Death on Blackheath Read online

  “I thought she didn’t want to go to the one at the Grovers’?” He was momentarily confused.

  There was a slight shadow in Charlotte’s face. “She doesn’t,” she agreed. “But Mary Grover was very kind to her, and Jemima promised she would be there to help.”

  Pitt remembered Jemima’s argument on the subject, then he looked at Charlotte again. “Don’t you think …?” he began.

  “The real reason she doesn’t want to go is because the Hamiltons are also having a party that evening, and she wants to go there instead, because she likes Robert Hamilton.”

  “Then—”

  “Thomas … she owes Mary Grover a debt of kindness. She will pay it. And don’t tell me ‘later.’ ‘Later’ doesn’t do.”

  “I know,” he said quietly.

  “I’m so glad.” Suddenly she smiled, and it warmed her whole face with a melting gentleness. “I don’t want to fight both of you—at least not at once.”

  “Good,” he said, also relaxing, although he did not doubt for a second that she would have fought both of them—and won—had he forced her into it.

  CHAPTER

  2

  THREE WEEKS LATER, AT the end of January, Pitt was at breakfast in the warmth of the kitchen when the telephone rang. It was a marvelous instrument and had been of great service to him, but there were times when he resented its presence. Quarter past seven on a winter morning, before he had finished his toast, was one of them. Nevertheless he stood up and went out into the hall where the telephone sat on the small table, and picked it up. He knew no one would call him without good reason.

  It was Stoker on the other end, his voice thick with emotion.

  “They’ve found a body, sir.” He took a breath, and Pitt could hear the sounds of footsteps and other voices around him. “I’m at the Blackheath police station,” Stoker went on. “It’s a woman … young woman, far as we can tell … handsome build …” He swallowed. “Reddish hair …”

  Pitt felt his own throat tighten and a wave of sadness pass over him. “Where?” he asked, although the fact that Stoker was calling from Blackheath told him that it was not far from Shooters Hill.

  “Gravel pit, sir,” Stoker replied. “Shooters Hill Road, just beyond Kynaston’s house.” He seemed about to add something, then changed his mind.

  “I’ll be there,” Pitt replied. He had no need to tell Stoker that it would take him at least half an hour. Keppel Street was little more than a mile from Lisson Grove, where his office was, but it was a long way west and north of the river from Blackheath, let alone from Shooters Hill.

  He put the phone back in its cradle and turned to see Charlotte standing at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for him to tell her what it was. She would know from his face, even from the angle of his body, that it was bad news.

  “A body,” he said quietly. “Young woman found in one of the gravel pits on Shooters Hill.”

  “I suppose you have to go …”

  “Yes. Stoker’s already there. That was him on the telephone. I suppose the local police called him.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  He smiled bleakly. “Because the local police are very diligent—or because he’s most likely kept checking on them in case they found Kitty Ryder’s body. But I think they must also sense a bad case coming, and they’d very much like not to have to deal with it themselves.”

  “Can they pass it to you, just like that?” she asked dubiously.

  “Since it’s on Kynaston’s doorstep, and might well be his maid who has been found, yes they can. If it turns out to be her, they’d have to give it to Special Branch anyway.”

  She nodded slowly, sadness pinching her face. “I’m sorry. Poor girl.” She did not ask why anyone would kill her or if Kitty might have done something, such as attempting blackmail, in order to bring it on herself. She had learned over their sixteen years of marriage how complicated tragedies could be. She was just as blazingly angry at injustice as she had been when they first met, but now very much slower to judge—most of the time.

  He walked back to the warm kitchen and its smells of coal, bread, and clean linen, to eat the last few mouthfuls of his toast, and drink his tea, if it wasn’t cold. He hated cold tea. Then he would go out into the icy morning and find a hansom. By the time he got to the river it would be sunrise, and daylight when he got up the hill to the gravel pit.

  Charlotte was ahead of him. She took his cup off the table and fetched a clean one from the Welsh dresser. “You’ve time for it,” she stated firmly before he could get the words out to argue. She topped up the teapot from the kettle on the hob, waited a moment, then poured it.

