Thomas & Charlotte Pitt 29 - Death On Blackheath (31 page)

‘I slipped up there,’ Carlisle admitted, wincing at his own failure. ‘But I didn’t know Kitty had been seen. Are you sure?’

‘Yes. I have a highly diligent assistant …’

‘Ah! The redoubtable Stoker. Yes. An excellent man.’ Carlisle smiled very slightly. ‘If he could actually find the woman, then she would testify as to what it was she saw, or heard, and why she ran away. Although it would be better to have something rather weightier than the word of a runaway lady’s maid.’

‘I’ll widen the search for her,’ Pitt promised. ‘Who else is involved? He must be passing the information to someone? And why, for God’s sake?’ Even giving words to the question and speaking it aloud was painful. He had not thought Kynaston more than perhaps self-indulgent with his mistress, certainly not a man to betray his own country. He had become used to disillusion but this still hurt.

Carlisle pulled his mouth into a gesture of apology. ‘I have no idea. But I have no doubt he will have plenty of defenders simply because no one will wish to believe that he could have betrayed them, or that they could have let him! The Prime Minister will be displeased, to say the least of it!’

‘I’m getting rather accustomed to displeasing the Prime Minister,’ Pitt said tartly. ‘It seems to be a function of the job. But catching Kynaston, even proving what he has done, is far from the end of the task …’

‘Oh, I know that!’ Carlisle agreed. ‘You need to know all of it! More than anything else, you need to know exactly how much information he has given, and to whom. Preferably, you also need to know how he came into such a position, and everyone else who is involved. And then, naturally, you need to deal with him so that as few people are aware of it as possible, in the circumstances. To have a trial and exposure would be almost as damaging as the act itself.’

‘Thank you, Carlisle! I am aware of that!’ Pitt snapped. ‘I also would prefer not to be obliged to prosecute you! I accept that you did not kill either of the women, but you took their bodies from wherever they were kept – a morgue of some sort, I imagine – and you laid them out in the gravel pits. I prefer not to know that you also mutilated them in identical ways so we would be forced to conclude they were killed by the same person, and the link to Kynaston was too clear to ignore. Well, I have your message, and I understand it. You have succeeded.’

Carlisle was pale, even in the firelight. ‘I am not proud of it,’ he said very quietly. ‘But Kynaston is betraying my country. He must be stopped.’

‘I will do all I can to stop him,’ Pitt promised. ‘And you will help me, if I can think of a way. And from now on you will do exactly what I tell you to … so I can find a reason not to charge you with body-snatching, mutilating the dead, and generally being a damn nuisance!’

‘Would you—’ Carlisle began.

Pitt glared at him. ‘Yes I would! And if you involve Lady Vespasia in this I’ll see you pay for it with your seat in Parliament!’

‘I believe you,’ Carlisle said very quietly indeed. ‘I give you my word I have not done so, and I will not.’

‘Thank you.’ Pitt stood up. ‘I thank you for at least this much truth. Now I wish I’d had the whisky!’

‘It’s still available …’

‘No, thank you. I must go home. It’s late, and I need to think how the hell I’m going to clear this up, starting tomorrow morning. By the way, where did you get the bodies? I assume you took them from some morgue?’

‘Yes. But I’ll see they are decently buried, when you’ve finished with them. As I promised in the first place,’ Carlisle replied.

Pitt stared at him for a moment, trying to find words for what lay between them, and failing. He turned and left.

Outside the rain had stopped but the wind was even colder. Pitt thought, seeing the hard, brittle glitter of the stars, that there could be a frost.

Walking briskly along the pavement he thought again of Carlisle. The man infuriated him, but he could not dislike him. This time he had seen beyond the wit and the imagination to someone who dared to believe in things further than he could see himself, and who reached, however crazily, for the sublime. A lonely man.

He could not believe that Carlisle had had any part in the deaths of either of the women, he had merely seized an opportunity. Pitt could imagine him carefully cutting the dead faces, women beyond indignity or pain, and apologising for using them for what he believed was a greater and more desperate good. The man he had known in the past would never have killed anyone, even to expose treason.

