Bethlehem Road Page 8

  Pitt knelt and looked more closely. The face looked calm, as if he had not seen death coming. It was a narrow patrician face, not unpleasing, with a long nose, a good brow, the mouth perhaps a little lacking in humor but without cruelty. The man’s hair was silver, but still thick. There were fresh flowers pale in the buttonhole.

  Pitt looked away and up at Drummond.

  “Vyvyan Etheridge, M.P.,” Drummond said quietly. He looked haggard, his eyes hollow, his mouth pinched. Pitt felt a quick stab of pity for him. Tomorrow all London, from the scrubwoman to the Prime Minister, would be calling for a solution to these outrages, stunned that members of the establishment, whether loved or hated, men considered safe above all others, could be killed silently and unseen within a few hundred yards of the Houses of Parliament.

  Pitt stood up. “Robbed?” he asked, although he knew the answer.

  “No,” Drummond replied, barely shaking his head. “Gold watch, very expensive, ten gold sovereigns and about ten shillings in silver and coppers, a silver brandy flask, still full. Looks in this light like an extremely fine one, solid, not plate, and scrolled and engraved with his name. Gold cuff links, and he carried a cane with a silver top—all here. Oh, and French leather gloves.”

  “No paper?”

  “What?”

  “No paper?” Pitt repeated, although he had little hope of it. He had to ask. “I wondered if perhaps whoever did it left some note, a threat, a demand. Some sort of identification.”

  “No. Only Etheridge’s own papers: a couple of letters, calling cards, that sort of thing.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Young fellow over there.” Drummond gestured very slightly with his head. “I think he was a little drunk then, but he’s certainly sober enough now, poor devil. Name’s Harry Rawlins.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Pitt stepped off the curb and crossed the road to the group of people standing under the lamp opposite. It all had a dreamlike quality, as if he were reliving the first time. The night sky was the same vast cavern overhead, the smell of the air sharp and clean here on the river, the water gleaming black and satin bright beyond the balustrade, reflecting the lights all along the Embankment, the triple globes of the lamps, the outline of the Palace of Westminster black gothic against the stars. Only the little knot of people was different; there was no Hetty Milner, with her fair skin and gaudy skirts. Instead there was an off-duty cabby, a tap-room steward on his way home, a clerk and his lady friend, frightened and embarrassed, a railway porter from Waterloo Station just across the bridge, and a young man with blond hair falling over his brow, face now pallid as marble, his eyes staring with horror. He was well dressed, obviously a young gentleman out for a night on the town. Every vestige of indulgence had fallen from him like a dropped garment, and he was appallingly sober.

  “Mr. Rawlins.” Pitt had no need to ask which he was; his experience was written in his face. “I am Inspector Pitt. Would you tell me exactly what happened, sir?”

  Rawlins gulped. For a moment adequate speech eluded him. It was not some tramp he had found, but a man of his own class, tied up ludicrously, lounging against the lamp, silk hat askew, white scarf too tight under his chin, head lolling in a mockery of drunkenness.

  Pitt waited patiently.

  Rawlins coughed and cleared his throat. “I was coming home from a late party with a few friends, don’t you know, and—”

  “Where?” Pitt interrupted.

  “Oh—Whitehall Club, just over there.” He pointed vaguely towards the other end of the bridge beyond Boadicea. “Off Cannon Street.”

  “Where do you live, sir?”

  “Charles Street, south of the river, off the Westminster Bridge Road. Thought I’d walk home. Do me good. Didn’t want the pater to see me a—a little tiddly. Thought the fresh air, and all that.”

  “So you were walking home over the bridge?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” For a moment he teetered a little on his feet. “God! I’ve never seen anything so awful! Poor devil was leaning backwards against the lamppost, sort of lolling, as if he were three sheets to the wind. I took no notice until I got level with him, and then I realized who he was. Met him a couple of times, you know; friend of the pater’s, in a mild sort of way. Then I thought, Vyvyan Etheridge’d never be caught like that! So I went over, thinking he must be ill, and—” He swallowed. There was a fine sweat on his face now, in spite of the cold. “—and I saw—saw he was dead. Of course, I remembered poor Hamilton then, so I walked back towards the Parliament side, pretty smartly—I think maybe I ran—and I shouted out something. Anyway, the constable came and I told him what ... er, what I’d seen.”

