Death in the Devil's Acre (3 page)

“My footman says you wish to speak to me about a murder? Is that correct?”

Pitt found himself standing a little straighter—not quite to attention, but definitely with his feet together and his head up. “Yes, sir. A week ago there was an extremely unpleasant murder in an area known as the Devil’s Acre, hard by Westminster.”

“I know where it is.” The general frowned. “But surely that was this morning?”

“I’m afraid there was a second one this morning. The first did not make much of a mark in the newspapers. However, I was called in for this one today, and when I heard of the earlier one, naturally I went to see the body.”

“Naturally,” the general’s frown deepened. “What is it you wish of me?”

Now that it came to the point, Pitt felt rather embarrassed at having to ask this man to come and look at the corpse of a dead procurer of whores. What did it matter if it was or was not the man who had been his footman at the time of the Callander Square murders? It could make no real difference now.

He cleared his throat; there was no avoiding it. “I think the man may be someone you knew.”

The general’s eyebrows rose in amazement. “Someone I knew?”

“Yes, sir, I think so.” Pitt explained as briefly as he could the circumstances of Pinchin’s death, and what Inspector Parkins had shown him at the mortuary.

“Very well,” the general said reluctantly, and reached for the bell cord to summon the carriage.

The door opened and, instead of the footman, one of the most striking women Pitt could recall ever having set eyes on came in: Lady Augusta Balantyne. Her face was as fine as bone china, but without any of porcelain’s fragility. Her clothes were magnificent, in the subdued taste of those who have always had money and therefore never felt the compulsion to display it garishly. She stared at Pitt with distaste; her very posture appeared to demand an explanation, not only for his presence in her house but for his very existence.

Pitt refused to be intimidated. “Good afternoon, Lady Augusta,” he said with a slight bow. “I hope I find you well?”

“I am always well, thank you, Mr.—” She could not have forgotten their past meetings; the subject was too bizarre, too painful. “Mr. Pitt.” She arched her eyebrows very slightly, and her eyes were glacial beneath them. “To what unfortunate occurrence do we owe your visit this time?”

“A matter of identification, ma’am,” he answered smoothly. He felt the general relax, even though he could barely see him at the edge of his vision. “A man General Balantyne may be able to name for us, and if so, that might assist us greatly.”

“Good gracious—can the man not name himself?”

“People do not always tell the truth, ma’am,” he said dryly.

She colored at her own clumsiness for not having seen the obvious.

“And in this case I understand he is dead anyway,” the general added tartly. “It is nothing for you to concern yourself with, my dear. It is my duty to be of assistance, if I can. I dare say I shall not be long.”

“Have you forgotten we are dining with Sir Harry and Lady Lisburne tonight?” She ignored Pitt as if he had been one of the servants. “I do not intend to arrive late. I will not be thought ill-mannered, whatever you may imagine your duty to be.”

“The man is in a mortuary not half an hour away.” The general’s face flickered with irritation. He disliked dinner parties, and, with Harry Lisburne as host, this one was likely to be more tedious than ever. “I have only to look at him and say whether I know him or not. I shall be back before dark.”

She blew down her nose with a little sigh, and went out without looking at Pitt again. General Balantyne walked into the hall, collected his coat from the waiting butler, and accompanied Pitt out into the rain just as the coachman drove around from the mews and stopped at the curbside for them.

They rode in silence. Pitt did not want to prejudice the identification by discussing the case beforehand, and he felt no compulsion to make small talk of other things.

The carriage stopped a short distance from the mortuary, and Pitt and the general alighted and walked up the path, still silent. Inside, the duty attendant appeared startled to see a gentleman of Balantyne’s obvious quality, but he recognized Pitt, and conducted them to the body without hesitation.

“There you are, sir.” He whipped back the sheet with the air of a conjurer producing a rabbit.

Like Pitt before him, the general’s eyes went straight to the mutilation, not even glancing at the face. He took a deep breath and let it out. He had seen death before, a great deal of death, almost all of it by the violence of war or the ravages of disease. What made this uniquely appalling to him was that it had happened deliberately, here at home in the streets of London. The inexpert dismemberment was not the accident of random cannonfire, but looked to be the result of a passionate and individual hatred for one man in particular.

