Hyde Park Headsman

4

TOM ILES WAS a musician of very moderate ability but immense enthusiasm. There was hardly anything which dampened his natural delight, and as he strode through Hyde Park towards the bandstand, he was singing cheerfully to himself, his trumpet swinging in his hand in its leather case. His sheet music was in his pocket, folded up, which made it harder to read but so much easier to carry. It meant he could stride out with a swagger, expressive of his soaring spirits.

He fully expected to be the first to arrive; he frequently was. Although today he was even more previous than usual. The long early morning light was almost turquoise on the dew-laden grass and there were clouds of small birds chattering in the trees.

He saw the octagonal outline of the bandstand ahead and increased his pace, singing a little more loudly. Then he stopped, observing with surprise an odd sense of irritation that he was not the first after all. There was someone sitting in one of the seats, apparently asleep. Now that really was an offense! If the indigent had to sleep in the open, then they should do so somewhere else. Tom Iles would tell him so.

“Good morning, sir!” he called out from some dozen yards away. “I say—you really can’t stay here, you know. This is a bandstand and we shall be practicing any moment. Sir! I say!”

The wretched fellow was slumped with his head so far forward it was invisible.

“I say!” Tom Iles leaped up the step and then tripped over nothing in particular as his legs gave way under him. He landed hard, bruising himself painfully. His heart was beating with such violence it sent the blood thumping in his ears, his mouth was dry and his stomach lurching.

Slowly he straightened up. Yes, it was still there. He really had seen the appalling thing that was imprinted on his mind. The man sitting in the bandstand had no head. But it was there—on the floor—a little to the left of his feet, the dark hair with its silver streaks still quite smooth, the face turned down into the floor. Thank God for that!

He stayed on his knees for several more minutes. It was ridiculous, but there was no strength in him. His arms wobbled as if he had just exerted himself lifting an enormous weight. He felt sick.

He must go and tell someone. There was bound to be a constable on the beat somewhere near here! He must find him. He must stand up—but not for a minute or two. Wait until his brain stopped spinning and his stomach calmed down.

“Arledge, sir,” Tellman said, staring at Pitt. “Aidan Arledge.” He stood in front of Pitt’s desk. It was half past eight in the morning and already he looked tired. His long, thin face had a gauntness built into the bones and the lines of exhaustion around his mouth and eyes. “Found in the bandstand in Hyde Park this morning, about a quarter to seven. Trumpet player going to practice. Got there before anyone else—and found him.”

“Beheaded, I assume?” Pitt said quietly. “From the fact you brought it to me immediately.”

“Oh yes, sir, taken right off and left on the floor near his feet,” Tellman said with something not unlike satisfaction. His lip twitched as he met Pitt’s eyes.

“Who is he? What sort of a man, do you know?” Pitt asked.

“Tall, distinguished-looking, about fifty-five or so,” Tellman replied. “Thin, very light, I should think. Gentleman. Soft hands. Never done a day’s work with them.”

“How do you know his name?”

“Cards on him. Nice little silver card case, with his name engraved and half a dozen cards inside.”

“Address?” Pitt asked.

“No. Just his name. Oh, and a little musical note. Affected,” Tellman said with contempt. “Why on earth would anyone put a musical note on their card?”

“Singer?” Pitt suggested. “Composer?”

“Well certainly not in the halls!” Tellman gave a dry laugh. “His clothes were expensive, best tailors, Savile Row, shirts from Gieves.”

“Any money on him?” Pitt asked.

“Not a halfpenny.”

“Nothing at all? Not even coppers?”

“Not a farthing. Just a handkerchief, a pencil, and two sets of house keys. He must have been robbed. No one goes out without even the price of a newspaper, a cab ride, or a packet of matches.” Tellman met Pitt’s eyes, challenging them. “Funny they left the card case, though. As if they wanted us to know who he was, don’t you think? Come to that, his shirt studs were still in.”

“Maybe they were interrupted,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “More likely they didn’t want the card case. Not easy to sell a thing like that.”

“Sane,” Tellman said with a twist of his mouth. “Very sane, this madman of ours. Knows what will do him good and what won’t. But then it makes you wonder why he didn’t take the money the first time, from Winthrop, doesn’t it?”

“It makes me wonder a lot of things,” Pitt replied. He looked at Tellman’s dark, flat eyes, giving nothing. He decided to preempt the criticism he thought was in Tellman’s mind and say it himself. “I thought Winthrop’s murder was personal. Now it begins to look as if it was a lunatic after all.”

“Does, doesn’t it?” Tellman agreed. He lifted his chin a trifle, his face almost expressionless. “Maybe it isn’t a society case after all, just ordinary police work? Unless, of course, our lunatic is a gentleman?” A flash of humor crossed his eyes and vanished again. He said nothing, staring at Pitt and waiting for him to continue.

“I suppose lunacy can afflict any walk of life,” Pitt agreed, knowing that had nothing to do with what Tellman meant. “But less likely, simply because there are fewer of them. What does the medical examiner say? Any struggle?”

“No sir. No other injuries at all, or scratches. No bruises. Hit on the head, like Winthrop, that’s all.”

“And his clothes?” Pitt asked.

“Damp in a few places,” Tellman replied. “As if he lay on the ground. Muddy here and there, but nothing torn, and nothing soiled with blood, except around the neck as you would expect.”

“So he didn’t fight either,” Pitt said.

“Doesn’t look like it. Will you be dropping the case yourself then, sir?” He assumed an air of innocent inquiry.

It was absurd. His words were ambiguous, but always sufficiently respectful to keep him from charges of insolence, and underneath them his expression, his true meaning, was challenging, resentful, itching for Pitt to make a mistake professionally serious enough to lose him his position. They both knew it, although Tellman would have denied it with a smile if he had been accused.

“I should be delighted,” Pitt said, meeting Tellman’s eyes with an equally hard stare. “Unfortunately, I doubt the assistant commissioner will allow me to. Lord and Lady Winthrop seem to be of some importance, in his estimation, and that requires our very best effort, not only factually but apparently as well. However …” He leaned back a little farther in his chair and looked up at Tellman standing before the desk. He slid his hands into his pockets deliberately. “I certainly shall not take you off the case. You are far too important to it.” He smiled. “Not a good idea to take an officer off when it’s a series of murders anyway. You might have seen something too small or too subtle to put into your notes, but nonetheless of importance. One never knows. You may see something else, one day, and it will all make sense.”

Tellman glared at him.

“Yes sir,” he said with an answering smile that was a baring of the teeth, which were oddly irregular in his symmetrical lantern face. “I’m sure I shall solve it, one way or another.”

“Excellent. You’d better find out about this Aidan Arledge, who he was, if there’s any possible connection between him and Oakley Winthrop …”

“Probably just the same place,” Tellman said dismissively. “Lunatics don’t ask if people know each other.”

“I said a connection,” Pitt corrected. “Not necessarily a relationship. Did they look alike? Dress alike? Pass in exactly the same spot at the same time? Did they have some habit or interest in common? There must be some reason why our lunatic killed those two, and not any of the other people who were regularly in the park at night”

“Give ’im time,” Tellman said dryly. “That’s two in two weeks. At this rate he could do fifty in a year. That is if fifty people go on walking in the park. Which doesn’t seem very likely. I wouldn’t cross the park alone at night now.” He looked at Pitt steadily, and Pitt knew what he was thinking. They both knew the atmosphere of fear that was rising, the whispers, the jumpiness, the ugly jokes and the beginning of accusation and persecution of anyone new in an area or a trifle different. Some had even awoken memories of Whitechapel and that other awful madman never found.

“How far away was the bandstand from the Serpentine where Winthrop was found?” Pitt asked aloud.

“Just under half a mile.”

“Was he killed at the bandstand where your trumpeter found him?”

“No,” Tellman said immediately. “No blood at all, worth speaking of, and it would have been all over the place with a beheading like that. No grass on his feet even, but then the grass in the park hasn’t been cut for several days, from the look of it. None on my feet when I walked across it. But I’ll see the park keeper of course,” he added before Pitt could tell him.

“Clean wound, was it?” Pitt asked.

“No, much messier than the first. Took two or three strokes, from the look of it.” Tellman’s face crumpled in disgust in spite of himself. “Takes a pretty good blow to cut through a man’s neck. Maybe he was lucky the first time.”

“And he was hit on the head first as well?” Pitt pursued.

“Yes, looks like it. Bad bruise under the hair at the back.”

“Enough to render him senseless?”

“Don’t know. Have to see the medical examiner for that.”

“Any guess as to what time he died?”

Tellman shrugged. “About the same, midnight or soon after.”

“Witnesses?”

