Hyde Park Headsman Page 15

  She looked away and her face was filled with pity.

  “Poor soul,” she said softly. “I know death can come at any age, but one does not look to be widowed when not yet forty. I believe that is her age. I am afraid I do not read newspapers myself—my husband did not care that I should—but one hears talk, even among servants.”

  “Yes, I would judge Mrs. Winthrop to be of that age. I believe she has two daughters very recently married. Mrs. Winthrop is still young.”

  “I’m so sorry.” The hands in her lap tightened a little.

  Pitt would have given a great deal to be able to avoid doing anything but asking her a few obvious questions and offering her what little sympathy he could. He admired her composure, her lack of bitterness, anger or self-pity, any of which would have been so easy to understand.

  But duty compelled him to pursue the more personal lines of inquiry, and as soon as possible. It was an intrusion which he felt even more acutely than usual.

  “Mrs. Arledge, we need to look closely at your husband’s effects to see if we can find anything which will provide a connection between him and Captain Winthrop. I realize it is not pleasant for you, and I am deeply sorry, but it is unavoidable. I really have no alternative.”

  “Of course,” she said quickly. “I understand. Please do not feel that you have to apologize, Superintendent.” She frowned, her blue eyes clouded. “Was it not some madman who chose his victims at random? Surely such a person has no reason in his mind?”

  “We don’t know yet, Mrs. Arledge. At this point we must examine every possibility.”

  “I see.” She looked away across the room at a vase of narcissi whose sharp, sweet perfume was noticeable even from where they sat. “Yes, of course you must. What would you like to see first? Your man, I forgot his name, has already looked, but perhaps he missed something.”

  “Inspector Tellman,” Pitt supplied.

  “Yes—yes I do recall now that you repeat it,” she said briefly. “He did not take very long. I rather gathered from what he said that it was”—she swallowed—“a maniac, and he expected no sense.”

  “I should like to see his papers.” Pitt rose to his feet. He felt like apologizing again, but it would only make the intrusion the more apparent. Her graciousness, her quiet courage, awoke in him both a deeper respect for her and an instinctive liking, and made his official task the more unpleasant. “Does he have a study?” he asked as she rose also, moving with remarkable grace and balance, as if in her youth she might have been a dancer. “And after that, perhaps his dressing room …”

  “Of course. If you would come this way I shall show you myself.” She led him out of the withdrawing room, across the parquet-floored hall and into a large, airy study with surprisingly few books, no more than fifty or sixty, and none of the heavy ornamentation he had found in so many rooms which were ostensibly studies, but actually places in which to receive visitors and to impress them with one’s wealth and taste. It gave the immediate impression of actually being a place of work.

  “Here you are, Superintendent,” she invited. “Please look at anything you feel may be helpful.”

  He thanked her as she excused herself, and felt even more intrusive. It was perfectly customary to examine the effects of a murdered person, and yet if he were the victim of a lunatic, merely the place and the time choosing him rather than any other, this was a pointless affront. Still, now he was here he must do it. The only thing that justified it in his mind was the finding of Winthrop in the boat. Surely he would never have got in there willingly with a stranger accosting him in the dark? And from the evidence of his shoes, he had walked there. And there had been no struggle.

  And Arledge had not struggled either. He must have been attacked from behind, and without warning, or he too knew his assailant.

  He began with the contents of the desk and read through them systematically. It was surprisingly interesting. Arledge had been a man of humor and sophisticated tastes, but without pomposity. Certain letters showed him also to have been generous both with his means and with his praise for others in his field. The more Pitt read, the more he felt the loss of a man he would have both liked and respected, a feeling very different from that woken in him by what he knew of the late Captain Winthrop.

  What could these two possibly have had in common?

  There were many books on music, piles of rough notes for composition, at least fifty scores from works varying from the operas of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan to piano concert! by Bach and the later chamber music of Beethoven. Nothing whatever suggested an acquaintance with Oakley Winthrop or any of his family.

  After the study, he was shown by the maid to Aidan Arledge’s dressing room, and after asking if there was anything else he wanted, she left him to search.