What man? The general looked up at the face. Pitt, watching him carefully, saw the start of recognition.

“General?” He lifted his voice only a little.

Balantyne looked up slowly. Pitt could not read the emotions in his eyes. Balantyne was an exceedingly private man, unused to the comforts of fellow sympathy. Pitt could never really understand him; their backgrounds were worlds apart. Balantyne was the last of generations of soldiers who had served monarch and country with unquestioning sacrifice in every foreign war since the days of Agincourt, whereas Pitt was the son of a country gamekeeper convicted unjustly of some petty offense. Pitt had grown up on the estate of his master and been educated to his excellent, almost beautiful diction, to provide companionship to the son of the house and to encourage the boy in his studies. Pitt’s hunger had been a challenge, and not infrequently a reproach to spur the boy out of indolence.

Yet he liked Balantyne, even admired him. He was a man who lived as strictly by the code he believed in as had any ancient knight or monk.

“Do you know him?” he prompted, although the question was now no more than academic; the answer was in the general’s face.

“Of course,” Balantyne replied quietly. “It is Max Burton, who used to be my footman.”

G
RACIE CAME RUSHING INTO
the parlor with the early editions of the afternoon newspapers. Her face was suffused with color, her eyes as round as gooseberries. “Oh, ma’am! There’s been an ’orrible murder—most terrible in London’s ’istory o’ crime, it says ’ere. Doin’s as’d make a strong man go white to ’is knees!”

“Indeed?” Charlotte did not stop her sewing. Newspapers always dealt in hyperbole—who stops in a January street to buy a paper that tells of the ordinary?

Gracie was horrified at her indifference. “No, ma’am—I really means it! It was dreadful! ’E was all ’acked to pieces, in a place as wot a lady wouldn’t even know of! Leastways not as she’d put words to and still call ’erself a lady. The papers is right, ma’am. There’s a terrible maniac loose in the Devil’s Acre—and maybe them preachers is right and the Last Days is come, and it’s Satan ’isself!” Gracie’s face went pale as the apparition formed in her mind.

“Nonsense!” Charlotte said sharply. She could see that if she was not careful she would have a case of hysterics on her hands. “Here, give me the papers, and go and get on with the vegetables or we shall have no dinner. If the master comes home out of this weather and there is nothing hot for him, he will be most displeased.”

It was an idle threat. Gracie held Pitt in immense respect; he was the master, after all. And beyond that he was a policeman and therefore represented the Law. And then there were the fascinating and dangerous things he must know! Shocking things! Worse than in the papers! But she was not in the least afraid of him. He was not the sort of person to put a servant out on the street for one neglected meal, and she knew it.

“It’s ’orrible, ma’am,” she repeated, wagging her head to prove she had been right from the beginning. “Do you want as I should use that cabbage tonight, or the turnips?”

“Both,” Charlotte replied absently, already absorbed in the newspapers herself.

Gracie accepted the dismissal and went back to the kitchen, turning the morning’s events over in her mind. It was a source of great satisfaction to her that she worked for a lady—a real lady—not one of your jumped-up social climbers as fancied theirselves better than they was, but one as was born into the Quality, and grew up in a house with real servants, a Staff, a butler as had a pantry of his own, and a separate cook and kitchenmaids and parlormaids and upstairs maids and the like—and footmen! None of Gracie’s sisters or friends had a mistress like that! Gracie enjoyed considerable distinction because of it, and was able to tell other girls what was what and how things should be done proper.

Of course Charlotte had come down in the world a bit since then; a policeman was not a gentleman—everyone knew that. But still there were times when it was very exciting! The tales she could tell—if she chose! But of course such things were far better hinted at than recounted in detail. She had her loyalties.

And, to tell the truth, she did not entirely approve of the way her mistress sometimes got herself involved in police goings-on. More than once she had actually had some face-to-face contact with people as had done murders. Looking for people like that, even if they turned out to be from the Quality, was no thing for a lady to do.