“Not yet, but I’ll find them.” There was a note of hard deliberation in Tellman’s voice, and looking at his face, Pitt felt sorry for any hapless passerby who refused to swear to all he knew.

“You’d better put someone else onto that, to begin with,” Pitt directed. “Find out who Aidan Arledge was, anything you can about him, where he lived, what he did, who he knew, if he owed money, had a mistress, anything you can.”

“Yes sir. I’ll put le Grange onto it.”

“You’ll do it yourself!”

“But that’s simple, Mr. Pitt,” he protested. “And probably doesn’t matter. Our lunatic won’t give a cuss who the man was. He probably never saw him before last night, and I daresay never knew his name anyway!”

“Maybe,” Pitt agreed. “But I still want a senior officer to go and speak to the widow.”

“Oh, I’ll do that.” Again Tellman bared his teeth. “Unless you think he may have been important enough you should do it yourself, sir?”

“I might. When you find out something about him!”

Tellman’s face hardened again. “Yes sir.” And without waiting to see if Pitt had any further instructions, he turned on his heel and went out, leaving Pitt angry and disturbed.

He sat still for some time, trying to absorb the impact of this new crime, the difference it made to all the conclusions he had come to, albeit tentatively. He had been so sure the murder of Winthrop was a personal crime, now this new development made nonsense of it. No sane lover, however vicious, murdered his rival, then some complete stranger as well. And if it were a grudge based on his professional life, no sailor, no matter how resentful of injustice, real or fancied, would kill an additional random victim also.

And why was Winthrop not robbed? Was it as simple as having been startled by something and fled?

But Arledge had not been murdered on the bandstand. Then where? And above all, why?

It was hard to think in the office. It was too quiet, too comfortable, and too prone to interruption.

He rose suddenly and without bothering to take his hat or jacket, strode out and down the stairs, calling over his shoulder to the desk sergeant, and went into the street.

Immediately the noise and clatter surrounded him and he felt a sudden overwhelming familiarity. This was the scene he was used to, the ordinary people pressing in on him, full of their own business, peddlers, costers, small tradesmen, women bound for markets to buy or to sell, running patterers calling out in their singsong voices the hasty rhymes of the latest news.

Around the corner out of Bow Street, along towards Drury Lane he passed pie sellers, sandwich men, and a woman with peppermint drinks, another with fresh flowers, all calling out after him, some even by name. He waved a hand in acknowledgment, but did not stop. Hansoms drove their way between slower carriages with tops open to show ladies out to see the sights, and to be seen.

He continued on southwards into the Strand. There hoardings advertised drama, music halls, concerts, and recitals. Magical names were written in giant letters: Ellen Terry, Marie Lloyd, Sarah Bernhardt, Eleanora Duse, Lillie Langtry.

Who was Aidan Arledge, and why had someone killed him so brutally? Was it really no more than the accident of having walked alone … He stopped. No, not in Hyde Park, not necessarily. They must find out where he had been killed. That was the most important thing. If it were really no more than a coincidence of place, then they must know what that place was.

Someone bumped into him, apologized icily and strode on.

“ ’Ere guv—wanna newspaper?” a ragged youth shouted cheerfully. “Another ’orrible murder in ’Yde Park! Mutilated corpse found on the bandstand! ’Omicidal madman loose in London! Jack the Ripper come back again! What are the rozzers doin’? ’Ere guv, d’yer want it or not? Read all about it ’ere!”

“Thank you.” Pitt took it absently and handed the boy a copper. He stood back from the fairway, leaning against the wall, and opened up the paper. The words were just as bad as the headlines: sensational horror, columns of speculation, and the inevitable criticism of the police. So far they had not mentioned the second victim’s name. At least Tellman had been swift enough to take the card case and keep it to himself. The widow, if there were one, should not discover her loss because some friend or servant had seen the blaring headlines in the newspaper.

He folded it up again and continued along the Strand. If it were a madman, a chance lunatic with no connection with either Winthrop or Arledge, it would be steady police work which caught him, if anything did. Tellman was good at that. Dammit, he was good at it himself! He knew the underworld and the petty thieves and forgers, macers, kidsmen, cardsharps and tricksters who would have wind of such a creature loose.

Then memory jarred his confidence. No one had caught the Ripper, no one had come anywhere near. There had been suspicions of a few people, but in the end the Ripper had eluded them all. History would remember the name with a shudder, and the superintendent who had been in charge of the case was a byword for his failure. Even Commissioner Warren had had to resign.

He wished fervently that Micah Drummond were still in charge. Promotion was a very double-sided coin. If he succeeded, Tellman could easily take the credit; if he failed, the assistant commissioner would blame him, and justly so. He gave the orders, he made the decisions.

He turned and walked back up towards Bow Street, passing a watch peddler he knew and nodding to him. Why on earth would Winthrop get into a pleasure boat with a stranger? It made no sense at all. There must have been a connection at least between Winthrop and his killer, even if not with Arledge. And he must find out more about Arledge.

He increased his pace, and reached the station with a sense of urgency.

The duty sergeant looked up, his face anxious. “Mr. Pitt, sir, Mr. Farnsworth’s here to see you, sir. And Mr. Pitt …”

“Yes.”

“He looks proper put out, sir.”

“I imagine he is,” Pitt said wryly. “But thank you for telling me.” And he stopped and took a moment to steady himself and try to prepare in his mind what he would say.

He arrived at his office with his head still a blank, and pushed the door open.

Farnsworth was sitting in the easy chair. He did not rise as Pitt came in, but merely looked up at him, his face dark.

“Good morning, sir.” Pitt closed the door and walked over to the other chair.

“Hardly!” Farnsworth snapped. “Have you seen the newspapers? Headlines in every one of them, and not surprising. Two headless corpses in two weeks. We’ve got another Ripper, Pitt, and what are you doing about it? I’ll tell you this, I don’t intend to lose my position because you don’t catch the lunatic who’s running amok. For God’s sake, sit down, man! I’m getting a crick in my neck looking at you.”

Pitt sat down immediately.

“Well, what are you doing?” Farnsworth demanded again. “Who is Arledge anyway? What was he doing in the park in the middle of the night? Was he picking up a woman? Is that the link? Were both these men picking up prostitutes, and some insane creature with a puritanical mind got it into his head to execute a kind of mad vengeance on them?” He pulled a face, doubt and anger in his eyes. “Although usually men with that kind of fixation kill the women, not the men.”

“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. “I’ve got Tellman out trying to find out who Arledge was, and everything we can about him.”

Farnsworth’s shoulders were stiff, pulling on the fine worsted of his coat.

“Tellman—Tellman? Is he good? I know that name …”

“Yes, he’s excellent,” Pitt said honestly.

“Ah—yes.” Farnsworth’s face lit with remembrance. “Drummond always spoke well of him. Bit rough, but intelligent, good at ordinary police work, knows his petty criminals. Good. Yes, use Tellman. What else?” He looked at Pitt with hard, accusing eyes, very clear light blue.

“I’ve got other men out searching the park, looking for any possible witnesses, although tonight will probably be better for that.”

“Tonight?” Farnsworth demanded with a frown. “You can’t afford to waste time until tonight, man. What’s the matter with you? For God’s sake, Pitt—can’t you see we are on the edge of another explosion of violence in the city? People are frightened. There is talk of anarchy, unrest, even murmurs of a republic. It’ll only take another string of unsolved murders like this and some revolutionary will strike a spark that will set London ablaze. You haven’t time to waste waiting around for evidence to come to you.” He thumped a tight fist into the arm of the chair, leaning forward in it uncomfortably. “We none of us have!”

“Yes sir, I am aware of that,” Pitt answered patiently. “But the most likely way for us to find a witness who may have seen something is to try those who are creatures of habit. The odd passerby who was there last night, and not ever before or again, we have no chance of finding unless they come to us. But those who go there regularly at that time will in all likelihood be there again tonight.”

“Yes, yes—I see.” Farnsworth was unable to relax, he still sat forward, all his muscles tight. “What else? You’ve got to do better than that. I don’t suppose anyone saw anything of value. This lunatic is certainly twisted, warped, mad—but that doesn’t mean he’s a fool. You’ve got to do a great deal more than hope, Pitt.” His voice rose and became sharper. “Abilene hoped with the Ripper—and look what happened to him!”

“He worked dammed hard too,” Pitt said defensively. He had not known Inspector Abilene personally, but he respected his efforts and knew he had done everything any man could to catch the Whitechapel murderer.

“And you had better work dammed hard too.” Farnsworth stared at him. “And something more. If you want to keep this office, we’ve got to get him.”

