Anne Perry - Death On Blackheath

‘I’m getting rather accustomed to displeasing the Prime Minister,’ Pitt said tartly. ‘It seems to be a function of the job. But catching Kynaston, even proving what he has done, is far from the end of the task …’

‘Oh, I know that!’ Carlisle agreed. ‘You need to know all of it! More than anything else, you need to know exactly how much information he has given, and to whom. Preferably, you also need to know how he came into such a position, and everyone else who is involved. And then, naturally, you need to deal with him so that as few people are aware of it as possible, in the circumstances. To have a trial and exposure would be almost as damaging as the act itself.’

‘Thank you, Carlisle! I am aware of that!’ Pitt snapped. ‘I also would prefer not to be obliged to prosecute you! I accept that you did not kill either of the women, but you took their bodies from wherever they were kept — a morgue of some sort, I imagine — and you laid them out in the gravel pits. I prefer not to know that you also mutilated them in identical ways so we would be forced to conclude they were killed by the same person, and the link to Kynaston was too clear to ignore. Well, I have your message, and I understand it. You have succeeded.’

Carlisle was pale, even in the firelight. ‘I am not proud of it,’ he said very quietly. ‘But Kynaston is betraying my country. He must be stopped.’

‘I will do all I can to stop him,’ Pitt promised. ‘And you will help me, if I can think of a way. And from now on you will do exactly what I tell you to … so I can find a reason not to charge you with body-snatching, mutilating the dead, and generally being a damn nuisance!’

‘Would you-’ Carlisle began.

Pitt glared at him. ‘Yes I would! And if you involve Lady Vespasia in this I’ll see you pay for it with your seat in Parliament!’

‘I believe you,’ Carlisle said very quietly indeed. ‘I give you my word I have not done so, and I will not.’

‘Thank you.’ Pitt stood up. ‘I thank you for at least this much truth. Now I wish I’d had the whisky!’

‘It’s still available …’

‘No, thank you. I must go home. It’s late, and I need to think how the hell I’m going to clear this up, starting tomorrow morning. By the way, where did you get the bodies? I assume you took them from some morgue?’

‘Yes. But I’ll see they are decently buried, when you’ve finished with them. As I promised in the first place,’ Carlisle replied.

Pitt stared at him for a moment, trying to find words for what lay between them, and failing. He turned and left.

Outside the rain had stopped but the wind was even colder. Pitt thought, seeing the hard, brittle glitter of the stars, that there could be a frost.

Walking briskly along the pavement he thought again of Carlisle. The man infuriated him, but he could not dislike him. This time he had seen beyond the wit and the imagination to someone who dared to believe in things further than he could see himself, and who reached, however crazily, for the sublime. A lonely man.

He could not believe that Carlisle had had any part in the deaths of either of the women, he had merely seized an opportunity. Pitt could imagine him carefully cutting the dead faces, women beyond indignity or pain, and apologising for using them for what he believed was a greater and more desperate good. The man he had known in the past would never have killed anyone, even to expose treason.

But people can change. Unknown pressures can fall on them, old debts can need to be paid. Was that why Carlisle had rescued Pitt from the fury of Edom Talbot so fortuitously? And was it he who had created the situation in the first place, so Pitt would owe him a debt?

Did Carlisle owe someone this terrible thing?

Or was it Kynaston who owed an unpayable debt?

And perhaps the treason was far more than Pitt had yet guessed.

He looked up at the thin starlight; sharp edged in the wind, and increased his pace.

Charlotte had deliberately chosen to spend more time with Emily, so when Emily invited her to go with Jack and herself to a reception for a visiting Norwegian explorer, and to listen to his lecture, she accepted. She did it for Emily’s sake, not because she was particularly interested in islands in the North Atlantic, and whatever manner of birds might inhabit them. The thought of so much floating ice made her cold, even before she set out.

Had Pitt been at home it would have been a greater sacrifice, but he was out many evenings recently, pursuing one aspect or another of the case of Kitty Ryder. He had said she was alive, but they still could not find her.

As she sat while Minnie Maude dressed her hair up, a skill she was rapidly developing, Charlotte thought more about the whole issue. She had not questioned Pitt any more, because she knew from watching his face that he was deeply worried about the case, and that it now concerned some other issue, which he could not tell her. That did not mean she was not free to try to discern it for herself.

She knew more of the personal lives of people like Dudley Kynaston than Pitt or Stoker could do, because the Kynastons belonged to the level of Society in which she had grown up, and to which Emily had belonged all her life. She and Pitt were now on the fringes of it, but to him it would always be alien, at least in some of its values, no matter how skilled he became at appearing to be comfortable.

When Emily arrived Charlotte saw that she was dressed in pale green, the colour that became her most. The gown itself was exquisite, and perfectly suited to the occasion. Charlotte recognised it as ‘battle dress’ from the way it fitted, and the beauty of the subtle emerald and diamond earrings that Emily wore with it. When she kissed her quickly on the cheek, the opinion was confirmed by the perfume she detected, so subtle she wanted to come closer again in order to catch it more definitely. It was nothing she could name, and no doubt very expensive. It was the sort of thing a woman buys herself, if she does not have to count the cost of it.

As soon as they were seated in the carriage and had moved off from the kerb into the roadway, Charlotte asked the question.

‘Why are we going to a lecture on arctic exploration?’

Emily smiled. Even in the gathering dusk and the first glow of streetlamps, her satisfaction was visible. ‘Because Ailsa and Rosalind Kynaston are going to it,’ she replied. ‘I have been getting to know Rosalind a little better recently. It isn’t difficult or odd in the circumstances. If Jack is going to be offered this position with Dudley Kynaston, then we shall possibly become friends.’

‘And is he?’ Suddenly Charlotte forgot all concern with the Kynastons, or Kitty Ryder’s plight. She could only think of Jack, because of how another disappointment would affect Emily.

‘You don’t want him to, do you!’ There was a sudden edge of challenge in Emily’s voice. ‘He’s brilliant, you know. Or perhaps you don’t know? It would be very interesting for Jack to work with him, and a promotion, of course. But you must know that, if you’ve thought about it at all!’

Charlotte forgot her resolve to be patient, and gentle. ‘I want him to take it, as long as Kynaston’s not guilty of anything,’ she said tartly. ‘If he was having an affair with his wife’s maid I suppose that isn’t very important, except to his wife, and perhaps to the maid. But if he killed her, then I would very much rather Jack did not work with him. Until he is accused, of course, then I dare say he will be in gaol, and there will be no possibility of anybody working with him. But even if he did kill her, or threaten to kill her, and we never prove it, I would still rather that Jack had nothing to do with it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Or even if it was his wife who killed her, unlikely as that seems, I would prefer no one I loved was involved with them.’