Death On Blackheath tp-29 Read online

  Kynaston remained standing, as though he felt that to sit down would somehow relax his guard.

  ‘We do not yet know what happened to Kitty, Mr Pitt,’ Ailsa said a little brusquely. ‘My sister-in-law told you that we would inform you if we did.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Kynaston, I know that,’ Pitt replied. The woman irritated him and he had to remind himself that although she certainly did not look it, she was probably afraid, more for her sister-in-law than for her own sake. The thought flickered through his mind that she might be more aware of the domestic realities than the younger and apparently more delicate Rosalind. He had a sudden cold vision of Kynaston’s possible affair with a handsome maid: quarrels, embarrassment, even an attempt at blackmail, a flare of temper out of control.

  Was that what he saw in Ailsa’s vivid eyes, and the fear of everything that exposure would bring? To whom? Scandal to Kynaston? Or disillusion to Rosalind? But he was days ahead of himself, and quite probably mistaken.

  Ailsa was waiting, somewhat impatiently.

  ‘I am sorry to inform you that we have discovered the body of a young woman up at the gravel pit to the west of here,’ Pitt told her. ‘We do not know who she is, but we would like to assure ourselves, and you, that it is not Kitty Ryder.’ Out of the corner of his vision he saw Kynaston relax a little. It was no more than a slight change in his stance, as if he breathed more easily.

  Ailsa gave the ghost of a smile. Rosalind did not stop staring straight at Pitt.

  ‘Why don’t you find out who she is, and then you would have no need to disturb my sister-in-law?’ Ailsa said with an edge of criticism in her voice. She did not like Pitt and she had no intention of concealing the fact. It might not have any meaning in this case, or with Kitty Ryder, but he wondered why. Rosalind did not seem to have any such feelings. But perhaps she was too numb to feel anything. Did she usually need Ailsa to protect her?

  If the body were that of Kitty Ryder, Pitt suspected that there was going to be a difficult mass of emotions to untangle, many of them irrelevant. Everyone had secrets, old wounds that still bled, people they loved or hated, sometimes both.

  ‘You would have heard of it within a day or two at the outside,’ Pitt assured her. ‘And if we have not eliminated the possibility that it is anyone from your house, it will be far more distressing.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake why don’t you know now?’ Ailsa demanded. ‘She was a perfectly recognisable young woman. Get the butler, or someone, to go and look at her. Isn’t that your job? Why on earth are you here bothering us?’

  Rosalind put her hand on her sister-in-law’s sleeve. ‘Ailsa, give him a chance to tell us. I dare say he has his reasons.’

  Pitt avoided the answer, aware of Kynaston’s eyes on him and a sharp, almost electric tension in the air.

  He looked at Rosalind. ‘Mrs Kynaston, I imagine that, like most ladies, you have a number of handkerchiefs, some of them embroidered with your initials?’

  ‘Yes, several,’ she replied with a frown.

  ‘Why on earth does that matter?’ Ailsa snapped.

  Kynaston opened his mouth to reprove her, and changed his mind. He looked even tenser than before.

  Pitt took the handkerchief from the corpse out of his pocket and passed it across to Rosalind.

  She took it, damp in her fingers, and dropped it instantly, her face white.

  Ailsa picked it up and examined it. Then she looked up at Pitt. ‘It’s a fairly ordinary lace-edged handkerchief, made of cambric. I have half a dozen like it myself.’

  ‘That one has an “R” embroidered on it,’ Pitt pointed out. ‘Does yours not have an “A”?’

  ‘Naturally. There are thousands like these. If she was not the kind of person to own one herself, she could have stolen it from someone.’

  ‘Did Kitty Ryder steal it from you, Mrs Kynaston?’ Pitt asked Rosalind.

  Rosalind gave the slightest shrug: a delicate gesture but unmistakable. She had no idea. Taking it between her fingertip and thumb, she passed it back to Pitt.

  ‘Is that all?’ Kynaston asked.

  Pitt replaced the handkerchief in his pocket. ‘No. She also had a small key, the sort that might open a cupboard or a drawer.’

  No one responded. They sat stiff and waiting, not glancing at each other.

