by Anne Perry
“Look at the light on the water.” Millicent went on ecstatically. “It’s just like a great silver plate.”
“Funny shape for a plate,” George muttered, regarding the long, narrow snake of the Serpentine with less enthusiasm than she.
“It will be like fairyland out there.” Mildred had no respect for the practical at a time like this. She had crept out through the park to sail on the dawn-lit water alone with George. What place had the literal at such a point? She picked up her skirts to keep them from getting soaked in the dew; this much was merely common sense, which was a totally different thing. No one wanted the wet, heavy fabric flapping around their ankles.
“There’s someone already out,” George said with disgust. And in the broadening light it was quite plain that there was indeed one of the small boats about three yards from the shore, but the figure in it was curiously bent over, as if looking for something in the bottom of the boat by his feet.
Millicent could hardly contain her disappointment. Where was the romance if someone else was present, someone not part of the idyll? One could pretend Hyde Park, in the middle of London, were a wood in some European archdukedom and George a prince, or at least a knight, but some other mundane-minded oarsman would definitely spoil it; apart from the fact that she should not be here, unchaperoned, and a witness was not welcome.
“Maybe he’ll go away,” she said hopefully.
“He’s not moving,” George replied with annoyance. He raised his voice. “Excuse me, sir. Are you quite well?” He frowned. “I can’t see the fellow’s face at all,” he added to Millicent. “Wait here. I shall see if he will be a gentleman and move a little away.” And he strode down towards the bank regardless of getting his shoes soaked, hesitated on the verge, then stumbled to his knees and slid with a violent splash into the water.
“Oh!” Millicent was horrified, painfully embarrassed for him, and having difficulty stifling her intense desire to giggle. “Oh, George!” She ran down the grass to where he was thrashing around in the shallows making a fearful noise and stirring up mud without seeming to regain his feet. Extraordinarily, the man in the boat took no notice whatsoever.
Then in the fast strengthening light, Millicent saw why. She had assumed he was bent forward, as had George. It was not so. His head was absent. There was nothing above his shoulders but the blood-soaked stump of his neck.
Millicent crumpled into total oblivion and fell headlong onto the grass.
“Yes sir,” the constable said smartly. “Captain the Honorable Oakley Winthrop, R.N. Found ’eadless in one o’ them little rowboats on the Serpentine. This mornin’ about dawn. Two young lovers off for a romantic trip.” He invested the word romantic with infinite scorn. “Poor souls fainted clean away—got no stomach for the likes o’ that.”
“Not unnatural,” Superintendent Thomas Pitt said reasonably. “I should find it a very worrying thought if they had.”
The constable quite obviously did not understand him.
“Yes sir,” he said with bland obedience. “The local bobby were called, when the gentleman pulled ’isself together and got out o’ the water. I gather as ’e fell in wi’ the shock o’ the event, like.” His lips twitched very slightly but his voice was carefully ironed of even the suspicion of humor. “Constable Withers, that was ’im what was called, ’is bein’ on duty in the park, like. ’e took one look at the corpse an’ knew as e’d got a real nasty one, so ’e sent for ’is sergeant, an’ they looked a bit closer, like.” He drew in his breath, waiting for Pitt to say something.
“Yes?” Pitt prompted.
“That’s when they found ’oo the dead man were,” the constable continued. “ ’Im being an important naval man, and an ‘Honorable,’ like, they thought as it should be someone o’ your rank to ’andle it—sir.” He looked at Pitt with satisfaction.
Pitt was newly promoted to superintendent. He had fought it long because he knew his real skill, which was very considerable, lay in working with people, both with the denizens of the semiunderworld, the poor or the truly criminal, and with the inhabitants of the servants’ quarters, the front parlors, and the withdrawing rooms of the gentry.
Then in the late autumn of last year, 1889, his superior, Micah Drummond, had retired from office in order to marry the woman he had loved ever since the appalling scandal that had ruined her husband and finally taken his life. He had recommended Pitt to fill his place on the grounds that although Pitt was not a gentleman, as Drummond most certainly was, he had the experience of actual police work, at which he was undoubtedly gifted, and had proved himself able to solve even the most delicate cases involving the politically or socially powerful.
And after the fiasco of the Whitechapel murders, still unsolved and perhaps destined to remain so, and the fierce unpopularity of the police, the public lack of faith in them, it was time for a bold change.