  “Was there anyone else on the bridge, or coming from the bridge as you approached it?”

  “Er ...” He blinked. “I don’t rightly recall. I’m fearfully sorry. I was definitely a bit—high—until I saw Etheridge and realized what’d happened.”

  “If you could search your memory, sir?” Pitt pressed, looking at the fair, earnest, rather placid face.

  Rawlins was very pale. He was neither so drunk nor so shaken that he did not realize the implication of Pitt’s insistence.

  “I think there was someone on the opposite of the bridge. I mean across the road, coming towards me; a big stout person. I have the impression of a longish coat, dark—that’s really what I remember, a sort of darkness moving. That’s about it. I’m sorry.”

  Pitt hesitated a moment longer, half hoping Rawlins would think of something more. Then he accepted that the young man’s mind had been in such a muddled state that that was really all there was.

  “And the time, sir?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “The time? Big Ben is just behind you, sir.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, I definitely heard it strike eleven, so about five past. Not later.”

  “And you are sure you saw no one else? No cabs passing, for instance?”

  There was a flicker of light in his eyes. “Oh yes—yes I did see a cab. Came off the bridge and went along the Victoria Embankment. Remember now that you mention it. Sorry Constable.”

  Pitt did not bother to correct Rawlins as to his rank. The man had intended no insult; he was shocked past everyday niceties.

  “Thank you. If you think of anything else, I’m at the Bow Street Station. Now you had better go home and have a hot cup of tea and go to bed.”

  “Yes—yes I’ll do that. Good night, er—good night!” He went off rapidly and rather unsteadily, lurching from one pool of light to the next on up Westminster Bridge Road and disappearing behind the buildings.

  Pitt crossed the street back to Drummond. Drummond met his eyes, searching for some sign of hope and finding little.

  “There’s nothing else,” he said bleakly. “Looks political after all. We’ll get the men out tomorrow morning after conspiracies, but we’re already doing all we can. There isn’t a single piece of evidence of any sort to connect anyone with this. Dear heaven, Pitt, I hope it isn’t some lunatic.”

  “So do I,” Pitt said grimly. “We’ll be reduced to doubling police on duty and hoping to catch him in the act.” He said it in desperation, but he knew there was little else they could do if indeed that were the case. “There are still other possibilities.”

  “Someone mistook the first victim?” Drummond said thoughtfully. “They intended Etheridge, but got Hamilton by mistake? It’s dark enough in the stretches between the lamps, and if he’d had his back to the light and his face in shadow when he was attacked, their features are enough alike, and with the same light hair—a frightened or enraged person—” He did not finish; the vision was clear enough.

  “Or the second crime is an imitation of the first.” Pitt doubted it even as he spoke. “Sometimes it happens, especially when a crime gains a lot of publicity, as Hamilton’s murder did. Or it could be that only one of the murders matters, and we are intended to believe it is anarchists or a madman, when one cold-blooded crime was committed to mask another.
”

  “Who was the intended victim, Hamilton or Etheridge?” Drummond looked tired. He had slept little in the last week and now this cold horror with all its implications stretched darkly in front of him.

  “I’d better go and tell the widow.” Pitt was shivering. The night air seemed to eat right through his clothes into his bones. “Have you the address?”

  “Three Paris Road, off the Lambeth Palace Road.”

  “I’ll walk.”

  “There’s a hansom,” said Drummond.

  “No, I’d rather walk.” He needed time to think, to prepare himself. He set off briskly, swinging his arms to get warm and trying to form in his mind how he would tell this new family of its bereavement.

  It took him over five minutes of knocking at the door and waiting before a footman turned on the light in the hall and gingerly opened the door.

