They moved more slowly, eyes to the ground, looking for footprints, signs of anyone’s passing recently.
“There, sir,” Buckler said between his teeth. “I reckon that’s ’cos something was dragged. See where it’s all bent. Some o’ their stalks is broke.”
Pitt had seen it. Something heavy had fallen and then been pulled along.
“I expect he carried Cathcart as far as he could, then dropped him here and hauled him the rest of the way,” Pitt said. He stepped forward, leading Buckler to the edge of the river. Here the weed was deeply scored, but the tide had risen and fallen four times in the last two days, and the marks were obliterated below the high-water line. There was a post where a boat could be tied, and the ridges worn on its sides made its use apparent.
Pitt stood staring at the water, rippling, dark peat browns reflecting the sun. It was several moments before he noticed the white edge of another chip of porcelain, and then another. It was Buckler who saw the mass of the rolled-up rug half sunken under the willow, brushed by the branches. At first it had looked like a drifting log, and he had ignored it.
Loath to wade into the river, or ask Buckler to do it, Pitt went back up to the garden shed and fetched a long-handled rake, and together they managed to pull the mass ashore. They unrolled it and looked at it carefully, but it had been in the mud and water too long to tell if any of the marks were blood or not.
“It was done in the ’ouse, and then ’e were carried out ’ere and put in the boat,” Buckler said grimly. “An’ ’ooever done it broke the jar an’ threw the bits down ’ere, an’ took the rug up ’cos o’ the blood. Mebbe they ’oped it’d ’ide the fact ’e were dead, an’ we’d think ’e jus’ upped an’ took off somewhere.”
Pitt was inclined to agree with him, and said so. The longer an investigation was delayed the more difficult it was. But this evidence did not answer whether the crime had been spontaneous or premeditated, simply that the killer had been in sufficient possession of his wits to act with self-preservation afterwards.
“Must a’ bin quite a big feller,” Buckler said doubtfully, “ter carry ’im down ’ere from the ’ouse an’ put ’im in the boat.”
“Or else he had help,” Pitt pointed out, although he did not believe that. There was too much emotion, too much that was violent and twisted, for a collaboration between two people-unless both were affected with the same madness.
“There’s nothing more for us here.” Pitt looked around at the quiet garden and the fast-flowing river. The tide had risen several inches even while they stood there. “We’d better go back to your station. This is your patch.”
But Superintendent Ward had no desire to take the case, and told Pitt in no uncertain terms that since the body had been found at Horseferry Stairs, and Pitt had already started to investigate, he should continue to do so.
“Besides,” he pointed out forcefully, “Delbert Cathcart was a very important photographer. Done a lot of high society. This could be a very nasty scandal indeed. Needs to be handled with a great deal of discretion!”
Tellman returned form Dover hot and tired, and after a cup of tea and a sandwich at the railway station, he went to Bow Street and reported to Pitt.
“No sign of him in Dover now,” he said with a mixture of relief at not having had to arrest a French diplomat, and disappointment because he had been denied a trip to France. “But he was there. Booked a passage across to Calais, then never turned up to go. I questioned them up and down about that, but they were absolutely certain. Wherever he is, he’s still in England.”
Pitt leaned back in his chair, looking at Tellman’s dour face and reading the anxiety in him.
“The body in the boat wasn’t Bonnard,” Pitt said. “It’s a society photographer called Delbert Cathcart. He lived in Battersea, just across the bridge from Chelsea, where he had a very nice house backing onto the river.” He told Tellman about finding the place where Cathcart had been carried down to the punt, and the broken jar and the stained rug.
Tellman sat in the other chair, frowning. “Then where’s Bonnard? Why did he take off to Dover and then disappear? Do you suppose he’s the one who killed what’s his name. . Cathcart?”
“There’s no reason to think they are connected,” Pitt said with a wry smile. He knew Tellman’s opinion of foreigners. “We’ll go and see Lily Monderell this evening.”
“His mistress?” Tellman invested the word with considerable scorn. There was a deep-rooted anger inside him against all sorts of things-privilege, injustice, greed, being patronized or ignored-but although he would have denied it hotly, he was a very moral man, and his beliefs on marriage were conservative, as were his ideas about women.
“We have to begin somewhere,” Pitt answered. “There were no signs of anyone having broken into the house, so we must presume that whoever killed him was someone he knew and let in himself. He knew of no reason to fear them. Mrs. Geddes says she has no idea who it could be. Perhaps Miss Monderell will know more.”
“Other servants?” Tellman asked. “Does this Mrs. Geddes do everything?”
“Apparently. He very often ate out, and didn’t care to have a manservant. Someone came in to do the scrubbing two days a week, and there was a gardener, but no one who knew him any better than Mrs. Geddes.”
“Then I suppose we’d best go and see this mistress,” Tellman conceded grudgingly. “Is there time for a proper dinner first?”
“Good idea,” Pitt said willingly. He would far rather find a warm, noisy public house and eat with Tellman than go home to the silence of Keppel Street and eat something alone at the kitchen table. The sight of the familiar room with its polished copper and the smell of linen and clean wood only made him more aware of Charlotte’s absence.
Tellman had formed a picture of Lily Monderell in his mind. She would be the sort of woman a man took to bed but did not marry. There would be something essentially vulgar about her, and of course greedy. She would have to be handsome or she would not succeed in her purpose, especially with someone who was an artist of sorts. Without any reason, he had seen her as fair-haired and rather buxom, and that she would be dressed flamboyantly.
When he and Pitt were shown into her sitting room in Chelsea, he was disconcerted, and yet he could not have said why. Apart from the fact that she was dark, she answered his imagined description very well. She was extremely handsome, with bold eyes, a wide, sensuous mouth, and masses of shining, dark brown hair. Her figure was very rich, and the gown she wore displayed it to fine advantage. It was a trifle ostentatious, but that might have been because she had so much to show. On a thinner woman it would have been more modest.
What upset his composure was that he did not find her unattractive. Her face was full of laughter, as if she knew some joke she was waiting to share. From the moment they stepped into the warm room with its rose- shaded lamps, she flirted with Pitt.
“I’m very sorry,” Pitt said after he had told her the news of Cathcart’s death, sparing her the details.
She sat on the sofa, her rose-red skirts billowing around her. She leaned back a little, more from habit than thought, showing off her generous body.
“Well, poor Delbert,” she said with feeling. She shook her head. “I can’t think who would want to do something so. . vicious.” She sighed. “He made enemies, of course. That’s natural when you’re really good at what you do, and he was brilliant. In some ways there was no one to touch him.”
“What sort of enemies, Miss Monderell?” Pitt asked. “Professional rivals?”
“Not who’d kill him, love,” she said with a wry smile.
Tellman noticed a slight northern accent. He was not sure where to place it, but he thought Lancashire. He did not know much about the cities outside London.
Pitt kept his gaze steady on her. “What sort?” he repeated.
“You ever seen any of his pictures?” She looked back at him without wavering.
“A few. I thought they were extremely good. Were some of his clients dissatisfied?”
Her smile widened, showing excellent teeth. “Well, I daresay you don’t know the clients,” she answered. “Did you see the lady dressed as Cleopatra. . with the snake?”
“Yes.”
Tellman was startled, but he said nothing.
“What did you think of it?” she asked, still looking at Pitt.
A flicker of uncertainty crossed Pitt’s face.
Tellman was fascinated. He wished he had seen the pictures. He wondered fleetingly if the lady in question
