Anne Perry - Death On Blackheath

Pitt thanked her and was drinking it gratefully — hot if a trifle weak — when Minnie Maude came in, carrying potatoes and a string of onions. Uffie, the small, shaggy orphan pup she had adopted a year ago was, as usual, practically treading on her skirts. He had begun by being denied the kitchen, but it had not worked. If Charlotte had had any sense, she would never have imagined it would!

Pitt smiled, then thought of Kynaston’s kitchen and how different it would be there. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ he said quietly, and turned to leave.

Pitt reached the gravel pit, as he expected, just as the grey light spread over the waste where the earth had been dug and exploited. The wind from the east carried flecks of ice, stinging the exposed skin of his face and finding the vulnerable parts of his neck. In earlier days he would have worn a long woollen scarf, wound round and round to keep out the cold. Now he felt that would be a little scruffy and informal for his rank, and he had a silk one instead. It was difficult enough to impress people anyway. His predecessors had all been gentlemen from their birth, and in many cases senior officers in either the army or the navy, like Narraway, assuming the obedience of others quite naturally.

‘Morning, sir.’ Stoker walked towards him with an easy gait, his feet crunching on the frozen grass. He refused to huddle his body against the wind. ‘She’s over there.’ He indicated a small group of men about fifty feet away, standing close together, coats whipping a little around their legs, hats jammed on their heads. The light of bull’s-eye lanterns glowed with a false warmth, yellow in the gloom.

‘Who found her?’ Pitt asked curiously.

‘The usual,’ Stoker replied with a shadow of a smile. ‘Man walking his dog.’

‘What time, for heaven’s sake?’ Pitt demanded. ‘Who the devil walks his dog up here at half-past five on a winter morning?’

Stoker lifted his shoulders slightly. ‘Ferryman down on the Greenwich waterfront. Takes people who cross the river to be there before seven. Sounds like a decent enough man.’

Pitt should have thought of that. He had come over the river by ferry himself, but barely looked at the man at the oars. He had dealt with murders most of his police career, and yet they still disturbed him. He had never seen the victim alive, but the accounts of her by the other staff at Kynaston’s house had given her a reality, a vivid sense of laughter and friendship, even of dreams for the future.

‘He reported it to the local police station, and they remembered your interest, so they sent for you,’ Pitt said.

‘Yes, sir. And they telephoned my local station, who sent a constable around for me.’ Stoker looked uncomfortable, as if he were making some confession before it caught up with him anyway. ‘I came up here first, before calling you, sir, in case it wasn’t anything to do with us. Didn’t want to get you out here for nothing.’

Pitt realised what he was doing — accounting for the fact that he was here first. He could have had his own local police call Pitt, and he had chosen not to.

‘I see,’ Pitt replied with a bleak smile, in this grey light, barely visible. ‘Where did you find a telephone up here?’

Stoker bit his lip but he did not lower his eyes. ‘I went to the Kynaston house, sir, just to make sure the maid had not returned and they had forgotten to tell us.’

Pitt nodded. ‘Very prudent,’ he said, almost without expression. Then he walked towards the group of men, who were openly shivering now as the wind increased. There were three of them: a constable, a sergeant and the third whom Pitt took to be the police surgeon.

‘Morning, sir,’ the sergeant said smartly. ‘Sorry to get you all the way up here so early, but I think this one might be yours.’

‘We’ll see.’ Pitt refused to commit himself. He did not want the case any more than the sergeant did. Even if the body was Kitty Ryder’s, her death probably had nothing whatever to do with Dudley Kynaston, but the danger of scandal was there, the pressure, the public interest, the possibility of injustice.

‘Yes, sir,’ the sergeant agreed, the relief not disappearing a whit from his face. He indicated the older man, who was shorter than Pitt and slightly built, his brown hair liberally sprinkled with grey. ‘This is Dr Whistler,’ he introduced him. He did not bother to explain who Pitt was. Presumably that had been done before he arrived.

Whistler inclined his head. ‘Morning, Commander. Nasty one, I’m afraid.’ There was a rough edge to his voice from perhaps more than the wretched morning, and an unmistakable pity in his face. He stepped back as he spoke, so Pitt could see behind him a rough cloth covering the body they had found.

Pitt took a deep breath of the air, cold and clean, then he bent to remove the cloth. In summer there would have been a smell, but the wind and the ice had kept it at bay. The body had been severely mutilated. Most of the face was so damaged as to be unrecognisable: the nose split, the lips removed as if by a knife. The eyes themselves were gone, presumably taken by scavenging animals. Only the arch of the brow was left to give an idea of their shape. The flesh was stripped from the cheeks, but the jawbone and teeth were intact. One could only imagine how her smile might have been.

Pitt looked at the rest of her body. She was quite tall, almost Charlotte’s height, and handsomely built, with a generous bosom, slender waist, long legs. Her clothes had protected most of her from the ravages of animals, and the normal decay had not yet reached the stage of disintegration. Pitt forced himself to look at her hair. It was wet and matted from exposure to the elements, but it was still possible to see that when one took the pins out it would fall at least half-way down her back, and that once dry it would be thick and of a deep chestnut colour.

Was it Kitty Ryder? Probably. They had said she was tall, handsomely built, and had beautiful hair, a shade of auburn like that found on the area steps, with the blood and glass.

He looked back at the surgeon. ‘Did you find anything to indicate how she died?’ he asked.

Whistler shook his head. ‘Not for certain. I think there are some broken bones, but I’ll have to get her back to the morgue to remove her clothes and look at her much more carefully. Nothing obvious. No bullets, no stab wounds that I can see. She wasn’t strangled and there’s no visible damage to the skull.’

‘Anything to identify her?’ Pitt asked a little sharply. He wanted it not to be Kitty Ryder. He would be very relieved if the body had no connection to the Kynaston house, except a reasonable proximity. More than that, he wanted it to be a woman he knew nothing about, even though they would still have to learn. Nobody should die alone and anonymously, as if they did not matter. He would just prefer it to be a regular police job.

‘Possibly,’ Whistler said, meeting Pitt’s eyes. ‘A very handsome gold fob watch. I looked at it carefully. Unusual and quite old, I think. Not hers, that’s for sure. It’s very definitely a man’s.’

‘Stolen?’ Pitt asked unhappily.

‘I should think so. Most likely recently, or she wouldn’t be carrying it around with her.’

‘Anything else?’

Whistler pursed his lips. ‘A handkerchief with flowers and initials embroidered on it, and a key. Looks like the sort of thing that would open a cupboard. Too small to be a door key. Might be a desk, or even a drawer, although not many drawers have separate keys.’ He looked across at the sergeant. ‘I gave it all to him. I’m afraid that’s it, for the meantime.’

Pitt looked back at the body again. ‘Did animals do that to her, or was it deliberate?’