Death On Blackheath (Thomas Pitt 29) Read online

  Pitt did not answer his question. ‘And just over a week later, on 22 December, again you have Mr Blanchard’s name in your diary, and again you did not see him,’ he went on.

  Kynaston sat absolutely motionless in the chair, unnaturally so. ‘I have no idea where I went,’ he replied. ‘But it was probably an engagement to do with a society I belong to, and couldn’t possibly have anything less to do with my wife’s maid.’ He swallowed, his throat jerking. ‘For God’s sake, do you do this to everybody? Read their diaries and cross-question them as to whom they dined with? Is this what we pay you for?’ There was a faint flush of colour in his cheeks.

  ‘If it has nothing to do with Kitty Ryder’s death, then it will go no further,’ Pitt said, perhaps rashly. He felt grubby pursuing something that was clearly private, and embarrassing. Were it not, Kynaston would not be still evading an answer.

  ‘Of course it has nothing to do with it!’ Kynaston snapped, leaning forward suddenly. ‘If anyone killed her, then it was this wretched young man she walked out with. Isn’t that obvious, even to a fool?’ He looked away. ‘I apologise, but really, all this probing into my life is unnecessary and completely irrelevant.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Pitt said sincerely. He felt vaguely soiled that he had to pursue this to the bitter end. ‘There are a few errors in your diaries, which is to be expected. We all get hours or dates wrong from time to time, or forget to note something at all, even do so illegibly. It is only the occasions when you left home, dressed for dinner, and consistently did not go where you stated that I am asking you about. There are at least a dozen of them in the last two months.’

  Kynaston’s face was now dark with colour.

  ‘And I will not tell you, sir!’ His voice wobbled a bit. ‘Except that it had nothing whatever to do with Kitty Ryder. For God’s sake, man! Do you think I am dining out in full evening dress with a lady’s maid?’ He managed to sound incredulous, even though his voice cracked a little.

  ‘I think you are going somewhere that you feel the need to lie about,’ Pitt answered. ‘The obvious conclusion is that it is with a woman, but that is not the only possibility. I would prefer to think that rather than anything else you feel the need to keep secret from your family, and from the police, and Special Branch.’

  Kynaston blushed scarlet. He caught Pitt’s implication immediately. Pitt regretted it, but the man had left him no choice. He waited.

  ‘I dined with a lady,’ Kynaston said in little more than a whisper. ‘I shall not tell you who it was, except that it was certainly not Kitty Ryder … or anyone else’s … servant.’

  Pitt recognised that that was the truth, and also that Kynaston did not intend to reveal who it was. The question in Pitt’s mind was whether Kitty Ryder might have known of it, and asked for some kind of favour not to tell her mistress. There was no purpose in asking Kynaston. He had already implicitly denied it.

  Pitt stood up. ‘Thank you, sir. I’m sorry I had to pursue such a thing, but a woman is dead – violently – and her body dumped in a gravel pit for wild animals to eat!’

  Kynaston winced.

  ‘That is more important than anyone’s sensibilities as to privacy for their indiscretions,’ Pitt concluded.

  Kynaston stood up also, but he said nothing more except to wish Pitt a good evening, icily, and as a matter of form.

  Outside in the cold, damp night, the wind was blowing clouds across the stars and streetlamps dotted occasionally here and there. Pitt was glad to walk briskly for some considerable distance. He was likely to find a hansom easily to take him all the way back across the river to Keppel Street.

  What should he tell Talbot? That Kynaston was having an affair, but with some woman he could dine with in full formal clothes? Certainly not a servant of any kind. Someone else’s wife? That was the obvious conclusion, although perhaps not the only one.

  Had Rosalind Kynaston any idea?

  Possibly she had. It was then conceivable that she did not mind, as long as he was meticulously discreet. Pitt knew of marriages where such agreements were made.

  It did not answer the question as to whether the bright and observant Kitty Ryder had been aware of it. If so, then it had to have been deduction. There was no way in which she could be in an appropriate place to have observed such a thing.

  Deduced from what? What could she have seen or heard … or overheard? A conversation on the telephone, perhaps? A letter left open? A coachman’s gossip?

