Good.”

  Pitt spent the next three hours going through all the papers and effects that he could find, with Robson’s help. These included diaries from the last three years, earlier ones having been thrown away. Clearly Halberd had spent an increasingly large amount of time in the country, at his own stable and visiting others, mostly in horse-breeding areas. There were references to the Prince of Wales, but not more than were easily accounted for by Halberd’s friendship with the Queen and his interest in horses. There were also notations on trees and flowers, especially roses.

  There were a lot of social engagements. Clearly he enjoyed the opera, concerts, theater, and good conversation. Such information as there was painted a picture of a man Pitt would have liked.

  There was a brief note lodged inside the front cover of the current diary, undated and unsigned: “Tuesday, not Thursday, please,” which could have referred to anything. Pitt put it to one side to take away with him, but with little hope of it being useful.

  Victor Narraway was referred to only twice, and so cryptically the entries offered nothing but more uncertainty. The first time it was merely, “Of course Narraway knew already. He would!” The second was longer: “I can’t help wondering if Narraway has a part in this, but I don’t want to tip my hand by asking.”

  There were notes about Kendrick, but they were mostly to do with horses and all self-explanatory. Kendrick had put a lot of money into good bloodstock, and was becoming successful. But that was public knowledge, as was the prince’s love of the sport. There were several names of other breeders. Some large sums of money were noted, but briefly; horses involved high expense, and sometimes high rewards.

  He searched thoroughly, not finding anything unexpected or out of the usual habits of a middle-aged man of good family and very considerable private means, but lacking any close relatives, which was merely misfortune.

  Pitt asked to take away some of the papers he had seen, thanked Robson, and walked out into the warm afternoon street with a sense of failure.

  And yet as he hailed a cab and gave the driver the Lisson Grove address, he was still certain that Halberd’s death had been deliberate, violent, and planned. It had also been well concealed afterward. All the facts he had depended on testimony. There was no physical evidence that a court would see as proof.

  Who had Halberd gone to the Serpentine to meet? And why? Why not meet in his own home, or the other person’s home, or a hotel lounge, a café, the corner of a street? Or even under a tree in the park? There had to be a reason.

  Perhaps the other person’s home was not private enough. That might also apply to a café or restaurant. The park after dusk seemed good enough, but then one ran the risk of appearing to loiter. One might be accosted.

  Had there been a third person involved, someone recognizable? Halberd did not live particularly close to the park. Did the other person live close by?

  When Pitt reached Lisson Grove he spoke briefly to Stoker and a couple of other men, then went up to his office, but there was no time to make notes about his earlier interviews. There was a message waiting for him, requesting his presence at his earliest convenience to report to Her Majesty. A carriage was awaiting him. Apparently it had been there close to an hour already.

  —

  PITT WAS CONDUCTED THROUGH the mews door into the palace. A footman showed him to the same room as before. Now that he was here, he would await her pleasure. There was no reason why he should not sit in one of the comfortable, overstuffed chairs while he waited, but he was too tense to relax. He paced back and forth like one of the sentries on duty. He could have been outside at the front, wearing a scarlet coat and the bearskin helmet of a Grenadier Guardsman.

  He heard the door open behind him and whirled around. Victoria came into the room slowly. She looked old and very small. Had she been anyone else, he would have offered her his arm to lean on, but one did not touch the Queen, or even suggest it.

  He bowed, and then watched as she made her way across the carpet, leaning on a stick, and sat down in the same chair as before. When she had arranged her skirts she told the maid at the door to go, and finally looked up at Pitt as the door closed with a barely perceptible click.

  “Well, Mr. Pitt, what have you to tell me?” Her voice was firm but a little hoarse, as if her mouth was dry. She could not possibly be afraid of him, but perhaps she was afraid of the truth.

  The least he could offer her was to be candid and not for an instant make her wait, or ask a second time.

  “I can tell you the details if you wish, Your Majesty,” he replied. His voice seemed loud in the quiet room. “But I have reached the conclusion that Sir John Halberd did not die accidentally as a result of standing up in the boat and overbalancing. I believe he was struck deliberately with an oar, and pushe
d over the side into the water. The boat was close enough to the bank for him to have reached the shore quite easily, had he been conscious. But the blow was hard enough to render him unconscious, and while in that state he drowned.”

