Death on Blackheath

by Anne Perry

  “And I have never minded that I married above me,” Pitt added wryly. “Or hardly ever …”

  Narraway drew in his breath, then let it out again soundlessly.

  “It’s not an insult,” Pitt said gently. “I don’t think there are any royal princes left for Vespasia to marry upwards, nor would she want to.”

  “I hope not,” Narraway said with emotion. Then he changed the subject abruptly, a slight pinkness coloring his cheeks. “Be careful of Talbot. Carlisle will not be there the next time to risk his neck rescuing you. You owe him a debt on that—which I suppose you are acutely aware of?”

  “Yes … but …” He had been going to say that it would have no effect upon his actions in confronting Carlisle over the bodies in the gravel pits; but he wondered if that were true. “I suppose I shouldn’t have—” he began.

  “Don’t be a fool, Pitt,” Narraway snapped. “You can’t go through life without owing anybody. The real debts are hardly ever a matter of money: they are about friendship, trust, help when you desperately need it, a hand out in the darkness to take yours, when you’re alone. You give it when you can, and don’t look for thanks, never mind payment. You grasp it when you’re drowning, and you never forget whose hand it was.”

  Pitt said nothing.

  “Carlisle won’t call you on it,” Narraway said with conviction. “You’ve turned a blind eye to his misdemeanors a few times.”

  “And he’s helped me more than once,” Pitt answered. “Of course he won’t call me on it! But I’ll be aware of it myself.”

  “It’s more than that.” Narraway reached for the teapot and refilled both of their cups. “It will be impossible to hide the fact that you’re digging into Kynaston’s private life. Are you certain you are prepared to deal with whatever you find? Ignorance is sometimes a kind of safety. And with the reactions of other people whose personal habits wouldn’t bear being made public, you could lose some valuable allies. You’ll find out enough you don’t want to know in this job; it’s a balancing act: know, but pretend that you don’t. You need to be a better actor than you are, Pitt, and less of a moralist, at least on the surface. Your job is to know, not to judge.”

  “You make me sound like a provincial clergyman with more self-righteousness than compassion,” Pitt said with disgust.

  “No,” Narraway said, shaking his head. “I’m just remembering how I used to be—at your age.”

  Pitt laughed outright. “When you were my age, you were twenty years older than I am!”

  “In some things,” Narraway agreed. “I’m twenty years behind you in others. Ask the questions you need to. Meanwhile, I will find out what I can and tell you just what is relevant, and no more.”

  Pitt did not argue. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY PITT received a rather stiff request to meet his brother-in-law, Jack Radley. Since it was apparently about the Kynaston case, Pitt could hardly refuse. He saw Jack alone, if hardly privately, on the Embankment not far from the House of Commons. It was a fresh, windy day with the usual chill of early March. The air was cold off the river, salt-smelling, and too brisk for one to enjoy lingering, so they walked along quite quickly together.

  Jack came straight to the point.

  “What business is it of Special Branch if Dudley Kynaston has a mistress, let alone who she might be?”

  Pitt could hear the sharp edge of criticism in Jack’s voice, something he was unused to. They had many differences of view, but they had usually been amicable. The tone of this took Pitt by surprise.

  “If it wasn’t my business I wouldn’t ask,” he replied. “Although I hadn’t realized I was so obvious.”

  “Oh, really!” Jack was impatient. “You’re asking about where he was, who he was with, attendance at different theaters or dinners—then cross-checking. Everybody can work out what you’re looking for.” He hunched his shoulders against the chill and pulled his white silk scarf a little higher. “You don’t suspect him of theft, or embezzling naval petty cash, or cheating at cards, do you? Or even being a little drunk and talking too much. Anyone can tell you Dudley Kynaston is a decent man from a good family who behaves like a gentleman and is intensely loyal to his country and all it means.” He turned to look at Pitt. “If he has a mistress, what of it? Maybe his wife is a crashing bore, or one of those chilly women who would break something if they laughed, or loved!”

