Anne Perry - Death On Blackheath

Before Rosalind could frame a reply, Pitt intervened, speaking to Kynaston. ‘We shall keep the case open until Kitty Ryder is found, or you have some news of her, whatever it may be,’ he said. ‘In the meantime, she appears not to have taken any of her belongings with her. The housekeeper told me even her nightgowns and hairbrush are still in her room. In light of that, we have to assume she did not plan to leave. If you discover anything of value missing from the house, please inform the local police. I would suggest that you be more than usually diligent in making certain that the doors are locked at night. You might inform your butler of the possibility of robbery …’

‘I dare say that is what it is,’ Kynaston agreed. ‘Most unpleasant. She came to us with good references. But your advice is well placed, and I shall certainly take it. I am obliged to you.’

‘I don’t believe Kitty would be involved in robbing us,’ Rosalind said with some heat, a slight flush on her pale cheeks.

‘Of course you’re reluctant to think so,’ Ailsa said gently, moving a step closer to her sister-in-law. ‘She was your personal maid, and you trusted her. One does! Usually one is right, but anyone can be misled, now and then. I understand she fell in with a very nasty type of young man, and we all know they can take people in — heaven knows, even in the best families, let alone a girl far from her home, working as a maid.’

The truth of the remark was unarguable, but Pitt saw in Rosalind’s face disbelief and frustration that she could not defend her feelings.

‘Quite.’ Kynaston nodded at Ailsa, and then turned to his wife. ‘Perhaps you could use Jane for a while. You like her, and she seems quite capable, until we get someone else to fill the place.’

‘What about Kitty?’ Rosalind said sharply. ‘For heaven’s sake, Dudley, she’s only been gone a few hours! You’re speaking as if she were dead and buried!’

‘Even if she returns, my dear, she is obviously unreliable,’ he said more gently. ‘I think this is the best decision.’ He turned to Pitt. ‘Thank you again for your promptness, and your advice, Commander. We won’t detain you any longer. Good day.’

‘Good day, sir,’ Pitt replied. ‘Ma’am,’ he acknowledged both women. Then he and Stoker left, going out through the front door into the deserted street. Rain was beginning to come across the open land of the heath.

‘What do you make of that, sir?’ Stoker asked curiously, turning up his coat collar as he walked. His voice was light but when Pitt glanced at him he saw the doubt in his face. ‘There was a lot of blood on that step,’ Stoker went on. ‘More than a scratch, I reckon. If someone hit that girl it was pretty hard. She must be daft to go willingly with anyone who’d use her like that.’ Now the doubt had turned to anger.

‘Perhaps she cut herself on the glass,’ Pitt said thoughtfully. He pulled the brim of his hat down and his scarf tighter as the rain increased. He looked up at the sky. ‘Good thing you made a sketch of it before this started. In twenty minutes there’ll be nothing to see.’

‘There was blood on the glass,’ Stoker said. ‘And the hair. Torn out by the roots, from the look of it. Kynaston may be important to the navy, but he’s covering something up … sir.’

Pitt smiled. He knew Stoker’s subtle and quite delicate insolence. It was not directed at him personally, but more at their political masters, whom he knew Pitt occasionally disliked as much as he did himself. He was still nervous that Pitt might yield to them, and not absolutely certain whether Pitt’s predecessor in command had done so or not. But Victor Narraway was a very different kind of man, at least on the surface. He was a gentleman, beginning as a junior lieutenant in the army, then through university in law, and as devious as an eel. Stoker had never been comfortable with him, but his respect for him was boundless.

Pitt, on the other hand, was the son of country gamekeeper, risen through the ranks of the regular Metropolitan Police. He had been promoted sideways into Special Branch, much against his will, when he had offended certain very powerful people and lost his job as Superintendent in Bow Street. Pitt might think he was subtle, but to Stoker he was as clear as the rising sun.

Pitt was aware of all this as he replied, ‘I know that, Stoker. What I don’t know is if it is something we should be concerned about.’

‘Well, if there’s something messy going on in that house, and a maid gets the bad end of it, we should care,’ Stoker said with feeling. ‘Perfect set-up for a spot of blackmail.’ He left the rest of his thought implied.

‘You think Dudley Kynaston was having an affair with his wife’s maid, and knocked her around on his own kitchen steps in the middle of a winter night?’ Pitt asked with a smile.

Stoker flushed faintly and stared straight ahead, avoiding Pitt’s eyes. ‘Put it like that, no, sir. If he’s that crazy he wants putting in the madhouse, for everybody’s sake, including his own.’

Pitt was going to add that it was probably just what it looked like, but he wasn’t sure what it looked like. The maids had found nothing missing to account for the glass. There was too much blood for a graze, and actually there was no way of telling if it was even human, let alone if it was that of the missing maid — who seemingly had gone without even taking her hairbrush. And was it her hair, or only a similar colour?

Who knew the nature of a lovers’ quarrel, if that is what it was?

‘We’ll have the local police keep an eye on it, and let us know if she comes back,’ he said to Stoker. ‘Or if she turns up anywhere else, for that matter.’

Stoker grunted, not satisfied, but accepting that there was nothing more they could do. They trudged through the rain silently, heads down, feet sloshing on the wet pavement.

Pitt arrived home at Keppel Street comparatively early, although at this time of the year it was already completely dark. The streetlamps gleamed like beacons through the rain, haloed in light for a brief space, darkness swirling between them.

Pitt went up the steps to his front door and was about to hunt through his always overstuffed pockets for his key when it opened in front of him, bathing him in the glow of the inside lights and the warmth of the parlour fire where the passage door was open.

‘Evenin’ sir,’ Minnie Maude said with a smile. ‘D’yer like a cup o’ tea before dinner’s ready? My, yer in’t ’alf soaked!’ She looked him up and down with sympathy. ‘I reckon as it’s rainin’ stair rods out there.’

‘Indeed it is,’ he agreed, dripping steadily on to the hall floor as the front door closed behind him. He looked at her freckled face and her piled-up red-brown hair, and for a moment he imagined the missing maid from Kynaston’s house and wondered where she was. Minnie Maude was handsome too, in her own way, tall and womanly; worldly-wise, domestically capable, and naïvely full of trust. He felt a tightness in his chest at the thought of her alone outside somewhere, perhaps hurt, cold to the bone, desperate for shelter. What on earth had happened to Kitty Ryder?

‘Yer a’right, sir?’ Minnie Maude’s anxious voice intruded on his thoughts.

Pitt eased himself out of his wet coat and took off his sodden boots. He gave her his hat and scarf as well.

‘Yes, thank you. And I will have a cup of tea. And I’ll have something to eat. I can’t remember what lunch was.’

‘Yes, sir. ’Ow about a couple o’ crumpets?’ she offered. ‘Wi’ butter?’

He looked at her. She was about nineteen, four years older than his daughter, Jemima, who was far too rapidly growing into a woman. Thank God Jemima wouldn’t be a servant living in somebody else’s house with only strangers to turn to.