  On the tallboy he found a silver-backed hairbrush, shaving equipment and personal toiletries. In the top drawer there were a handful of collar studs, shirt studs, cuff links and a bloodstone ring. It was a very small collection for a man who made frequent public appearances in evening dress. It was modest in the extreme.

  He turned away and looked in the wardrobe. There were rows of suits, and in the drawers at least twenty shirts, most of them for ordinary daytime wear. He continued to look at the rest of the room. There were a few mementos, a photograph of Dulcie in a silver frame. She was dressed in riding habit, not found as one might wear in Rotten Row, but with the timeless elegance of a countrywoman who rode to hounds. She was smiling out at the camera, confident and happy. There was a pleasing blur of trees behind her. In a chest of drawers there were personal linen, handkerchiefs, and socks, the items one might expect.

  He had not found a diary either in the study or here. The pair to the silver-backed brush was absent. There were no evening studs for the shirts.

  He reviewed everything carefully, closed the drawers, and went down the stairs to knock on the withdrawing room door.

  “Come in, Superintendent,” she invited.

  “Did your husband have dressing rooms at the conceit hall, Mrs. Arledge?” he asked, closing the doors behind him. He loathed this. Already there was a dark premonition in his mind and he was angry and hurt on her behalf.

  “Oh, no, Superintendent.” She smiled at him very slightly, a shadow in her eyes in spite of the calm still in her voice. “You see, he conducted in many different places. In fact, it was seldom the same hall two weeks in a row.”

  “Then where did he change into his evening clothes?” he said quietly.

  “Why here, of course. He was most meticulous about his appearance. One has to be when one is watched by a whole audience.” Her voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “Aidan always used to say it was a terrible discourtesy to be improperly dressed, as if you did not consider your audience worthy of your best effort.”

  “I see.”

  “Why do you ask, Superintendent?” She looked at him with a deepening frown, her eyes searching his face.

  He avoided a direct answer.

  “If there were a late performance, did your husband always come home, or did he perhaps stay with friends, other musicians, maybe?”

  “Well—I think he may have once or twice.” Now she was hesitant, her expression touched with anxiety, even the beginning of fear. “As I mentioned before, I did not always wait up for him.” She bit her lip. “You may think that less than dutiful of me, but I do not find it easy to keep late hours, and Aidan would be very tired when he came in, and simply wish to retire straightaway. He asked me not to trouble myself by waiting up. That is why I did not …” Now she was controlling herself only with an effort. “That is how I did not miss him that night.”

  He felt a pity for her so sharp it caught his breath. His mind was full of confusion. How could a man as sensitive as the one suggested by the letters in his study have betrayed a woman like this?

  “I understand, ma’am. It seems very sensible to me,” he said gently. “I do not expect my wife to wait up for me when I am late. In
deed I should feel extremely guilty if she did.”

  She smiled at him, but the fear in her eyes did not lessen, indeed if anything it increased. “How very sympathetic of you. Thank you so much for saying so.”

  “Was Mr. Arledge conducting a performance that evening?”

  “No—no.” She shook her head. “He spent the evening at home, working on a score, one he said was very difficult. I rather think that is why he wished to go for a walk, in order to clear his head before retiring.”

  “Does he have a valet, ma’am?”

  “Oh yes, indeed. Do you wish to speak with him?”

  “If you please.”

  She rose to her feet.

  “Is there something wrong, Superintendent? Did you find something—something to do with the Winthrops?”

  “No, not at all.”

  She turned away.

  “I see. You prefer not to tell me. I beg your pardon for having asked. I am not—not used …”

  He wished intensely that there was something gentle and comforting he could say, something even remotely true that would ease the present pain in her, and the additional, fearful wound he now was almost sure was to come.

  “It may prove to be of no meaning at all, Mrs. Arledge. I would prefer not to leap to conclusions.” It was futile, and he knew it even as the words were on his lips.

