Death On Blackheath tp-29 Read online

  He sighed and took another mouthful of the excellent meal. ‘He ended up in an Italian prison somewhere in the north, with both his shoulders dislocated. Must have hurt like hell. He never spoke of it. If you need to know, I’m afraid I can’t help you. I haven’t any idea what happened, or who did it. I could give half a dozen guesses as to why.’

  Pitt avoided Rawlins’ eyes, looking instead down at his own plate. ‘Did you ever know him to commit violence against anyone?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps in the conviction that the end justified the means?’ He did not want the answer, and he almost denied the question in the next breath. He could feel his muscles tense, as though he were waiting for a blow.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ Rawlins said quietly. ‘Not in a way that would be of any value. I never knew him choose violence, in fact as a student I saw him go to some lengths to avoid it. He was argumentative, but never quarrelsome. But I do know that he was a man of intense passions. I don’t believe anything would stop him doing something he believed to be necessary in a cause he cared about. He had too much imagination, and not enough sense of fear. He was an all-or-nothing sort of man. Judging by his speeches in Parliament, and the little I know of him now, he still is. Actually, I don’t think that kind of thing changes. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.’

  ‘Any friends I should worry about?’ Pitt asked casually.

  ‘Worry?’

  ‘Fringes of the communal underworld, that sort of thing?’

  Rawlins smiled. ‘Carlisle? Quite possibly. He’s a man of eclectic tastes and peculiar loyalties. But if he makes a promise, he won’t break it.’

  ‘That’s rather what I thought,’ Pitt agreed.

  They finished the meal speaking of other things. Rawlins was a pleasant man, intelligent and courteous. Pitt found him not only easy to like, but easier to believe than he would have wished.

  Nothing he had heard in the course of the whole two days had painted a picture of Somerset Carlisle that was in any way different from the man he already knew, the man who had played such a grotesque and dangerous game with the corpses in Resurrection Row.

  If anything, he was worse off, because it drew a picture of a man he not only liked, and was now compelled to admire, but one very capable of doing precisely what Pitt had feared.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Pitt arrived late at his office on the following morning, having been held up by a traffic accident on Euston Road. The whole thing had turned into chaos as everyone tried to find a way around it, and ended by getting jammed in a total impasse where no one had room to turn and extricate themselves.

  Stoker was waiting for him, looking grave. ‘Don’t bother taking your coat off,’ he said as soon as Pitt was in through the door.

  Pitt stopped. ‘Not another body!’

  ‘No, sir, still the same one. Whistler wants to see you. And if you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to come along too.’

  Pitt had no objection to Stoker coming, but he was curious, and desperate for a little hope. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  Stoker stared back at him, his dark grey eyes clear. ‘I want to know more about what kind of a man does this to a woman. I want to know who it is that Kitty Ryder thinks she’s running away from.’

  ‘You still think it has something to do with Kynaston?’ Pitt felt the knot tighten in his stomach.

  ‘I don’t know, sir, but it appears she thinks it has. If I could find her, I’d ask her why.’

  ‘No more progress with that?’ Pitt asked.

  ‘Not much.’ Stoker stopped, took a deep breath, and went on, ‘But I’m not giving up.’ There was a faint colour in his bony face, just a smudge of pink across his cheeks. He looked at Pitt defiantly, offering no explanations.

  ‘Well, if you succeed, you can ask her.’ Pitt jammed his hat on again. ‘But we can’t wait for that. We’d better go and see Whistler. Just what I feel like first thing on a cold wet morning, get stuck in a traffic jam, then a visit to the morgue. Come on!’ He led the way back out into the rain.

  Pitt and Stoker had to wait several minutes to find a hansom. It was always like this on wet days. No one was willing to walk.

  Finally they found a cab and splashed through the puddles to scramble inside, their sodden trouser legs flapping, coats flying open in the wind.

  It was a long way from Lisson Grove to Blackheath, on the other side of the river and considerably further east.