“I’ve also got men out trying to find out where the murder was committed,” Pitt added. Farnsworth was unreasonable. Even though Pitt understood the knowledge and the fear which drove him, it still angered him, though he could not afford to show it. It was a position he resented bitterly. There was no honor in placing a man so you could abuse his courage or his intelligence and leave him no recourse to retaliate, or even to defend himself. Now that he had power, he must make sure he did not do it so easily, regardless though Tellman might tempt him.

Did Farnsworth find him as irksome?

“What do you mean?” Farnsworth demanded, staring at Pitt. “Wasn’t he killed where he was found? How do you know?”

“No—no blood,” Pitt replied. “At the moment we don’t know if it was somewhere else in the park or a place entirely different, which could be anywhere.”

Farnsworth rose to his feet and began pacing the floor.

“What about Winthrop?” he demanded. “Wasn’t he killed in the boat? Isn’t that what you said before?”

“Yes—with his head over the side. We can’t prove that, but it seems extremely likely.”

Farnsworth stopped abruptly.

“Why?”

“Because there was a fresh nick in the wood of the boat corresponding in size, position and depth with where a blade would have caught it if it had struck off someone’s head over the side,” Pitt answered. “Also he had a few pieces of cut grass on his shoes. He was quite dry himself, but his head was wet.”

“Good—good. That’s definite. So Winthrop was killed in the boat, and Arledge was killed somewhere else, but you don’t know where. I still think it could be connected with a prostitute. You’d better bring in all those who work around that area—and don’t tell me it’s several hundred. I know there are well over eighty thousand prostitutes in London. One of them may have seen something, may even know who this lunatic is. Do that, Pitt!”

“Yes sir,” Pit agreed immediately. Actually it was an extremely sensible idea. So far the connection did seem the most likely. Prostitutes had their own areas, and the number he would need to see was actually relatively small. Winthrop might indeed have gone to the park for that purpose, or even have thought of it afterwards, when an opportunity presented itself. That was an answer to the seemingly impossible question of why he would have got into a pleasure boat with anyone. He could have with a prostitute, if she had expressed the desire to do so as a preliminary to her favors. Winthrop would suspect nothing, especially since he was a sailor. It might seem to him an amusing thing to do.

“Well?” Farnsworth went on. “What else? What do we say to the newspapers? Can hardly tell them we suspect the late Captain Winthrop of soliciting a whore in the park. Apart from anything else, we’d be sued. Lord Winthrop has been onto the Home Secretary, saying too little has been done.”

“Tell them the assistant commissioner has made a penetrating and lucid suggestion which the police on the case are following,” Pitt suggested soberly. “Let the newspapers work out for themselves what it is. Tell them you cannot say until it is proved, in case you do someone an injustice.”

Farnsworth glared at him, uncertain whether to suspect sarcasm or not.

Pitt was saved the necessity of explaining himself by a knock on the door, and as he answered, Police Constable Bailey came in. He was tall, sad-faced, with a sweet tooth for striped peppermint drops. He looked at the assistant commissioner apprehensively.

“What is it, Bailey?” Pitt asked.

“We have found out ’oo Arledge was, poor devil,” he replied, turning from Pitt to Farnsworth and back again.

They both spoke at once. Bailey opted to answer Pitt.

“ ’E were a musician, sir. ’E conducted a small orchestra sometimes and guested with a lot o’ other different people. Quite distinguished ’e were, in ’is own circle, like.”

“That’s quick.” Pitt looked at Bailey carefully. “How did you find out so soon?”

Bailey blushed. “Well sir, ’is wife said as ’e didn’t come ’ome last night. She didn’t realize it until this morning, like, but when she ’eard about the body bein’ found, she got upset an’ sent for us. The local constable knew it were ’er ’usband, o’ course, because ’er name’s Arledge—Dulcie Arledge, poor creature.”

Farnsworth was sitting upright in his chair.

“What else? What sort of woman is she, this Mrs. Arledge? Where do they live? What did he do, apart from music? He must have had money.”

“Don’t know about that, sir, but seems like ’e were quite famous in ’is own fashion. ’E did ’is conducting very well, so they say. As for Mrs. Arledge, she seems like a real lady, very soft-spoken, nice sort o’ manners, dressed very quiet like, although not in black yet, o’ course.”

“How old, in your estimate?” Farnsworth pressed.

Bailey looked awkward. “ ’Ard to tell a lady’s age, sir….”

“Oh for Heaven’s sake, man! Make a guess. You must have some idea. You’re not saying it in front of her!” Farnsworth said impatiently. “Forty? Fifty? What?”

“More like forty, sir, I should say, but still very pretty. One o’ them sort o’ faces that you can live with, if you know what I mean?”

“I have no idea what you mean!” Farnsworth snapped. Bailey blushed unhappily.

“Do you mean pleasing without being consciously beautiful?” Pitt asked him. “The sort that becomes more agreeable as you know the person better, rather than less so?”

Bailey’s face lit. “Yes sir, that’s exactly what I mean. The sort you wouldn’t get tired of, ’cos that’s all there is to ’er—sir.”

“A most attractive woman,” Farnsworth said sourly. “But that doesn’t mean her husband didn’t go out after whores all the same.”

Bailey said nothing, but his unhappiness registered in his features.

Farnsworth ignored him. “Find out, Pitt!” he said grimly. “Find out this Arledge’s habits, anything you can about him, where he went for his pleasures, how often he took walks in the park in the evenings, any”—he hesitated—“any peculiar tastes he might have had. Perhaps he abused women, went in for sadism or perverted behavior—something that might bring a pimp down on him.”

Pitt pulled a face.

“Don’t be squeamish,” Farnsworth said abruptly. “Good God, man, you know the situation! There’s close to hysteria over this second case. Banner headlines everywhere, and articles about police incompetence. There’s a by-election coming up, and already the candidates are out to make capital of it.”

“I’m not reluctant to do it,” Pitt explained as soon as Farnsworth finished speaking. “I simply don’t think peculiar tastes, or even sadism, would make a pimp behead a client. They don’t care, as long as they get paid and the girl isn’t marked too much to be useful anymore.”

Farnsworth looked at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “Really? Well I suppose that is your field of expertise. It isn’t something I know a great deal about.” His lip curled in distaste. “All the same, I think you’ll find that’s the answer. Pursue it, Pitt. Do all the other things, of course. See where he was killed. Get your other witnesses, if there are any, but find those women!”

“Yes sir,” Pitt agreed.

“Do it.” Farnsworth stood up, still ignoring Bailey, and went to the door. He readjusted his jacket to make it hang more symmetrically, and went out without saying anything further.

“Shall I ask Mr. Tellman to do that, sir?” Bailey said helpfully now that Farnsworth was gone. He pulled a paper bag out of his pocket and put a peppermint in his mouth.

“No.” Pitt had made up his mind. “No thank you. I’ll do that myself. You can go on looking for where he was killed. There’ll be a lot of blood somewhere. Oh—and how he was moved, if you can.”

Bailey looked startled. “ ’Ow he was moved? Well, I suppose someone carried ’im. Bit messy, like, but if you’ve just ’acked a fellow’s ’ead orf, I suppose a bit o’ blood on yer clothes in’t goin’ ter upset yer too much.”

“Bit risky, carrying a headless corpse through the park,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “And why move him? Why not leave him where he was? Unless that place would lead us to whoever killed him. Find it, Bailey.”

“Yes sir,” Bailey said dubiously. “Anything else, Mr. Pitt?”

“Not yet.”

“Yes sir. Then I’ll go and get started, sir.”

By the middle of the afternoon Pitt had been back home to Bloomsbury and changed into his oldest clothes: an ill-fitting jacket, shirt with twice-turned collar and cuffs, and boots that were scuffed on top, their soles coming apart. His trousers were frayed at the bottoms and his battered hat hid half his face. He set out for the Edgware Road, to the north of Hyde Park, and some of the warrens behind the facades, where he knew he would find the men he was looking for and, more important, the women.

It was a wild late spring day and a warm wind blew the clouds in white drifts across the sky. Late daffodils still shone gold against the grass. Nursemaids in stuff dresses pushed perambulators along the paths, and children followed after dutifully, some with horse heads on sticks or china-faced dolls. Two boys chased a hoop and a third brandished a wooden sword.

He should have loathed being dressed as he was and bound on a duty of finding pimps and prostitutes, and yet there was vitality in his step and a sense of freedom merely in being out of the station and in the open air, and even more of having no one looking over his shoulder with criticism poised on the tongue.

He turned off the Edgware Road left into Cambridge Street. Halfway along he went down the steps into an areaway and knocked on the basement door. He waited several moments, then knocked again, twice.

After a minute the door opened a crack and an eye and a nose appeared.

