Death in the Devil's Acre Read online

  Parkins went to one of the white, sheet-covered tables and pulled the cloth off entirely, showing not only the face but the whole naked body. It was a curiously indecent gesture, even toward the dead. Pitt’s instinct was to seize the sheet and cover the lower part again, but he knew it was ridiculous. After all, that was what he had come to see.

  But the wound was not identical. This was a messy and extremely inexpert castration. The glands had been removed and the organ all but severed.

  “All right.” Pitt swallowed, his throat rough.

  Parkins replaced the sheet and looked at Pitt, his mouth twisted with wry, sad humor. “Nasty, isn’t it?” he said quietly. “Makes you feel sick. Don’t suppose you know him, by any chance? Not likely, but you can never tell.” He turned the sheet back at the top.

  Pitt had not even looked at the face. Now he did so, and instantly felt a prickling sense of shock. He had seen those dark, surly features before, the heavy eyelids and curling, sensuous mouth. At least he was almost sure he had.

  “Who is he?” he asked.

  “Max. Used two or three different surnames: Bracknall, Rawlins, Dunmow. Kept more than one establishment. Very enterprising fellow. Why? Do you know him?”

  “I think so,” Pitt replied slowly. “At least he looks like someone I dealt with a few years ago—murders in Callander Square.”

  “Callander Square?” Parkins was surprised. “Hardly the area for a creature of this sort. Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m not sure. He was a footman. His name was Max Burton then—if it is the same man.”

  Parkins’ voice lifted with curiosity. “Can’t you find out? It could be important.” Then his tone fell again and he smiled bleakly at himself. “Although I hardly suppose so. He’s changed his style of living more than somewhat since then!”

  “I expect I can,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “Shouldn’t be too hard. Oh, where was the wound that caused his death?”

  “Here,” Parkins replied, as if he too had momentarily forgotten it. “Stab in the back, about so.” He indicated on Pitt’s body a place close to the spine, an inch or two to the left. It was lower than the wound in Pinchin’s back, but only by a fraction, and on the same side. But then Max had been taller than Pinchin.

  “What kind of weapon? How long? How broad?”

  “About eight inches long, and an inch and a half broad at the hilt. Could have been a kitchen knife. Everybody has one, ordinary enough. Sorry.” Parkins raised one eyebrow, understanding perfectly. “Same as yours, is it?”

  Pitt disliked the reference to Pinchin as “his,” but he knew what Parkins meant. “Yes,” he conceded. “Almost exactly.” He was compelled to add, “Only, in today’s case, the man’s entire genital organs were slashed away, and placed between his knees.”

  Parkins’ face tightened. “Catch him,” he said quietly. “Catch this bastard, Mr. Pitt.”

  Pitt had not been back to Callander Square since the murders three years ago. He wondered if the Balantynes still lived there. He stood in the bitter afternoon under the bare trees; the bark was wet with rain gathering on the wind. It would be dark early. He was only twenty feet away from the place where the bodies had been found that had first brought him here to question the residents of these elegant Georgian houses, with their tall windows and immaculate façades. These were people with footmen to answer doors, parlormaids to receive, and butlers to keep their pantries, guard their cellar keys, and rule with rods of iron their own domains behind the green baize doors.

  He pulled his collar up higher, set his hat a trifle rakishly on his head, and plunged his hands into his pockets, which already bulged with odd bits of string, coins, a knife, three keys, two handkerchiefs, a piece of sealing wax, and innumerable scraps of paper. He refused to go to the tradesmen’s entrance, as he knew would be expected of him, but instead presented himself at the front door, like any other caller.

  The footman received him coldly. “Good afternoon ... sir.” The hesitation was slight, but sufficient to imply that the title was a courtesy, and in his opinion one not warranted.

  “Good afternoon,” Pitt replied with complete composure. “My name is Thomas Pitt. I would like to see General Balantyne on a matter of business that is most urgent. Otherwise I would not have called without first making sure it was convenient.”