  “Of course. The valet,” she agreed, her words equally hollow, and she did not meet his eyes. She rang the bell, and when the maid appeared, sent for the valet to meet Pitt in the study.

  But the valet’s answers only clouded the issue the more. Either he had no idea where the other silver-backed brush was or he refused to say. Nor did he know where to find the evening studs. He looked confused and embarrassed, but Pitt had no sense that it was guilt.

  Walking home slowly along Mount Street towards the park, Pitt had the sad empty feeling that for all his humor and courtesy, Aidan Arledge was far less uncomplicated than he had seemed at first. There was something hidden, something unexplained.

  Where did he go after late performances? Where were the things that Pitt had expected to find, and had not? Why had he two sets of keys? Did Aidan Arledge keep a second establishment somewhere, a place his wife knew nothing of?

  Why? Why would a man keep a secret establishment?

  He could think of only one answer: obvious, glaring and painful. He had a mistress. Somewhere there was a second woman mourning his death, a woman who dared not show her grief, dared not even claim his acquaintance.

  Gracie had made up her mind while she was sitting at the kitchen table watching Pitt eat his treacle pudding, but it was after midnight before she could put her plan into effect. She had to be quite sure everyone in the house was asleep. If they were to catch her sneaking out, there would be no acceptable excuse she could give, and her whole venture would be aborted. And after last time, Pitt would be furious and perhaps even dismiss her. That thought was unendurable. But so was the knowledge that he was being criticized in the newspapers by people who did not know what they were talking about and were not fit to speak to him, let alone air their opinions.

  So there was nothing for it but to do her best to find out something. Added to which, with the mistress too busy with the new house to do anything, and Miss Emily all caught up in the by-election, who else was there to help?

  Outside on the pavement she walked smartly towards the main thoroughfare. She had enough money to get a hansom to the park, first, and back again, of course. She had borrowed it from the fish money. It was not strictly honest. But then if she did not have any of the fish herself tomorrow, it would not be stealing either.

  She did not look the part of a prostitute. No girls were out for business dressed in a maid’s stuff gown, high to the neck, long-sleeved, and cut in plain gray-blue. But then she did not want to succeed in attracting anyone. It was information she was seeking, not trade. Also there was the danger of being seen as a rival and driven off, perhaps violently, by a protective pimp. Like this she would hardly occasion any such feelings. Mockery, perhaps, laughter, even pity, but not fear.

  It took her several minutes to find a cab and convince the driver she had the fare, and then another quarter hour to reach the park and be set down.

  The cab drove away, the horse’s hooves loud on the deserted road, the carriage lamp disappearing towards Knightsbridge. The darkness closed in and the night seemed huge around her and full of strange sounds, any of which could be someone coming, an idle passerby, someone taking a late stroll, a man looking for a prostitute, a woman looking for trade, a pimp guarding his territory, the Hyde Park Headsman …

  “Stop it,” she said aloud to herself. “Pull yourself together, you stupid girl.” And with that admonition, also aloud, she started to walk briskly along the footpath, her sharp step ringing out till it sounded like a beating heart in the night, and she realized she appeared far too purposeful to attract the slightest attention from the people she wished.

  Actually it took her nearly an hour, by which time she was cold, frightened and at the point of abandoning the whole venture, before a tall, angular woman with straw-colored hair and a cheap dress came up and looked at her with suspicion and contempt.

  “Ain’t no omnibuses pass ’ere, dearie,” she said sarcastically. “And wi’ a face like yours, it’s about all yer gonna catch.”

  Gracie lifted her chin, looked around, then straight at the woman. “Like you done, eh?”

  “I’ll get my share, yer cheeky bitch,” she said without malice. “But you won’t get enough to feed a rabbit. Yer look like yer ain’t ’ad a decent bite in years, there’s no flesh on yer bones, poor little cow. Men don’t want a starveling wi’ no bosom and no ’ips.” She pulled a face. “Less they’re bent in some way. Yer should be careful—them ones can turn nasty—’cos they ain’t right in the first place.” She shrugged. “Anyway, this is my patch, an’ I don’t take to poachin’ kindly. Even if I didn’t see yer orf, there’s my pimp wot will.”

