Death On Blackheath (Thomas Pitt 29) Read online

  ‘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. ‘Not a 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 grey 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 humour. The last thing he wanted to do was disturb the Kynaston family again, but it had to be done some time. Perhaps it was not only the most efficient thing to do, but also the kindest not to leave the news, which would inevitably reach them, hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles.

  He came to the entrance to the pit, spoke briefly to the sergeant, 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 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.

  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 further side of the room. 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 goodbye 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 apologised. ‘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 te
a 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 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 dare say 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 deserve 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 apologise, 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 colouring.’

  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 thought of someone we know 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. ’Ceptin’ 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 best 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 grey 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, but I imagine you had worked that out for yourself, from the state of her, poor creature. 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 somebody’s house 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 pretty clean, apart from a smear or two of mud and bits of gravel and sand caught up in her clothes. And that could be from where she was lying. Wherever she was kept for the time in between death and being put in the gravel pit, it was clean. And although she’s badly mutilated, when I looked more closely, that appears to have been done recently, after the flesh had begun to decay. 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 or 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. 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. The body’s too badly damaged and too far deteriorated to find any marks of ropes, or whether she lay on slats, or boards, or anything else. You’ve got a nasty one …’

  Pitt looked at him coldly. ‘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, 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 defences of anger and a quiet belligerence, the sense of helplessness and
pity for the agony of a stranger now beyond his help. 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 odour 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. Who was she? Was it Kitty Ryder, or someone else who happened quite by chance to resemble her, at least superficially? How had she died? And where? Had she remained where she was killed, or been moved first somewhere safer, and then last night taken to the gravel pit? Why? What had necessitated that?

  If he knew where she had been, would that tell him also 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 were already up – ‘Mutilated corpse found on Shooters Hill! Who is she? Police are keeping silent!’

  They were like hounds on the scent of blood. Inevitable, even necessary, but he flinched at it all the same.

  But then without Zebediah Smith’s dog they would not have found the poor woman before there was far less of her left – less chance of identifying her, less chance of finding out what happened to her and who was responsible.