  The footman’s face twitched, but he had been forestalled in the argument he had prepared.

  “General Balantyne does not receive callers merely because they happen by, Mr. Pitt,” he said, even more coldly. He looked Pitt up and down with an expert eye. Obviously, dressed like that, he was not a person of quality, in spite of his speech. Such clothes were surely the product of no tailor, and as for a valet—any valet worthy of his calling would cut his own throat rather than let his master appear in public in such total disarray. That waistcoat should not have been matched with that shirt, the jacket was a disaster, and the cravat had been tied by a blind man with two left hands.

  “I am sorry,” he repeated, now quite sure of his ground. “General Balantyne does not receive callers without appointment—unless, of course, they are already of his social acquaintance. Perhaps if you were to write to him? Or get someone else to do it for you?”

  The suggestion that he was illiterate was the final straw.

  “I am acquainted with General Balantyne,” Pitt snapped. “And it is police business. If you prefer to discuss it on the doorstep, I shall oblige you. But I imagine the general would rather have it pursued inside! Considerably more discreet—don’t you think?”

  The footman was startled, and he allowed it to show. To have police at the house—and at the front of it—was appalling. Damn the man’s impertinence! He composed his face, but was annoyed that Pitt was taller than he by some inches, so even with the advantage of the step he could not adequately look down on him.

  “If you have some problem of theft or the like,” he replied, “you had better go round to the tradesmen’s entrance. No doubt the butler will see you—if it is really necessary.”

  “It is not a matter of theft,” Pitt said icily. “It is a matter of murder, and it is General Balantyne I require to speak to, not the butler. I cannot imagine he will be best pleased if you oblige me to come back with a warrant!”

  The footman knew when he was beaten. He retreated. “If you will come this way.” He refused to add the “sir.” “Perhaps if you wait in the morning room, the general will see you when he is able.” He walked smartly across the hall and opened the door of a large room whose grate held the embers of a fire that took the chill from the air but was not hot enough to thaw Pitt’s hands or warm his body through his clothes.

  The footman looked at the ashes and smirked with satisfaction. He turned and went out, closing the polished wooden door with a click. He had not offered to take Pitt’s hat or coat. Five minutes later, he was back, his face pinched with anger. He took Pitt’s outer clothes and ordered him to follow the parlormaid to the library.

  In that room a fire was blazing, reflecting bright scarlet in the leather bindings of books and glinting off the polished trophies on the far wall, The general stood behind a great desk littered with inkstands, pens, paperweights, open books, and a miniature field cannon in brass—a perfect replica of a Crimean gun. He had not changed outwardly since Pitt saw him last: the same broad, stiff shoulders, the proud face, the light brown hair perhaps graying a little, although Pitt was not sure. It was a face dominated by strength of bone, and the coloring was incidental.

  “Well, Mr. Pitt?” he said formally. He was a man who did not know how to be casual. All his life had been spent observing rules, even in the face of terror or extremity of pain. As a boy soldier, he had stood appalled on the ridge above Balaclava and seen the charge of the Light Brigade. The carnage of the Crimea was indelible in his memory. He knew the men of the “thin red line” who had held against all the might hurled at them by the Russian Army, men who had kept their ground in face of the impossible. Hundreds h
ad fallen, but not a man had broken ranks.

  “My footman says you wish to speak to me about a murder? Is that correct?”

  Pitt found himself standing a little straighter—not quite to attention, but definitely with his feet together and his head up. “Yes, sir. A week ago there was an extremely unpleasant murder in an area known as the Devil’s Acre, hard by Westminster.”

  “I know where it is.” The general frowned. “But surely that was this morning?”

  “I’m afraid there was a second one this morning. The first did not make much of a mark in the newspapers. However, I was called in for this one today, and when I heard of the earlier one, naturally I went to see the body.”

  “Naturally,” the general’s frown deepened. “What is it you wish of me?”

  Now that it came to the point, Pitt felt rather embarrassed at having to ask this man to come and look at the corpse of a dead procurer of whores. What did it matter if it was or was not the man who had been his footman at the time of the Callander Square murders? It could make no real difference now.