  The Queen did not blink. “I see.”

  He waited a moment, but she appeared to have assumed that he would continue. She looked tired and deeply unhappy.

  “I’m sorry…” He said it instinctively. It was true. What he had learned of Halberd was admirable, but he would have grieved for the Queen’s sake, whatever Halberd had been like.

  “Thank you. Why did the police not come to this conclusion, Mr. Pitt?”

  Should he tell her the details? He hesitated.

  “Mr. Pitt?” She spoke more abruptly.

  “I tried to think of a reason why Sir John would be there at all, ma’am,” he said awkwardly. “There were some unkind suggestions of meeting a type of woman he would not see openly.” He saw the distaste in the downturn of her lips. “Nothing I could learn of him made that seem likely, so I looked for another reason, a meeting of a different sort.” He was talking too quickly. Deliberately he took more time. “I spoke to the young man who found Sir John’s body, then the man who owned the boat, and I looked at it myself, at the rowlocks and the oars. I found evidence that he was struck with the oar, then when he fell the gunwale caught him on the side of the head. From the place where the oar was found and the shape of the rowlock, that would not happen by accident. I cannot prove it because the boat has been painted over, but the young man who found Sir John had a clear recollection of what he found, and the police surgeon identified the injuries that correspond with my theory.”

  “I see.” She took a deep breath and let it out soundlessly. “I was afraid of it. I wish you had proved me wrong. A simple accident. He was inattentive, stood up, and lost his balance. That is what I would like to have heard. And had you told me so, I would have believed it.”

  “Would you, ma’am? Sir John Halberd had experience with boats on the Nile, I was told.”

  She looked at him with a tight smile, but there was an unwilling amusement in it. “No doubt you were. Truthfully, I would have liked you to tell me that it was merely an accident, but I would have struggled to believe you. And I daresay that in the end I would not have. I would simply have thought you possibly kind, if a trifle patronizing.” Her voice hardened. “Or else incompetent. Then I would have had to ask the home secretary to relieve you of your position. Victor Narraway would not have liked that. He thinks well of you. Or he did the last time I saw him, which was a while ago now. He would not have lied to me, whatever he had to say. A clever man, with steel in his soul. Have you steel in your soul, Mr. Pitt?”

  This time he did not hesitate long enough for her to notice. “Yes, ma’am.” Please heaven that was true. But perhaps not as much steel as Narraway. He wanted to, and yet he was also afraid of the price of it.

  “Then you will find out for me who killed John Halberd, and why,” she replied. “And you will tell me when you have proof of it. Do you understand me, Mr. Pitt?” Her voice was a little husky, as if she was battling against deep emotion.

  “Yes, ma’am, I do.”

  “Regardless of who it is. Do you understand that also, Mr. Pitt?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I have no time left for comfortable lies,” she went on. “If the answer is one you do not like, you will bring it to me just the same. It is not your prerogative to decide anything for me. You are a nice young man. You have a wife and children, I am told. My friend Vespasia tells me you have a gentle heart.”

  He was startled, and moved that Vespasia would speak of him to the Queen.

  The Queen gave a little grunt. “I am not your family, I am your queen and empress, and you will not be gentle with me! You are commander of my Special Branch, and you will bring me the truth…regardless of what you think I may do with it, or how unpleasant it may be. Will you give me your word, Mr. Pitt?”

  He bowed very slightly. “Yes, ma’am. I give you my word.”

  “Good. Then you had best be about it. I shall expect you to report to me regularly. Good night, Mr. Pitt.”

  He bowed more deeply and left the room, moving backward to the door, then turning and going out.

  A waiting footman conducted him to the rear entrance again, although Pitt was hardly aware of him. He walked out into the palace mews and found the carriage that had brought him still waiting. He asked the driver to take him to his home on Keppel Street, then sat back to go over and over in his mind what the Queen had said to him.

  What was it she feared so much?

  He knew. Why was he avoiding it? It was there at the edge of his mind all the time. She was afraid that in some way the Prince of Wales was involved. Not that he was directly responsible, but indirectly.

  The prince’s relationship with his mother had never recovered after the death of Prince Albert. Pitt had lost his own mother when he was a boy, but at least the memories were all clean. There was deep loneliness, a gaping sorrow where the rest of their lives together should have been, but there was no festering wound, nothing unhealed to poison the past.

