by Anne Perry
“And did you?” Talbot could not conceal his fear. His face was strained, the muscles of his neck so tight he could barely turn his head without a wince of pain. His high, stiff collar had to be biting into him.
“To my own satisfaction,” Pitt answered. “But it won’t satisfy the police, or the newspapers, if they get hold of it. It certainly wouldn’t satisfy a jury.”
Talbot seemed not to be breathing, yet a nerve jumped in his temple.
“Be precise, man,” he snapped. “What are you talking about? The prime minister can’t deal in what’s and if’s and maybe’s. Is Kynaston implicated or not? If that damn fool Carlisle asks questions in the House again, the prime minister has to have a decent and absolute answer! And I have to be able to assure him that it is accurate. And in spite of appearance to the contrary, that Special Branch knows what the devil it’s doing!”
Pitt kept his voice level with a considerable effort.
“This woman had a gold watch chain with a very unusual fob. The first one had the actual watch, you will remember …”
“Half the well-to-do men in London have gold watches,” Talbot snapped. “Probably most of them have a chain and fob of some sort.”
“The watch was Kynaston’s,” Pitt said levelly. “He admitted it. The fob he owned to as well. It has the initials BK on it. He said it had belonged to his brother, Bennett, and was of sentimental value to him. He said it had been stolen from him by a pickpocket, in Oxford Street, or near it.”
Talbot was silent for a moment.
Pitt waited.
“And do you believe him?” Talbot said at last.
“I don’t know. There was a handkerchief like the first one as well.”
“It means nothing!” Talbot said sharply.
“And the watch and fob, on two different women, both dead and mutilated, and left in the gravel pits?” Pitt asked. “Does that also mean nothing? On the other hand, we have evidence that the Kynastons’ maid was seen alive and well sometime after the first body was found, and the second one does not resemble her.”
Something almost palpable eased inside Talbot. “Seen alive after the first body was found? Then for God’s sake leave Kynaston alone! You can’t prove anything! Maybe this pickpocket is your homicidal lunatic!”
“Perhaps. But when I asked Mr. Kynaston to account for his whereabouts at the time the body was left in the gravel pit, he lied about it.”
“So he’s got some business, or pastime, he doesn’t want to discuss with the public!” Talbot raised his eyebrows very high. “Haven’t we all? He was gambling, drinking, or whoring, for all I know, or care. He wasn’t murdering some wretched woman and dumping her body in the gravel pits right outside his own damn doorway!”
“I was hoping for something definitive for the newspapers,” Pitt explained. “They might consider any of the pastimes you mentioned worthy of public attention, and I’m sure we would rather they didn’t.” He kept the smile from his face with difficulty. It might well have been more of a sneer.
Talbot started to make a remark, then thought better of it. “Keep me apprised,” he ordered instead. “Do try to get this thing solved and out of the newspapers.”
“Yes, sir.”
THE EVENING DARKNESS HAD closed in and it was dripping sporadic rain when Pitt reached the police surgeon at the morgue. He knew the woman from the gravel pit would have been given priority. Surely Whistler would have all the information he needed by now?
He found Whistler in his office looking tired and a little gaunt. His clothes were rumpled and his tie had come undone. A kettle was steaming gently on the top of a wood-burning stove in the corner, and altogether the room was very pleasant, apart from its proximity to the morgue itself. All real ease was torn away by the knowledge that within thirty feet of them there were cold rooms with corpses in them, and tables on which those same corpses would duly be cut open and examined.
When Pitt went in, Whistler was in the act of taking his work jacket off and replacing it with a more casual one. His hands were pink, the skin a little raw, as if he had just scrubbed himself as hard as he could with an abrasive brush.
“I was expecting you,” he said wearily. “In fact I thought you’d be here waiting, like a dog for its dinner.” He sat down behind his desk, which was covered with papers in no apparent order.
“Would it have been worth the wait?” Pitt asked, closing the door. He was grateful that he did not have Whistler’s job. Even if his clients were beyond pain, and Pitt’s were not, they were also beyond help.
