Anne Perry - Death On Blackheath

‘Don’t you know? I asked Talbot, and was told fairly tersely to mind my own business.’

‘Good,’ Narraway responded. ‘Then there’s something there. You’ll get the door shut in your face. I’ve got a few favours I can call in …’

‘Or threats you can hold over people,’ Pitt said a little bitterly. ‘I’m beginning to learn the power of this job.’

‘That’s the favour,’ Narraway answered. ‘I won’t carry out the threat. Lesson, Pitt — never carry out a threat unless you absolutely have to. Once it’s done, you’ve no more power with it.’

‘If I never do it, why would anyone believe that I would?’ Pitt asked reasonably.

‘Oh, you’ll have to, once or twice,’ Narraway assured him, a shadow passing over his eyes as if memory darkened them for a moment. ‘Just put it off as long as you can. I hated doing it — you’ll hate it even more.’

Pitt remembered a large party, a house full of laughter and music, and a scene where a man lay on a tiled floor, blood pooling out from the shot with which Pitt had killed him.

‘I know,’ he said almost under his breath.

Narraway looked at him with a moment’s intense compassion, then that too vanished.

‘I’ll see what I can find out about Dudley Kynaston,’ he promised. ‘Might take a couple of days. Keep on trying to identify your corpse. You might be lucky and find out it’s not your missing maid, but don’t count on it.’

Pitt stood up. ‘I’m not,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m preparing for the next round.’

It came exactly as Pitt had expected. Nothing further had been learned about the identity of the woman in the gravel pit, nor had Stoker been more fortunate in finding any trace of Kitty Ryder. Narraway telephoned Pitt and invited him to call by just after dark. He would have invited him to dinner, but he knew Pitt’s desire to be at home with his family. If he envied him that, he disguised it so well Pitt had seen no more than perhaps a glimpse of it.

He offered Pitt a brandy, something that Pitt very seldom accepted, though he did on this occasion. He was tired and cold. He needed the fire inside as well as burning in the hearth.

Narraway got to the point immediately.

‘Kynaston is cleverer than he looks, and — at least professionally — a lot more imaginative. He works on the design of submarines for the navy, and now particularly on submarine weapons, which is a field of its own: obviously different from weapons fired above the water.’

‘Submarines?’ Pitt realised the yawning gap in his knowledge. He frowned, not wanting to make a fool of himself. ‘You mean like in Jules Verne’s, Twenty ThousandLeagues under the Sea ?’

Narraway shrugged. ‘Not quite that clever yet, but definitely the naval warfare of the future, and not so far ahead either. The French were the first to launch a submarine not relying on human power for propulsion — Plongeur , back in ’63, then improved on in ’67. Fellow called Narcis Monturiol built a boat forty-six feet long, could dive down nearly a hundred feet and stay down for two hours.’

Pitt was fascinated.

‘The Peruvians, of all people, built a really good submarine during their war with Chile in ’79. Then the Poles had one about the same time.’

‘Didn’t we do anything?’ Pitt interrupted with chagrin.

‘I’m getting to it. Our clergyman and inventor George Garrett got together with a Swedish industrialist Thorsten Nordenfelt and made a whole series, one of which they sold to the Greeks. In ’87 they improved it and added torpedo tubes for firing underwater explosive missiles. That one, sold to the Ottoman Navy, was the first to fire a torpedo while submerged.’ He closed his eyes and for a moment his jaw tightened. ‘One can only begin to imagine the possibilities of that on an island like ours, whose survival depends on our navy guarding not only our trade routes but our shores themselves: in fact, our existence.’

Pitt’s imagination was already there, racing and yet cold with fear.

‘The Spanish are working on it too,’ Narraway went on. ‘And the French have an all-electrical-powered one. It will be only two or three years before they’re common.’

‘I see,’ Pitt said quietly. Indeed he did, all too terribly clearly. Britain was an island. Without their sea lanes the British could be starved to death in weeks. The importance of submarine weapons could hardly be exaggerated — which is why they had to value people like Dudley Kynaston, and be prepared to go to great lengths to protect him.

‘I can’t see why Talbot wouldn’t tell me that,’ Pitt said, both puzzled and angry.

‘Neither can I,’ Narraway agreed. ‘I can only suppose that he thought you had been told.’ Then he hesitated. ‘Except that I imagine if so you would have gone on to ask a lot more questions, and the answers to those might be rather more … delicate.’ Narraway was tense, sitting back in his chair as if casually, but Pitt saw the strain in the fabric of his jacket as his shoulders hunched very slightly.

Pitt could not leave it unasked. ‘Technically delicate, or personally?’

‘Personally, of course,’ Narraway said with a wry twist to his lips. ‘Technically is probably irrelevant, and would require a great deal more study than you have time for in order to understand. Are you aware that Dudley had a brother, Bennett, a couple or so years younger than he?’

‘Yes. There’s a picture of him in Kynaston’s study, behind his desk.’ Pitt could see it as clearly as if it were before him now, even the eyes, the contours of the face. ‘Odd place to put it, except that it’s the best wall space, and the best light,’ he added. ‘And he will see it every time he comes into the room. Strong resemblance to Dudley, but even better-looking. But he’s been dead for several years. What could he have to do with Kitty Ryder, or whoever this woman was?’

‘Probably nothing,’ Narraway agreed. ‘But there was a scandal concerning him several years ago. I haven’t been able to uncover it, which means they took very great care indeed to hide everything, or disguise it as something else. I haven’t even been able to learn if Dudley is aware of it himself. Apparently at least some elements of it happened abroad. Again, I don’t know where. The only thing I gathered from both sources I tried is that Bennett was not to blame for it. Of course that may, or may not be true.’

‘At the time of his death?’ Pitt asked.

‘No, some years before.’

‘Which would mean it was at least a decade ago, or longer,’ Pitt concluded. ‘Kitty Ryder would have been a child.’

‘Relevant only to Dudley Kynaston’s sensitivities,’ Narraway pointed out. ‘And therefore his immediate reaction to conceal things that perhaps other people would not, even if he were completely innocent. He and Bennett were very close, as you have deduced from the portrait in the study.’

Pitt thought about it for a few moments. It would account for Dudley Kynaston’s behaviour, the unease Pitt had sensed, even the tiny errors of omission in his diaries.

‘Yes,’ he said with a degree of relief. Perhaps Kitty Ryder was likeable, but unwise, and she had eloped with the young man the household staff so disapproved of, and the woman in the gravel pit could turn out to be unrelated to the Kynaston house.

Narraway saw the sudden ease in his face. ‘Protect Kynaston as long as you can,’ he said quietly. ‘We need a navy as strong as possible. There’s a hell of a lot of unrest in the world. Africa is stirring against us, especially in the south. The old order is changing. The century is almost worn out, and the Queen with it. She’s tired and lonely and growing weaker. In Europe they’re looking for change, reform. We may think we are isolated, but it’s a delusion we can’t afford. The English Channel is not very wide. A strong swimmer can make it, let alone a fleet of ships. We need to have the best navy in the world.’