  “Inspector Thomas Pitt, Bow Street Station,” Pitt said quietly. “I’m sorry, but I have bad news for Mr. Etheridge’s family. May I come in?”

  “Yes—yes sir.” The footman stepped back and pulled the door wider. The hall was large and lined with oak. A single gaslight showed the dim outlines of portraits and the soft blues of a Venetian scene. A magnificent staircase curved up towards the shadows of the gallery landing and the one light glowing there.

  “Has there been an accident, sir?” the footman asked anxiously, his face puckered with doubt. “Was Mr. Etheridge taken ill?”

  “No, I am afraid he is dead. He was murdered—in the same way as Sir Lockwood Hamilton.”

  “Oh my Gawd!” The footman’s face blanched, leaving the freckles across his nose standing out sharply. For a moment Pitt was afraid he was going to faint. He put out his hand, and the gesture seemed to recall the man. He was probably no more than twenty at most.

  “Is there a butler?” Pitt asked him. The youth should not have to bear the burden of such news alone.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Perhaps you should waken him, and a lady’s maid, before we tell Mrs. Etheridge.”

  “Mrs. Etheridge? There in’t no Mrs. Etheridge, sir. ’E’s—’e were a widower. Long time now, before I come ’ere. There’s just Miss Helen—that’s ’is daughter; Mrs. Carfax, she is—and Mr. Carfax.”

  “Then call the butler, and a maid, and Mr. and Mrs. Carfax. I am sorry, but I shall need to speak to them.”

  Pitt was shown into the morning room, austere in dark green, with early spring flowers in a misty blue Lalique bowl and paintings on the wall, at least one of which Pitt believed to be an original Guardi. The late Vyvyan Etheridge had had not only fine taste, but a great deal of money with which to indulge it.

  It was nearly a quarter of an hour before James and Helen Carfax came in, pale-faced and dressed in nightclothes and robes. Etheridge’s daughter was in her late twenties and had his long, aristocratic face and good brow, but her mouth was softer, and there was a delicacy in her cheekbones and the line of her throat which, while it did not give her beauty, certainly spoke of an imagination and perhaps a sensitivity not apparent in her father. Her hair was thick but of no particular depth of shade, and disturbed from sleep and caught by tragedy, she was bereft of color or animation.

  James Carfax was far taller than she, lean and slenderly built. He had a magnificent head of dark hair and wide eyes. He would have been handsome had there been strength in his face instead of mere smoothness. There was in his mouth a mercurial quality; it was a mouth that would be as quick to smile as to sulk. He stood with his arm round his wife’s shoulder and stared defensively at Pitt.

  “I am extremely sorry, Mrs. Carfax,” Pitt said immediately. “If it is of any comfort to you, your father died within seconds of being attacked, and from the look of peace upon his face, I think he probably knew no fear, and barely a moment’s pain.”

  “Thank you,” she said with difficulty.

  “Perhaps if you were to sit down,” Pitt suggested, “and have your maid bring you some restorative?”

  “It is not necessary,” James Carfax snapped. “Now that you have told us the news, my wife will retire to her room.”

  “If you prefer that I return tomorrow morning,” Pitt said looking not at James but at Helen, “then of course I shall; However, the sooner you give us all the information possible, the better chance we have of apprehending whoever is responsible.”

  “Rubbish!” James said instantly. “There is nothing we can tell you that would help! Obviously whoever murdered Sir Lockwood Hamilton is still at large and murdered my father-in-law as well. You should be out in the streets hunting for him—or them. It’s either a madman, or some anarchist plot. Either way, you won’t find any guidance to it in this house!”

  Pitt was used to shock and knew the first wave of grief often showed itself as anger. Many people fought against pain by driving it out with some other intense emotion. The desire to blame someone seemed to come most readily.

  “Nevertheless, I must ask,” Pitt insisted. “It is possible the attack may have been personally inspired, made by someone who had some political animosity—”

  “Against both Sir Lockwood and my father-in-law?” James’s dark eyebrows shot upward in sarcastic disbelief.