“Watcher want? ’ere, it’s Mr. Pitt. Come down in the world, ain’t yer? I ’eard as yer’ve bin made up ter one o’ the nobs. Threw yer out, did they? Serves yer right! Nobody should try ter get above their station wot they were born ter. Could ’ave told yer that. Yer weren’t born a gentleman, and nothing’ll make yer one. Not cleverness least of anything. Gentlemen ’ates them what’s clever. Back on the grubby cases, are yer?” The door remained firmly where it was.

“Don’t know,” Pitt prevaricated. “I could be. And yes, I’m on the grubby cases.”

The eye looked him up and down.

“I can see that. Yer looks awful. Watcher want wi’ me? I ain’t done nuffink. I don’t go in fer your kind of things.”

“Women,” Pitt said succinctly. “Some of your women work the park.”

“I ain’t sayin’ as they do or as they don’t. But wot’s it to you? They don’t go cutting people’s ’eads orf. Bad fer business, apart from why should they? It don’t make no sense. If yer think they did it, then yer should be back on the beat.” He laughed hollowly at his own joke.

“Are you going to let me in, or am I going to get every one of your girls down to the station and ask them?”

“You’re an ’ard man, Mr. Pitt, and unjust,” he complained, but the door opened and Pitt went into a pleasantly proportioned room, now appallingly overcrowded with all sorts of furniture, chairs, sofas, desks, cheval glasses, upholstered stools and a chaise longue. Nearly all of it that was upholstered was either red or sharp pink. It was extraordinarily oppressive, giving Pitt the feeling that at any moment something would fall over, although actually everything seemed to be resting quite safely on its feet.

The man who now stood in the small space in the middle of the red-and-gold carpet was of medium height with a straggly fair beard and mustache. His thin face with its aquiline nose did not seem to belong with the rest of his features. His shoulders were bent over, and his right side seemed to be withered in some fashion; his right arm was several inches shorter than the left. He looked at Pitt guardedly out of shrewd eyes.

“Life is unjust,” Pitt said without sympathy. “But make the best of it you can. I can always send Mr. Tellman here …”

The man spat and his eyes narrowed.

“ ’E’s a bastard, that one. I’d see ’im in the bottom o’ the river and dance on ’is grave, I would.”

Pitt forbore from pointing out the impossibility of such a feat.

“No doubt,” he said dryly. “Which girls do you have working the park at the moment? And don’t miss any out, because if I find out, I’ll see you’re dragged through every charge in the book.”

“Promotion’s gorn to yer ’ead,” the man said with a sour twist of his mouth. “And yer always was a nasty piece o’ work.”

“Rubbish. I never did anything to you you didn’t deserve. Nothing to what I could do, and will, if you don’t tell me who was in the park. And while we’re discussing this …” Pitt sat down on one of the overstuffed chairs. It was more comfortable than he had expected. He crossed his legs and leaned back. “Anyone new in the area?”

The man smiled and ran his long forefinger across his throat. Then as Pitt’s grin broadened, he blanched. “Oh no yer don’t. I never done it! I can run me rivals out without doin’ anything so—so dangerous.” He pulled a face. “Anyway, if I was goin’ ter do summink like that, which to my way of thinkin’ is pure vulgar and unnecessary, I wouldn’t do it in the park, now would I? If gents get too scared to come in the park on their own, what ’appens to me business, eh? I ain’t stupid. And if yer think I’d do summink like that—”

“I don’t,” Pitt interrupted impatiently. “But I think your girls might have seen something. And more than that, they might know if there is someone strange around, someone with bizarre tastes, someone who carries a large blade.”

“No. No one any odder than always. Gents what comes into the park looking fer a bit o’ fun often ’as their own tastes.”

“Which might go too far?” Pitt said with eyebrows raised questioningly. “Which a new girl might resent?”

“Oh yeah? So she chops ’is ’ead orf?”

“Not personally.”

“Well I don’t follow me girls around. Gents don’t like it.” He laughed in a soft, whispering falsetto. “Daft bastards, think no one knows about ’em, so they like to keep things private.” He grimaced, showing dark teeth. “And ’ow would I do that anyway? I don’t carry an ax wi’ me.” He struck an absurd pose. “Pardon me, sir, but me girls don’t like that sort of thing and would yer mind just bending down on the grass, like, so I can chop yer ’ead orf—just ter teach other gents wi’ nasty ideas as it don’t pay.”

“They were hit on the head first,” Pitt said sourly, but he could see the reason in the man’s words.

“If I’d knocked ’im senseless, why cut ’is ’ead orf?” The man curled his lip with contempt.

“Someone did!” Pitt said. “Tell me which of your girls was in the park on those nights?”

“Marie, Gert, Cissy and Kate,” he answered readily enough.

“Fetch them,” Pitt said tersely.

The man hesitated only a moment, then disappeared, and a few moments later four women came in looking tired and drab in the daylight. By moonlight or gaslight they may have had a certain glamour, but now their skins were pasty, their hair lusterless and full of knots, their teeth stained and chipped, several gaps showing when they opened their lips. Kate, seemingly the leader, was a tall thin woman with red hair, and looked at Pitt with dislike. She appeared about forty, but she may well have been no more than twenty-five.

“Bert says as yer looking for the geezer what done them murders in the park. Well we dunno nuffink about it.”

The other three nodded in agreement, one pulling her soiled robe around herself, another pushing a mane of fair hair away from her eyes.

“But you were in the park those nights.” Pitt made it a statement.

“Some o’ the time, yeah,” Kate conceded.

“Did you see anyone on the Serpentine around midnight?”

“No.” Her face filled with amusement. Pitt had spoken to her several times before over one thing or another. She had been a seamstress until she became pregnant. Sewing coats at sevenpence ha’penny for a coat and by working a fifteen-hour day she could make two shillings and sixpence; but out of this she had to pay threepence for getting the buttonholes worked and fourpence for trimmings. Even eighteen hours a day was not enough to keep herself and her child. She had taken to the streets to earn a day’s wages in an hour. Let the future take care of itself. As she had said to Pitt, what was the use of a future if you didn’t live beyond today?

“Gents like ter be a bit more private, like, even if they’ve a fancy for the open an’ in an ’urry. Yer ever tried it in one of them little boats? They tip over awful easy.”

Pitt smiled back at her. “I had to ask. Have you ever seen Captain Winthrop?”

“Yer mean was ’e a customer?”

“If you like. Or even just seen him walking?”

“Yeah—I’ve seen ’im a couple o’ times, but ’e weren’t a customer.”

Pitt grunted. He had no idea if she was telling the truth or not. She had looked at him with total candor, and that in itself made him vaguely dubious.

“Look, Mr. Pitt,” she said, suddenly serious, “it weren’t nothink to do with any o’ us, and that’s Gawd’s truth. Yer might get the odd bloke what gets stuck wi’ a shiv. Wee Georgie’s good at that, but it ain’t no good for business ter get violent. Puts people orf, and then we don’t eat. This ain’t one o’ us, it’s some geezer wot’s a real nutter. An’ it’s no use asking us ’oo, ’cos we don’t know.” She looked at the other girls.

Cissy pushed her blond hair out of her eyes again and nodded in agreement.

“We don’t like it no more’n you do,” she said, sucking on a rotten tooth and wincing, putting her hand up to her jaw. “Makes people un’appy about goin’ out, it does. They’re all spooked. And that’s our patch.”

“Yeah,” one of the other two agreed. “It in’t as if we could just move uptown, like. Fat George’d do us if we got onto ’is girls’ patch.” She shivered. “I in’t scared o’ Fat George. ’E’s just a bucket o’ lard. But that Wee Georgie, ’e scares the ’ell out o’ me. ’E’s a real evil little swine. I reckon as ’e in’t right in the ’ead. The way ’e looks at yer.”

“Eeurgh.” Cissy pulled a face and hugged herself.

“But it don’t make no sense fer ’im to cut nobody’s ’ead orf,” Kate insisted. “An’ ’onest, Mr. Pitt, we don’t know nothink about anyone around what’s a real nutter. There in’t nobody sleeps out that we knows of. Is there?” She looked at the others.

They all shook their heads, eyes on Pitt.

“Sleeping rough in the park?” Pitt suggested

“Nah. There’s them as sleeps rough, or tries ter,” Kate agreed. “But the park keeper is pretty ’ard. Comes and moves ’em on. And o’ course there’s rozzers ’round every now and again. That’s another reason why most gents don’t fancy doing their business in the park. Makes yer look a right fool ter get caught by a passin’ rozzer. We just makes acquaintance there.”

There was no point in asking if they had seen Aidan Arledge. His description was that of a hundred men who might have been in the park.