  ‘If someone’s trying to make Kynaston look guilty of this, even if he isn’t, then it’s someone with a pretty good knowledge of his household,’ Stoker said after a few minutes. ‘And he knows Kynaston himself too. Either he knows why Kynaston keeps on lying, or he’s got some kind of a hold over him so he doesn’t tell us the truth.’ He sat huddled in his damp coat, looking sideways at Pitt in the grey daylight.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s unarguable,’ Pitt agreed. ‘What I need to know is, why? To what end? I wish I could think it was personal vengeance of some sort, but we haven’t found any kind of reason for it.’

  They turned from Seymour Place right into Edgware Road then left and right again into Park Lane.

  ‘Well, I dare say Rosalind Kynaston would be pretty angry if she knew about the mistress,’ Stoker pointed out. ‘And she could have taken the watch and fob easily enough.’

  ‘She might hate him,’ Pitt replied reasonably, ‘but she wouldn’t ruin him. If she did, she’d be ruining herself at the same time. His disgrace would be hers as well. And if he lost his income, that’s also hers! You told me she comes from a respectable background, but she has no independent wealth. Unless you think she’s got a lover too! One who would marry her, in spite of whatever this does to her reputation? I suppose it’s possible, but I can’t see it as likely, can you?’

  Stoker thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know women that well, sir. Not as you must, with a wife and a daughter …’

  ‘I’m not sure any man knows women,’ Pitt said drily. ‘Let us agree that perhaps my ignorance is not as total as yours. What about it?’

  ‘Mrs Kynaston doesn’t look to me like a woman who’s got a secret lover, sir.’ Stoker assiduously avoided his eyes. ‘I remember when my sister Gwen was first in love with her husband, didn’t know that much about him, but by heck, I knew she had something going on. Little things, like the way she did her hair, the way she took care with what she wore, not just some of the time, but all of it. That little secret smile, like the cat that got the cream. And even the way she walked with a little swish of her skirts, as if she knew she was going somewhere special.’

  Pitt couldn’t help laughing, in spite of the cold and the discomfort inside the rattling hansom squashing them together. He had seen exactly what Stoker was describing in Charlotte, years ago when he had been courting her. He hadn’t understood it then: the happiness one moment, despair the next, but always the vitality. She had seemed to glow with life.

  He had seen it in Emily too, when she was beginning to think seriously about Jack Radley. But that was another subject, and at the moment one of more pain than pleasure.

  And, of course, now it was also beginning in Jemima. How quickly she was growing up. Pitt knew which young men she liked, and which held no interest for her. She was so pretty, brave and vulnerable, like her mother, imagining she was sophisticated, and as easy to read as an open book. Or was that only so to him, because he loved her, and would have protected her from every pain, if that were possible?

  Charlotte’s father would have protected her from the social disasters, not to mention financial, of marrying a policeman! The only fate worse would have been not to marry at all, and that judgement call was a fine thing! Thank heaven her mother had more emotional sense!

  Would he have sense, when it came to Jemima marrying someone?

  Not necessary to think of now. It was years away! Years and years!

  They were moving steadily south towards the river. No doubt the driver would take them along the Embankment, then over one of the bridges on to the south
bank.

  Pitt regarded Stoker with a new respect. He had not thought him capable of such human observation. It came to him in a rush of clarity that he did not know Stoker very much at all. Outside his skill and intelligence in the job, and his well-proven loyalty, he was almost unknown!

  ‘So you think Rosalind Kynaston is not having an affair?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right, sir. She looks like a woman who has very little to be happy about,’ Stoker agreed.

  ‘Do you think she knows of Kynaston’s affair?’

  ‘Probably. In my experience people do know, especially women, even if they can’t afford to admit to themselves that they do. Of course, when they’re not in Society, and there’s not much money or a nice house to lose, there’s not the same need to fix a smile on your face and pretend you’ve seen nothing. And I’ll bet you anything you like,’ he added, ‘she’s not the one who killed anyone and laid them out in the gravel pits — or slashed their faces to bits!’

  Pitt shivered. ‘Quite. But you agree that whoever is doing it, the whole thing is connected to the Kynaston house?’