  ‘It fits one of the cupboards in your laundry room,’ Pitt added.

  Ailsa raised her delicate eyebrows slightly. ‘Only one? Or did you not try the rest? In my house such a key would have fitted all of them.’

  Rosalind drew in her breath as if to speak, and then changed her mind.

  Was it anger in Ailsa, or fear? Or simply defence of someone she saw as more vulnerable than herself? Pitt replied to her levelly, politely. ‘I am aware that there are only a limited number of types of keys, especially of that very simple sort. I have cupboards in my own house, and I have found that all the doors in one piece of furniture can be opened by the same key. This one opened one set of doors, but nothing in your kitchen, or pantry, for example.’

  Ailsa did not flinch. ‘Are you concluding from this … evidence … that the unfortunate woman in the gravel pit is Kitty Ryder?’

  ‘No, Mrs Kynaston. I am hoping there is some way of proving that she is not.’ It was perfectly honest: he would very much rather she were someone about whom he knew nothing, whose friends or relatives he would meet only when there was no hope left of her being alive. It was easier, he admitted to himself. You went prepared. Probably it would be a case for the local police, not Special Branch at all.

  Kynaston cleared his throat, but when he spoke his voice was still hoarse.

  ‘Do you wish me to look at this poor woman and see if I recognise her?’

  ‘No, sir,’ Pitt said gently. ‘If you will permit me to take your butler, Norton, he will know her better and be in a position to tell us, if it is possible, whether this is Kitty Ryder, or not.’

  ‘Yes … yes, of course,’ Kynaston agreed, breathing out slowly. ‘I’ll tell him immediately.’ He seemed about to add something, but glancing first at Ailsa, then at Rosalind, instead he said goodbye to Pitt with a brief nod, and turned to go and seek Norton.

  ‘That is all we can do for you, Mr Pitt.’ Ailsa did not rise to her feet, but her dismissal was clear.

  ‘Thank you for your consideration,’ Rosalind added quietly.

  Pitt and Norton travelled to the morgue by hansom cab. Norton sat bolt upright, his hands clenched in his lap, knuckles white. Neither of them spoke. There was no sound except the clatter of the horse’s feet and the hiss of the wheels on the wet road, then the occasional splash as they passed through a deeper puddle.

  Pitt let the silence remain. Norton could have felt anything for the girl he was perhaps going to identify, from indifference, possibly irritation, dislike, through respect even to affection. Or the clearly intense emotion he suffered now could be quite impersonal, simply a dread of death. Anybody’s death was a reminder that it was the one unavoidable reality in all life.

  Perhaps he had lost someone else young: a mother, a sister, even a daughter. It happened to many people. Pitt was lucky it had not happened to him — at least not yet. Please God — never!

  Or it might be that Norton feared that if it were Kitty, then her murder had some connection with the Kynaston house and someone who lived in it, either family or staff.

  And there was the other possibility also, as there was in every household, that close and intrusive police investigation would expose all kinds of other secrets, weaknesses, the petty deceits that keep lives whole, and private. Everyone needed some illusions; they were the clothes that kept them from emotional nakedness. It was sometimes more than a kindness not to see too much; it was a decency, a safety to oneself as well as to others.

  It was Pitt’s duty to watch this man as he looked at the body, read all his emotions, however private or, for that matter, however irrelevant. He could not find justice or protection for the innocent without the truth. But he still
felt intrusive.

  It was also his duty to interrogate him now, while he was emotionally raw and at his most vulnerable.

  ‘Did Kitty often go out with the young carpenter?’ he began. ‘That was very lenient of Mrs Kynaston to allow her to. Or did she do it without asking?’

  Norton stiffened. ‘Certainly not. She was allowed her half-day off, and she went out with him sometimes, just for the afternoon. A walk in the park, or out to tea. She was always home by six. At least … nearly always,’ he amended.

  ‘Did you approve of him?’ Pitt asked, now watching his face for the feeling behind the words.

  Norton’s shoulders tightened — he stared straight ahead. ‘He was pleasant enough.’

  ‘Had he a temper?’

  ‘Not that I observed.’

