Anne Perry - Cardington Crescent

He straightened up, feeling so sick he was afraid he was going to faint. He breathed deeply-in and out, in and out-and heard Stripe blundering away, choking and retching behind a gravestone carved with cherubs.

After a moment of staring at the dusty stones, the trodden grass, and the tiny yellow spots like pinheads on the laurel leaves, he forced himself to turn back to the dreadful parcel. There were details to note; the kind and color of the paper, the twine that wound it, the type of knots. People left their mark-tied string loosely or tightly, length or width first, made slipknots, running knots, tied at each crossover or merely looped. And there were a dozen different ways of finishing off.

He blanked from his mind what was inside it and knelt to examine it, turning it over gingerly when he had seen all he could from the top. It was thick paper, a little shiny on the inside, two layers of it. He had often seen such paper used for tying parcels of linen. It was strong and usually crackled a little if touched-only this was wet with blood and made no sound, even when he turned it. Inside the brown paper was clear, greased kitchen paper, another two layers, the sort butchers sometimes use. Whoever had wrapped this hideous thing must have imagined it would hold the blood.

The string was unusual-coarse, hairy twine, yellow rather than white, wrapped lengthways and widthways twice and knotted at each join, and finally tied with a loop and two raw ends about an inch and a half long.

He took out his notebook and wrote it down, though it was all something he would like to forget-wipe totally from his memory. If he could.

Stripe was coming back, awkwardly, embarrassed by his loss of composure. He did not know what to say.

Pitt said it for him. “There must be more. We’d better organize a search.”

Stripe cleared his throat. “More … Yes, Mr. Pitt. But where should we start? Could be anywhere!”

“Won’t be very far.” Pitt stood up, knees stiff. “You don’t carry that sort of thing longer than you have to. Certainly not further than you can walk. Even a lunatic doesn’t get into a hansom or a public omnibus with a bundle like that under his arm. Should be within a radius of a mile at the outside.”

Stripe’s brows went up. “Would ’e walk a mile, sir? I wouldn’t. More like five ’undred yards, if that.”

“Five hundred in each direction,” Pitt answered. “Somewhere five hundred yards from here.” He waved his arm round the compass.

“In each …” Stripe’s blue eyes were confused.

Pitt put the thought into words. “Must be a whole body altogether. That’s about six parcels, roughly this size. He couldn’t carry them all at once, unless he used a barrow. And I doubt he’d draw attention to himself by doing that. He certainly wouldn’t be likely to borrow one, and who owns barrows except tradesmen and costers? But we’ll check for any seen in this area, either yesterday or today.”

“Yes, sir.” Stripe was intensely relieved to have something to do. Anything was better than standing there helplessly while the flies buzzed round the appalling heap in the grass.

“Send a message back to the station that we need half a dozen constables. And the mortuary cart, and the surgeon.”

“Yes, sir.” Stripe forced himself to look down once more, perhaps because he felt somehow callous disregarding the enormity of it, walking away without some acknowledgment. It was the same instinct that makes one take off one’s hat at the sight of a hearse passing in the street, even though one has no idea who is dead.

Pitt walked between the gravestones, curled and decorated, marred by weeds, and came to the graveled entrance to the church. The door was open and it was cool inside. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom and the hazy colored splashes on the stones from the stained glass. A large woman was collapsed, half prostrate, on a wooden seat, her hat on the floor beside her, the neck of her dress undone. The sexton’s wife, holding a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of ammonia smelling salts in the other, was muttering something comforting. They both looked round, startled, as Pitt’s footsteps sounded on the floor. A ginger-colored Pekingese dog was asleep in the doorway in the sun and ignored him completely.

“Mrs. Peabody?”

She stared at him with a mixture of suspicion and anticipation. It was not entirely displeasing to be the epicenter of such a drama-providing, of course, that everyone understood she had no connection with it but that of an innocent woman drawn in by chance.

“I am she,” she said somewhat unnecessarily.

Pitt had met many Mrs. Peabodys before, and he knew not only what she felt now but what nightmares were to come. He sat down on the bench beside her, a yard away.

“You must be extremely distressed”-he hurried on as she drew in a gasp of breath to tell him precisely how much-“so I will trouble you as little as possible. When was the last time you walked your dog past the churchyard?”

Her carefully arched eyebrows shot up into her rather sandy hairline. “I don’t think you understand, young man! I am not in the habit of finding such … such …” She could frame no words for the quite genuine horror that seized her.

“I’m sure,” Pitt said grimly. “I assume that if it had been there the last time, your dog would have found it then.”

Mrs. Peabody, in spite of her shock, was not without common sense. She saw the point immediately. “Oh. I came this way yesterday afternoon, and Clarence did not …” She trailed off, not liking to complete such an unnecessary remark.

“I see. Thank you. Do you know if Clarence pulled the parcel out from under the bushes, or was it already out?”

She shook her head.

It did not matter, except that had it been in the open it would probably have been noticed earlier. Almost certainly, whoever had put it there had taken the time to hide it also. There was really nothing else to ask her but her name and address.

He left them and went outside again into the heat and began to think about organizing a search. It was half past four.

By seven o’clock they had found them all. It was a grim business; going down the steps into disused areaways, sifting through refuse in rubbish cans that could be reached from the street, poking under bushes and behind railings. Parcel by parcel the rest were retrieved. The worst was in a narrow and fetid alley just over a mile from the churchyard, in the sour tenements of St. Giles. It should have provided the first clue to her identity, but as with two of the others, feral cats had discovered it first, led by scent and their ever devouring hunger. There was nothing recognizable now but long, fair hair and a crushing injury to the skull.

The long summer day did not darken till ten in the evening. Pitt trudged from door to door asking, pleading, occasionally bullying an unfortunate servant into an admission of guilt for some domestic misdemeanor-perhaps an illicit flirtation that had held them on the back steps longer than usual-but no one admitted to having seen anything remotely relevant. There had been no costermongers but those on long known and legitimate business, no residents or strangers carrying mysterious parcels, no one hurrying furtively, and no one reported missing.

Pitt was back at the police station as the sun set cherry-red over the roofs, and the gaslights came on in the fashionable thoroughfares like so many straying moons. Inside, the station smelled of closed doors, heat, the sharpness of ink, and brand new linoleum on the floor. The police surgeon was waiting for him, shirt sleeves still rolled up and stained, his waistcoat done up on the wrong buttons. He looked tired, and there was a smear of blood across his nose.