  ‘No question,’ Stoker agreed. ‘I just don’t know how! I’ve been turning it over and over, but nothing makes complete sense. For a start, why these mutilations? What kind of a person cuts the flesh on the face of someone who’s already dead? The only reason I can think of is to disguise who it is. But we’ve got no idea, anyway.’

  ‘Or to draw our attention to it,’ Pitt said, thinking aloud.

  ‘You mean two dead women dumped in a gravel pit isn’t going to make us stop and think?’ Stoker asked with heavy disbelief.

  ‘Doesn’t make as big a headline as two that are mutilated in exactly the same way,’ Pitt pointed out.

  ‘What’s the point of that?’ Stoker was now looking at Pitt curiously, as if he expected an answer. He stared more intently. ‘You mean it’s to draw our attention even more to Kynaston? Like the handkerchiefs?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Why?’ Stoker repeated.

  ‘That’s what I am struggling with,’ Pitt told him, trying to find words that were honest, and yet did not tell him about Somerset Carlisle. Not naming him would be easy, but Stoker would know the answer was being evaded, and that was an insult he did not deserve. It would also damage the trust between them, which was one of Pitt’s greatest assets. Without the trust of his men he was alone. He was increasingly aware of the lack of confidence from people like Talbot, and possibly others in the Government. Even in Lisson Grove he had yet to earn the kind of respect they had had for Victor Narraway.

  ‘One thought that came to me,’ Pitt went on as they crossed over the river and turned east, ‘is that if Kynaston is suspected and the net seems to be closing around him, he would be extremely grateful to anyone who could prove his innocence …’

  ‘He won’t thank us for long, sir,’ Stoker said with an odd gentleness, as if he were protecting a younger man from disillusion.

  Pitt avoided looking at him, suddenly both moved and amused by his desire to prevent a pain that afflicted everyone from time to time. It was reality, bitter and as sharp as the icy edge of the spring winds that so often take the early flowers.

  Pitt had to speak quickly, dispel the mistake before it had taken shape.

  ‘I know that, Stoker. I was considering the possibility of someone else offering him rescue, at a price — someone who owes him nothing, but to whom he might then owe a very great deal.’

  Stoker’s eyes widened, sharp and bright. ‘I see! At a price he would then go on paying indefinitely! That would be very clever indeed. And we would look stupid. We might find ourselves listened to rather less the next time we suspect someone!’

  Pitt had not even thought of that. He wished that he had. It was a powerful and dangerous possibility.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said softly, barely heard above the noise of the traffic along Rotherhithe Street. ‘It grows uglier, doesn’t it? At least the possibilities do. The question arises again — who?’

  ‘There seem to be conflicting lines of evidence, sir,’ Stoker answered. ‘One of them regarding Kynaston having a mistress and being guilty of murdering the maid who found out about it, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense — unless there’s a major piece missing. And then why four different women?’

  Pitt was puzzled for a moment.

  ‘Kitty Ryder, the first woman in the gravel pit, the second woman in the gravel pit, and the mistress,’ Stoker counted. ‘There’s no way any two of those could be the same person.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything that makes sense of that,’ Pitt admitted. ‘And yet the two women in the gravel pit are linked by several circumstances: the place they were found, but not necessarily where they were killed; the fact they had been kept somewhere before being put in the gravel; the mutilations, which were hideous and seem to serve no purpose at all, because they were inflicted after death, but were not effective in hiding their identity, because we don’t know them anyway. They both appear to have been maids, but no one has come forward to claim them. Not to mention Kynaston’s watch on one and his fob on the other.’

  Stoker nodded. ‘So what about it all being nothing to do with who the women are, but to do with Kynaston — to try to blackmail or coerce him into doing something? Or not doing something? Perhaps he’s behaving so stupidly about this whole thing because he had some evidence that would ruin someone, and he’s being blackmailed into silence?’

  ‘Possible,’ Pitt agreed. It was possible indeed — and Somerset Carlisle did not fit into that story at all. That was why, much as he longed to believe it, Pitt did not.

  ‘You got another idea, sir?’ Stoker asked.