  Pitt caught him by the arm and swung him round so he was obliged to stop. They stood face-to-face in the wind.

  “You say that with a lot of feeling, Jack.” Pitt allowed it to sound like an accusation. He had not entirely forgotten Jack’s reputation before his marriage.

  Jack colored; his eyes under his amazing eyelashes were dark with temper. “You’re a self-righteous idiot sometimes, Thomas. You may have been promoted to be the guardian of the nation’s secrets, but no one appointed you arbiter of our morals. Leave the poor man alone, before you ruin him with your suspicions.”

  “I wouldn’t give a damn about his affair,” Pitt said between his teeth. “Except that I’m trying to prove he didn’t have anything to do with the murder of two women!! But I can’t do that if he keeps on lying to me about where he was at the relevant times.”

  “I thought you didn’t know when the second woman was killed,” Jack retaliated instantly.

  “I don’t!” Pitt was raising his voice now, too. “But I know within a few hours when she was dumped at the gravel pit, and I’m pretty certain how she was carried there. If Kynaston would tell me where he was, and I could confirm it, I’d be certain it was not he who did it.”

  “Why the hell would you even suspect him?”

  “You know better than to ask that,” Pitt replied. “You know perfectly well I can’t tell you.”

  The anger drained out of Jack’s voice. “It must be intensely private …”

  “I need to know about this for myself!” Pitt said exasperatedly. “I’m not going to tell the world. If he isn’t guilty he’s wasting my time, but I’ll let go of it and allow the regular police to do their job. If this case is no threat to Kynaston, it’s nothing to do with Special Branch.”

  Jack looked at him with disbelief. “You really think Kynaston’s desperation to hide who his mistress is could be a threat to the security of the state? Come on, Thomas. That looks a hell of a lot like an upstart officer wielding his new powers to embarrass his social superiors, because he can. You’re better than that.”

  Pitt was stunned. He stood in the bright light, and the cold wind off the water chilled him right through his coat as if it were made of cotton.

  “Kynaston’s maid ran away the night before the first body was found, Jack,” he replied, his voice shaking not only with anger but with a degree of hurt. “Because she saw or heard something that made her fear for her life. And that’s not a supposition! She’s been seen and spoken to since. Not by us—we can’t find her—but by others with no interest in this affair. Now there’s a second woman dead and mutilated and dumped in the same gravel pit. Physical evidence, which he doesn’t deny, links him to both dead women. Kynaston isn’t telling the truth about where he was, and won’t tell us anything except that he’s having an affair. But he must prove it, or allow his mistress, even discreetly to Special Branch, to say where they were. She could just confirm that he was actually with her. There are questions here that need to be answered. He works on highly sensitive state secrets for the navy. Wouldn’t you want something better than an evasion, for that reason alone?”

  Jack looked as if the wind drove through his coat, too. The last of the anger drained out of him, and his face was pale and tight. “Do you think he killed anyone?” he asked very quietly.

  “I don’t want to,” Pitt replied. “But he’s hiding something a lot more than the name of a woman he’s having an affair with.”

  Jack said nothing.

  “Would you sooner be publicly accused of murder than privately accused of infidelity?” Pitt demande
d.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Jack agreed unhappily, his face filled with concern, his shoulders hunched. “Is he protecting someone, do you think? He counts family loyalty terribly highly.”

  “Of course he does,” Pitt agreed sarcastically. “That’s why he has a mistress!”

  Jack winced as if Pitt had slapped him. “Perhaps that is more loyal than leaving a wife and publicly humiliating her,” he said so softly that the whine of the wind almost took his words away.