  Gracie felt a shiver of fear and excitement. She took a shaking breath and let it out slowly.

  “I dunno about bent ones …” She put a heavy doubt in her voice. “I don’t take nobody wot gets nasty. I mean”—she stared at the woman—“there’s nasty—an’ nasty, if yer gets wot I mean?”

  “Oh.” The woman looked ashen in the glimmer of distant gaslight anyway, so it was hard to tell if her color changed, but there was a slackness of fear in the hang of her mouth. “I don’t mean nuffink like the ’Eadsman. Gawd ’elp us—’e ain’t bothered any o’ us. Guess it’s geezers wot ’e’s after.”

  “I don’t want any part of ’im!” Gracie said with a dramatic shudder, which was not entirely assumed. Standing here on the path under the windswept trees in the dark, with the chill air eating through her shawl, and only the faint chain of gaslights in the distance, fear did not have to be imagined. “I don’t want ter be with a geezer wot rubs ’im up the wrong way. ’E’d ’ave ter do us too, just ’cos we seen.”

  “Yer right,” the woman agreed, moving a step nearer, as if somehow their sheer physical closeness could be some sort of protection against the violence.

  “D’yer reckon as there’s some sorts as’d be ’is meat?” Gracie asked with as much innocence as she could manage. Actually her voice was shaking anyway, so her expression was marred from the start.

  “Like wot?” The woman stared along the path towards the shadows in the distance. “Maybe there’s a spot o’ trade comin’ our way. Don’t you mess me up, yer fourpenny scrap rabbit, or I’ll mark yer so nobody’ll want yer.”

  Gracie drew herself up to spit back that she would not demean herself, then remembered just in time her new role.

  “I gotter live,” she said plaintively. “You’ll do all right. Yer pretty …”

  The woman smiled mirthlessly, showing dark, stained teeth.

  “Crawly cow,” she said, but without rancor this time. “Well, one thing’s fer sure, I got a lot more’n you’ll e
ver ’ave, poor bitch. I’ll do this for yer, if ’e fancies yer, which ain’t likely, yer can ’ave this one. An’ if I see yer on my patch again, I’ll do yer.”

  “I’ll get meself a man,” Gracie said defiantly.

  “A runner?” The woman laughed. “ ’Oo’d wanter run yer, yer ain’t worth nuffink.”

  “Yes I am. There’s gents wot likes ’em little, like kids!” Gracie knew this from tales she’d heard from less reputable relatives when they had not realized her childish ears were so sharp, before she first went to work for Charlotte.

  “There’s all sorts,” the woman agreed with disgust. “There’s them as likes yer ter talk dirty to ’em, them as likes yer ter cuss summat rotten an’ pretend as yer ’ates them, them as likes ter be told orf like they were kids ’emselves—an’ there’s them as likes ter ’urt yer. Yer wanter watch for them—some o’ them gets real ugly. There’s one around ’ere wot likes ter beat girls up pretty bad, real vicious bastard ’e is, big geezer, but speaks ever so soft like a real gent, minds all ’is manners, then beats yer black and blue. Real bad one, ’e is. Ain’t no money worth that. Yer want ter stay clear o’ the likes of ’im.”

  Gracie swallowed and found her throat so tight she could hardly speak. Maybe this was it? Maybe this was the clue Pitt was looking for? Perhaps this man had beaten a girl, her pimp had killed him, and the second victim had been killed because he knew something about it.

  “Yer right,” she said chokingly. “ ’E sounds real bad. Mebbe I should try a lighted street or summat. I don’t wanter run inter summat like ’im.”

  “Yer won’t, you daft little piece. ’E likes women, not kids.” The woman laughed. “Anyway, I can see business coming. This one’s mine. Good luck, you poor little swine—you’ll need it.” And with a parting wave, she turned and sauntered towards the approaching shadows, swaying her hips as she went.

  Gracie waited until she was indistinguishable in the darkness, then turned on her heels and ran.

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