So now in the spring of 1890, the dawn of a new decade, Pitt was in charge of the Bow Street station, with special responsibility for sensitive cases which threatened to become explosive if not handled with both tact and extreme dispatch. Hence P.C. Grover was standing in front of him in the beautiful office which he had inherited from Micah Drummond, telling him of the decapitation of Captain the Honorable Oakley Winthrop, knowing that Pitt would be obliged to handle the case.
“What else do you know about it?” Pitt asked, looking up at Grover and leaning back in his chair, although at times like this he still felt it to be Drummond’s chair.
“Sir?” Grover raised his eyebrows.
“What did the medical officer say?” Pitt prompted.
“Died of ‘avin’ ’is ’ead cut orf,” Grover replied, lifting his chin a little.
Pitt considered telling him not to be insolent, but he was still feeling his way with the men in his command. He had not worked with them closely before, always having had one sergeant with him at most, more often no one at all. He was regarded more as a rival than a colleague.
They had obeyed Micah Drummond because he was from a distinguished family with private means and had a career in the army behind him, and thus was of a class doubly used to command. Pitt was totally different, a gamekeeper’s son who spoke well only because he had been educated, by grace, with the son of the estate. He had neither the manner nor the appearance of one born to lead. He was tall, but he frequently stood awkwardly. His hair was untidy, even on his best days. On his worst it looked as if he had been blown in by a gale. He dressed with abandon, and kept in his pockets a marvelous assortment of articles which he thought might one day prove handy.
The Bow Street men were slow to get used to him, and he was finding leadership alien to his nature. He was used to disregarding the rules, and being tolerated because he succeeded. Command placed quite different obligations on him and required a stiffer and less eccentric example to be set. Suddenly he was responsible for other men’s orders, their successes and failures, even their physical safety.
Pitt fixed Grover with a cold eye. “Time of death, Constable,” he said levelly. “That would be more instructive to know. And was he killed in the boat or brought there afterwards?”
Grover’s face fell. “Oh, I don’t think we know that, sir. Not yet. Bit of a risky thing to do, though, chop a man’s ’ead orf right there in the park. Could ’ave bin seen by anyone out for a walk.”
“And how many people were out for a walk at that hour, Grover?”
Grover shifted his feet.
“Oh, well, don’t seem as if there were nobody but them two as found ’im. But your murderer couldn’t ’ave counted on that, could ’e.” It was a statement rather than a question. “Could’ve been anyone out for a morning ride,” he went on reasonably. “Or even someone comin’ home late from a party, or a night out, takin’ the air …”
“That is if it was done in daylight,” Pitt pointed out. “Perhaps it was done long before that. Have you found anyone else who was in the park yet?”
“No sir, not yet. We came
to report it to you, Mr. Pitt, as soon as we realized as it were someone important.” It was his ultimate justification, and he knew it was sufficient.
“Right,” Pitt agreed. “By the way, did you find the head?”
“Yes sir, it was right there in the boat beside ’im, like,” Grover replied, blinking.
“I see. Thank you. Send Mr. Tellman up, will you.”
“Yes, sir.” Grover stood to attention momentarily. “Thank you, sir.” And he turned on his heel and went out, closing the door softly behind him.
It was less than three minutes before Tellman knocked, and Pitt told him to enter. He was a lean man with a narrow aquiline face, hollow cheeks and a tight sarcastic mouth. He had come up through the ranks with hard work and ruthless application. Six months ago he had been Pitt’s equal, now he was his junior, and resented it bitterly. He stood to attention in front of the large leather-inlaid desk, and Pitt sitting in the easy chair behind it.
“Yes, sir,” he said coldly.
Pitt refused to acknowledge he had heard the tone in Tellman’s voice. He looked across at him with innocent eyes. “There’s been a murder in Hyde Park,” he said calmly. “A man by the name of Oakley Winthrop, Captain the Honorable, R.N. Found a little after dawn in one of the pleasure boats on the Serpentine. Beheaded.”
“Unpleasant,” Tellman said laconically. “Important, was he, this Winthrop?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt said honestly. “But his parents are titled, so we can assume he was, at least in some people’s eyes.”
Tellman pulled a face. He despised those he considered passengers in society. Privilege stirred in him a raw, bitter anger that stretched far back into his childhood memories of hunger, cold, and endless weariness and anxiety, a father beaten by circumstances till he had no pride left, a mother who worked till she was too tired to talk to her children or laugh with them.
