‘This woman had a gold watch chain with a very unusual fob. The first one had the actual watch, you will remember …’
‘Half the well-to-do men in London have gold watches,’ Talbot snapped. ‘Probably most of them have a chain and fob of some sort.’
‘The watch was Kynaston’s,’ Pitt said levelly. ‘He admitted it. The fob he owned to as well. It has the initials “BK” on it. He said it had belonged to his brother, Bennett, and was of sentimental value to him. He said it had been stolen from him by a pickpocket, in Oxford Street, or near it.’
Talbot was silent for a moment.
Pitt waited.
‘And do you believe him?’ Talbot said at last.
‘I don’t know. There was a handkerchief like the first one as well.’
‘It means nothing!’ Talbot said sharply.
‘And the watch and fob, on two different women, both dead and mutilated, and left in the gravel pits?’ Pitt asked. ‘On the other hand, we have evidence that the Kynaston’s maid was seen alive and well sometime after the first body was found, and the second one does not resemble her.’
Something almost palpable eased inside Talbot. ‘Seen alive after the first body was found? Then for God’s sake leave Kynaston alone! You can’t prove anything! Maybe this pickpocket is your homicidal lunatic!’
‘Perhaps. But when I asked Mr Kynaston to account for his whereabouts at the time the body was left in the gravel pit, he lied about it.’
‘So he’s got some business, or pastime, he doesn’t want to discuss with the public!’ Talbot raised his eyebrows very high. ‘Haven’t we all? He was gambling, drinking, or whoring, for all I know, or care. He wasn’t murdering some wretched woman and dumping her body in the gravel pits right outside his own damn doorway!’
‘I was hoping for something definitive for the newspapers,’ Pitt explained. ‘They might consider any of the pastimes you mentioned worthy of public attention, and I’m sure we would rather they didn’t.’ He kept the smile from his face with difficulty. It might well have been more of a sneer.
Talbot started to make a remark, then thought better of it. ‘Keep me apprised,’ he ordered instead. ‘Do try to get this thing solved and out of the newspapers.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The evening darkness had closed in and it was dripping sporadic rain when Pitt reached the police surgeon at the morgue. He knew the woman from the gravel pit would have been given priority. Surely Whistler would have all the information he needed by now?
He found Whistler in his office looking tired and a little gaunt. His clothes were rumpled and his tie had come undone. A kettle was steaming gently on the top of a wood-burning stove in the corner and altogether the room was very pleasant, apart from its proximity to the morgue itself. All real ease was torn away by the knowledge that within thirty feet of them there were cold rooms with corpses in, and tables on which those same corpses would duly be cut open and the pieces of them examined.
When Pitt went in Whistler was in the act of taking his work jacket off and replacing it with a more casual one. His hands were pink, the skin a little raw, as if he had just scrubbed himself as hard as he could with an abrasive brush.
‘I was expecting you,’ he said wearily. ‘In fact I thought you’d be here waiting, like a dog for its dinner.’ He sat down behind his desk, which was covered with papers in no apparent order.
‘Would it have been worth the wait?’ Pitt asked, closing the door. He was grateful that he did not have Whistler’s job, even if his clients were beyond pain, and Pitt’s were not. They were also beyond help.
Whistler sighed. ‘Tea?’ he offered. ‘It’s colder than a witch’s heart in that damn morgue.’ Without waiting for Pitt’s reply he moved the kettle into the middle of the stove and watched while it boiled. He talked as he made the tea in a battered pewter pot, which must once have been quite handsome.
‘Cause of death is fairly obviously a very bad fall,’ he said. ‘From the look of the poor creature, might have been out of a window. Two storeys up, at least, maybe higher. Lot of broken bones, some of them downright splintered. Only good thing about it is that she probably didn’t know much about it.’
Pitt winced without being able to help it. ‘How long ago?’
‘Ah!’ Whistler poured the boiling water into the teapot and inhaled the fragrant steam. ‘That’s the more difficult part. At least two weeks ago, but I’d bet my money on more like three. But just like the other one from the gravel pit, she’d been kept in a cold place. Couldn’t have made a better job of it if I’d had her here. And I assure you, I didn’t! No apparent marks of depredation, except a little bit from insects. Hadn’t been out there more than a night. But I expect you know that. Do you take milk?’
‘Yes, please.’ Pitt was losing his taste for eating or drinking anything, even as chilled as he was.
‘Sugar?’
‘No … thank you.’
‘Got no cake. Need to stop eating so much. Cut up too many fat people and seen what’s inside ’em to want to become one.’ He passed Pitt one of the mugs. ‘Here.’
‘Thank you. So she was kept for a couple of weeks at least? You’re certain?’ he asked.
Whistler looked at him sharply. ‘Of course I’m certain! You’ve got a bloody lunatic here! The sooner you, or someone else, gets hold of him and locks him up, the better.’
Pitt asked the question he had been dreading. ‘Are you certain she was murdered?’
Whistler’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. ‘What? Man, half the bones in her body were smashed. She didn’t walk herself up to the gravel pit in the middle of the night!’
‘I’m not suggesting she put herself there,’ Pitt said patiently. ‘But could she have died from an accidental fall, and someone else put her there?’
‘Two or three weeks after she died? And for God’s sake — the mutilations! That’s not done by animals or nature — it’s grotesque, man: moral obscenity!’ Whistler took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. ‘But I suppose it’s not impossible her death itself was accidental — if you can look at it in isolation,’ he conceded. ‘But why? Why would any sane man keep the victim of an appalling accident for weeks, mutilate her, and then dump her up at the gravel pit — and right where she’d be sure to be found? If he wanted to get rid of the body, why not bury her? Or even drop her, with a few stones around her waist, in one of the shallow lakes around there? By the time the summer dried them out, she’d be unrecognisable. There wouldn’t be a cat in hell’s chance of finding out who she was, or who put her there. If she was ever found at all!’
Pitt thought about it. ‘Well, he doesn’t appear to have been interrupted, so he had time to do whatever he wanted. He must have wanted her to be found.’
Whistler stared at him. ‘We’ve got a lunatic on our hands.’
‘Perhaps …’
‘If this one isn’t, I pray to the Good Lord we never get one that fits your idea of what is!’ he said disgustedly.
‘Anything else you can tell me?’ Absent-mindedly Pitt drank the tea. For all the makeshift preparation of it, it was actually very good. After the subject of the conversation, and the fear that was forming in his mind, he was glad of its warmth.
‘I’ll write up a full report for you,’ Whistler promised. ‘But I doubt it’ll help you much. As far as I can tell, she was a well-nourished woman in her late twenties. From the state of her it’s hard to tell a lot. A few odd scars on her hands, just like the other one. Could have been a maid or laundress, or a young woman with her own house, but no one else to do the chores. But if she was poor, she still ate well. Her hair must have been beautiful, and she was tall and nicely curved in all the right places. Does that help?’ He put his cup down and added more hot water to it.
‘Not that I can see,’ Pitt admitted. ‘We’ll get the local police this side of the river to find out if anyone’s missing that it could be. Thank you, anyway.’
‘Sorry I can’t tell you when she died, closer than by a week or so. Can’t very well rule anyone out over that.’
‘Can’t even tell who put her there,’ Pitt replied. ‘For whatever that might be worth!’
Pitt thanked him and left, glad to get outside into the wind, away from the heaviness and the closed air of