  ‘Would you have employed him, if he had a domestic ability you could use?’

  Norton thought for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘I think I would.’ A faint smile crossed his face and vanished. Pitt could not read it.

  They reached the morgue and alighted. Pitt paid the driver then led the way inside. He stayed close to Norton because he was afraid the man might faint. He looked white, and a little awkward, as though he were not certain of his balance.

  As always, the place smelled of carbolic and death. Pitt was not certain which was the worse. Antiseptic always made him think of corpses anyway, and then of loss, and pain. He hurried without meaning to, and then had to wait for Norton to catch up when he reached the end of the passage and the door to the cold room that they wanted.

  The attendant seemed to disappear into the grey walls, the sheet that had fully concealed the corpse in his hands. Now it was covered only as much as decency required. She looked even more broken and alone than she had lying sprawled out in the gravel pit on the freezing grass.

  Norton gasped and choked on his own breath. Pitt took his arm to support him if he should faint.

  There was no sound but an irregular dripping somewhere. Norton took a step closer and looked down at the body, the blotched and rotted flesh coming away from the bone, the hollow eye sockets, the ravaged face. The auburn hair was thick and tangled now, but it was still possible to see where clumps of it had been torn out.

  Norton backed away at last, staggering a little, uncertain of his footing although the floor was even. Pitt still kept hold of him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Norton said hoarsely. ‘I can’t say. God help her, whoever she is.’ He began to shake as though suddenly the cold had reached him.

  ‘I didn’t expect you would,’ Pitt assured him. ‘But you might have been able to say that it was not her. Perhaps the hair was wrong, or the height …’

  ‘No,’ Norton gulped. ‘No … the hair looks right. She … she had beautiful hair. Perhaps it was a little darker than that … but it looked … messy. She was always very careful of her hair.’ He stopped abruptly, unable to control his voice.

  Pitt allowed him to walk away and go out of the room into the cold, tiled passage, then along to the door to the outside and the steady drenching rain that held nothing worse than physical discomfort. They still did not know if the woman from the gravel pit was Kitty Ryder, or some other poor creature whose name and life they might never learn.

  The next morning Stoker finished all the enquiries he could make locally, and on leaving the police station in Blackheath he walked up the rise towards Shooters Hill. He was careful to keep his footing on the ice. Pitt had said little yet as to how they would approach the staff in the Kynaston house regarding Kitty Ryder. Stoker was surprised how much he still wanted to find her alive.

  Without realising it he had increased his pace, and he had to steady himself. The footpath was treacherous. Perhaps someone could tell him a detail, a fact that would prove that the woman they had found in the gravel pit was not her, could not be, from some quirk or other: a birthmark, the shape of her hands, a particular pattern in the way her hair grew — anything. Maybe there was something the butler, Norton, had been too emotionally overwrought to notice.

  It was all ridiculous. He knew that. One woman’s life was as important, as unique as another. He knew nothing about Mrs Kynaston’s maid, except what Pitt had told him. If he had met her he might have found her just as ordinary, as trivial, as the most unattractive person he knew. To allow his imagination to become involved was bad detection. He knew that too. Facts. Deal with the facts only. Allow them to take you wherever they lead.

  He reached the areaway steps where he had first found the blood and broken glass. There was nothing there now. They had been swept clean, apart from a few iced-over puddles where endless feet coming and going had worn a dip in the stone.

  He knocked on the door and after a few moments it was opened by Maisie. She looked at him blankly for a moment, then lit up with a smile when she recognised him.

  ‘Yer come ter tell us yer found Kitty, an’ the body in’t ’er at all?’ she said immediately. Then she screwed up her eyes and looked at him more closely. Her voice caught in her throat. ‘It in’t ’er — is it?’

  She was only a child and suddenly Stoker, in his mid-thirties, felt very old.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He meant it to sound gentler, but he was not used to softening the truth.

  Her face crumpled. ‘Wot d’yer mean, yer don’t think so! Is it ’er or not?’

  He resisted the temptation to lie, but only with difficulty. ‘We don’t think it’s her,’ he replied. ‘We just need to be sure. I have to ask all of you some more questions about her.’