  ‘Only a possibility,’ Pitt answered. He could not shut it out any longer. He was lying to Stoker, and to himself. Somerset Carlisle was as sharp as an open razor in his brain. But Carlisle would not kill — surely? What would he care about enough to do all this: the bodies stolen from somewhere, the mutilation, which must have been hideous, almost unbearable to him, and yet he had performed this — if indeed it was him?

  The only answer that fitted it all was something as serious as treason.

  ‘Sir?’ Stoker’s voice broke through his thoughts.

  ‘To force us to dig until we find the greater crime,’ Pitt answered.

  ‘Greater than murder?’ Stoker’s tone was hard with anger and disbelief.

  ‘Yes, worse than murder,’ Pitt answered levelly. ‘Treason.’

  Stoker sat rigid. He gulped. ‘Yes, sir. I never thought of that — not — not in all this …’

  ‘Please God, you have no need to,’ Pitt said, staring straight ahead of him. ‘It’s only an idea …’

  ‘No, sir,’ Stoker turned to face the front also. ‘It’s our job.’

  Whistler met them in his office in the morgue, a place that had become unpleasantly familiar to Pitt in the last few weeks. This time Whistler was busy and in no mood to offer the hospitality of tea.

  ‘Newspapers got it,’ he said curtly. ‘Just want you to know it wasn’t me.’ He glared at Pitt as if already Pitt had doubted him. ‘Like bloody dogs sniffing out the smell of death!’ he said bitterly. ‘Don’t know what the hell they’ll make of this one — probably anything and everything.’ He started to shake his head, and ended up with his whole body shuddering, as if he had been dropped in cold water. ‘The mutilations were all after death. Told you that before. When I looked at them closely, so were the broken bones. Only a few made when she was alive, most importantly, the fracture of the skull. Bruises were made at the same time. Can’t bruise after you’re dead. No blood flow.’

  Pitt stared at him. ‘Was it the blow to the head that killed her?’ He did not know what he wanted Whistler to say. It was a nightmare. All that would make it any better was to wake up.

  ‘Blow,’ Whistler repeated the word, turning it over in his mind, examining it.

  ‘Was it?’ Pitt snapped.

  ‘Large, flat object,’ Whistler sai
d slowly. ‘Lot of bruises, can’t define them exactly. Too long dead now. My opinion? She fell downstairs and cracked her head on the floor at the bottom. Nothing to think it wasn’t accidental.’

  Pitt felt relief wash over him with an intensity that was close to the sort of pain you get when a frozen limb comes back to life. ‘So she wasn’t murdered?’

  ‘No reason to think she was,’ Whistler agreed. ‘But what bloody, God-awful lunatic then cut half her face off — that’s another question — yours, not mine!’

  Pitt thanked him with a nod, and they left.

  First Pitt would go and speak with Somerset Carlisle. If he had continued all this horror in order to force Pitt into investigating Kynaston, then it was time to face him and demand what crime he believed him guilty of.

  He was undecided at first whether to warn Carlisle of his coming. Surprise had many advantages, and if he were to make it a formal appointment then he would have to state his reason for it. But if he did not, the chances were high of finding that Carlisle was not at home. And perhaps it would be a deceit that would only make him look absurd if he attempted deviousness. He picked up the telephone and made the appointment. Carlisle made no argument at all; in fact he had sounded as if Pitt were welcome.

  As it was, a soberly dressed manservant welcomed Pitt at the door and ushered him into a pleasant and very individual sitting room where Carlisle spent the few evenings he had at home, in the winter by the fire now warming the whole room. For the summer there was a well-curtained french door.

  ‘This must be important,’ Carlisle said with a wry smile. ‘It’s a filthy night. What price spring, eh? Still, I suppose it will be the more welcome when it comes. Sit down.’ He indicated a whisky glass on a table beside the chair from which he had risen. ‘Whisky? Sherry?’ He winced very slightly. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Later, thank you,’ Pitt replied. ‘If you still feel like offering it.’ He found his throat tight and his mouth dry with the prospect of the unpleasantness to come, and a good whisky would have warmed him. Since he rose in rank, and income, he had learned the difference between good whisky and average. But he needed a clear head tonight. He could not afford to give Carlisle any advantage at all.