the mildness of the morning, a scarlet tunic of a Yeoman of the Guard, the traditional Beefeaters who man the Tower, and the other of the two boatmen who had first found her.
Pitt climbed ashore, only just avoiding getting his feet wet on the slipway. Susannah was lying on the waterline where the high tide had left her, only her feet below the surface, a long, slender form barely crumpled, turned over half onto her face. One white hand was visible protruding from the wet, dripping cloth of her gown. Her hair had come unraveled from its pins and lay like seaweed around her neck, spilling onto the stone.
The constable turned as Pitt came ashore, recognized him and stepped back from the body.
“Morning, sir.” He looked very pale.
“Good morning, Constable,” Pitt replied. He did not remember the man’s name, if indeed he knew it. He looked down at Susannah. “When was she found?”
“‘Bout ’alf past three, sir. High tide’d be just before three, ‘cording to the boatman ’ere. Reckon as they were the first past ’ere on this side o’ the river after she were washed up, poor creature. Weren’t no suicide, sir. Poor soul was strangled, no two ways about that.” He looked sad and very solemn for his twenty-odd years. His beat was on the river’s edge, and this was not the first body he had seen, nor the first woman, but she was perhaps the first he had seen with beautiful clothes and-when the hair was pulled back, as it was now-such a passionate, vulnerable face. Pitt knelt down to look at her more closely. He saw the unmistakable finger marks purple on her throat, but from the lack of swelling or bloating on her face, he thought perhaps she had actually died of a broken neck rather than suffocation. It was a tiny thing, very tiny, but the fact that she was not disfigured eased the hurt. Possibly she had suffered only very briefly. He would think that as long as he could.
“We didn’t touch her, sir,” one of the boatmen said nervously. “’cept to make sure as she was dead, and we couldn’t ’elp ’er, poor creature.” He knew enough of the circumstances which drive people to suicide to have no judgment over it. He would have put them all in consecrated ground and left the decision to God. But he was not a churchgoing man by choice. He went only to please his wife.
“Thank you,” Pitt said absently, still looking at Susannah. “Where would she have been put in the water to be washed up here?”
“That depends, sir. Currents is funny. ‘Specially in a river like this where it twists and turns, like. Most often bodies sink at first, then come up again right about where they went in. But if she was put in on the turn o’ the tide, into the water, like, if she moved at all it could a’ bin upriver from ’ere. That’s if she were put in off a boat. But if she were put in off the shore, more like it were on the incoming tide, and she came upriver from below. And that would depend on when she were put in, as to where, if you follow me, guv?”
“So all we know for sure is that she was here when the tide turned?”
“Yer got it right,” the boatman agreed. “Bodies stay in the water different sorts of times. Depends on what passes making a wake, or if they bump summink. Things get caught and pulled sometimes. There’s eddies and currents you can’t always account for. Maybe the doc can tell yer ’ow long she’s been gone, poor thing. Then we can tell yer if she were put in then, like, just about where it would be.”
“Thank you.” Pitt looked up at Tellman. “Have you sent for the mortuary wagon?”
“Yes sir. It will be waiting up in Trinity Square. Didn’t want a whole lot of talk going on,” Tellman answered without glancing at the boatmen. If they didn’t know who she was, so much the better. The news would spread fast enough. It would be an appalling way for Chancellor to learn, or anyone else who had cared for her.
Pitt straightened up with a sigh. He should tell Chancellor himself. He knew the man, and Tellman did not. Apart from that it was not a duty to delegate.
“Get them down here to take her to the medical examiner. I must report it as soon as possible.”
“Yes sir, of course.” Tellman glanced once more at Susannah, then turned on his heel and went back to the boat, his face twisted with distaste.
A few moments later Pitt left also, climbing up the Queen’s Stairs and walking slowly around to Great Tower Hill. He was obliged to walk as far as East Cheap before he found another cab. The morning was beginning to cloud over from the north and now there were more people about. A newsboy shouted some government difficulty. A running patterer had an early breakfast at a pie stall while he studied the day’s events, getting ready to compose his rhymes. Two men came out of a coffee shop, arguing animatedly with each other. They were looking for a cab, but Pitt reached it just before them, to their considerable annoyance.
“Berkeley Square, please,” he directed the driver, and climbed in. The driver acknowledged him and set off. Pitt sat back and tried to compose in his mind what he would say. It was useless, as he had known it would be. There was no kind or reasonable way in which to break such news, no way to take the pain out of it, no way even to lessen it. It was always absolutely and unequivocally terrible.
He tried to think at least what questions to ask Chancellor, but it was of little use. Whatever he decided now, he would still have to think again when he saw Chancellor’s state of mind, whether he was able to retain sufficient composure to answer anything at all. People were affected differently by grief. With some the shock was so deep it did not manifest itself to begin with. They might be calm for days before their grief overcame them. Others were hysterical, torn with helpless anger, or too racked with weeping to be coherent, or think of anything but their loss.
“What number, sir?” the cabby interrupted his thoughts.
“Seventeen,” he replied. “I think.”
“That’ll be Mr. Chancellor, sir?”
“That’s right.”
The cabby seemed about to add something more, but changed his mind and closed the trapdoor.
A moment later Pitt alighted, paid him and stood on the doorstep, shivering in spite of the early morning sun. It was now after seven. All around the square maids were busy bringing out carpets to the areaways to be beaten and swept, and bootboys and footmen went in and out on errands. Even a few early delivery boys pushed carts, and news vendors handed over their papers for the maids to iron so they could be presented at breakfast before the masters of the houses left for the day’s business in the city.
Pitt rang the doorbell.
It was answered almost immediately by a footman who looked surprised to see someone at the front door so very early.
“Yes sir?” he said politely.
“Good morning. My name is Pitt.” He produced his card. “It is imperative I see Mr. Chancellor immediately. It is on a matter that cannot wait. Will you tell him so, please.”
The footman had worked for a cabinet minister for some time and he was not unused to matters of dire emergency.
“Yes sir. If you will wait in the morning room, I will inform Mr. Chancellor that you are here.”
Pitt hesitated.
“Yes sir?” the footman said politely.
“I am afraid I have some extremely unpleasant news. Perhaps you would send the butler to me first.”
The footman paled.
“Yes sir, if you think that’s necessary?”
“Has he been with Mr. Chancellor long?”
“Yes sir, some fifteen years.”
“Then please send him.”
“Yes sir.”
The butler came within moments, looking anxious. He closed the morning room door behind him and faced Pitt with a frown.
“I’m Richards, sir, Mr. Chancellor’s butler. I gather from Albert that something distressing has happened. Is it one of the gentlemen in the Colonial Office? Has there been a … an accident?”
“No, Richards, I am afraid it is far worse than that,” Pitt said quietly, his voice rough at the edges. “I am afraid Mrs. Chancellor has met with … has met with a violent death.” He got no further. The butler swayed on his feet as if he were about to faint. Every vestige of color fled from his skin.
Pitt lunged forward and grasped him, guiding him backwards towards one of the chairs.
“I’m … I’m sorry, sir,” Richards gasped. “I don’t know what came over me. I …” He looked up at Pitt beseechingly. “You are sure, sir? There could not be some error … some mistake as to identity?” Even as he said it his face reflected his knowledge that it could not be so. How many women were there in London who looked like