Whistler sighed. “Tea?” he offered. “It’s colder than a witch’s heart in that damn morgue.” Without waiting for Pitt’s reply he moved the kettle into the middle of the stove and watched while it boiled. He talked as he made the tea in a battered pewter pot, which must once have been quite handsome.
“Cause of death is fairly obviously a very bad fall,” he said. “From the look of the poor creature, might have been out of a window. Two stories up, at least, maybe higher. Lot of broken bones, some of them downright splintered. Only good thing about it is that she probably didn’t know much about it.”
Pitt winced. “How long ago?”
“Ah!” Whistler poured the boiling water into the teapot and inhaled the fragrant steam. “That’s the more difficult part. At least two weeks ago, but I’d bet my money on more like three. But just like the other one from the gravel pit, she’d been kept in a cold place. Couldn’t have made a better job of it if I’d had her here. And I assure you, I didn’t! No apparent marks of depredation, except a little bit from insects. Hadn’t been out there more than a night. But I expect you know that. Do you take milk?”
“Yes, please.” Pitt was losing his taste for eating or drinking anything, even as chilled as he was.
“Sugar?”
“No … thank you.”
“Got no cake. Need to stop eating so much. Cut up too many fat people and seen what’s inside ’em to want to become one.” He passed Pitt one of the mugs. “Here.”
“Thank you. So she was kept for a couple of weeks at least? You’re certain?” he asked.
Whistler looked at him sharply. “Of course I’m certain! You’ve got a bloody lunatic here! The sooner you, or someone else, gets hold of him and locks him up, the better.”
Pitt asked the question he had been dreading. “Are you certain she was murdered?”
Whistler’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. “What? Man, half the bones in her body were smashed. She didn’t walk herself up to the gravel pit in the middle of the night!”
“I’m not suggesting she put herself there,” Pitt said patiently. “But could she have died from an accidental fall, and someone else put her there?”
“Two or three weeks after she died? And for God’s sake—the mutilations! That’s not done by animals or nature—it’s grotesque, man: moral obscenity!” Whistler took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “But I suppose it’s not impossible her death itself was accidental—if you can look at it in isolation,” he conceded. “But why? Why would any sane man keep the victim of an appalling accident for weeks, mutilate her, and then dump her up at the gravel pit—and right where she’d be sure to be found? If he wanted to get rid of the body, why not bury her? Or even drop her, with a few stones around her waist, in one of the shallow lakes around there? By the time the summer dried them out, she’d be unrecognizable. There wouldn’t be a cat in hell’s chance of finding out who she was, or who put her there. If she was ever found at all.”
Pitt thought about it. “Well, he doesn’t appear to have been interrupted, so he had time to do whatever he wanted. He must have wanted her to be found.”
Whistler stared at him. “So we’ve got a lunatic on our hands.”
“Perhaps …”
“If this one isn’t, I pray to the Good Lord we never get one that fits your idea of what is!” he said disgustedly.
“Anything else you can tell me?” Absentmindedly Pitt drank the tea. For all the makeshif
t preparation of it, it was actually very good. After the subject of the conversation, and the fear that was forming in his mind, he was glad of the tea’s warmth.
“I’ll write up a full report for you,” Whistler promised. “But I doubt it’ll help you much. As far as I can tell, she was a well-nourished woman in her late twenties. From the state of her it’s hard to tell a lot. A few odd scars on her hands, just like the other one. Could have been a maid or laundress, or a young woman with her own house, but no one else to do the chores. But if she was poor, she still ate well. Her hair must have been beautiful, and she was tall and nicely curved in all the right places. Does that help?” He put his cup down and added more hot water to it.
“Not that I can see,” Pitt admitted. “We’ll get the local police this side of the river to find out if anyone’s missing that it could be. Thank you, anyway.”
“Sorry I can’t tell you when she died, closer than by a week or so. Can’t very well rule anyone out over that.”