  She did not move aside. ‘Din’t Mr Norton go ter look at ’er?’

  ‘She’s in a bad way. It didn’t help a lot,’ he replied. ‘Can I come in? It’s cold out here, and you’re letting it all in with the door open.’

  ‘S’pose so,’ she said grudgingly, stepping back at last and allowing him to go past her into the scullery.

  ‘Thank you.’ He closed the door firmly behind him. The sudden warmth made him sneeze and he blew his nose to clear it. Then he smelled the onions and herbs hanging on the racks.

  Maisie bit her lip to stop it trembling. ‘I s’pose yer want a cup o’ tea, an’ all?’ Without waiting for his answer, she led him into the kitchen where the cook was busy preparing dinner, rolling pastry ready to put on top of the fruit pie on the counter.

  ‘You got those carrots prepared then, Maisie?’ she said sharply before she noticed Stoker following. ‘You back?’ She looked at him with disfavour. ‘We only just got rid o’ yer gaffer. ’E bin ’ere ’alf o’ yesterday upsetting everyone. Wot is it now?’

  Stoker knew how irritated people were when interrupted in their work, and least likely to tell you what you needed to know. He wanted them to be at ease, not merely answering what he asked, but filling in the details, the colour he could not deliberately seek.

  ‘I don’t want to interrupt you,’ he said, filling his tone with respect. ‘I’d just like you to tell me a little more about Kitty.’

  Cook looked up from her pastry, the wooden rolling pin still in both hands. ‘Why? She ran off with that miserable young man of ’ers, didn’t she?’ Her face crumpled up with anger. ‘Stupid girl. She could ’a done a lot better for ’erself. Come ter that, she couldn’t ’ardly ’a done worse!’ She sniffed hard and resumed her smoothing and easing the shape of the pie crust.

  Stoker heard the emotion in her voice, and saw it in the angry tightness of her shoulders and the way she hid her face from him. She had cared about Kitty and she was frightened for her. Anger was easier, and less painful. He knew from relatives in service, old friends he seldom saw, that few household servants had family they were still in touch with. If they stayed for any length of time the other servants became family to them, full of the same loyalties, squabbles, rivalries and intimate knowledge. Kitty might have been the closest this woman, bent over her pastry, would have to a daughter of her own.

  Stoker wanted to be gentle, and it was almost impossible.

  ‘P
robably she did,’ he agreed. ‘But we didn’t find her, so we’ve got no proof of it. Got to know who this woman is in the gravel pit. I’d like to know for sure it’s not her.’

  She looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears. ‘Yer saying as that ’orrible … fool … did that to ’er?’

  ‘No, ma’am, I’m saying I’d like to prove it’s got nothing to do with this house at all, and keep the police away from having to trouble you.’

  She sniffed and searched for a handkerchief in her apron pocket. When she had found it and had blown her nose, she gave him her full attention. ‘Well, what do you want to know about Kitty? She might ’a been a fool about men, goin’ an’ picking the stupidest great lummox she could find.’ She glared at him, daring him to argue.

  ‘How did she meet him?’ Stoker asked.

  ‘Came an’ did a carpentry job ’ere,’ she answered. ‘Kept coming back even after it were finished, just to see ’er.’

  ‘Was she frightened of him?’ He tried to keep the sudden anger out of his own voice, and his face.

  ‘Not ’er! Ask me, she were sorry for ’im,’ she responded. ‘More fool ’er! ’E played on it. ’Oo wouldn’t?’

  ‘She was gentle?’ he said with some surprise. The idea he had in his mind was of a strong woman, handsome and sure of herself. But the cook might know of a vulnerable side to her that her mistress didn’t.

  The cook laughed and shook her head. ‘Yer just like all men, aren’t yer! Think because a woman’s ’andsome, an’ got a mind of ’er own, that she can’t be ’urt, can’t cry ’erself ter sleep when no one sees ’er, like anyone else. She were worth ten of ’im, any day, an’ ’e knew it.’ She was obliged to blow her nose again, hiding the tears on her face.

  ‘Did that make him angry with her?’ Stoker asked.