  Was she really so quick, so very acute a judge? Was Kynaston so desperate, and so callous as to beat a maid to death for her knowledge of his affair? He was embarrassed that Pitt had deduced it, but Pitt had seen no rage in him, not the slightest suggestion of violence of any sort, physical or political. He had not threatened Pitt’s job or his position.

  Was it necessary to report this to Edom Talbot?

  He had reached the main road and found a hansom. He was sitting in it bowling along at a good speed by the time he reached the conclusion that it was, but he was still undecided exactly what he would say.

  He was still collecting his evidence next day when a message came to his office requiring him to report immediately to Downing Street. It had to be Talbot, but how could he know what Pitt had learned the previous evening already? Surely that was impossible? Unless Kynaston had gone there ahead of Pitt, in order to – what? Complain? Deny the charge? Confess privately to Talbot who his mistress was, instead of to a mere policeman? Did he have far more influence in Government than Pitt had imagined?

  Pitt had no choice but to obey. He put the papers in a small case so that, if Talbot demanded it, he could prove his assertion. Then he went out into the street to catch a hansom.

  He sat all the way through the traffic, turning over in his mind how much he would tell Talbot. He would be finished if he were caught in a lie, but he might get away with an omission.

  Why was he even thinking of concealing the truth from Talbot?

  Because he did not believe that Kynaston had murdered Kitty Ryder to keep the secret of an affair. It was too extreme for a man who appeared to be neither violent nor particularly arrogant. Nothing Pitt had learned of him suggested either. And he had learned a considerable amount. Kynaston was proud of his family heritage. He had mourned the loss of his brother, Bennett, deeply; in fact the grief was still there in him, masked beneath the surface. To all outward appearances he had been a good father and a dutiful husband, if not a passionate one.

  Certainly he liked a few luxuries in his dress and in his dining, but even with his favourite wines – of which there were several – Stoker had found no one who had seen him seriously inebriated, and never in any circumstances aggressive.

  His passion and imagination seem to have gone into his work. Thomas Pitt knew that only from the high esteem in which he was held by the senior naval officers who were involved with his inventions. Pitt had not heard this from them himself. It had been passed on to him by the appropriate authorities. Could that be an omission he needed to rectify? Underwater ships firing explosive missiles, invisible from the surface, might well be the warfare of the future. Britain was behind in the race, and – as an island – peculiarly vulnerable. She had no land borders with any other country across which to import food, raw materials, munitions, or any kind of help.

  He arrived at Downing Street unusually nervous. The palms of his hands were sweating even in the cold, and he took his gloves off. Better to be dry, if numb.

  He walked to the step and was let in almost immediately. There was always a policeman on duty and he was recognised without having to state his name.

  Inside, he was shown immediately to the room in which he had met Talbot before. Talbot was waiting for him, pacing the floor. He swung around angrily as soon as Pitt came in and started to speak before the footman had closed the door, leaving them alone.

  ‘What the devil are you playing at?’ Talbot demanded. ‘I would prefer to think you’re incompetent rather than deliberately attempting to
deceive Her Majesty’s Government. Did you not understand my distinct command that you report to me – here – any further development in the Kynaston case? What is it in that which is unclear to you?’ His cheeks were red, his nose pinched at the nostrils and his jaw tight. He glared at Pitt as if his fury were slipping out of his control.

  ‘I was checking some of the evidence before I reported it to you,’ Pitt replied. Damn! That sounded so feeble, so obviously an excuse, and yet it was the truth. ‘I wished to—’ he began again.

  ‘You wished to evade the issue!’ Talbot said furiously. ‘What about this bloody hat you found in the gravel pit?’

  ‘It’s not bloody,’ Pitt corrected him.

  ‘God damn it, man! Don’t you dare tell me when to swear and when not to! Who the hell do you think you are, you jumped-up—’

  ‘There is no blood on the hat … sir,’ Pitt said between his teeth.

  Talbot stared at him. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘There was no blood on the hat,’ Pitt repeated.

  ‘That is totally irrelevant. Was it the maid’s hat or not?’ Talbot said slowly between his teeth, as if Pitt were simple.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pitt replied. ‘But that is also irrelevant to Kynaston, unless we can prove that he had some illicit relationship with her, or that she knew of something else he was doing about which she threatened him.’