“See anything unusual the night of the second murder?” he asked, without any real hope of a useful answer.

Kate shrugged. “Some amateur tried to get on our patch and Cissy pulled ’er ’air out …”

“I did not!” Cissy protested. “I just give ’er a nice civil warning, like.”

“Sure she was an amateur?” Pitt asked. “She wouldn’t have had a pimp somewhere behind, who’d—” He stopped. It was too unlikely to be worth pursuing.

Kate gave him a wry glance.

“Seen no one else ’cept the usual gents,” she said, pulling a face.

“No one else at all?” he insisted.

“A rozzer a couple o’ times, but ’e don’t bother us if we behave proper and don’t accost”—she used the word with heavy sarcasm—“any gentlemen what’s taking a quiet respectable stroll by ’isself. ’E in’t a bad sort. ’E knows we gotter eat like anyone else. An’ the gentlemen wot pays ’is wages wouldn’t like to be driven out o’ their bit o’ pleasure.”

“Who else? Think, Kate! There is someone—someone with an ax or a cutlass …”

“Gawd!” She shivered. “Will yer quit yappin’ on about it! I jus’ saw ordinary-lookin’ gents, one or two wi’ a skinful, the rozzer, the park keeper goin’ ’ome wi’ ’is machine, or somethink. It were real quiet.”

“It’ll be a bloody sight quieter now,” Gert said angrily. She looked up at Pitt. “Why the ’ell can’t yer catch the bleedin’ lunatic wot’s doin’ this and let us get on wi’ our business? It ain’t safe for no one anymore. I thought that was what the bleedin’ crushers were supposed to be for? To make the place safe!”

“I don’t think making it safe for ladies of trade was what the gentlemen of the government had in mind at the time,” Pitt said wryly. “Then—on the other hand …”

Kate gave a sharp laugh. Gert pulled a face.

“Were you anywhere near the bandstand?” Pitt asked, looking at them one at a time.

They all shook their heads. Again there was no way of telling whether they were speaking the truth, but he thought they probably were. If anyone had seen the corpse there would have been screams, a commotion. Word would have spread.

“I see.”

He thanked them and left, walking out past a sour and uncharacteristically curious Bert. He was afraid for business, the only sensitive area in his soul. Pitt ignored him and went out into the street. He did not dislike the women. He knew too many of their stories, and even the knowledge of drink and disease, vulgarity, manipulation and greed did not alter the fact that for almost all of them, there was little other chance of survival in London. They were unemployable as domestic servants, although that was how many of them had begun. One had to have references. A charge of immorality, true or not, an accusation of thieving, even if the mistress had merely mislaid an ornament or a pin, a comb, an earring—any of a dozen tiny items, it made no difference; a girl without a character reference would get no other post. There was no redress, and seldom a second chance. More than one handsome parlormaid had found herself on the streets because the master would not keep his hands off her.

Others found the sweatshops, match factories or markets too hard, far too little reward. The risk of disease on the streets was high, but then it was high anyway. At least they were less likely to starve to death.

Men like Bert, or the other pimp, Fat George, he regarded in a totally different light. And the sadistic and perverted Wee Georgie he would have seen dead with pleasure.

But what the women said made sense. He thought about it as he went back down the Edgware Road, passing peddlers and costermongers and a woman selling peppermint drink. He stopped and bought a sandwich from a stall, and a mug of tea. He walked on slowly, listening to the chatter, gossip, haggling and abuse that ebbed and flowed around him. Occasionally he was greeted by name, and he replied briefly.

Twice he heard someone say “The Headsman,” and knew whom they meant. Already the horror was there, the sudden silence and the chill, even in the sun and the bustle of the streets. There was fear—cold, gray fear—underneath the banter and the attempts to make a joke of it.

Was there a madman loose? Or was there some connection between Captain the Honorable Oakley Winthrop, R.N., and the conductor Aidan Arledge, something personal and so dreadful it had brought them both to their deaths?

He increased his pace till he was striding along the footpath so swiftly people scattered in front of him, grumbling about his manners.

“Hey?” one man yelled indignantly. “They put out the fire in 1660! Yer too late!”

“It was 1666!” Pitt yelled back at him, correcting his history with satisfaction.

Back in the office in Bow Street, le Grange was waiting for him. As soon as he saw Pitt’s attire his ingenuous face filled with surprise and incomprehension.

“Are you all right, sir? You look—well …”

“Yes I am quite all right, thank you,” Pitt answered, going around him and sitting down at the desk. “Have you something to report?”

“Yes sir. At least, Mr. Tellman said as I should come and say as there isn’t really anything new … sir.”

“Did he?” Pitt was irritated. That was one slip of protocol he had never indulged in, sending a sergeant to Micah Drummond to report progress. Either he had ignored him completely or he had come himself. “So Mr. Tellman has achieved nothing at all?”

“Oh no, sir.” Le Grange looked upset. “That ain’t what I mean, sir, not at all. ’E’s been very busy. Never stopped, in fact. ’E’s seen the bandsman what found Arledge, but ’e don’t know nothing. Just unfortunate, you might say. And o’ course ’e did question the park keeper, same as before, but ’e don’t know nothing either. Thoroughly scared he were.”

“Of Tellman or the lunatic?” Pitt asked with only a thread of sarcasm.

Le Grange weighed his answer for several moments. “Of Mr. Tellman, I think, sir,” he said at last. “Mr. Tellman being there, like, and the lunatic not.”

“Very pragmatic,” Pitt remarked.

“What, sir?”

“A good choice. What else?”

Le Grange looked at Pitt carefully. He took a deep breath.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, you shouldn’t ’a gone questioning the criminal element yerself. There ain’t no need. And Mr. Tellman’s got a real skill at it. ’E don’t waste no time bein’ nice, and nobody tells ’im lies. ’E won’t stand fer it. There are ways, sir, and it ain’t what a senior officer like yourself needs to be doing.”

“Indeed?” Pitt felt both insulted and excluded. Le Grange was telling him plainly as he dared that Tellman was better at the job.

“Well sir.” Le Grange was insensitive to danger. “It’s beneath you now, sir, isn’t it?”

“No it’s not. I learned some very useful things from some of the prostitutes. They don’t think it’s a lunatic at all.”

“No sir?” le Grange said politely, disbelief all through his bland face. “Well I wouldn’t take much notice o’ what them sorts o’ people says. They ain’t exactly noted for their truthfulness, are they? Mr. Tellman says as they’d sell their mothers fer a flatch I mean an ’a’penny to you, sir. And beggin’ your pardon again, sir, but you’re too much the gentleman with ’em. They’ll run rings ’round you.”

“Is that what Mr. Tellman says?” Pitt said quickly.

Le Grange blanched. “Well—yes sir—in a manner o’ speaking. This is a real bad case, sir. We got no time to pussy around wi’ people, especially that sort.”

“And do you think they know who killed those men, le Grange?”

“Well …”

“Don’t you think they’d be willing enough to help us if they could?”

Le Grange’s face softened with amusement. “Oh no, sir. That’s where you got them wrong. They ’ate us. They’d not give us the time of day, willing like.”

“No, le Grange,” Pitt corrected. “That’s where you are wrong, and Tellman, if he agrees with you. They don’t give a toss about us one way or the other. What they do care about is business. And believe me, the Hyde Park Headsman is bad for business—very bad.”

Le Grange sucked in his breath sharply as realization dawned on him. Gradually the full understanding came to him of just what Pitt meant, and with it the dawning of respect.

“Oh—well. Yes, I see. I suppose so.”

“indisputably so,” Pitt agreed. “And you may report that back to Mr. Tellman when you see him. Find any witnesses yet?”

“Nothing very good.” Le Grange’s face was pink and he moved from one foot to the other. “Arledge definitely weren’t there at ten o’clock. We got a judy what took a customer there after then, and she swears there weren’t no one anywhere near, or she’d not ’ave—well …” He stopped, not sure what words to use.

“Quite. Is that all?”

“No sir. Mr. Tellman went to see the widow, poor soul.”

“And?” Pitt demanded.

“Well sir, ’e says she’s a very decent sort of lady—”

“For Heaven’s sake, le Grange!” Pitt exploded. “What did you expect? That she’d come to the door in scarlet pantaloons and a feather in her hair?”

Le Grange stared at him in total consternation.

“Of course she’s a decent woman,” Pitt said in exasperation. “What did he learn? What time did Arledge go out? Did he go alone? Where did he say he was going, and what for? A walk, to meet someone, to visit someone?”

Le Grange looked aggrieved.

“She said ’e went out about a quarter past ten, sir, just for a breath of air. ’E did that sometimes. She weren’t worried because it’s the sort o’ thing gentlemen do on a spring evening, especially if they live near the park.”

