Death on Blackheath Page 4

  After several moments it was opened by Maisie, the little scullery maid. For a moment she was confused. He was obviously not a delivery-man, and yet she was aware that she knew him.

  “Good morning, Maisie,” he said quietly. “Commander Pitt, Special Branch, you remember? May I come in?”

  “Oh, yeah!” Her face lit with a smile. Then she recalled his original reason for coming, and suddenly she was terrified. “Yer found Kitty, ’ave yer?” She wanted to add more, but the rest of her thoughts were clearly too hideous to speak aloud.

  “I don’t know,” he answered, still keeping his voice low so as not to attract the attention of the other servants in the kitchen a few yards away. “You will hear very soon, probably from the first delivery boy of the day, that we’ve found a woman’s body up in the gravel pits, not far from here. It’s difficult to tell who she is.”

  Maisie gulped, but she did not reply.

  He pulled the handkerchief and the key out of his pocket. “Have you seen this handkerchief before, or one like it?”

  She took it gingerly as if it were a live thing that might have bitten her. Very carefully she opened it out.

  “It’s pretty,” she said with a shiver. “If she got one like this, mister, she’s a lady. It’s got summink stitched on it in the corner, ’ere …” She held it out.

  “Yes, it’s a letter R. I imagine it belonged to someone whose name begins with R.”

  “Kitty don’t begin with an R,” she said with certainty. “I can’t read, but I know that much.”

  “The thing is,” he said as casually as possible, “it may not be her own handkerchief. As you said, ladies have ones like this. It may have been given to her by someone …”

  The understanding in Maisie’s face was immediate. “You mean the woman wot you found could be Kitty, and someone give it ’er?”

  “It’s possible. If we could find out whose handkerchief it is, then it might help us to know if this is Kitty, or not.”

  “Did she drown in the pits?” Maisie asked. She was shaking now, as if they were standing outside in the wind and the ice.

  “I don’t know yet.” He had no choice but to be honest. Evasion would only make it worse. He showed her the key. “Do you have any keys like this in the house?”

  She frowned. “Everybody does. What’s it for?”

  “Probably a cupboard, or a desk drawer.” He offered it to her.

  She picked it up reluctantly, then walked over to one of the cupboards on the far side of the scullery. She tried it in the lock, and it would not fit. She tried a second, and a third with no success. On the fourth one it slipped in, and after a little difficulty, it turned.

  “There y’are,” she said, her face still white. “We all got cupboards a bit like that. Don’t mean nothing. Mister, can’t you do summink ter know if it’s our Kitty?”

  She had made the point well. It was a very ordinary key that might fit some lock or other in any of a hundred houses in the area, or for that matter, out of it. It probably served more as a handle than a device of security.

  “She was only discovered this morning,” he replied gently. “We’ll do all we can to find out who she is. A few more questions and we may be able to say at least whether it is Kitty or not. If it isn’t, then we need to know who she is. And you should go on believing that Kitty is somewhere alive and well, but perhaps too embarrassed to tell you why she ran off without saying good-bye to anyone.”

  Maisie took a deep breath and let it out shakily. “Yeah … yeah, I will. Can I get yer a cup o’ tea? It’s fair perishin’ out there. Colder than a—” She stopped abruptly.

  “Witch’s tit,” he finished for her. He was perfectly familiar with the expression.

  She blushed hotly, but she did not deny that that was what had been in her mind. “I didn’t say it,” she murmured.

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have,” he apologized. “I beg your pardon.”

  “ ’S’all right!” Then she gave him a dazzling smile. “I’ll get yer a cup o’ tea, and tell Mr. Norton as yer ’ere.” And before he could protest she whisked away around the corner into the kitchen.

  Fifteen minutes later, and after a good hot cup of tea, Pitt was in the butler’s pantry with a grim-faced Norton. It was quite a large room, painted cream and brown, and around the walls glass-fronted cupboards for the china and crystal in daily use. There were wooden horses for drying glass and tea cloths, a table for pressing cloths or ironing and folding newspapers. There were also all the usual keys, funnels, corkscrews, and—as was customary in most houses—a picture of the queen.

