The Hyde Park Headsman (19 page)

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.