“I suppose we will all be trudging holes in our boots so we can get the beggar who did it,” he said sourly. “Sounds like a madman to me. I mean, why would anyone do anything so—” He stopped, uncertain what word he wanted. “Was his head there? You didn’t say.”
“Yes it was. There was no attempt to hide his identity.”
Tellman pulled a face. “Like I said, a madman. What the hell was a naval captain doing in a pleasure boat on the Serpentine anyway?” A smile lit his face quite suddenly, showing a totally different side to his nature. “Bit of a comedown, isn’t it? Fellow like that’d be more used to a battleship.” He cleared his throat. “Wonder if he was there with a woman. Someone else’s wife, maybe?”
“Possibly,” Pitt agreed. “But keep such speculation to yourself for the time being. First of all find out all the physical facts you can.” He saw Tellman wince at being told something he considered so obvious. He disregarded the man’s expression and continued. “Get all the material details. I want to know when he was killed, what with, whether it took one blow or several, whether he was struck from the front or the back, left hand or right, and if he was conscious at the time or not …”
Tellman raised his eyebrows.
“And how will they know that, sir?” he inquired.
“They’ve got the head,” Pitt replied. “They’ll know if he was struck first—and they’ve got the body, they can find out if he was drugged or poisoned.”
“Won’t know if he was asleep,” Tellman pointed out sententiously.
Pitt ignored him. “Tell me what he was wearing,” he went on. “And the state of his shoes. Did he walk across the grass to the boat, or was he carried? And you certainly ought to be able to work out whether his head was chopped off there in the boat or somewhere else.” He looked up at Tellman. “And then you can drag the Serpentine to see if you can find the weapon!”
Tellman’s face darkened. “Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?”
“No—but it’s a start.”
“Anyone in particular you want me to take on this job, sir? Being as it’s so delicate?”
“Yes,” Pitt said with satisfaction. “Take le Grange.” Le Grange was a smooth-tongued, rather glib young man whose sycophantic manner irritated Tellman even more than it did Pitt. “He’ll handle the possible witnesses very well.”
Tellman’s expression was vile, but he said nothing. He stiffened to attention for an instant, then turned on his heel and went out.
Pitt leaned back in his chair and thought deeply. It was the first major case he had been in charge of since taking over from Micah Drummond. Of course there had been other crimes, even serious ones, but none within the scope for which he was particularly appointed: those which threatened scandal or tragedy of more than purely private proportions.
He had not heard the name Winthrop before, but then he did not move in society, nor was he familiar with the leading figures in the armed services. Members of Parliament he knew more closely, but Winthrop was not of that body, and if his father ever took his seat in the House of Lords, it had not so far been to sufficient effect for it to have reached public awareness.
Surely Micah Drummond would have reference books for such an occasion? Even he could not have stored in his memory all the pertinent facts of every important man or woman in London.
Pitt swiveled around in the chair and stared at the immaculate bookshelves. He was already familiar with many of the titles. It had been one of the first things he had done on moving in. There it was—Who’s Who. He pulled it out with both hands and opened it on the desk. Captain the Honourable Oakley Winthrop was not present. However, Lord Marlborough Winthrop was written up at some length, more for his heritage than his achievements, but nonetheless the book gave a very fair picture of a proud, wealthy, rather humorless man of middle age whose interests were tediously predictable. He had had a host of respectable minor offices and was related to a wide variety of the great families in the land, some quite distantly, but nevertheless each connection was duly noted. Some forty years ago he had married one Evelyn Hurst, third daughter of an admiral, later ennobled.
Pitt closed the book with a feeling of foreboding. Lord and Lady Winthrop were not likely to be placated easily if answers were slow in coming, or displeasing in their nature. It was probably unfair, but already he had a picture of them in his mind.
Was Tellman right—was a madman loose in the park? Or had Oakley Winthrop in some way brought it upon himself by courting another man’s wife, welshing on his debts, or cheating? Or was he privy to some dangerous secret? These were questions that would have to be asked with subtlety and extreme tact.
In the meantime he would like to have gone to the park and sought the material evidence himself, but it was Tellman’s job, and it would be time wasting as well as impolitic to oversee him in its pursuance.
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