  “Yes, sir, Mrs. Kynaston has handkerchiefs similar to this,” Norton agreed. “But I cannot say that this one is hers. She does occasionally give such things away, if she has new ones, or if it is no longer … serviceable. Such as if it is frayed, or stained in some way. They do not last indefinitely.” He looked at it again. “It is difficult to say, in this condition, what state it would be if washed and ironed.”

  “Yes, it is,” Pitt agreed. “But the monogram is clearly an R.”

  “Many ladies’ names begin with an R,” Norton pulled his lips tight. “As for the key, it is a very simple thing. I daresay half the houses in London have something it would open. I’m afraid we can be of no assistance to you.”

  “I have no wish that the poor woman in the gravel pit should be Miss Ryder,” Pitt said with feeling. “But I am obliged to do all I can to find out who she was. She deserves a burial, and her family deserves to know what happened to her.” He stood up from the stool where he had been sitting. “I preferred to come myself, since that was very much a possibility, rather than send a sergeant to disturb you at this hour.”

  Norton stood also. “I apologize, sir. I was ungenerous,” he said a little awkwardly. “It was a kindness that you came yourself. I hope you find out who the poor creature is. Apart from the handkerchief, and the fact that the gravel pit is not far away, is there anything that made you think it was Kitty Ryder?”

  “She was the height and build you described, and she had thick auburn hair,” Pitt replied. “It is unusual coloring.”

  Norton was momentarily stunned. “Oh dear. Oh—I’m very sorry. I … this is absurd. Whoever she is she deserves our pity. Just for a moment the way you said that made it so much more … real.” He cleared his throat. “I shall inform Mrs. Kynaston of your call, sir, and your consideration. May I show you out?”

  IT TOOK PITT SOME time to find Zebediah Smith at his home, and confirm with him what the sergeant had told him. He was not surprised to learn nothing new. His real purpose was to satisfy his own mind that Zebediah was as straightforward as he seemed. The man was still visibly shaken when he told Pitt how he had set out for his usual walk, and in the darkness the keen nose of his dog had scented something different and gone to find it. Then it sat and howled until Smith had come up to it himself and—in the light of his lantern—seen the pathetic corpse.

  He shook his head. “Who’d do that to a woman?” he said miserably. “What kind of a … I suppose I gotta call ’im a man, although ’e ain’t human. Can’t call ’im an animal though. Even animals don’t kill their own for nothing.”

  “There’ll be a reason, Mr. Smith,” Pitt replied. “It’s my job to find it—when we discover who she is.”

  Zebediah looked up and met Pitt’s eyes. “Ain’t no reason to do that to anyone, sir, an’ I don’t care ’oo you are—government, police, nor nothin’—you find ’im, an’ when you do, God ’elp yer what you do to ’im.”

  Pitt did not argue. He was satisfied that Zebediah was telling the exact truth, and also that since he walked the same paths every morning, the body could not have been there twenty-four hours earlier.

  By mid-afternoon Pitt was in the morgue with Dr. Whistler. There was no place he disliked more. Outside, the wind had risen considerably. Gusting rain blew hard and cold one moment, then the next, in sheltered places, simply dripped with surprising power to soak through even the be
st coats. Now and then there were brief blue patches in the sky, bright, and then gone again.

  Inside the morgue it seemed to be always winter. The windows were high, perhaps to conceal from the passing world what happened there. The cold was necessary to preserve the bodies as they were wheeled from one room to another for examination. Those stored for any length of time were kept in ice chambers, the chill of which permeated everything. The smell was mostly antiseptic, but it was impossible to forget what it was there to mask.

  Whistler’s office, where he saw Pitt, was warm and—had it been anywhere else—would have been quite pleasant. Whistler himself was dressed in a gray suit, and there was no outward sign of his grisly occupation, except a faint aroma of some chemical.

  “I’m not going to be very helpful,” he said as soon as Pitt had taken a seat in one of the well-padded but still uncomfortable chairs. They seemed to have been constructed to oblige one to sit unnaturally upright.