  He cleared his throat; there was no avoiding it. “I think the man may be someone you knew.”

  The general’s eyebrows rose in amazement. “Someone I knew?”

  “Yes, sir, I think so.” Pitt explained as briefly as he could the circumstances of Pinchin’s death, and what Inspector Parkins had shown him at the mortuary.

  “Very well,” the general said reluctantly, and reached for the bell cord to summon the carriage.

  The door opened and, instead of the footman, one of the most striking women Pitt could recall ever having set eyes on came in: Lady Augusta Balantyne. Her face was as fine as bone china, but without any of porcelain’s fragility. Her clothes were magnificent, in the subdued taste of those who have always had money and therefore never felt the compulsion to display it garishly. She stared at Pitt with distaste; her very posture appeared to demand an explanation, not only for his presence in her house but for his very existence.

  Pitt refused to be intimidated. “Good afternoon, Lady Augusta,” he said with a slight bow. “I hope I find you well?”

  “I am always well, thank you, Mr.—” She could not have forgotten their past meetings; the subject was too bizarre, too painful. “Mr. Pitt.” She arched her eyebrows very slightly, and her eyes were glacial beneath them. “To what unfortunate occurrence do we owe your visit this time?”

  “A matter of identification, ma’am,” he answered smoothly. He felt the general relax, even though he could barely see him at the edge of his vision. “A man General Balantyne may be able to name for us, and if so, that might assist us greatly.”

  “Good gracious—can the man not name himself?”

  “People do not always tell the truth, ma’am,” he said dryly.

  She colored at her own clumsiness for not having seen the obvious.

  “And in this case I understand he is dead anyway,” the general added tartly. “It is nothing for you to concern yourself with, my dear. It is my duty to be of assistance, if I can. I dare say I shall not be long.”

  “Have you forgotten we are dining with Sir Harry and Lady Lisburne tonight?” She ignored Pitt as if he had been one of the servants. “I do not intend to arrive late. I will not be thought ill-mannered, whatever you may imagine your duty to be.”

  “The man is in a mortuary not half an hour away.” The general’s face flickered with irritation. He disliked dinner parties, and, with Harry Lisburne as host, this one was likely to be more tedious than ever. “I have only to look at him and say whether I know him or not. I shall be back before dark.”

  She blew down her nose with a little sigh, and went out without looking at Pitt again. General Balantyne walked into the hall, collected his coat from the waiting butler, and accompanied Pitt out into the rain just as the coachman drove around from the mews and stopped at the curbside for them.

  They rode in silence. Pitt did not want to prejudice the identification by discussing the case beforehand, and he felt no compulsion to make small talk of other things.

  The carriage stopped a short distance from the mortuary, and Pitt and the general alighted and walked up the path, still silent. Inside, the duty attendant appeared startled to see a gentleman of Balantyne’s obvious quality, but he recognized Pitt, and conducted them to the body without hesitation.

  “There you are, sir.” He whipped back the sheet with the air of a conjurer producing a rabbit.

  Like Pitt before him, the general’s eyes went straight to the mutilation, not even glancing at the face. He took a deep breath and let it out. He had seen death before, a great deal of death, almost all of it by the violence of war or the ravages of disease. What made this uniquely appalling to him was that it had happened deliberately, here at home in the streets of London. The inexpert dismemberment was not the accident of random cannonfire, but looked to be the result of a passionate and individual hatred for one man in particular.

  What man? The general looked up at the face. Pitt, watching him carefully, saw the start of recognition.

  “General?” He lifted his voice only a little.

  Balantyne looked up slowly. Pitt could not read the emotions in his eyes. Balantyne was an exceedingly private man, unused to the comforts of fellow sympathy. Pitt could never really understand him; their backgrounds were worlds apart. Balantyne was the last of generations of soldiers who had served monarch and country with unquestioning sacrifice in every foreign war since the days of Agincourt, whereas Pitt was the son of a country gamekeeper convicted unjustly of some petty offense. Pitt had grown up on the estate of his master and been educated to his excellent, almost beautiful diction, to provide companionship to the son of the house and to encourage the boy in his studies. Pitt’s hunger had been a challenge, and not infrequently a reproach to spur the boy out of indolence.