  ‘And you have done! The man is having an affair! But you did not think it necessary to report that fact to me, as I commanded you to?’ Talbot said grimly. ‘I wonder if you would care to explain that? I rather think we are back to the beginning again.’ His voice grated, full of ragged edges. ‘Are you so arrogant that you think you can take decisions on this matter without reference to your superiors, or have you some reason of your own for protecting Kynaston from the truth? Just how well do you know him? You force me to ask.’

  Pitt felt the heat rise up his face. Any answer he could give was going to sound like an excuse. And yet if he had come to Talbot earlier, before he was certain of Kynaston’s affair, he would have been equally to blame for maligning an important man in the Government’s plans for naval defence, not to mention the moral and civil wrong of false accusation. It would have brought Special Branch into disrepute and made its future work harder. It might even have earned Pitt’s own removal from leadership.

  A sudden horrible thought flashed into his mind that this was the purpose of Talbot’s rage. This was an excellent platform on which to build the means of getting rid of Pitt altogether. He drew in his breath to frame some kind of a reply just as the door opened and Somerset Carlisle came in, closing it quietly behind him. He was older than when they had first met, but the remarkable arched brows and the quirky humour were still there in his face. It was only the deepening of the lines that changed him, made one aware that it was over a decade later.

  ‘Ah! Pitt,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Delighted to find you here.’

  ‘You are interrupting a private conversation—’ Talbot snarled at him.

  ‘Yes, of course I am,’ Carlisle cut across the rest of his remark. ‘Just wanted to tell Pitt that I found the piece of information he was looking for.’ He smiled at Pitt, gazing straight into his eyes. ‘You were quite right, of course. The hat was no more Kitty Ryder’s than it was mine! Some damn fool was wanting to distract attention from his own rather stupid mistakes … drinks locally now and then, so he knew about the poor woman’s disappearance, and the body you found in the gravel pit, of course.’

  Talbot tried to interrupt but Carlisle carried on without taking the slightest notice of him.

  ‘Knew she’d had a hat like that, poor girl, and bought one the same. Put a red feather in it.’ He smiled even more widely and reached his hand into his pocket. He pulled out a rather crumpled piece of paper. ‘Got the receipt. You’ll see it’s dated for the day before your informant found it.’

  ‘Just all by pure coincidence?’ Talbot said sarcastically.

  ‘Hardly,’ Carlisle replied with exaggerated patience. ‘He was the one who found it!’

  Talbot was standing motionless, his face filled with bafflement and even further mounting anger.

  Carlisle was still smiling, as if the atmosphere in the room were one of co-operation, not open enmity.

  ‘Policeman’s job to be sceptical,’ he went on, now looking at Pitt. ‘Good thing you were. Made a highly embarrassing mistake if you’d reported to Downing Street that the body was Kitty’s on evidence discovered by the man who put it there. Looked a bit of a fool. Not good for the reputation of Special Branch.’ He shook his head. ‘No doubt some journalist would have got hold of it and put it all over the front pages. Somehow or other they find these things.’ He shrugged. ‘And then, of course, they put all kinds of other bits of fact – and imagined fact – together and come up with accusations. Too late to apologise when you’ve ruined a man.’

  Pitt had recovered from his amazement, although he had no idea how Carlisle had known he was here, or become involved in the matter at all.

  ‘Exactly,’ he agreed aloud.

  Talbot was still fighting the issue, his body stiff, his face pale.

  ‘What unbelievable good fortune that you happened to be aware of all this … eccentric behaviour, Mr Carlisle,’ he said sarcastically. ‘I suppose we should be grateful some extraordinary chance took you to … what?’ His voice became even more grating. ‘How was it you learned that this particularly irresponsible man knew of Ryder’s passion for a hat with a red feather, and also exactly where her body was found, and that he should purchase such a hat, plus feather, of course, and place it there? Such a piece of good fortune seems … beyond belief.’ He pronounced the words slowly, giving every syllable emphasis.

  Carlisle merely smiled a little more widely.