“Where do they live? You didn’t say.”

“Mount Street.”

“I see. What else did Mrs. Arledge say?”

“She weren’t anxious when she didn’t ’ear ’im come ’ome, because she were very tired that night, and she just went ter bed and fell asleep straight orf. It was only in the morning when ’e didn’t come down for breakfast that she got worried.”

“And did she know Captain Winthrop?”

Le Grange’s face fell.

“Mr. Tellman didn’t ask?” Pitt opened his eyes very wide. “No sir, I don’t recall as ’e said. But if it were a lunatic, sir, what difference would that make?”

“None at all. But if it wasn’t, then it might make all the difference in the world.”

“Must be, sir. Mightn’t ’a bin, just the one. But two, that’s the work of a madman, sir.” Le Grange’s smooth face shone with conviction.

“That’s Tellman’s opinion?”

“Yes sir.” Le Grange was aware of Pitt’s irritation, and for the first time it discomforted him. “Maybe Wee Georgie’s gone too far at last,” he suggested. “ ’E’s a proper nasty little creature. Mr. Tellman’s always said that one day ’e’d swing.”

“I hope so,” Pitt said with feeling. “But not for beheading Captain Winthrop. Wait till we got a prostitute with a shiv in the back.”

“Fat George could ’ave done it. ’E’s as strong as an ox.”

“He’s probably as heavy as one, but why would he behead two perfectly ordinary gentlemen walking through the park?”

“Maybe they weren’t ordinary?” le Grange offered. “Mr. Tellman says as some o’ these fancy gents ’as very funny tastes. ’E knew o’ one what liked ’is women ter—”

“And did they murder him?” Pitt interrupted.

“Well—no—they just charged ’im double.”

“Precisely. Murder is bad for business, le Grange, and whatever else Fat George is, he’s a businessman. Go and find out more about Aidan Arledge. I don’t suppose you’ve discovered where he was killed yet, have you?”

“Well—no sir, not yet.”

“Then get on with it!”

“Yes sir! Will that be all, sir?”

“Yes it will.”

Le Grange beat a hasty retreat, leaving Pitt wondering if he were capable of changing his loyalties from Tellman to him. How many of the other men felt the same? The sense of well-being with which Pitt had strode across the park had now totally withered away. He felt hemmed in. Farnsworth on one side was frightened for the reputation of the police, and no doubt feeling the pressure of it through the public demanding an arrest; and on the other, Tellman was growing more and more resentful at Pitt’s promotion, and his contempt for him was increasing by the day. He took no trouble to conceal it from the other men, in fact it seemed he enjoyed to take them along with him.

Whatever had made Pitt accept Micah Drummond’s offer? It was not the right job for him. He had not the nature nor the social position. He was not a diplomat and he was certainly not a gentleman.

He would go and see Mrs. Arledge himself. There must be a connection between the two men somewhere, unless it really was a random lunatic.

He was outside in Bow Street walking along the pavement when two ladies skirted around him, moving at least two yards to the left. Then he remembered he was not dressed as a superintendent in charge of Bow Street police station, and certainly not in a fit state to visit the widow of a gentleman.

He returned home a little after six, tired and dispirited, longing to sit down in the warmth of the kitchen, have a good meal, tell Charlotte what had happened, what he knew, and above all to share his fears and doubts about himself and the job. She would encourage him, tell him he was perfectly equal to it. She might not know, and her words would spring more from loyalty than any understanding of what was really involved, but nonetheless he would feel immeasurably better for it.

But when he neared the kitchen door there was no one there except Gracie.

“ ’Ell?, sir,” she said cheerfully, her bright little face lighting up with pleasure. She was very neatly dressed, her collar clean, her apron starched and immaculate, ribbons tied tightly behind her tiny waist. She looked freshly scrubbed and beaming with importance. “Yer supper’s ready, sir, an’ I can get yer a bowl of ’ot water right away, an’ another for yer feet if you like?”

“Thank you,” he accepted. “One will be enough.”

She looked him up and down dubiously. “What about a tub, sir? You bin in them rookery kind o’ places again, ’aven’t yer?”

“Yes.” He sat down on one of the hard chairs and without asking she bent in front of him and unlaced his boots. “Where’s Mrs. Pitt?” he asked.

“Oh, she’s still at the new ’ouse, sir. Like ter be there all evenin’, I shouldn’t wonder,” she replied, standing up and going to fetch a basin of steaming water. “There’s a terrible lot ter be done, sir, an’ she said as I was to make your supper—that was if you came ’ome for supper, o’ course. An’ I done some lamb stew for yer, sir, wi’ potatoes an’ onions an’ some ’erbs from the new garden.” Her eyes were bright with pride in it.

He swallowed his disappointment with difficulty. Charlotte had been away so often lately he was beginning to feel unreasonably resentful. And it was unreasonable, he knew that. She was working at the new house with builders, decorators, plumbers and so on, things he would have done himself had he the time, but none of those arguments stopped the feeling of having been let down.

“Thank you, Gracie,” he said somberly. “It sounds excellent. Where are the children?”

“Upstairs, sir. I told ’em not to bother yer till you’d ’ad yer supper.” She screwed up her face and regarded him narrowly. “Yer lookin’ a little peaked, sir. Shall I get yer summat ter eat before yer change yer clothes? I’m sure it don’t matter, not in the kitchen, like.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Thank you,” he accepted. “That would be a good idea.”

She looked relieved. It was a big responsibility Charlotte had left her with. She was not a cook, just a maid-of-all-work who was day by day growing into a mixture of housemaid, parlormaid and kitchen maid, with a good deal of nursery maid as well. She was desperately eager to please him, and not a little in awe. She had been even prouder of his promotion than some of his family.

Hastily she set about mashing potatoes and serving them with a thick, deliciously aromatic stew, then sat down at the end of the table to await his further needs or instructions. She regarded him steadily, still a small pucker between her brows.

“Would you like some pudding, sir?” she asked at length. “I got some treacle sponge.”

“Yes, yes I would.” Treacle sponge was one of his favorites, which he thought she knew.

Her face lit up again, and she forgot to behave with the new dignity she had assumed and scrambled off the seat to get it for him. She presented it with a flourish.

“Thank you,” he accepted. Actually it was extremely good, and he told her so.

She blushed with pleasure.

“Yer gettin’ closer ter catchin’ the ’Eadsman?” she asked with concern.

“Not much.” He continued eating, then thought that was a bit abrupt. “I have been asking the local prostitutes if they knew of anyone who has been abusing the girls and brought a pimp down on them, but they say not. They’ve none of them seen anything, no one living in the park or wandering around.”

“D’yer believe ’em?” she asked skeptically.

He smiled at her. “I don’t know. It would take a lot for a pimp to kill a customer, if he paid—let alone two.”

“Maybe they would if the customer marked a girl, like?” she said thoughtfully. “That’s damaging goods. If you break summat in a shop, yer ’as ter pay for it”

“Quite true,” he agreed, his mouth full of sponge and treacle.

“Yer like a nice ’ot cup o’ tea?” she offered.

“Yes—please.”

She got up and went over to the kettle, apparently lost in contemplation. Several minutes later she returned with a mug full of tea and set it on the table. She did not even seem to have considered bringing the whole teapot.

“Gracie?” he said questioningly.

“Yes sir? Is that too strong?”

“No, it’s just right. What are you thinking about, the girls in the park?”

Her face cleared and she looked at him out of innocent eyes.

“Oh, nuffink really. I ’spec they told yer the truth. Why not?”

It was a wholly unsatisfactory answer, but he did not know why. He drank the tea and thanked her again, then excused himself. He must go upstairs and change into his best clothes. Since Charlotte was not home, he would go and visit the widow of Aidan Arledge.

It was early evening when he finally passed his card to Dulcie Arledge’s butler in Mount Street and then was shown into a charming withdrawing room facing onto a garden with a long lawn sloping down to an old wall. The comer of a conservatory was just visible around the edge of a clump of lilies, the last light gleaming on its glass panes. Dulcie Arledge herself was naturally dressed entirely in black, but it could not mar the delicacy of her skin or the softness of her brown hair. She was as Bailey had said: a woman full of grace and pleasantness, with the sort of features that were not ostentatiously beautiful, yet carried their own regularity. There was nothing in her to offend. In every detail she was comely and feminine.

“How courteous of you to come in person, Superintendent,” she said with a gesture of acknowledgment “However, I fear I can tell you little beyond what I have already said to your men.”

She led him over to a chair upholstered in a pattern of damask roses, its wooden arms heavily carved. Another sat opposite it, complementing the deeper wine-red of the curtains and muted pink of the embossed wallpaper. The proportions of the room were perfect, and in the few moments in which he had to notice such things, the furniture appeared to be rosewood.

