Anne Perry - Cardington Crescent

“Well?” Pitt asked wearily.

“Young woman.” The man sat down without being asked. “Fair hair, fair skin. As near as one can tell, she might have been quite good-looking. She certainly wasn’t any beggar. Hands were clean, no broken nails, but she’d done a bit of housework. My first guess would be a parlormaid, but it’s only a guess.” He sighed. “And she’d had a child, but not within the last few months.”

Pitt sat down behind his desk and leaned on his elbows. “How old?”

“For God’s sake, man! How do I know?” the doctor said angrily, his pity, disgust, and sheer helplessness spilling over at the only victim available. “You present me with a corpse in half a dozen pieces, like so much offal from some bloody butcher, and you want me to tell you who she was! Well, I can’t!” He stood up, knocking his chair over. “She was a young woman, probably in domestic service, and some lunatic murdered her by hitting her on the back of the head and then, God knows why, cut her into pieces and left her strewn around Bloomsbury and St. Giles. You’ll be damned lucky if you ever find out who she is, still less who did that to her. I sometimes wonder why you bother. Of the thousand different ways to murder people, a crack on the head might be less cruel in the long run than some of the ways we ignore. Have you been in the tenements and lodging houses in St. Giles, Wapping, Mile End? The last corpse I looked at was a twelve-year-old girl. Died in childbirth-” He stopped, his voice thick with tears he was only half embarrassed for. He glanced at Pitt savagely and strode out, slamming the door.

Pitt stood up slowly, righted the chair, and went out after him. Normally he would have walked home; it was only a couple of miles. But it was nearly eleven and he was tired and hungry and his feet hurt more than usual. He took a hansom and ignored the expense.

The front of the house was dark and he let himself in with his key. Gracie, the maid, would long have gone to bed, but he could see a light on in the kitchen and he knew Charlotte would be waiting for him. Sighing, he took off his boots with relief and walked along the corridor, feeling the coolness of the linoleum through his socks.

Charlotte was in the doorway, the gas lamp behind her shining on the auburn in her hair and catching the warm curve of her cheek. Without saying anything, she put her arms round him and held him surprisingly tightly. For a moment he was afraid something was wrong, that one of the children was ill; then he realized she would of course have seen an evening newspaper. If it had not mentioned his name, she had guessed from his lateness that he was involved.

He had not intended to tell her. In spite of all the cases she had concerned herself with, part of him still believed she should be protected from such horror. Most men felt their homes were a retreat from the harshness, and frequently the ugliness, of the outside world, a place to refresh both body and spirit before returning again to the fray. Women were part of that gentler, better place.

But Charlotte had seldom done the expected, even before she had appalled her well-bred family by marrying into the police, a descent so radical she was fortunate they had not disowned her.

Now she loosed herself a little and looked up at him, her face puckered with concern.

“You are on that case, aren’t you, Thomas? That poor woman found in St. Mary’s churchyard?”

“Yes.” He kissed her gently, then again, hoping she would not talk about it. He was so tired he hurt, and there was nothing to say.

As she grew older Charlotte was learning when to keep her own counsel a little more, but this was not one of those occasions. She had read the extra edition of the newspaper with horror and pity, cooked two dinners for Pitt and had to abandon them both, and she expected at the very least that he would share with her the thoughts and some of the feelings that had possessed him during the day.

“Are you going to find out who she was?” she asked, pulling back and starting for the kitchen. “Have you eaten?”

“No, of course I haven’t,” he said wearily, following her. “But don’t bother cooking anything now.”

Her eyebrows shot up, but this time she glanced at his face and bit her tongue. Behind her on the blackened and polished range the kettle was billowing clouds of steam.

“Would you like cold mutton, pickle, and fresh bread?” she asked sweetly. “And a cup of tea?”

He smiled in spite of himself. It would be easier, and pleasanter in the long run, to surrender.

“Yes, I would.” He sat down, putting his jacket over the back of the chair.

She hesitated, then decided it would be wiser to make the tea before saying anything more, but there was a little upward quirk at the corner of her mouth.

Five minutes later he had three slices of crumbly bread, a pile of homemade chutney-Charlotte was very good at chutney and marmalade-several slices of meat, and a breakfast cup full of steaming tea.

Charlotte had contained herself long enough. “Are you going to find out who she was?”

“I doubt it,” he said, filling his mouth with food.

She stared at him solemnly. “Won’t somebody report her missing? Bloomsbury is quite a respectable area. People who have parlormaids notice if they’re gone.”

In spite of their six years of marriage and all the cases she had one way or another found herself involved in, she still carried with her remnants of the innocence in which she had grown up, protected from unpleasantness, imprisoned from the harshness and the excitement of the world, as young ladies of gentility should be. To begin with, Charlotte’s breeding had awed Pitt and, in her blinder moments, angered him. But mostly it disappeared in all the infinitely more important things they shared: laughter at life’s absurdities, tenderness, passion, and anger at the same injustices.

“Thomas?”

“My darling Charlotte, she doesn’t have to have come from Bloomsbury. And even if she did, how many maids do you suppose have been dismissed, for any number of reasons, from dishonesty to having been caught in the arms of the master of the house? Others will have eloped! — or been supposed to have-or lifted the family silver and disappeared into the night.”

“Parlormaids aren’t like that!” she protested. “Aren’t you even going to ask after her?”

“We have done,” he replied with a tired edge to his voice. Had she no idea how futile it was-and that he would already have done everything he could? Did she not know that much of him, after all this time?

She bent her head, looking down at the tablecloth. “I’m sorry. I suppose you’ll never know.”

“Probably not,” he agreed, picking up his cup. “Is that a letter from Emily on the mantelpiece?”

“Yes.” Emily was her younger sister, who had married as far above herself as Charlotte had descended. “She is staying with Great-aunt Vespasia in Cardington Crescent.”

“I thought Great-aunt Vespasia lived in Gadstone Park.”

“She does. They’re all staying with Uncle Eustace March.”

He grunted. There was nothing to say to that. He had a deep admiration for the elegant, waspish Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, but Eustace March he had never heard of, nor did he wish to.

“She sounds very unhappy,” Charlotte went on, looking at him anxiously.

“I’m sorry.” He did not meet her eyes but fished for another piece of bread and the chutney dish. “But there’s nothing we can do. I daresay she’s bored.” This time he did look up, fixing her with something approaching a glare. “And you will go nowhere near Bloomsbury, not even to visit some long lost friend, either of yours or of Emily’s. Is that understood, Charlotte?”