  Pitt thanked her and was drinking the hot—if a trifle weak—tea gratefully when Minnie Maude came in, carrying potatoes and a string of onions. Uffie, the small, shaggy orphan pup she had adopted a year ago was, as usual, practically treading on her skirts. At first they had tried to prevent him from coming into the kitchen, but it had not worked. If Charlotte had had any sense, she would never have imagined it would!

  Pitt smiled, then thought of Kynaston’s kitchen and how different it would be there this morning, if the body turned out to be Kitty’s. “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he said quietly, and turned to leave.

  HE REACHED THE GRAVEL pit just as the gray light spread over the waste where the earth had been dug and exploited. The wind from the east carried flecks of ice, stinging the exposed skin of his face and finding the vulnerable parts of his neck. In earlier days he would have worn a long woolen scarf, wound round and round to keep out the cold. Now he felt that would be a little scruffy and informal for his rank, and he had a silk one instead. It was difficult enough to impress people anyway. His predecessors had all been gentlemen from birth, and in many cases senior officers in either the army or the navy, like Narraway, assuming the obedience of others quite naturally.

  “Morning, sir.” Stoker walked towards him with an easy gait, his feet crunching on the frozen grass. He refused to huddle his body against the wind. “She’s over there.” He indicated a small group of men about fifty feet away, standing close together, coats whipping a little around their legs, hats jammed on their heads. The light of bull’s-eye lanterns glowed with a false warmth, yellow in the gloom.

  “Who found her?” Pitt asked curiously.

  “The usual,” Stoker replied with a shadow of a smile. “Man walking his dog.”

  “What time, for heaven’s sake?” Pitt demanded. “Who the devil walks his dog up here at half past five on a winter morning?”

  Stoker lifted his shoulders slightly. “Ferryman down on the Greenwich waterfront. Takes people who cross the river to be there before seven. Sounds like a decent enough man.”

  Pitt should have thought of that. He had come over the river by ferry himself but barely looked at the man at the oars. He had dealt with murders most of his police career, and yet they still disturbed him. He had never seen Kitty alive, but the accounts of her by the other staff at Kynaston’s house had made her real, colored her as a girl quick to laugh and quick to make friends, with dreams for the future.

  Stoker was watching him. He had to remind himself that the body might not be Kitty’s. “So this man reported it to the local police station, and they remembered your interest and sent for you,” Pitt said.

  “Yes, sir. They telephoned my local station, who sent a constable around for me.” Stoker looked uncomfortable, as if he were making some confession before it caught up with him anyway. “I came up here first, before calling you, sir, in case it wasn’t anything to do with us. Didn’t want to get you out here for nothing.”

  Pitt realized what he was doing—accounting for the fact that he was here first. He could have had his local police call Pitt, and he had chosen not to.

  “I see,” Pitt replied with a bleak smile, in this gray light, barely visible. “Where did you find a telephone up here?”

  Stoker bit his lip, but he did not lower his eyes. “I went to the Kynaston
house, sir, just to make sure the maid had not returned after all and they had just forgotten to tell us.”

  Pitt nodded. “Very prudent,” he said, almost without expression. Then he walked towards the group of men, who were openly shivering now as the wind increased. There were three of them: a constable, a sergeant, and the third whom Pitt took to be the police surgeon.

  “Morning, sir,” the sergeant said smartly. “Sorry to get you all the way up here so early, but I think this one might be yours.”

  “We’ll see.” Pitt refused to commit himself. He did not want the case any more than the sergeant did. Even if the body was Kitty Ryder’s, her death probably had nothing whatever to do with Dudley Kynaston, but the danger of scandal was there, the pressure to solve the case quickly, the public interest the whole thing would attract. And the possibility of injustice, if it turned out there was something unsavory being covered up.

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant agreed, the relief not disappearing a whit from his face. He indicated the oldest man, who was shorter than Pitt and slightly built, his brown hair liberally sprinkled with gray. “This is Dr. Whistler,” he introduced him. He did not bother to explain who Pitt was. Presumably that had been done before he arrived.