  Yet he liked Balantyne, even admired him. He was a man who lived as strictly by the code he believed in as had any ancient knight or monk.

  “Do you know him?” he prompted, although the question was now no more than academic; the answer was in the general’s face.

  “Of course,” Balantyne replied quietly. “It is Max Burton, who used to be my footman.”

  2

  GRACIE CAME RUSHING INTO the parlor with the early editions of the afternoon newspapers. Her face was suffused with color, her eyes as round as gooseberries. “Oh, ma’am! There’s been an ’orrible murder—most terrible in London’s ’istory o’ crime, it says ’ere. Doin’s as’d make a strong man go white to ’is knees!”

  “Indeed?” Charlotte did not stop her sewing. Newspapers always dealt in hyperbole—who stops in a January street to buy a paper that tells of the ordinary?

  Gracie was horrified at her indifference. “No, ma’am—I really means it! It was dreadful! ’E was all ’acked to pieces, in a place as wot a lady wouldn’t even know of! Leastways not as she’d put words to and still call ’erself a lady. The papers is right, ma’am. There’s a terrible maniac loose in the Devil’s Acre—and maybe them preachers is right and the Last Days is come, and it’s Satan ’isself!” Gracie’s face went pale as the apparition formed in her mind.

  “Nonsense!” Charlotte said sharply. She could see that if she was not careful she would have a case of hysterics on her hands. “Here, give me the papers, and go and get on with the vegetables or we shall have no dinner. If the master comes home out of this weather and there is nothing hot for him, he will be most displeased.”

  It was an idle threat. Gracie held Pitt in immense respect; he was the master, after all. And beyond that he was a policeman and therefore represented the Law. And then there were the fascinating and dangerous things he must know! Shocking things! Worse than in the papers! But she was not in the least afraid of him. He was not the sort of person to put a servant out on the street for one neglected meal, and she knew it.

  “It’s ’orrible, ma’am,” she repeated, wagging her head to prove she had been right from the beginning.
“Do you want as I should use that cabbage tonight, or the turnips?”

  “Both,” Charlotte replied absently, already absorbed in the newspapers herself.

  Gracie accepted the dismissal and went back to the kitchen, turning the morning’s events over in her mind. It was a source of great satisfaction to her that she worked for a lady—a real lady—not one of your jumped-up social climbers as fancied theirselves better than they was, but one as was born into the Quality, and grew up in a house with real servants, a Staff, a butler as had a pantry of his own, and a separate cook and kitchenmaids and parlormaids and upstairs maids and the like—and footmen! None of Gracie’s sisters or friends had a mistress like that! Gracie enjoyed considerable distinction because of it, and was able to tell other girls what was what and how things should be done proper.

  Of course Charlotte had come down in the world a bit since then; a policeman was not a gentleman—everyone knew that. But still there were times when it was very exciting! The tales she could tell—if she chose! But of course such things were far better hinted at than recounted in detail. She had her loyalties.

  And, to tell the truth, she did not entirely approve of the way her mistress sometimes got herself involved in police goings-on. More than once she had actually had some face-to-face contact with people as had done murders. Looking for people like that, even if they turned out to be from the Quality, was no thing for a lady to do.

  Gracie shook her head and tipped the turnips out into the sink and began to wash and peel them. Unless she was very mistaken in her judgment, her mistress was shaping up nicely to start meddling into something again. She had that restless look about her, fiddling with things and putting them down half done, writing letters to her sister Emily as was now Viscountess Ashworth. Married above herself, that one. Not that she wasn’t very nice, the few times that Gracie had seen her. More often Charlotte went to visit her at her grand house in Paragon Walk. And who could blame her for that?