Anne Perry - Death On Blackheath

Pitt and Stoker walked into the wind towards the group of men they could see huddled about a hundred yards away. The tussock grass was rough and the ground between littered with small stones and weeds. In moments their boots were covered with pale, sandy mud.

Some movement must have caught the eye of one of the men because he turned, and then started to walk towards them, the loose ends of his scarf flapping. Before he reached them he stopped, nodding to Stoker, then speaking to Pitt.

‘Sorry, sir. Looks too much like the last one not to let you know. Over this way.’ He started to walk back, head bent, feet making no sound on the spongy earth.

Pitt and Stoker followed, each consumed in their own thoughts.

The sergeant in charge was the same man as before. He looked tired and cold. ‘Mind those tracks there,’ he directed, pointing at what there was of a pathway. ‘Looks like a pony and trap, or something of the sort. Might have nothing to do with the body, but more than likely it was what the swine brought her here in.’

‘So she didn’t die here?’ Pitt asked.

The man bit his lip. ‘No, sir. Looks just like the other one back a few weeks ago. Even got the same kind of hair, same sort of build. From what you can tell, she must a’ bin real ’andsome when she were alive. We’ll need the doc to tell us for sure, but I reckon that wasn’t all that lately. Week or two, at any rate.’

‘Hidden from view?’ Pitt asked.

‘That’s it,’ the sergeant replied, ‘she wasn’t. She was right out there for anyone passing to see. Couldn’t hardly miss her, poor creature.’

‘So she was put there very recently?’

‘Last night. That’s why the wheel tracks are worth something, or might be.’

‘Who found her?’ Pitt asked.

‘Young couple.’ The sergeant pulled a grim face. ‘Bin out all night. Walking the girl home so she could pretend as she’d been in ’er own bed, like. Not fooling anyone now!’ He gave a bark of laughter.

‘At least they reported it,’ Pitt observed, keeping pace with him. ‘They could have just kept going. Then it might have been a lot longer before we found her. Could have been more wind and rain, and we wouldn’t have found the cart tracks. How far do they go?’

‘Far as the main track over there,’ he pointed. ‘Then they get lost in all the gravel ruts. But then it’s reasonable that’s the way he came. Isn’t really any other way.’

‘Which means she was deliberately brought here,’ Pitt pointed out just as they reached the group. They were all standing close together giving the illusion of sheltering each other, although the wind managed to pick them out, whip everyone’s scarves and coat tails, and bend the grasses around their feet.

They parted slightly to allow Pitt to walk through and look down at the corpse that lay in the shallow dip in the ground. Her clothes were spread out around her, dark and lacking any distinguishing shape or colour in the wet early light. Her hair was immediately noticeable because it was thick and fair, a little longer than average. Pitt thought that in life it would have been beautiful.

Her face was harder to appreciate because it was already distorted by death and, like the earlier corpse, it had been obscenely lacerated by a razor-sharp blade. The eyes, nose and lips were missing. It was worse, because decomposition had begun, and small night animals had already reached her. As the sergeant had told him, she had been dead some time before she was placed here.

‘What killed her?’ Pitt straightened up, trying to control the horror and pity that welled up inside him. His whole body was shaking, and he could not control it. He looked from one to another of the men. ‘I can’t see anything obvious.’

The sergeant spoke quietly, his voice hoarse. ‘We’ll need the police surgeon to tell us for sure, but ’er inside is broken up pretty bad, and both her legs are broke, high up, across the …’ He drew his own hand across his upper thighs. ‘God knows what did that to ’er.’

‘But no blood,’ Pitt said with surprise. He looked at the ground near her and saw nothing to mark the proximity except the claw marks of small animals. ‘And she wasn’t here last night?’ he went on.

‘She’d ’ave bin seen, this close to the main paths,’ the sergeant answered. ‘And ’er clothes are damp but not soaked. There’s the cart tracks as well. No, she was put here after dark yesterday. God alone knows what for! But if we catch the swine what did it, you won’t need the hangman …’

One of the young men cleared his throat. ‘Commander Pitt, sir?’

Pitt looked at him.

‘Sir, she’s lying kind of odd, like her spine’s bent, or something. But I were ’ere when we found the first one, sir, an’ she were lying exactly the same way — I mean absolute exactly. Like it’s the same thing all over again.’

Pitt had a flash in his mind’s eye of the woman they had thought was Kitty. It was exactly the same, as if she had the same internal pain twisting her back.

The wind was rising, whining a little in the branches above them and rattling as it knocked the dead weed heads together.

‘You’re right. Well observed,’ Pitt said. ‘I presume the police surgeon in on his way?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then I’ll talk to the couple who found her, until he comes. Might as well let them be on their way. Anything else about her? I suppose no one has any idea who she is?’

‘No idea at all, sir. Except the quality of her dress an’ jacket suggest she could be another maid. Looked at ’er ’ands, an’ she’s got little burns and scars on them too, like she did a lot of ironing or cooking, or that kind of thing. And … there’s a handkerchief in her coat pocket, an embroidered one with lace and an “R” stitched on it. Far as I can recall it’s a pretty exact match for the one we found on the other body. An’ worse than that, sir, we found this on her.’

He took an envelope out of his own pocket and opened it. Inside was a gold chain with a very beautiful fob on it, also gold, about an inch in diameter, but of an irregular shape. It was slightly indented around the circumference, like a five-petalled rose. On the reverse were the initials ‘BK’ in an ornamental script. Bennett Kynaston? It had to be the missing chain and fob from Dudley Kynaston’s watch that he claimed was taken from his pocket.

‘I can just imagine what the papers will make of this,’ he said grimly. ‘Let me see the handkerchief too, please?’

The man bent and picked it out of the dead woman’s pocket. He passed it to Pitt. It was a small square of white lawn, lace-edged and embroidered with an ‘R’ in one corner, with tiny flowers. It was an exact match for the earlier one.

‘I’ll go and speak with Kynaston,’ Pitt said to the sergeant, then he turned to Stoker. ‘Stay here. Speak to the couple who found her. Learn all you can. I’ll catch up with you at the police station, or the morgue. Make damn sure this gets priority.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Stoker and the sergeant replied as one.

Pitt was cold and hungry when he knocked on the front door of Kynaston’s house on Shooters Hill. This time he had no interest in the area steps, or the servants except as they might corroborate anyone else’s story.

The door was opened by Norton, the butler, who regarded Pitt with unhappy misgiving. No one with any manners called at this hour. It could only mean bad news.

‘Good morning, sir. May I help you?’ he said very coolly.

‘Thank you.’ Pitt stepped inside, forcing Norton either to let him in, or deliberately to bar the way. ‘I apologise for my boots. They are unfortunately filthy. I have been to the gravel pit … again.’ He knew his voice was shaking. His body was tense, muscles looked tight across the shoulders and in his belly, as if he were as cold as the mutilated body up on the wind-combed grass a thousand yards away. He had tried, really tried, to get it out of his imagination, to concentrate on his job, to watch and listen to the present, but he could not.