spent observing rules, even in the face of terror or extremity of pain. As a boy soldier, he had stood appalled on the ridge above Balaclava and seen the charge of the Light Brigade. The carnage of the Crimea was indelible in his memory. He knew the men of the “thin red line” who had held against all the might hurled at them by the Russian Army, men who had kept their ground in face of the impossible. Hundreds had fallen, but not a man had broken ranks.
“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.”
2
Gracie 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