Gracie shook her head and tipped the turnips out into the sink and began to wash and peel them. Unless she was very mistaken in her judgment, her mistress was shaping up nicely to start meddling into something again. She had that restless look about her, fiddling with things and putting them down half done, writing letters to her sister Emily as was now Viscountess Ashworth. Married above herself, that one. Not that she wasn’t very nice, the few times that Gracie had seen her. More often Charlotte went to visit her at her grand house in Paragon Walk. And who could blame her for that?

Gracie drifted into a pleasant dream of what a Viscountess’s house might be like. No doubt she would have beautiful footmen, all tall and handsome, and wearing livery, too! A man did look good in livery, no matter what anyone said!

In the evening when Pitt came home, Charlotte was waiting for him. She had read the newspapers thoroughly because the appalling corpse had been discovered in Pitt’s area; she knew it was quite likely that the call he had received before dawn that morning had to do with the murder.

Of course the case was not one in which she would be able to give any help, unfortunately. She was ready for the challenge, even the danger of another investigation, but the man had been found in a location she knew nothing whatsoever about, except by repute. And Lambert Gardens, where apparently he had lived, was not part of her family’s social circle, so she could offer no assistance there either.

Still, perhaps if he was prepared to discuss it with her, she could at least use her wits. She had not been unskilled at divining motives in the past, and the nature of human beings had much in common whatever the circumstances.

She hurried to meet her husband as soon as she heard the front door close, even before Gracie could get there. She took his coat, hung it up to dry, and then turned immediately to kiss him. His face felt cold. She knew he must be tired; it was over twelve hours since he had left, without breakfast. Her senses told her to restrain her curiosity at least until he had finished supper. She led the way into the parlor and talked about nothing of consequence while Pitt thawed out in front of the fire until Gracie served the meal.

By nine o’clock she considered that tact had been paid more than its due. “The constable who came for you this morning,” she began. “Was that because of the corpse in the Devil’s Acre?”

A trace of bleak humor flickered across his face. When Charlotte tried being subtle with him, he usually saw through it, so she had abandoned the effort. Anyhow, she had not had time to prepare and approach the whole subject in a more devious fashion.

“Yes,” he said guardedly. “But Lambert Gardens, which is where he lived, is not your family’s social circle. There is nothing you can do to help.”

She was not tactically inept. “No, of course not,” she said. “But it is impossible not to be interested. The newspapers are full of it this evening.”

He pulled a face.

She changed her line of attack. “Do be careful, Thomas. It sounds as if there is some dreadful madman loose. I mean, it isn’t a sane sort of crime, is it? What do you suppose a man like Dr. Pinchin was doing in the Devil’s Acre anyway? Did he have a practice there? The newspapers said he was a very respectable man.” She was not entirely convinced; she had known plenty of “respectable” people herself. All the adjective really meant was that they were either clever enough or fortunate enough to have maintained an excellent façade. Behind it there might be anything at all.

Pitt smiled, his eyes uncomfortably clear. “Thank you, my dear, but you have no need to be anxious for me. I don’t expect to prowl the Acre alone. I shall be in no danger from madmen.”

She debated whether to be hurt and pretend he had misunderstood her, but decided rapidly that it would not work. “Of course not,” she said. “Perhaps I was being silly. I dare say Dr. Pinchin was not nearly as respectable as the newspapers suggested. After all, they would have to be very careful of what they said, and the poor man is only just dead.” She looked up, wide-eyed and totally candid. “Did he have a family?”

“Charlotte!”

“Yes, Thomas?”

He let out his breath in a sigh. “This is not a case you can involve yourself in. Dr. Pinchin was not the only victim—he was the second that we know of, and whatever is going on, it has its cause in the Devil’s Acre. The other body was found there, too. It is not a domestic crime, Charlotte. It does not involve the sort of motives you are good at.”

She ignored the compliment. “Another one? I didn’t know that! The newspapers didn’t say anything. Are you keeping it secret? Who was it?”

There was a momentary flash of irritation in his face. Charlotte was not sure whether it was directed at her or at circumstances.