“Can’t even tell who put her there,” Pitt replied. “For whatever that might be worth!”
Pitt thanked him and left, glad to get outside into the wind, away from the heaviness and the closed air of Whistler’s office.
He walked for a little distance, deep in thought. He was not ready yet to decide his next actions, although it was too late to do much else this evening. When he got home he would have dinner, then help Jemima with her homework, or at least make suggestions. He would have a quick game of dominoes with Daniel, who was getting pretty good at it. Another year or two and he would have lost the chance. Daniel and Jemima would be bound up in their own futures. Jemima would probably be in love.
Charlotte would understand if Pitt continued working, but that was not an excuse to do so. Regardless of her wishes that he solve the case, he wanted to spend time with her for himself, time that had nothing to do with Kynaston, or dead women, or possible treason and threats to the state.
Walking home alone in the dark, the wind blustery around him, he would think.
Was someone trying to make Kynaston appear guilty of killing these women? It was an outlandish idea! Worse than eccentric, it was absurd. Since Kitty was alive, at least until a few days ago, the first body could not have been hers. Yet the suggestion that it was had been deliberately created by leaving the distinctive gold watch there. By whom? But more than that, why? Had there been a pickpocket at all? It was totally believable, and impossible to disprove.
He crossed a main thoroughfare and had to wait for a couple of carriages to pass.
Was Somerset Carlisle behind it? This was bizarre and macabre enough for him! It took Pitt back all those years to the case in Resurrection Row, and the corpses then. He remembered with a shiver and a strange, twisted amusement the resolution of that case. Perhaps he should have had Carlisle prosecuted then? But he had not. It was one of the very few occasions when he had bent the rules. His own sense of justice forced him to. Had Carlisle always known that? Yes, he probably had.
And now that Pitt knew Vespasia so much better, cared for her as much as he cared for anyone in his own immediate family, it was still impossible to prosecute him! Carlisle had been her friend—and his—in times of disappointment, or need. He had never found any request for help too dangerous or too troublesome to fulfill.
He increased his pace a little, walking along the pavement.
And he also owed Carlisle for the rescue from his embarrassment, possibly even a major disgrace, in front of Talbot. Not that Carlisle would ever attempt to collect the debt! And that made it heavier to carry.
Damn the man, and his charm, his courage, and his outrageous behavior!
In the morning Pitt resolved to have Stoker, and whatever other men he needed, dig more deeply into every aspect of Kynaston’s life, his relationships past and present, personal and professional. Had he rivals for office? What exactly was his financial position? What were his debts, or expectations? And, of course, who was the mistress he guarded so carefully? And lied about? Had he rivals there, other than the woman’s husband, of course? He could not now afford to ignore any of these things, distasteful as they were to pursue. The watch and the fob made them impossible to overlook.
CHAPTER
12
VICTOR NARRAWAY AWOKE EARLY the following morning and was not in the least surprised to find Pitt at the door as he was about to begin breakfast. Last evening’s newspapers had been full of the discovery of another mutilated body in the Shooters Hill gravel pits. Narraway had already lain awake for some of the night, thinking it over and over. He had fallen asleep at almost three in the morning, exhausted and without any further useful thoughts.
He welcomed Pitt in and asked his manservant to bring him breakfast. Pitt declined it and Narraway ignored him.
“You’re going to sit here and talk to me. You might as well eat,” he pointed out. “I don’t think well on an empty stomach, and neither do you. Has this new body got anything to do with Kynaston?”
The manservant appeared with an additional cup and saucer. Narraway thanked him and poured tea for Pitt without asking him.
“Appears to have,” Pitt replied, taking the tea and thanking him for it. After the first sip, he appreciated that he was hungry as well. “She had a gold watch chain and a highly unusual gold fob, which Kynaston admitted was his, from the watch he claims was stolen from his pocket in Oxford Street. He made no insurance claim because its sentimental value was irreplaceable. It used to belong to his late brother, Bennett.”
