lamp trembled in his hand.
Charles did not blame him. The woman had been murdered; that violent truth was told by the gaping slash across her jugular. But that and her sex-her hair was long and red-gold, she was heavy-breasted and dressed in a skirt and blouse-were the only truths immediately apparent. Her face was unspeakable, the features almost completely obliterated, and her hands had been chewed to the wrists.
“Pike,” Winston growled. “Vicious things, teeth like bloody sawblades. They’ll eat anything, alive or dead.” He made a gagging sound, and he too turned away. “But it’s not-I don’t believe that’s Gladys Deacon, Charles.”
“I agree,” Charles said gravely. “She has not the same figure. And the clothing is that of a servant.” He glanced up at Stevens, whose face was still averted. “Stevens, were you acquainted with Kitty?”
“Saw her, of course, m’lord,” Stevens said in a strangled voice. “When she was hired, and several times about the house. But I couldn’t-” He swallowed, tried to speak, swallowed again. “I couldn’t tell you if that… that thing is her.”
“Who can?” Winston asked.
Wearily, Charles stood up. “Stevens,” he said, “please be so good as to fetch Alfred.” He paused. “But don’t tell him why. I would prefer that he not know what to expect. And when you have brought him, you may go back to bed.” He smiled a little. “I should recommend a large brandy.”
“Yes, m’lord,” Stevens said gratefully. He cast a last glance at the corpse that lay on the floor. “Alfred’s doing the locking-up. It may take a while to find him.”
But Stevens must have located the footman quickly, for he was back within minutes. “Here’s Alfred, m’lord,” he said thinly, and departed.
Alfred stepped through the door. He was still in full livery, and his costume-powdered hair, maroon jacket, white breeches, white stockings-looked oddly incongruous in the cold, stone-walled room. He was, Charles thought, very young.
“You wanted me, m’lord?” Alfred asked with a deferential courtesy. “What can I-” And then he saw what lay on the floor, and stopped. “Sweet Jesus,” he whispered. He lifted his eyes, suddenly wild and staring, to Charles’s face. “It isn’t!” he cried, his voice going taut and shrill. “It’s not her!”
“How do you know?” Charles asked gently. And then, when all that came out of Alfred was a kind of dying whimper, added, “Don’t you think you owe it to Kitty to be sure?”
Alfred was shaking so hard that his teeth seemed to rattle in his head. “I… I can’t,” he wailed. “That thing… it don’t look like her!”
Charles stepped forward and put his hand on the young man’s shoulder, steadying him. “You were intimate with her,” he said. “Do you recall whether she bore any marks on her body? Any moles? Birthmarks?”
Alfred had thrown his arm across his face, as a man does when he cannot bear to look on something terrible, something inhuman. He was sobbing now, the sobs coming from deep within him.
“Any moles, Alfred?” Charles persisted, more authoritatively. “Any birthmarks?”
Alfred choked. “On her… her left sh-shoulder,” he managed. “A
… a brown mark.”
Charles knelt down again and pulled the woman’s wet dress from her shoulder, far enough to see a dark brown birthmark about the size of a sixpence. He rearranged the dress, stood again, and spoke to Winston. “Kitty,” he said, although he had not doubted it.
Alfred’s sobs suddenly ceased, with a harsh, half-strangled sound. “She… she was murdered, wa’n’t she?” he whispered. His voice was thin and reedy, the voice of a lost child. “Somebody slit her throat?”
“Yes,” Charles said gravely, watching the emotions chase one another across the young man’s face: disbelief, grief, rage, disbelief again. Such was death, and encounters with death. “Do you know who did it?”
The long silence was filled only with the audible rasp of Alfred’s breathing. “No,” he said at last. “O’course not. How should I know?”
Charles studied the pale face. “Perhaps you did it yourself,” he remarked in a neutral tone.
Alfred’s eyes flew wide open in unfeigned shock. “Me!” he cried. “Me? No, never! I loved her! We was… we was going to Brighton and get married, we was!”