  “Even the omission of something might be useful,” Pitt said hopefully.

  Whistler shrugged. “She’s been dead at least two weeks. And it is as I said: that abomination was done to her face by a clean, very sharp knife.”

  Pitt said nothing.

  “I can tell you she was moved after she was dead,” Whistler went on. “But you must have concluded that, too. If she’d been lying there for a couple of weeks someone else would have found her before now. Apart from other people who walk their dogs on the paths across the old gravel pits, there’s Mr. Smith himself.”

  “As you said,” Pitt observed drily. “Not much help so far. I’ve spoken to Mr. Smith. I agree, she wasn’t there yesterday. If she’s been dead a couple of weeks, where was she all that time? Do you know that? Or can you at least make an educated guess?”

  “Somewhere cold, or the deterioration would be worse than it is,” Whistler answered.

  “Brilliant.” Pitt was now openly sarcastic. “At this time of the year, that narrows it down to anywhere in England except the home of somebody who has decent fires in all the main rooms. Even then it could be someone’s outhouse.”

  “Not quite.” Whistler pursed his lips. “She was very clean, apart from a smear or two of mud and bits of gravel and sand caught up in her clothes, likely from the pit itself. Wherever she was kept for the time in between death and being put in the gravel pit, it was clean. I suppose that could be useful?” He shrugged. “It more or less rules out anywhere outside.”

  “More than that.” Pitt sat forward a little. “If you’re quite sure about that: no rats? Absolutely no rats?”

  Whistler took his point. There were rats almost everywhere, in cities and the country, in the sewers, in the streets and gutters, in people’s houses, even cellars, potting sheds, and outhouses of every kind. One did not see them so often, but any food left lying, certainly any dead and rotting body, they would have found.

  “Yes.” Whistler nodded, his eyes meeting Pitt’s squarely for the first time. “You may safely conclude that wherever she was, it was cold and clean, and sufficiently well sealed that neither flies nor rats could get in, or the damage to her body would’ve been much worse. Of course there are no flies at this time of year, but there are always beetles of some sort. Narrows it down quite a lot.”

  “Any idea how she got there?” Pitt pursued.

  “Impossible to tell. I can’t find any marks of ropes, or tell whether she lay on slats, or boards, or anything else. You’ve got a nasty one …”

  Pitt looked at him coolly. “That also I had worked out for myself.”

  “I’ll let you know if I find out anything more,” Whistler said with a faint smile.

  “Please do.” Pitt rose to his feet. “For example, how old she was, any distinguishing marks that might help identify her, what state of health she was in, any healed injuries, old scars, birthmarks? Particularly, I would like to know what killed her.”

  Whistler nodded. “Believe me, Commander, I very much want you to find out who did this and then exact everything from him the law allows, in some attempt at payment for it.”

  Pitt looked at him more closely, and for an instant saw, behind the defenses, a quiet belligerence, the sense of helplessness and pity for the agony of a stranger now beyond his aid. Whistler was embarrassed by his own grief and hid it behind a bitter professional detachment. Pitt wondered how often he had to do this sort of thing, and why he had chosen it instead of a practice with the living.

  “Thank you,” Pitt said gravely. “If I learn anything that might be useful to you I’ll see that you are informed.”

  Outside again he walked quickly. The air was cold and had the sting of sleet in it, its odor was the sourness of soot and smoke, the smell of horse dung and swift-running gutters, impersonal, ordinary, but he breathed it in with relief.

  Questions were teeming in his mind. Was the body Kitty Ryder? He hoped profoundly that it wasn’t, but he couldn’t help but feel it probably was. After all, what were the odds of it being another woman who happened quite by chance to resemble her, at least superficially?

  How had she died? And where? Had she been kept where she was killed, or had she been moved first and then last night taken to the gravel pit? Why? What had necessitated that?

  If he knew where she had been, would that also tell him for certain who she was? And therefore quite possibly who had killed her, how, and why?

  As he came to the first major street corner he saw the newspapers for sale. The black headlines would soon be up—“Mutilated Corpse Found on Shooters Hill! Who is she? Police Are Keeping Silent!”

