Anne Perry - Cardington Crescent

Mrs. Peabody was hot and out of breath. It was midsummer; her stays imprisoned her unyieldingly and her gown, with its fashionable bustle, was far too heavy to allow her to go chasing down the pavement after a willful dog that was fast disappearing through the wrought-iron churchyard gates.

“Clarence!” Mrs. Peabody cried out furiously. “Clarence! Come back here at once!”

But Clarence, who was fat and middle-aged and should have known better, squirmed through the gap and shot away into the long grass and the laurel bushes on the other side of the railings. Mrs. Peabody, gasping with annoyance and clinging on to her broad hat with one hand, sending it rakishly over her eyes, tried with the other to force the gates open far enough to allow her extremely ample form to pass through.

The late Mr. Peabody had preferred women of generous proportions. He had said so frequently. A man’s wife should reflect his position in life: dignified and substantial.

But it took more aplomb than Mrs. Peabody possessed to remain dignified while caught by one’s bosom in a churchyard gate with one’s hat askew and a dog yelping like a fiend a dozen yards away.

“Clarence!” she shrieked again and, drawing in her breath, gave a mighty heave, which had the opposite effect from the one desired. She let out a wail of desperation, and struggled through, her bustle now alarmingly closer to her left hip.

Clarence was barking hysterically and scuffling in the laurel bushes. The ground was dry after a week without rain and he was sending up spurts of dust. But he had his prize, a very large, sodden-looking parcel wrapped in brownish paper and tied securely with twine. Under Clarence’s determined efforts it was now torn in several places and beginning to come undone.

“Drop it!” Mrs. Peabody commanded. Clarence ignored her. “Drop it!” she repeated, wrinkling her nose in distaste. It was really very unpleasant; it appeared to be kitchen leavings-unusable meat. “Clarence!”

The dog ripped off a large piece of the paper, wet with blood and coming away easily. Then she saw it-skin. Human skin, pale and soft. She screamed; then as Clarence exposed more of it she screamed again, and again, and again, until her lungs were bursting and she could not find breath and the world spun round her in a red haze. She fell to the ground, unaware of Clarence, still tugging at the parcel, and passersby forcing their way through the stuck gate in alarm.

Inspector Thomas Pitt looked up from his desk, strewn with paper, glad of the interruption. “What is it?”

Police Constable Stripe stood in the doorway, his face a little pink above his stiff collar, his eyes blinking.

“I’m sorry, sir, but there’s a report of a disturbance in St. Mary’s churchyard in Bloomsbury. An elderly person ’avin’ ’ysterics. Quite respectable, and locally known-and doesn’t touch the gin. ’Usband was Temperance, ’afore ’e died. Never bin a nuisance in the past.”

“Perhaps she’s ill?” Pitt suggested. “Doesn’t need more than a constable, does it? Maybe a doctor?”

“Well, sir.” Stripe looked distressed. “Seems ’er dog ran away and found this parcel in the bushes, an’ she thought it was part of a person. That’s what gave ’er ’ysterics.”

“What on earth do you mean, ‘part of a person’?” Pitt demanded irritably. He liked young Wilberforce Stripe; he was normally keen and reliable. This vague story was unlike him. “What’s in this parcel?”

“Well, that’s it, Mr. Pitt, sir. The constable on the beat says ’e ’asn’t touched it more’n necessary afore you get there, sir, but by ’is reckoning that’s just what it is-a part of a woman’s body. The-er …” He was clearly embarrassed. He did not wish to be indelicate, yet was aware that a policeman should be precise. He placed one hand across his waist and the other across his neck. “The top ’alf, sir.”

Pitt stood up, papers cascading off his lap onto the floor and remaining there. In spite of his seventeen years in London, where the sumptuous and elegant heart of the Empire disported itself a stone’s throw from slums that teemed with poverty so intense rotting tenements stood stacked against each other, fifteen people to a room living and dying together, he had not ceased to be shocked by the savagery of crime. He could not grasp the mass-the mind refused. But the pain of the individual still had power to move him.

“Then we’d better go and see,” he replied, ignoring the disarray around him and leaving his hat on the stand where he had thrown it on arriving in the morning.

“Yes, sir.” Stripe fell in behind him, following Pitt’s familiar disheveled figure along the corridor, down the steps past several other constables, and into the hot and dusty street. An empty hansom clattered past them, not believing Pitt, with his coattails flapping and his tie askew, to prove a likely fare. Stripe, in uniform, was not even worth considering.

Pitt waved his arm and ran a few steps. “Cabbie!” he shouted, his anger directed not at the personal slight but against all crime in general, and this one he was going to pursue in particular.

The cabbie drew rein and looked at him with disfavor. “Yes, sir?”

“St. Mary’s churchyard, Bloomsbury.” Pitt scrambled in and held the door for Stripe, behind him.

“Will that be the east side or the west side?” the cabbie inquired.

“The back gate, off the avenue,” Stripe put in helpfully.

“Thank you,” Pitt acknowledged; then, to the cabbie, “Get on with it, man!”

The cabbie flicked the whip and made encouraging sounds, and they moved off, rapidly increasing to a trot. They rode in silence, each absorbed in his own speculations as to what they might find.

“This ’ere where you wanta be, sir?” the cabbie leaned down and asked dubiously.

“Yes.” Pitt had already seen the little knot of people and the harassed constable in the middle. It was an ordinary, rather seedy suburban churchyard; dusty, grass dry with the summer heat, gravestones uneven and ornate, marble angels, and over on the right before the yew trees, a clump of dark laurels.

He climbed out, paid the driver, then crossed the pavement and spoke to the constable, who was obviously overwhelmed with relief to see him.

“What have you got?” Pitt asked dourly.

The constable jerked his elbow towards the high, spiked railings but did not turn his head. His face was pale and there was a heavy beading of sweat on his lip and across his brow. He looked wretched. “Top ’alf of a woman’s body, sir.” He swallowed hard. “Pretty ’orrible, it is. It was under them bushes.”

“Who found it, and when?”

“A Mrs. Ernestine Peabody, out walking ’er Pekingese dog by the name o’ Clarence.” He glanced down at his notebook. Pitt read from it upside down; 15th June, 1887, 3:25 P.M., called to St. Mary’s churchyard, woman screaming.

“Where is she now?” Pitt asked.

“Sittin’ on the seat in the church vestibule, sir. She’s took pretty bad, an’ I said as soon as you’d spoke to ’er she could go ’ome. It’s my opinion, sir, as she won’t be much use to us.”

“Probably not,” Pitt agreed. “Where is this … parcel?”

“Where I found it, sir! I didn’t touch it more’n to make sure she wasn’t ’avin’-delusions, like. On the gin.”

Pitt went to the gates, heavy wrought iron and stuck fast, a little over a foot apart, wedged in the ruts of the dried mud. He squeezed through and walked along the inside of the railing till he came to the laurel bushes. He knew Stripe was immediately behind him.

The parcel was about nineteen inches square, lying where Clarence had left it, paper torn and pulled away to expose the meatlike flesh and several inches of fine-grained, white skin smeared a little with blood. There were flies beginning to gather. He did not have to touch it to see that the portion showing was part of a woman’s breast.