  Pitt’s heart was racing, but he dared not intervene. He had no explanation either.

  ‘And of course that you should also, purely by chance, of course, know exactly where Commander Pitt was,’ Talbot went on. ‘And race here just in time to rescue him from having to give me some explanation as to why I had to hear of the whole apparent farce from someone else, and demand he explain to me why he had not reported to me, as I had instructed him. I suppose you have answers for all that also?’

  Carlisle spread his hands in an elegant gesture, rather like another shrug of his shoulders.

  ‘The man who bought the hat is a constituent of mine,’ he said calmly. ‘He’s been in trouble a few times for trying to draw attention to himself.’

  ‘Kitty Ryder’s desire for a hat with a red feather was not in the newspapers,’ Talbot said icily. ‘And your constituency is miles from Shooters Hill.’

  Carlisle laughed. ‘For heaven’s sake, man! People move around. He’s a hound for scandal. He went and drank at the Pig and Whistle. He asked questions, listened to gossip. And as to finding Pitt here, when I put the pieces together I called his office and was told he’s been sent for to come here. Not exactly the work of a genius.’ His eyes were bright, his arched eyebrows even higher. ‘Anyway, I’m delighted if I’ve saved you embarrassment – not to mention poor Kynaston.’ He turned to Pitt. ‘If your business here is finished, I’ll walk to Whitehall with you.’

  ‘Yes … thank you,’ Pitt agreed quickly, then turned to Talbot. ‘I shall keep you informed of anything I learn that is relevant to Mr Kynaston, especially should we find out the identity of the woman in the gravel pit. Good morning, sir.’ And without waiting for Talbot to answer or give him leave to go, he turned and followed Carlisle out of the door, through the hallway and into the street.

  They walked several paces along the quiet pavement, past the usual police presence, since Downing Street was the home not only of the Prime Minister, but also of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  ‘Was any of that true?’ Pitt asked quietly as they turned into Whitehall.

  Carlisle’s expression barely changed. ‘Close enough,’ he replied.

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p; ‘Close enough for what?’ Pitt demanded, still uneasy.

  ‘To pass muster, should Talbot choose to have it investigated,’ Carlisle replied. ‘Don’t ask anything further, because you don’t want to know, and I certainly don’t want to tell you.’

  ‘Does the hat have anything to do with Kitty Ryder?’

  ‘Nothing at all, except that she did want one. Or, at least, she did want a red feather of some sort. It is entirely true that that was not her hat.’

  Pitt let his breath out slowly. ‘I’m extremely grateful.’

  ‘You should be,’ Carlisle agreed pleasantly. ‘Don’t cross Talbot; he’s a nasty bastard. Doesn’t mean Kynaston’s innocent, of course. Just can’t hang a man on a manufactured piece of evidence. And … and I wouldn’t like to see you replaced by someone a lot worse. Good luck! Watch your back!’ And with that he turned and walked in the opposite direction towards Westminster Bridge, leaving Pitt to go east, and down to the river.

  It was only as he was nearing the riverbank and could hear the slurping of the incoming tide that Pitt allowed the wave of relief to run through him with a sudden warmth. He realised how close he had come to giving Talbot a reason to dismiss him. Of course he knew that many people did not find him a suitable person to follow Victor Narraway, who was undoubtedly a gentleman.

  Pitt himself was the son of a disgraced gamekeeper, transported to Australia for theft when Pitt was a boy. He could scarcely remember him, only the shock and the indignation, his protest of innocence that was disregarded, then his mother’s grief. She and Pitt had been allowed to remain in the large country estate; indeed, Pitt had been educated with the son of the house, to encourage the boy. It would not do for a servant’s son to outdo the heir, and it was felt this might prevent such a thing. Although looking back on it now, Pitt thought that that had been an excuse to mask a kindness that was always intended.

  Still, it was hardly a background to equal Narraway’s, or one that a man such as Talbot – and to be honest, many others – would be happy with. He must remember that, and not let anger or complacency lead him into error again. Carlisle had rescued him this time, and Pitt was just beginning to appreciate now just how much. He had been gracious enough to make light of it, as if it were in his own interest, rather than in Pitt’s, but that was a courteous fiction.