Narraway stopped eating for a moment. “Do you believe Kynaston about the robbery?” he asked, not taking his eyes from Pitt’s.
“I have no idea,” Pitt admitted. “It seems extremely fortuitous, and yet he does not seem to me to be lying. Somebody could have stolen it, and left it on the body—like the watch left on the first body. The question is why. Is this personal or professional?”
“Any reason why it should be personal?” Narraway asked the question without hope that Pitt would have found any such reason. They were both working towards the answer they did not want, and he seemed to know it.
It was Pitt’s job to find this truth, whatever it turned out to be. It was not Narraway’s; the government had dismissed him. He owed no more loyalty towards them than the average citizen did. No—that was not true, not completely. Old loyalties could not be disregarded.
“Carlisle.” Pitt had remained silent, so Narraway finally said what they were both thinking.
Pitt nodded. “It is he who is drawing attention to Kynaston in Parliament. What is the disappearance of Kynaston’s wife’s maid to Carlisle unless he has some deeper motive for raising the subject? Why would he do that?”
“Have you spoken to him?”
The manservant came in silently with Pitt’s breakfast: eggs, bacon, fried bread, and fresh toast.
Pitt thanked him and began to eat with relish.
“No,” he answered after a few minutes. “I’ve been putting it off …”
“You don’t want to know,” Narraway said drily. “Neither do I, but I think you have to.” He smiled very slightly. “I don’t.”
Pitt looked at him steadily. The amusement died out of Narraway’s eyes and he colored very faintly, just a flush across the bones of his cheeks.
It told Pitt all he was seeking to know. Narraway loved Vespasia enough to blind himself deliberately so he could protect Carlisle, because he was her friend. Pitt felt a sudden wave of emotion, a happiness that surprised him. But he would say nothing of that now, even though he was aware of a strange aloneness where he had counted on an ally. And yet it also pleased him. It was something he had not thought Narraway to be capable of, and from the awareness of it now, neither had Narraway himself.
“But I will have to do it soon,” Pitt continued aloud. “I will be happy if he has some believable story to explain it.”
“Very subtle,” Narraway said sarcastically. “Really, Pitt, you could do better than that!”
Pitt raised his eyebrows. “Do I need to?”
“No—no, you don’t. And I daresay I would have criticized you if you had. Have some toast.” Pitt accepted the toast.
“I do think Kynaston is the key, given what we know about Kitty running off,” Pitt said after he swallowed the first bite. “Plus he seems to be prepared to lie, even if it brings him into suspicion of having dumped this second body in the gravel pit.”
“You had better be careful about it,” Narraway warned. “Have all your reasons ready to explain why you’re digging into the very private life of a man whose skills at invention are extremely important to the country.”
“If it’s really just an affair, why won’t he tell me and clear himself from suspicion of murder?” Pitt argued. “I don’t approve of him being in bed with another man’s wife, but it isn’t my concern, unless he’s endangering the security of the country. I’m not going to expose it. Good heavens, I’ve spent all my adult life in the police! Does he imagine I haven’t seen every kind of affair you can think of, and a few you wouldn’t have?”
Narraway smiled. “I know. You can’t leave the job half done. I’m just warning you to be careful. Talbot already dislikes you …”
“I hardly know him!” Pitt protested.
Narraway shook his head very slightly. “You are naïve sometimes, Pitt. Talbot doesn’t need to know you to resent your rise to a position usually occupied by someone of considerable social standing, and frequently a military or naval background as well. The fact that you’re the best man for the job is irrelevant to him.”
“Why on earth—” Pitt began.
“Because he’s from the same sort of background, you fool!” Narraway said with exasperation. “And he knows society’s closed to him. You don’t care, and that gives you a kind of grace, God help me, that allows you to be accepted. Added to which—and believe me I understand it—you know too many people’s secrets for anyone to risk offending you.”
“And you?” Pitt asked.
“Or me either,” Narraway admitted. “And neither do I care.” He stopped suddenly.
