Anne Perry - Death On Blackheath

‘Anything!’ Dobson agreed eagerly.

‘Why was she afraid of them? I know, but I want you to tell me what she believed.’

‘She saw things and heard them,’ Dobson answered straight away. ‘She knew as there were something really bad going on in that house. I mean worse than just people pinching the odd thing ’ere and there, or messing around with other people’s wives, an’ such.’

‘Not an affair?’ Stoker was surprised, immediately wondering if Kitty had told Dobson the truth. ‘What, then?’

Dobson shook his head. ‘She didn’t say. I asked her, told her to go to the police, but she said the police wouldn’t be no good. For a start, she didn’t think they’d believe ’er, considering who Mr Kynaston is, but also she said the police could be in on it anyway. And there in’t no use getting angry with me! Don’t you think I’d tell you, if I knew?’

‘Yes,’ Stoker said frankly. ‘I think you would. Thank you, Mr Dobson. If we find Kitty we’ll keep her safe …’

‘You can’t,’ Dobson said instantly. ‘You don’t know who’s after ’er.’ That was a challenge, not a question.

‘No,’ Stoker admitted. There was a chill inside him as if a gust of cold rain had drenched his clothes, touching his skin with an icy hand. He drew breath to promise that he would find out, then he realised he had made enough extravagant promises for today. That one he would make silently, and to himself.

That same evening, Pitt was sitting by the fire in his home on Keppel Street. The long curtains across the french windows on to the garden were closed, but he could hear the wind and rain beating against the glass. The children were in bed. He and Charlotte were sitting quietly by the fire.

It was Charlotte who raised the subject of the unidentified woman in the gravel pit again.

‘Do you think it’s over?’ she asked, putting her embroidery aside.

Pitt liked watching her sew. The light flashed on the needle as it moved in her hands, weaving in and out, and the faint click of it against the thimble on her finger was rhythmic and comforting.

‘What’s over?’ He had not been paying attention. To be honest he was nearly asleep in the warmth of his home, with Charlotte so close he could have leaned forward and touched her.

‘The Dudley Kynaston case,’ she answered. ‘I keep waiting every day for Somerset Carlisle to raise it again in the House. You know the hat wasn’t Kitty’s, but you don’t know that the body wasn’t — do you?’

He sighed, forcing his attention back to the issue. ‘No, and there’s no further evidence, so there’s nothing to pursue. We have to let it go.’

‘But you do know there’s something wrong!’ she protested. ‘Didn’t Kynaston admit to you that he had a mistress?’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t Kitty Ryder.’

‘You believe him?’ Her brow was puckered.

‘Yes, I do.’ He sat up a little straighter. ‘From everything the other servants say, Kitty was a handsome girl, ambitious to better herself, not to have an affair that could cost her her job. Or worse than that, get her with child, and then out on the street with no money, no position and no future. I believe Kynaston. I really don’t think a quick fumble with his wife’s maid would be worth killing her to keep secret. I don’t know why Kitty went, but I can’t see her succeeding in blackmailing him or — from what the other servants say of her — even trying it. It looks as if she ran off with Dobson and then perhaps was too ashamed to come home again.’

‘Maybe she was with child already, and she married him?’ Charlotte suggested. ‘I suppose you looked at all the marriage registers?’

Pitt smiled. ‘Yes, my darling, we did.’

‘Oh.’ She was silent for several minutes. There was no sound but the flickering of the fire and the rain against the windows.

‘Then what is Somerset Carlisle doing?’ she said at last. ‘Why did he raise the question in the House? He must have had a reason. For that matter, how did he even know so much about it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Pitt confessed. ‘He must be aware of something, or at least believe it. The information is not so difficult to get; he may have friends in the police, or in the newspapers.’

She frowned. ‘What could he know that we don’t? It has to be about Kynaston, doesn’t it?’

‘Or his mistress,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘He may have ways of finding out, on a personal level, that we don’t.’

‘Would it matter?’ She was puzzled, her embroidery still ignored. ‘I mean would it matter to Somerset? If it were someone he knew, or cared about, surely it would be the last thing he would want exposed publicly, wouldn’t it?’

Pitt considered the possibility of the woman being someone Carlisle disliked, but as soon as the thought formed in his mind he discarded it. Carlisle was unpredictable in many ways — eccentric at times, to say the least — but he would not have descended to using his privilege of parliamentary questions for the purpose of conducting a private vendetta.

Charlotte was watching him. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. Talbot’s involvement troubles me, but I can’t put my finger on it. Carlisle dislikes him profoundly. It’s there in his manners and his voice, polite and perfectly controlled so there’s nothing to get hold of. I don’t like Talbot either, and I’m perfectly sure he doesn’t like me. But as far as I know, it’s just because I’m not the sort of gentleman he thinks should hold this position.’ He felt suddenly self-conscious saying this. Charlotte was the daughter of a family of both very comfortable means and long accepted social position — not high society like Vespasia, but far beyond the servant status of his own family. A generation earlier he would have been her footman, not her husband. He was more conscious of it than she. Talbot’s attitude had brought it back again to the forefront of his mind.

‘Then he’s a fool,’ Charlotte said angrily. ‘It is too important a position to appoint people because of who their fathers were. We can’t afford anything but the best. To try to undermine that is disloyal to the country. Of which I shall remind him, should he be rash enough to make such a remark in my presence.’

He laughed, but it was a little lopsided. He knew that she was perfectly capable of doing exactly that.

‘Are you going back to Carlisle?’ she asked.

‘Not until I have something specific to ask him,’ he answered. ‘We know each other too well for me to fool him for an instant. I wish I were as good a judge of him!’

‘I’m glad you’re not much like him,’ she said gently.

Pitt was in his office in the morning, reading through reports from various officers around the country, when, after a brisk knock on the door, Stoker came in. Today there was nothing stoic about him. His usually bleak, rather bony face was alight with satisfaction. His eyes shone.

Pitt was in no mood for preamble. ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

‘I found Harry Dobson,’ Stoker said immediately. ‘He’s set up in his own workshop now, that’s why we couldn’t find him. Ordinary sort of bloke, but decent. I checked on him. No record with the police. Pays all his debts. Nothing bad known about him-’

‘Get to the point, Stoker. Where is Kitty Ryder?’ Pitt interrupted.

‘That’s it. She ran off from Shooters Hill with Dobson because she knew something that scared her so badly she thought she’d be killed if she stayed. Wouldn’t tell Dobson what it was, but it was bad enough that when the hat with the red feather in it was found, she thought someone was after her again and she moved off. Wouldn’t tell him where she was going. Maybe she hadn’t decided.’ His face tightened. ‘Or she meant to keep on moving, too scared to stay in one place.’