She indicated one of the chairs, and as he accepted, sat in the other herself.

“Nevertheless, Mrs. Arledge,” he said gently, “I would appreciate it very much if you would recount the events of that evening to me, as you recall them.”

“Of course. My poor husband went out for what he intended to be a short stroll for a breath of air—shortly after ten, as I recall. He did not intimate that he had expected to meet anyone, or indeed that he would be longer than twenty or thirty minutes. We do not always retire at the same time.” She smiled apologetically. “You see, Aidan was frequently out in the evenings because he conducted at concerts and recitals. It could be after midnight before he returned home, or even later if the traffic were dense and he found it difficult to obtain a hansom.” In spite of the horror of the circumstances there was a warmth about her that brought to mind instantly Bailey’s words about her being a woman of beauty.

“Waiting for someone can be so frustrating, don’t you find?” she asked quietly. “There were many occasions when I did not stay up for him. I was willing to of course, but …” She caught her breath. “He was most considerate.”

“I understand,” Pitt said quickly, wishing he could find any way at all of lessening the hurt for her. “Mrs. Arledge, my sergeant tells me Inspector Tellman did not ask you if you were acquainted with Captain Oakley Winthrop.”

“Oh dear.” She looked at him with alarm and then comprehension. She had very fine eyes, clear and dark blue. “No he didn’t, but it would not have helped if he had. I’m afraid I had never heard the name until the poor man was killed. Does that mean something, Superintendent?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.”

“Of course my husband knew a great number of people whom I never met, admirers of his work, musicians and so on. Could Captain Winthrop have been such a person?” she asked gravely.

“Possibly. We shall have to ask Mrs. Winthrop.”

She looked away and her face was filled with pity.

“Poor soul,” she said softly. “I know death can come at any age, but one does not look to be widowed when not yet forty. I believe that is her age. I am afraid I do not read newspapers myself—my husband did not care that I should—but one hears talk, even among servants.”

“Yes, I would judge Mrs. Winthrop to be of that age. I believe she has two daughters very recently married. Mrs. Winthrop is still young.”

“I’m so sorry.” The hands in her lap tightened a little.

Pitt would have given a great deal to be able to avoid doing anything but asking her a few obvious questions and offering her what little sympathy he could. He admired her composure, her lack of bitterness, anger or self-pity, any of which would have been so easy to understand.

But duty compelled him to pursue the more personal lines of inquiry, and as soon as possible. It was an intrusion which he felt even more acutely than usual.

“Mrs. Arledge, we need to look closely at your husband’s effects to see if we can find anything which will provide a connection between him and Captain Winthrop. I realize it is not pleasant for you, and I am deeply sorry, but it is unavoidable. I really have no alternative.”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “I understand. Please do not feel that you have to apologize, Superintendent.” She frowned, her blue eyes clouded. “Was it not some madman who chose his victims at random? Surely such a person has no reason in his mind?”

“We don’t know yet, Mrs. Arledge. At this point we must examine every possibility.”

“I see.” She looked away across the room at a vase of narcissi whose sharp, sweet perfume was noticeable even from where they sat. “Yes, of course you must. What would you like to see first? Your man, I forgot his name, has already looked, but perhaps he missed something.”

“Inspector Tellman,” Pitt supplied.

“Yes—yes I do recall now that you repeat it,” she said briefly. “He did not take very long. I rather gathered from what he said that it was”—she swallowed—“a maniac, and he expected no sense.”

“I should like to see his papers.” Pitt rose to his feet. He felt like apologizing again, but it would only make the intrusion the more apparent. Her graciousness, her quiet courage, awoke in him both a deeper respect for her and an instinctive liking, and made his official task the more unpleasant. “Does he have a study?” he asked as she rose also, moving with remarkable grace and balance, as if in her youth she might have been a dancer. “And after that, perhaps his dressing room …”

“Of course. If you would come this way I shall show you myself.” She led him out of the withdrawing room, across the parquet-floored hall and into a large, airy study with surprisingly few books, no more than fifty or sixty, and none of the heavy ornamentation he had found in so many rooms which were ostensibly studies, but actually places in which to receive visitors and to impress them with one’s wealth and taste. It gave the immediate impression of actually being a place of work.

“Here you are, Superintendent,” she invited. “Please look at anything you feel may be helpful.”

He thanked her as she excused herself, and felt even more intrusive. It was perfectly customary to examine the effects of a murdered person, and yet if he were the victim of a lunatic, merely the place and the time choosing him rather than any other, this was a pointless affront. Still, now he was here he must do it. The only thing that justified it in his mind was the finding of Winthrop in the boat. Surely he would never have got in there willingly with a stranger accosting him in the dark? And from the evidence of his shoes, he had walked there. And there had been no struggle.

And Arledge had not struggled either. He must have been attacked from behind, and without warning, or he too knew his assailant.

He began with the contents of the desk and read through them systematically. It was surprisingly interesting. Arledge had been a man of humor and sophisticated tastes, but without pomposity. Certain letters showed him also to have been generous both with his means and with his praise for others in his field. The more Pitt read, the more he felt the loss of a man he would have both liked and respected, a feeling very different from that woken in him by what he knew of the late Captain Winthrop.

What could these two possibly have had in common?

There were many books on music, piles of rough notes for composition, at least fifty scores from works varying from the operas of Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan to piano concert! by Bach and the later chamber music of Beethoven. Nothing whatever suggested an acquaintance with Oakley Winthrop or any of his family.

After the study, he was shown by the maid to Aidan Arledge’s dressing room, and after asking if there was anything else he wanted, she left him to search.

On the tallboy he found a silver-backed hairbrush, shaving equipment and personal toiletries. In the top drawer there were a handful of collar studs, shirt studs, cuff links and a bloodstone ring. It was a very small collection for a man who made frequent public appearances in evening dress. It was modest in the extreme.

He turned away and looked in the wardrobe. There were rows of suits, and in the drawers at least twenty shirts, most of them for ordinary daytime wear. He continued to look at the rest of the room. There were a few mementos, a photograph of Dulcie in a silver frame. She was dressed in riding habit, not found as one might wear in Rotten Row, but with the timeless elegance of a countrywoman who rode to hounds. She was smiling out at the camera, confident and happy. There was a pleasing blur of trees behind her. In a chest of drawers there were personal linen, handkerchiefs, and socks, the items one might expect.

He had not found a diary either in the study or here. The pair to the silver-backed brush was absent. There were no evening studs for the shirts.

He reviewed everything carefully, closed the drawers, and went down the stairs to knock on the withdrawing room door.

“Come in, Superintendent,” she invited.

“Did your husband have dressing rooms at the conceit hall, Mrs. Arledge?” he asked, closing the doors behind him. He loathed this. Already there was a dark premonition in his mind and he was angry and hurt on her behalf.

“Oh, no, Superintendent.” She smiled at him very slightly, a shadow in her eyes in spite of the calm still in her voice. “You see, he conducted in many different places. In fact, it was seldom the same hall two weeks in a row.”

“Then where did he change into his evening clothes?” he said quietly.

“Why here, of course. He was most meticulous about his appearance. One has to be when one is watched by a whole audience.” Her voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “Aidan always used to say it was a terrible discourtesy to be improperly dressed, as if you did not consider your audience worthy of your best effort.”

“I see.”

“Why do you ask, Superintendent?” She looked at him with a deepening frown, her eyes searching his face.

He avoided a direct answer.

“If there were a late performance, did your husband always come home, or did he perhaps stay with friends, other musicians, maybe?”

“Well—I think he may have once or twice.” Now she was hesitant, her expression touched with anxiety, even the beginning of fear. “As I mentioned before, I did not always wait up for him.” She bit her lip. “You may think that less than dutiful of me, but I do not find it easy to keep late hours, and Aidan would be very tired when he came in, and simply wish to retire straightaway. He asked me not to trouble myself by waiting up. That is why I did not …” Now she was controlling herself only with an effort. “That is how I did not miss him that night.”

He felt a pity for her so sharp it caught his breath. His mind was full of confusion. How could a man as sensitive as the one suggested by the letters in his study have betrayed a woman like this?

“I understand, ma’am. It seems very sensible to me,” he said gently. “I do not expect my wife to wait up for me when I am late. Indeed I should feel extremely guilty if she did.”

She smiled at him, but the fear in her eyes did not lessen, indeed if anything it increased. “How very sympathetic of you. Thank you so much for saying so.”

“Was Mr. Arledge conducting a performance that evening?”