  Whistler inclined his head. “Morning, Commander. Nasty one, I’m afraid.” There was a rough edge to his voice from perhaps more than the wretched morning, and an unmistakable pity in his face. He stepped back as he spoke, so Pitt could see behind him a rough cloth covering the body they had found.

  Pitt took a deep breath of the air, cold and clean, then he bent to remove the cloth. In summer there would have been a smell, but the wind and the ice had kept it at bay. Still, Pitt was unprepared for what he found. The body had been severely mutilated. Most of the face was so damaged as to be unrecognizable: the nose split, the lips removed as if by a knife. The eyes themselves were gone as well. Only the arch of the brow was left to give an idea of their shape. The flesh was stripped from the cheeks, but the jawbone and teeth were intact. One could only imagine how her smile might have been.

  Pitt looked away from her face, at the rest of her body. She was quite tall, almost Charlotte’s height, and handsomely built, with a generous bosom, slender waist, long legs. Her clothes had protected her from the ravages of animals, and the normal decay had not yet reached the stage of disintegration. He forced himself to look at her hair. It was wet and matted from exposure to the elements, but it was still possible to see that when one took the pins out it would fall at least halfway down her back, and that once dry it would be thick and of a deep chestnut color.

  Was it Kitty Ryder? Probably. They had said she was tall, handsomely built, and had beautiful hair the same shade of auburn as the hair found on the area steps.

  He looked back at the surgeon. “Did you find anything to indicate how she died?” he asked.

  Whistler shook his head. “Not for certain. I think there are some broken bones, but I’ll have to get her back to the morgue to remove her clothes and look at her much more carefully. Nothing obvious. No bullets, no stab wounds that I can see. She wasn’t strangled, and there’s no visible damage to the skull.”

  “Anything to identify her?” Pitt asked a little sharply. He wanted it not to be Kitty Ryder. He would be very relieved if the body had no connection with the Kynaston house, except a reasonable proximity. More than that, he wanted it to be a woman he knew nothing about, even though they would still have to learn. Nobody should die alone and anonymously, as if they did not matter. He would just prefer it to be a regular police job.

  “Possibly,” Whistler said, meeting Pitt’s eyes. “A very handsome gold fob watch. I looked at it carefully. Unusual and quite old, I think. Not hers, that’s for sure. It’s very definitely a man’s.”

  “Stolen?” Pitt asked unhappily.

  “I should think so. Most likely recently, or she wouldn’t be carrying it around with her.”

  “Anything else?”

  Whistler pursed his lips. “A handkerchief with flowers and initials embroidered on it, and a key. Looks like the sort of thing that would open a cupboard. Too small to be a door key. Might be a desk, or even a drawer, although not many drawers have separate keys.” He looked across at the sergeant. “I gave it all to him. I’m afraid that’s it, for the meantime.”

  Pitt looked back at the body again. “Did animals do that to her, or was it deliberate?”

  “It was deliberate,” Whistler replied. “A knife, not teeth or claws. I’ll know more about it when I look at her more closely, and not by the light of a bull’s-eye lantern when I’m freezing up here on the edge of a damn gravel pit at the crack of dawn. It looks like the bloody end of the world up here!”

  Pitt nodded without answering. He turned to the sergeant, holding his hand out, palm up.

  The sergeant gave him the small square of white embroidered cambric and a domestic key about an inch and three-quarters long, and the old and very lovely gold watch.

  Pitt met his eyes, questioning.

  “Don’t know, sir. There’s a few gentlemen as could have a watch like this. If someone picked his pocket he would have complained, depending where he was at the time, if you get my meaning?”

  “I do,” Pitt answered.

  “Or he could have given it to her, as payment for services,” the sergeant added.

  Pitt gave him a bleak look. “It’s worth a year’s salary for a lady’s maid,” he said, looking again at the watch. “What about the handkerchief?”

  The sergeant shook his head. “No ideas yet, sir. The initial on the handkerchief is an R. Seeing as how Mrs. Kynaston’s name begins with an R, I thought I should leave that to you.”