  Pitt stared at him. It was a possibility that had not occurred to him. Then a worse thought followed hard on its heels. Was Jack speaking of Kynaston, or of himself? Charlotte had told him of Emily’s unhappiness, but he had also seen it. She was without color, all the fine lines on her face drawn downwards. It was not absurd that Ailsa Kynaston had taken her for Charlotte’s elder sister. Was that, at the heart of it, why Jack so resented Pitt’s pursuit of Kynaston’s affair? Sometimes Pitt wished he did not have to know so much. This kind of knowledge could isolate you from all human closeness. He could not tell Charlotte. Her love of Emily, and her own candor, would betray it instantly.

  “I know you’ve been offered a position close to Kynaston,” he said aloud. “Be careful, Jack. Think hard before you accept it. You have a lot to lose.”

  “You said there is physical evidence linking Kynaston to the murdered women?” Jack asked. “Are you certain?”

  “Absolutely. Don’t ask me about it because I can’t tell you. It doesn’t prove guilt, but it’s highly suggestive. If you have any influence with him, Jack, tell him to explain himself. I can’t let it go!”

  Jack stared at him long and steadily, then gave a very slight nod and turned and walked away, back towards the Houses of Parliament.

  Pitt could not tell Charlotte about his conversation with Jack. She knew him far too well: even if she did not ask, she would deduce from his discomfort that there was something he would not discuss. Her imagination would make the worst of it, probably that the rift between Jack and Emily was deeper than she had thought. She and Emily might quarrel at times over all sorts of little things, but underneath it she was intensely loyal. Entwined through all her life’s memories were the images of Emily as the younger sister, the one two years behind whom it was Charlotte’s job to protect. It had nothing to do with duty, or with need, for that matter. Emily had been supremely able to look after herself—until now.

  THAT EVENING PITT SAT in his big chair by the fire watching Daniel and Jemima working on a large jigsaw puzzle. After some time he became aware of a pattern, not only in the picture beginning to take form on the card table but in their behavior also. There were three years between their ages. Jemima was always those few steps ahead. It would be like that through life, until age began to be a disadvantage. Now it was all in Jemima’s favor. But as he watched, he saw her mind leap to a recognition, her hand reach for the piece then fall back again. She smiled as Daniel suddenly made the same recognition and put the piece in the right space.

  Pitt felt a sudden rush of emotion, almost overpowering. He could see something of himself in Jemima, but so very much more of her mother. That kind of discreet gentleness, the quiet selflessness, was exactly what he had observed in Charlotte, time and again. Jemima was not yet sixteen, and there it was, the instinct to nurture, to protect.

  How could he protect Jack, or Emily, in this wretched business, without crossing the boundaries of his own morality?

  Jack had made a bad error of judgment with his loyalties once before. There would be those very happy to remind his superior of it, and throw his wisdom into doubt. The safety of the state was Pitt’s duty, above and beyond that to those he loved. No one in the public trust could favor his own family. It would be, perhaps, the ultimate betrayal of the oath he had taken, and the faith in him he had accepted.

  And yet he learned secrets he did not want to know, vulnerabilities he could not protect. He had his own network of debts and loyalties; it was what made life precious: the honor, and the caring. Without such things it was empty, a long march to nowhere.

  Carlisle had done favors for all of them, in one case or another, especially for Vespasia. If Carlisle was involved—and Pitt was becoming increasingly afraid that he was—could Pitt ever trust Vespasia in this?

  Perhaps Victor Narraway was the only one he could trust without placing an intolerable burden on him.

  But thinking back on their last meeting, perhaps he, too, was now compromised? He cared for Vespasia far more deeply than mere friendship. After all the fancies and hungers of his youth, and adventures since then, even his care for Charlotte, was this to be the love of his life, the one that touched him too deeply to heal over, or pass by?

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

  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 judgment 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 and 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, 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 would be 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 favor.

  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 and then 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 inquiries made, discreetly. No exh
umations until he had evidence.

  But why? What was Carlisle’s connection with Kynaston? He would have to look into 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? 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 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 and engage his help in Parliament.

  “He is erratic,” Rawlins said. “I wanted to build towers and spires that reached to the sky. Somerset wanted to climb them!” He gave a wry smile. “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 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.”