“That’s what you say,” Charles replied, more harshly now. “But perhaps Kitty wasn’t as anxious to marry you as you to marry her. Perhaps the two of you fell into a lover’s quarrel.” He held up his hand, stemming Alfred’s violent objection. “It’s happened before, many times. A woman rejects her suitor, he turns on her, and-”
“Oh, never!” Alfred said brokenly. “Oh, I’d never do anything like that.” He was sobbing again, his shoulders shaking. “Whatever else I’ve done, I’m no killer. And not Kitty. Never Kitty, I swear!”
“But someone did it,” Charles said. “If not you, then who?”
“P’rhaps she had another lover,” Winston put in helpfully. “One of the other servants. Or someone in Woodstock. A rival, Alfred.”
“No!” Alfred howled. He dropped to his knees, raising his clenched fists as if in torment. “Kitty didn’t have nobody else but me! We was going to be married, I tell you! We-”
“Well, then,” Charles said, more soothingly, “perhaps it wasn’t another servant. Perhaps it was someone who knew why she was here at Blenheim.”
“Why the two of you were here,” Winston added.
There was a sudden silence. “Why… why we was here?” Alfred managed at last. His glance, apprehensive, darted to Winston, then back to Charles. He looked cornered.
“Yes,” Charles said. “Someone else who was in on the robbery scheme. Bulls-eye, perhaps. Could Bulls-eye have killed her?”
Alfred got clumsily to his feet. “Bulls-eye? How d’ye know about..” He stopped, sucking in his breath. His lips had turned blue and he was shivering violently. He wrapped his arms around himself in an effort to stop shaking. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anybody named Bulls-eye.”
“Of course you do, Alfred,” Charles said, unmoved. “Bulls-eye, at the Black Prince. He knew that you and Kitty were here at Blenheim, and why, and how it was all to be done.” He paused, adding thoughtfully, “Perhaps Bulls- eye was Kitty’s lover. Perhaps-”
“No!” Alfred cried. “Bulls-eye don’t care about Kitty, nor me, nor anybody. All he cares about is getting the job done.” He stopped, swallowing, seeming to realize that he had confirmed what he had tried to deny. “D’you know Bulls-eye, then?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t had that pleasure, but Mr. Churchill has,” Charles replied. “We know who he is, and where he is, and what he plans. And I think it’s possible that he killed Kitty, especially if he felt that she had become a danger to him, or a threat.” Alfred was biting his lip and Charles paused, letting that sentence sink in, before he added: “Did she say anything to you that might suggest that she knew the identity of the gang’s leader?”
Alfred was bewildered. “The… leader? She knew-?” He stopped, shaking his head back and forth, numbly. “How could she know? Nobody knows. How could-?”
“She didn’t mention a photograph to you, then?” Charles interrupted. “Or that she planned to have a go at Bulls-eye?”
Alfred was still shaking his head, but the color was beginning to come back into his face. “I don’t know anything about a picture. You.. you think Bulls-eye killed her because she knew too much?”
“I believe it’s entirely possible,” Charles said. He narrowed his eyes at Alfred. “And I should think, if you truly loved Kitty, that you would want to do something about it.”
“Do something?” Alfred cried, as if he were heart-broken. “But what can I do? What can anybody do?” He held out his hands in a gesture of despairing helplessness. “Nobody can bring her back to life!”
“But you can help us bring Bulls-eye to justice,” Charles said. “If he killed her, you can see that he goes to the gallows for what he has done.”
There was another silence. Winston broke it with a dismissive cough and an amused half-smile. “I doubt that he has the stomach for it, Sheridan. After all, there’s some danger.”
“Not the stomach?” Alfred said, between his teeth. “You’ll see what stomach I have for danger, when it’s Kitty we’re talking about. You’ll see!”
“Then you’ll do it?” Charles asked.
Alfred looked down at the corpse on the floor. “I’ll do it-for her,” he said brokenly. “If it will get him, I’ll do it.”