  “There are only twenty-six letters in the alphabet, Sergeant,” Pitt pointed out. “There must be scores of names beginning with R. If it had been Q, or X, that might have narrowed it down a bit. Even a Y, or Z.”

  “That was exactly what I was thinking, Commander,” the sergeant replied. “And I’m sure Mr. Kynaston would have told me so, with some disfavor, if I had started out by asking if this was his wife’s handkerchief.” He seemed about to add something more and then changed his mind. Instead he turned to his own constable, standing a couple of yards away with his collar turned up and his back to the wind. “I expect the commander’ll want you to stay until his own man gets here—more than Mr. Stoker, that is. So I’d better get back to the station.” He gave Pitt a bleak smile. “That suit you, sir?”

  “What happened to the man who found her?” Pitt asked, turning beside the sergeant and starting to walk back over the rutted ground towards the road.

  “Got his statement, written and signed, then sent him on his way. Poor devil were a bit shaken up, but he’s got his living to earn just the same,” the sergeant replied.

  “Do you know him?” Pitt said a trifle sharply.

  “Yes, sir. Zeb Smith.”

  “But you know him?” Pitt repeated.

  “Yes, sir.” The sergeant increased his pace. “Zebediah Smith, Hyde Vale Cottages, about a mile or so over that way.” He pointed north, towards Greenwich port and the river. “Had a bit too much to drink a couple of times—must be a few years ago now. Then he got married and settled down.”

  “Zebediah …” Pitt murmured, more to himself than to the sergeant.

  “Yes, sir. Religious mother. We know where to find him, if we need him again. Frankly, sir, ferrymen are good witnesses. Don’t want to get the reputation for giving them a hard time for no reason.”

  “Understood,” Pitt acknowledged. “Did Mr. Smith tell you anything useful? Does he walk up here often? When was the last time? Did he see anyone else up here this morning? Any sign of someone? A figure in the distance, footprints? There’s enough mud and ice to show them. What about his dog? How did it react?”

  The sergeant smiled, a tight, satisfied expression. “He couldn’t tell us a whole lot, sir. Except that he came up here yesterday morning as usual, and the body wasn’t here then. Even if he hadn’
t seen it himself, his dog would. Good animal. Good ratter, apparently. Didn’t see anyone else. I asked him that several times.” He stepped over a ridge of tussock grass and Pitt followed. “Not a soul,” he went on. “No footprints as make any sense. Looks like there’s been an army up here, but not recently. Weather does that. No more to see a couple of hours ago than there is now.” He looked down at the ground with a slight curl of his lip. “Useless,” he added, regarding the cracked, rutted earth. As they came closer to the road, some of it was still frozen, more swimming in mud. “Anything could have passed that way.”

  Pitt was obliged to agree with him. “And the dog?” he asked again.

  “Didn’t see anyone else,” the sergeant said. “Didn’t bark. Didn’t want to chase anything. Just found the body, an’ howled!”

  Pitt had a sudden vision of the dog throwing its head back and letting out a long wail of despair as it came across sudden death in the gray fog before dawn, shivering and alone amid the dripping weed heads and the few shadowy, skeletal trees.

  “Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll keep you informed as I may have to hand the case back to you.”

  “Ah … yes … sir,” the sergeant said awkwardly.

  Pitt smiled, although he felt very little humor. The last thing he wanted to do was disturb the Kynaston family again, but it had to be done sometime. Perhaps it was not only the most efficient thing to do it now but also the kindest. Then the news, which would inevitably reach them at some later point, would not be hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles.

  He came to the entrance to the pit, spoke briefly to the other sergeant there, then set out briskly to walk to the Kynaston house.

  Because of the early hour of the morning, he went again to the back door. He did not want to be announced and have to ask permission to speak to the servants, with an explanation, and possibly an argument about the body in the gravel pit.

  The areaway steps were scrubbed and clean, nothing worse on them now than a thin rime of ice, slick on top from the misty rain. He went down carefully and knocked on the scullery door.