  The press was like hounds on the scent of blood. Inevitable, even necessary—he pictured Zeb Smith’s dog, tracking the body long before any human would’ve been able to—but he flinched at the thought all the same.

  CHAPTER

  3

  IT WAS WELL AFTER five by the time Pitt was again in the Kynaston house, this time standing in the morning room opposite Kynaston himself. It was dark outside by this hour, but the fire had probably been lit all day and the room was warm. In other circumstances he might have appreciated the elegance of the furniture, the books on the many shelves, even the paintings. They were a curious choice, most of them snow scenes, clearly not anywhere in Britain by the scale and magnificence of the mountains. There was a soaring beauty to them, and yet a sense of intimacy in the detail that indicated the artist was familiar with them. He wondered why Kynaston had chosen them, but today he was too preoccupied to give them more than a glance.

  Kynaston was waiting for him to speak. He stood in the middle of a thick Turkish carpet, his face tense and puzzled.

  “I expect you have heard already,” Pitt began. “There has been a body found early today, before dawn, at the gravel pit to the east of here. It’s that of a young woman, but it is so damaged that it is not possible to make an immediate identification. I am very sorry, but we cannot say if it is Kitty Ryder or not—at least not yet.”

  Kynaston was very pale, but he kept his composure, even if it was with difficulty. “I take it from the way you phrase it that it could be. Do you believe that it is?”

  “I think it is probable, yes,” Pitt admitted, then instantly wondered if perhaps he should have been more cautious.

  Kynaston took a deep breath. “If she is unrecognizable, poor creature, why do you believe it is Kitty?”

  Pitt had seen people fight the inevitable before. It was the natural instinct to deny tragedy as long as possible. He had done it himself but had always had to give in, in the end.

  “She is the same general height and build as Kitty,” he replied quietly. “Her hair is auburn.” He saw Kynaston’s body tense even more and the muscles along his jaw tighten. “And she had in her pocket a lace-edged handkerchief with the letter R embroidered on it,” he continued. “Your butler says Mrs. Kynaston has some like it and that she occasionally gives away old ones.”

  There was a long moment’s silence, then Kynaston straightened his shoulders a little. “I
see. Yes. It does seem … probable. Nevertheless we shall not leap to conclusions. I would be obliged if you did not tell the rest of the household that it is Kitty … until there is no doubt left. Then we shall have to deal with it. My butler and housekeeper are both excellent people. They will help the more emotionally affected of the staff.”

  Pitt took the gold watch out of his pocket and saw Kynaston’s eyes widen and the color drain from his face. “This was found on the body also,” he said very quietly. “I see you recognize it.” It was not a question.

  “It … it’s mine.” Kynaston’s voice was a croak, as if his mouth and lips were dry. “It was taken out of my pocket a couple of weeks ago. Somewhere on the street—damn pickpockets! The fob and chain were taken, too. Kitty didn’t take it—if that’s what you’re thinking!”

  Pitt nodded. “I see. I’m afraid it happens. Now, I would like to speak to both your wife and your sister-in-law, if that is possible. I appreciate that they, too, will be distressed, but either of them may have knowledge that would help us.”

  “I doubt it.” Kynaston’s mouth pulled down in a gesture of distaste. “I think you would learn more from the other maids … if anything is known at all. Girls talk to each other, not to their mistresses.”

  “I was not thinking of confidences so much as their observations of Kitty,” Pitt answered. “My own wife is a very good judge of character. I imagine Mrs. Kynaston is also. Women see things in other women, whatever their social station. And no woman who runs a house well is ignorant of the character of her maids.”

  Kynaston sighed. “Yes, of course you are right. I wished to spare her this distress, but perhaps it is not possible.”

  Pitt smiled a trifle bleakly, knowing in his mind exactly how Charlotte would have reacted had he tried to conceal such a thing from her. “If you would be good enough to ask her to give me half an hour or so of her time …”

  “What about the other maids?” Kynaston did not move. “Or the housekeeper? Female staff are her concern.”