“No—no.” She shook her head. “He spent the evening at home, working on a score, one he said was very difficult. I rather think that is why he wished to go for a walk, in order to clear his head before retiring.”

“Does he have a valet, ma’am?”

“Oh yes, indeed. Do you wish to speak with him?”

“If you please.”

She rose to her feet.

“Is there something wrong, Superintendent? Did you find something—something to do with the Winthrops?”

“No, not at all.”

She turned away.

“I see. You prefer not to tell me. I beg your pardon for having asked. I am not—not used …”

He wished intensely that there was something gentle and comforting he could say, something even remotely true that would ease the present pain in her, and the additional, fearful wound he now was almost sure was to come.

“It may prove to be of no meaning at all, Mrs. Arledge. I would prefer not to leap to conclusions.” It was futile, and he knew it even as the words were on his lips.

“Of course. The valet,” she agreed, her words equally hollow, and she did not meet his eyes. She rang the bell, and when the maid appeared, sent for the valet to meet Pitt in the study.

But the valet’s answers only clouded the issue the more. Either he had no idea where the other silver-backed brush was or he refused to say. Nor did he know where to find the evening studs. He looked confused and embarrassed, but Pitt had no sense that it was guilt.

Walking home slowly along Mount Street towards the park, Pitt had the sad empty feeling that for all his humor and courtesy, Aidan Arledge was far less uncomplicated than he had seemed at first. There was something hidden, something unexplained.

Where did he go after late performances? Where were the things that Pitt had expected to find, and had not? Why had he two sets of keys? Did Aidan Arledge keep a second establishment somewhere, a place his wife knew nothing of?

Why? Why would a man keep a secret establishment?

He could think of only one answer: obvious, glaring and painful. He had a mistress. Somewhere there was a second woman mourning his death, a woman who dared not show her grief, dared not even claim his acquaintance.

Gracie had made up her mind while she was sitting at the kitchen table watching Pitt eat his treacle pudding, but it was after midnight before she could put her plan into effect. She had to be quite sure everyone in the house was asleep. If they were to catch her sneaking out, there would be no acceptable excuse she could give, and her whole venture would be aborted. And after last time, Pitt would be furious and perhaps even dismiss her. That thought was unendurable. But so was the knowledge that he was being criticized in the newspapers by people who did not know what they were talking about and were not fit to speak to him, let alone air their opinions.

So there was nothing for it but to do her best to find out something. Added to which, with the mistress too busy with the new house to do anything, and Miss Emily all caught up in the by-election, who else was there to help?

Outside on the pavement she walked smartly towards the main thoroughfare. She had enough money to get a hansom to the park, first, and back again, of course. She had borrowed it from the fish money. It was not strictly honest. But then if she did not have any of the fish herself tomorrow, it would not be stealing either.

She did not look the part of a prostitute. No girls were out for business dressed in a maid’s stuff gown, high to the neck, long-sleeved, and cut in plain gray-blue. But then she did not want to succeed in attracting anyone. It was information she was seeking, not trade. Also there was the danger of being seen as a rival and driven off, perhaps violently, by a protective pimp. Like this she would hardly occasion any such feelings. Mockery, perhaps, laughter, even pity, but not fear.

It took her several minutes to find a cab and convince the driver she had the fare, and then another quarter hour to reach the park and be set down.

The cab drove away, the horse’s hooves loud on the deserted road, the carriage lamp disappearing towards Knightsbridge. The darkness closed in and the night seemed huge around her and full of strange sounds, any of which could be someone coming, an idle passerby, someone taking a late stroll, a man looking for a prostitute, a woman looking for trade, a pimp guarding his territory, the Hyde Park Headsman …

“Stop it,” she said aloud to herself. “Pull yourself together, you stupid girl.” And with that admonition, also aloud, she started to walk briskly along the footpath, her sharp step ringing out till it sounded like a beating heart in the night, and she realized she appeared far too purposeful to attract the slightest attention from the people she wished.

Actually it took her nearly an hour, by which time she was cold, frightened and at the point of abandoning the whole venture, before a tall, angular woman with straw-colored hair and a cheap dress came up and looked at her with suspicion and contempt.

“Ain’t no omnibuses pass ’ere, dearie,” she said sarcastically. “And wi’ a face like yours, it’s about all yer gonna catch.”

Gracie lifted her chin, looked around, then straight at the woman. “Like you done, eh?”

“I’ll get my share, yer cheeky bitch,” she said without malice. “But you won’t get enough to feed a rabbit. Yer look like yer ain’t ’ad a decent bite in years, there’s no flesh on yer bones, poor little cow. Men don’t want a starveling wi’ no bosom and no ’ips.” She pulled a face. “Less they’re bent in some way. Yer should be careful—them ones can turn nasty—’cos they ain’t right in the first place.” She shrugged. “Anyway, this is my patch, an’ I don’t take to poachin’ kindly. Even if I didn’t see yer orf, there’s my pimp wot will.”

Gracie felt a shiver of fear and excitement. She took a shaking breath and let it out slowly.

“I dunno about bent ones …” She put a heavy doubt in her voice. “I don’t take nobody wot gets nasty. I mean”—she stared at the woman—“there’s nasty—an’ nasty, if yer gets wot I mean?”

“Oh.” The woman looked ashen in the glimmer of distant gaslight anyway, so it was hard to tell if her color changed, but there was a slackness of fear in the hang of her mouth. “I don’t mean nuffink like the ’Eadsman. Gawd ’elp us—’e ain’t bothered any o’ us. Guess it’s geezers wot ’e’s after.”

“I don’t want any part of ’im!” Gracie said with a dramatic shudder, which was not entirely assumed. Standing here on the path under the windswept trees in the dark, with the chill air eating through her shawl, and only the faint chain of gaslights in the distance, fear did not have to be imagined. “I don’t want ter be with a geezer wot rubs ’im up the wrong way. ’E’d ’ave ter do us too, just ’cos we seen.”

“Yer right,” the woman agreed, moving a step nearer, as if somehow their sheer physical closeness could be some sort of protection against the violence.

“D’yer reckon as there’s some sorts as’d be ’is meat?” Gracie asked with as much innocence as she could manage. Actually her voice was shaking anyway, so her expression was marred from the start.

“Like wot?” The woman stared along the path towards the shadows in the distance. “Maybe there’s a spot o’ trade comin’ our way. Don’t you mess me up, yer fourpenny scrap rabbit, or I’ll mark yer so nobody’ll want yer.”

Gracie drew herself up to spit back that she would not demean herself, then remembered just in time her new role.

“I gotter live,” she said plaintively. “You’ll do all right. Yer pretty …”

The woman smiled mirthlessly, showing dark, stained teeth.

“Crawly cow,” she said, but without rancor this time. “Well, one thing’s fer sure, I got a lot more’n you’ll ever ’ave, poor bitch. I’ll do this for yer, if ’e fancies yer, which ain’t likely, yer can ’ave this one. An’ if I see yer on my patch again, I’ll do yer.”

“I’ll get meself a man,” Gracie said defiantly.

“A runner?” The woman laughed. “ ’Oo’d wanter run yer, yer ain’t worth nuffink.”

“Yes I am. There’s gents wot likes ’em little, like kids!” Gracie knew this from tales she’d heard from less reputable relatives when they had not realized her childish ears were so sharp, before she first went to work for Charlotte.

“There’s all sorts,” the woman agreed with disgust. “There’s them as likes yer ter talk dirty to ’em, them as likes yer ter cuss summat rotten an’ pretend as yer ’ates them, them as likes ter be told orf like they were kids ’emselves—an’ there’s them as likes ter ’urt yer. Yer wanter watch for them—some o’ them gets real ugly. There’s one around ’ere wot likes ter beat girls up pretty bad, real vicious bastard ’e is, big geezer, but speaks ever so soft like a real gent, minds all ’is manners, then beats yer black and blue. Real bad one, ’e is. Ain’t no money worth that. Yer want ter stay clear o’ the likes of ’im.”

Gracie swallowed and found her throat so tight she could hardly speak. Maybe this was it? Maybe this was the clue Pitt was looking for? Perhaps this man had beaten a girl, her pimp had killed him, and the second victim had been killed because he knew something about it.

“Yer right,” she said chokingly. “ ’E sounds real bad. Mebbe I should try a lighted street or summat. I don’t wanter run inter summat like ’im.”

“Yer won’t, you daft little piece. ’E likes women, not kids.” The woman laughed. “Anyway, I can see business coming. This one’s mine. Good luck, you poor little swine—you’ll need it.” And with a parting wave, she turned and sauntered towards the approaching shadows, swaying her hips as she went.

Gracie waited until she was indistinguishable in the darkness, then turned on her heels and ran.