But people can change. Unknown pressures can fall on them, old debts can need to be paid. Was that why Carlisle had rescued Pitt from the fury of Edom Talbot so fortuitously? And was it he who had created the situation in the first place, so Pitt would owe him a debt?

Did Carlisle owe someone this terrible thing?

Or was it Kynaston who owed an unpayable debt?

And perhaps the treason was far more than Pitt had yet guessed.

He looked up at the thin starlight; sharp edged in the wind, and increased his pace.

CHARLOTTE HAD deliberately chosen to spend more time with Emily, so when Emily invited her to go with Jack and herself to a reception for a visiting Norwegian explorer, and to listen to his lecture, she accepted. She did it for Emily’s sake, not because she was particularly interested in islands in the North Atlantic, and whatever manner of birds might inhabit them. The thought of so much floating ice made her cold, even before she set out.

Had Pitt been at home it would have been a greater sacrifice, but he was out many evenings recently, pursuing one aspect or another of the case of Kitty Ryder. He had said she was alive, but they still could not find her.

As she sat while Minnie Maude dressed her hair up, a skill she was rapidly developing, Charlotte thought more about the whole issue. She had not questioned Pitt any more, because she knew from watching his face that he was deeply worried about the case, and that it now concerned some other issue, which he could not tell her. That did not mean she was not free to try to discern it for herself.

She knew more of the personal lives of people like Dudley Kynaston than Pitt or Stoker could do, because the Kynastons belonged to the level of Society in which she had grown up, and to which Emily had belonged all her life. She and Pitt were now on the fringes of it, but to him it would always be alien, at least in some of its values, no matter how skilled he became at appearing to be comfortable.

When Emily arrived Charlotte saw that she was dressed in pale green, the colour that became her most. The gown itself was exquisite, and perfectly suited to the occasion. Charlotte recognised it as ‘battle dress’ from the way it fitted, and the beauty of the subtle emerald and diamond earrings that Emily wore with it. When she kissed her quickly on the cheek, the opinion was confirmed by the perfume she detected, so subtle she wanted to come closer again in order to catch it more definitely. It was nothing she could name, and no doubt very expensive. It was the sort of thing a woman buys herself, if she does not have to count the cost of it.

As soon as they were seated in the carriage and had moved off from the kerb into the roadway, Charlotte asked the question.

‘Why are we going to a lecture on arctic exploration?’

Emily smiled. Even in the gathering dusk and the first glow of streetlamps, her satisfaction was visible. ‘Because Ailsa and Rosalind Kynaston are going to it,’ she replied. ‘I have been getting to know Rosalind a little better recently. It isn’t difficult or odd in the circumstances. If Jack is going to be offered this position with Dudley Kynaston, then we shall possibly become friends.’

‘And is he?’ Suddenly Charlotte forgot all concern with the Kynastons, or Kitty Ryder’s plight. She could only think of Jack, because of how another disappointment would affect Emily.

‘You don’t want him to, do you!’ There was a sudden edge of challenge in Emily’s voice. ‘He’s brilliant, you know. Or perhaps you don’t know? It would be very interesting for Jack to work with him, and a promotion, of course. But you must know that, if you’ve thought about it at all!’

Charlotte forgot her resolve to be patient, and gentle. ‘I want him to take it, as long as Kynaston’s not guilty of anything,’ she said tartly. ‘If he was having an affair with his wife’s maid I suppose that isn’t very important, except to his wife, and perhaps to the maid. But if he killed her, then I would very much rather Jack did not work with him. Until he is accused, of course, then I dare say he will be in gaol, and there will be no possibility of anybody working with him. But even if he did kill her, or threaten to kill her, and we never prove it, I would still rather that Jack had nothing to do with it.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Or even if it was his wife who killed her, unlikely as that seems, I would prefer no one I loved was involved with them.’

‘Jack will be pleased to know that you love him,’ Emily said icily. ‘Even if it does appear to infect your imagination with grotesque fantasies. If every woman in London were to murder their maids because their husbands slept with them, we would be up to our knees in blood!’

‘Not likely.’ Charlotte was equally icy. ‘She wasn’t stabbed. She was beaten, her face mutilated, and her body left up in the gravel pit to be scavenged by animals. Not much blood at all.’

‘You are disgusting!’ Emily spat out the words.