  And he had promised to find out who had killed Halberd, and why, and tell Victoria! There was no way to escape it, except to fail, and so completely that she could not think he was lying to cover something he dared not tell her.

  PITT BEGAN THE DAY early, going to see Jack Radley at his office in the House of Commons. He did not wish to see him at his home, where Emily would inevitably learn about it. She was quick-witted enough to deduce that the case he was working on had turned more serious and was sufficiently political for him to seek Jack’s help. It was something he had done before, but rarely, and only when it involved someone professionally connected to Jack. It had usually turned out unfortunately for Jack, with disillusion and a deep and painful lesson. In fact, on the last occasion, Jack had decided not to stand for Parliament again after his present term was finished.

  Of course, he was free to change his mind, however unlikely that seemed now.

  Jack was in a meeting, even at nine o’clock in the morning, and Pitt waited in his office, having sent a messenger to inform Jack of his presence in case he did not automatically return.

  Pitt had been pacing the floor a mere twenty minutes when the door opened and Jack came in. His face was as handsome as always, time having marked it kindly, adding distinction as he began to take life more seriously. Now he actually looked worried.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Thomas,” he said warmly. “Some men seem to be able to talk endlessly without actually saying anything. I assume you have a case in which I can help?” He waved his hand toward the comfortable leather armchairs by the marble fireplace, which in the winter heated the office very pleasantly. He was no longer a junior member, sharing rooms with someone else.

  Pitt sat down and crossed his legs comfortably, as if he intended to be here for some time.

  “Did you know Sir John Halberd?” he asked.

  “Slightly.” Jack looked at him steadily. “I know the gossip regarding his being in a boat on the Serpentine, but I’m reluctant to believe it. I can understand if he had an affair. He’s a normal man, and not married. It would take pretty good proof for me to believe he picked up a prostitute, or that he had an affair with a woman married to someone else, and conducted it like that.” He smiled with a slight downward turn of his lips. “Awkward, uncomfortable, and completely unnecessary, apart from anything else.”

  “What do you think he was doing there?” Pitt asked curiously.

  Jack frowned. “That’s a question I can’t answer, except that he must have been meeting someone. He wasn’t going for a midnight row alone. Who on earth does that? Incidentally, how did he get the boat? Are they not locked up at night somehow? Moored with a chain and padlock, or something? Otherwise any fool could make away with them: young men a bit drunk; thieves just for the sake of it.”

  “I asked the own
er. Halberd had a key to the padlock. The boatman gave it to him by arrangement.”

  Jack looked surprised. “What did he say Halberd wanted it for?”

  “The man had not the nerve to ask him. Apparently it wasn’t the first time,” Pitt replied.

  “I thought he was a pretty good man. Was I wrong again?” The sadness of previous misjudgments was clear in Jack’s eyes and in the slight stiffness of his body in the easy chair.

  Pitt thought for a moment, unhappy that he had been forced to disillusion Jack twice, and painfully. It would be an ugly thing if Jack was to lose faith in himself over this, and he had come very close before. Broken trust does not heal easily. Another time and it would become a habit to suspect, so that he would not see what was brave or good anymore. And yet evasion would not be kind either. It would be felt as condescension.

  To begin with, Pitt had thought Jack a charming, empty man, too handsome for his own good or anyone else’s. However, during the years of Jack’s marriage to Emily, Pitt had come not only to like him but to see the best in him—the courage, the good humor, a gained self-knowledge of his original superficiality.

  Now he was waiting for Pitt to answer.

  “I don’t think so,” Pitt said seriously. “It is a private matter so far, although it will have to become public soon, because I am sure in my own mind that he was murdered. I don’t know by whom, or why. Perhaps the why is what matters most.”

  Jack perceived the gravity of it immediately. “Murdered? And the head of Special Branch called in. By whom? The police?”

  “No.” Pitt hesitated. “As a matter of absolute confidence…”

  Jack leaned forward a fraction. “Tell me only what you have to.”

  Pitt smiled bleakly. “I wouldn’t tell anyone if I didn’t have to. Narraway and Aunt Vespasia are out of the country, somewhere in Europe. I don’t even know where. And I haven’t told Charlotte. She knows I can’t.”