  “I need to investigate, sir.” Pitt held his gaze steadily. “I must not decide in advance what the solution is going to be. Sometimes one man may commit murder in imitation of another, hoping the first will be blamed for both crimes.”

  James lost his fragile temper. “More likely it’s anarchists, and you’re simply incompetent to catch them!”

  Pitt overlooked the jibe. He turned to Helen, who had taken his advice and seated herself uncomfortably on the edge of the wide, forest green sofa. She was hunched forward, arms folded across herself as if she were cold, although the room still retained the warmth of the smoldering fire.

  “Are there any other members of the family we should inform?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “No, I am the only child. My brother died several years ago, when he was twelve. My mother died shortly after. I have an uncle in the Indian Army, but I shall write to him myself, in a day or two.”

  So she would inherit. Pitt would make sure, of course, but it would be extraordinary if Etheridge had left his fortune outside the family. “So your father had been a widower for some time,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Had he ever considered marrying again?” It was a reasonably tactful way of inquiring whether Etheridge had any romantic alliances. He hoped she understood what he meant.

  A wan smile lit her face for an instant, and vanished. “Not so far as I know. That is not to say there were not several ladies who considered it.”

  “I imagine so,” Pitt agreed. “He was of fine family, had a successful career, an impeccable reputation, was charming and personable, and was of very substantial means, and still young enough to have another family.”

  James’s head came up sharply and his mouth fell slack with some emotion of alarm or loss that Pitt could see for an instant, before it was masked, but he could not be sure of its nature.

  Helen’s eyes flashed upward to her husband’s face; she grew even more pale, then the color rushed up in her cheeks. She turned to Pitt and spoke so quietly he had to lean forward to catch her words.

  “I don’t think he ... ever had any desire to marry again. I’m sure I should have known of it.”

  “Would any of these ladies have had reason for entertaining hopes?”

  “No.”

  Pitt looked at James, but James avoided his eyes.

  “Perhaps you would give me the name of his solicitors in the morning?” Pitt asked. “And any business partners or associates he may have had?”

  “Yes, if you think it necessary.” She was very pale. Her hands were clenched and her body still hunched forward on the edge of the seat.

  “His affairs were in excellent order,” James put in, suddenly looking at Pitt and frowning. “Surely they have no bearing on this? I think you intrude on
our privacy without justification. Mr. Etheridge’s wealth was inherited through lands in Lincolnshire and the West Riding, and shares in several companies in the City. I suppose there may be some malcontents or would-be revolutionaries who resent that, but only the same ones who would resent anyone with property.” His eyes were bright, his jaw a little forward. He was half challenging Pitt, as if he suspected Pitt might have some secret sympathy with those James considered to be his own class.

  “We are looking into that, of course.” Pitt smiled briefly back at him and held his gaze. It was James who looked away. “I will also inquire into his political career as well,” he continued. “Perhaps you can give me an outline from which to begin?”

  Helen cleared her throat. “He has been a Liberal Member of Parliament for twenty-one years, from the general election in December 1868. His constituency is in Lincolnshire. He served as a junior minister in the Treasury in 1880 when Mr. Gladstone was Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in the India Office when Lord Randolph Churchill was Secretary for India, I think that was 1885. And he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Sir William Harcourt when he was Home Secretary, but only for about a year—I think it was 1883. At present he has—he had,” she said, hesitating for only a moment, “no particular office, so far as I know, but a great deal of influence.”

  “Thank you. Do you happen to know if he held strong views on the Irish question? Home Rule, for example.”

  She shivered and glanced again at James, but he was apparently unaware of it, his mind absorbed with something else.

  “He was against Home Rule,” she answered very quietly. Then her eyes widened and there was a flash, a quickening of something within. Anger and hope? Or merely intelligence? “Do you think it could have been Fenians? An Irish conspiracy?”

  “Possibly.” Pitt doubted it; he remembered Hamilton had been strongly in favor of Home Rule. But then perhaps Hamilton had been killed by mistake. At night with the distortion of the lamplight ... the two men were of a height, roughly of an age, and not dissimilar in coloring and features. “Yes—possibly.”