‘Don’t be so stupid!’ Charlotte snapped. ‘It’s you I love, and I like Jack, very much, but that will cease instantly if he hurts you.’

‘He isn’t—’ Emily began, but stopped equally quickly. When Charlotte turned to look at her she saw the tears brim over her eyes and down her cheeks. At another time she would have said something, even hugged her. Now the emotion between them was too brittle. She sat in silence for several moments, allowing Emily time to regain her composure. When she thought it was long enough, she began another conversation. ‘What is Rosalind like?’ she asked. She did not have to feign interest.

‘Actually, I like her,’ Emily replied, her voice almost level again. ‘She is much more individual than she appears at first. She reads quite a lot, and she knows about all sorts of unusual things: adventures, explorers, the people who go to Mesopotamia, and Greece, and dig up tombs and find amazing things – artefacts and writings. And she has great knowledge of plants. I went to Kew Gardens with her, and she could tell me where dozens of the different trees and flowers came from, and who found them. I started paying attention to her out of courtesy, but quite quickly found I was genuinely interested. And she is nothing like as bland or easily misled as I used to suppose.’

‘Is that why she is going to this lecture?’ Charlotte asked, surprised. Pitt had said little about Rosalind, and Charlotte had assumed her to be rather colourless. Perhaps she was guilty of supposing that because her husband had a mistress, then she must be dull. Did all married women suppose that? If a man seeks another woman, then his wife must be cold, tedious, plain – something one could avoid being oneself, so it would never happen to you?

‘I look forward to getting to know her better,’ she said.

Emily might be unhappy but she had lost none of the social skills. She could still make careful planning look like complete chance. She and Charlotte found themselves standing close to Rosalind and Ailsa Kynaston. They were related by marriage, and clearly knew each other well, but no one would have taken them for sisters. Rosalind was soberly dressed in a deep plum colour, which looked gracious and expensive, and yet it lacked the flair that Emily could have achieved with far less.

Ailsa, on the other hand, had the advantage of height, and the grace it gave her movement. There was a vitality in her face and a silver-pale gleam to her hair that attracted the eye, willingly or not. The sombre blues of her gown were of no importance; if anything they were a contrast that heightened her own energy.

They greeted each other with pleasure, as if it were good fortune that had placed them so closely. Both Ailsa and Rosalind remembered Charlotte and affected to be happy to see her again. If they connected her immediately with Pitt and the wretched business that had brought him into Rosalind’s house, they were too polite to say so.

Conversation was easy and touched only on trivial things. Emily was at her best, being both interesting and amusing. Particularly she made Rosalind laugh, leaving Charlotte free merely to listen, and to watch the language of look and gesture between Rosalind and Ailsa. Perhaps that was what Emily had intended. If she had, she could not have contrived it better.

‘I am pleased so many people have come,’ Rosalind said, glancing around at the steadily increasing crowd. ‘I admit, I had feared there would be embarrassingly little support.’

‘We will all leave grateful that our spring, if chilly, is not nearly as harsh as it could be,’ Emily agreed.

Ailsa lifted her graceful shoulders a little. ‘The north has a clean beauty that many people admire,’ she said. She was not exactly contradicting Emily, but there was a coolness in her voice.

‘Do you know the north well?’ Emily asked with enthusiasm.

For a moment Ailsa hesitated, as though she were unprepared for the question.

‘I have travelled north,’ she conceded. ‘It has great beauty, and one becomes acclimatised to the cold. Of course, summer is not cold at all, and brighter than here … quite often.’

‘So you will be familiar with places like the ones Dr Arbuthnott will be mentioning,’ Emily concluded. She turned to Rosalind. ‘Have you been there also?’

Rosalind smiled. ‘Oh, no. I’m afraid I have never been further north than Paris, which I find a marvellous city.’

‘Paris is south from here, my dear,’ Ailsa said gently.

Charlotte looked at her face. She was smiling but there was no warmth in it, in spite of her tone. If she had liked Rosalind, Charlotte knew that she would not have made the observation at all.

Rosalind coloured very slightly. ‘I know that. Perhaps I would have been clearer if I had said “in Europe”.’

Several appropriate remarks occurred to Charlotte, which would have put Ailsa in her place, but she refrained from making them.