The Hyde Park Headsman (42 page)

At the far end she turned and cantered back towards Hyde Park Corner, feeling the wind in her face and at last beginning to smile.

Three quarters of the way down she slowed to a walk. She knew better than to offer her horse a drink at the trough while it was still warm, but she would dearly like to splash her own face with its coolness. She dismounted, leaving the reins loose, and took a couple of steps to the trough. She bent down absently, her mind still on her husband’s offense, then with her hands in the water she turned her head and looked.

The water was red-brown.

She withdrew sharply with a cry of revulsion. The whole trough was cloudy with some dark fluid, far too dark to be water. There was also something else in it, something large which she could not see because of the murkiness.

“Oh really!” she said angrily. “This is too bad! Who would do such a stupid thing? Now it’s filthy!” She stepped back, and it was only as she stood up that she saw the odd object on the far side of the trough. It was so odd in its appearance that she looked more closely.

For a breathless instant she did not believe it. Then when it sank on her incredulous brain that it was truly what it seemed, she slid with a splash into the trough, face first.

The cold water choked her and in an effort to get her breath she pulled herself up again, gasping and gagging; the whole of the top of her body was soaked, and now thoroughly cold. She was too horrified even to scream, but crouched in silence, half arched over the edge of the trough, shaking violently.

There was a thud of hooves behind her, a scatter of pebbles, and a man’s voice spoke.

“I say, ma’am, are you all right? Had a fall? May I—” He stopped abruptly, having seen the object. “Oh my God!” He gulped and caught his breath in a choking cough.

“The rest of him is in there.” Amanda gestured weakly towards the trough, where now a liveried knee was protruding from the bloody water.

*  *  *

Tellman looked down at Pitt in his chair with a dark, grim expression in his lantern face.

“Yes?” Pitt asked, his heart sinking.

“There’s been another,” Tellman said, staring back without wavering. “He’s done it again. This time you’ll have to arrest him.”

“He …?”

“Carvell. There’s another headless corpse in the park.”

Pitt’s heart sank even further. “Who is it?”

“Albert Scarborough, Carvell’s butler.” A shadow of bitter humor touched Tellman’s face. “Lady Kilbride found him in the horse trough. Or to be more accurate, all of him except his head,” he amended. “His head was behind it.”

“Horse trough where?”

“Rotten Row, a hundred yards or so short of Hyde Park Corner.”

Pitt tried to force the horror of it from the front of his mind and concentrate on the practical elements of the case. “Some distance from Green Street,” he observed. “Any idea how he got there?”

“Not yet. He was a big fellow, so there is no way Carvell could have carried him. Might have walked there.”

Pitt opened his eyes very wide. “Midnight stroll with his employer? Doesn’t seem like the sort of person one takes a walk with for pleasure. And as the assistant commissioner has been at pains to point out, no one is strolling around the park these nights.”

“So he didn’t walk there,” Tellman corrected with a grimace. “Carvell killed him in his home and took him there in some sort of conveyance. Could even have been his own carriage. Do you want to arrest him, or shall I?”

Pitt rose to his feet, his limbs suddenly very tired, as though his body were of enormous weight. He should have been relieved there was an end to the mystery, if not the terror or the tragedy of it; but he felt no sense of ease at all.

“I’ll go.” He went to the hat stand and took his hat, even though it was a fine morning. “You’d better come with me.”

“Yes sir.”

It was still before nine when Pitt and Tellman presented themselves at the front door of the house in Green Street. Pitt rang the bell, but it was several moments before it was answered.

“Yes sir?” A footman with untidy fair hair looked at him with anxiety.

“I would like to speak with Mr. Carvell, if you please,” Pitt said, but his voice was a command, not a request.

The footman was startled. “I’m sorry sir, I’m not sure Mr. Carvell has risen yet,” he said apologetically. “Could you call again at about ten o’clock?”

Tellman made as if to speak, but Pitt cut across him.

“I’m afraid it will not wait. The matter is of the utmost gravity. Will you tell him that Superintendent Pitt and Inspector Tellman are here and require to see him immediately.”

The footman paled. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then changed his mind and turned away without remembering to ask them to wait, or direct them to a more suitable place than the hall.

Within a few moments Carvell appeared in a dressing robe, his hair standing in spikes, his face pale and filled with fear.

“What has happened, Superintendent?” he said to Pitt, ignoring Tellman. “Is there something wrong? What brings you at this hour?”

Again Pitt felt the tug of reluctance and the familiar pity inside him.

“I am sorry, Mr. Carvell, but we require to search your premises and question your staff. I know it will inconvenience you, but it is necessary.”

“Why?” Carvell was now extremely anxious, his hands opened and closed at his sides and his face was ashen. “What has happened? For God’s sake, tell me what is wrong. Has—has there been another …?”

“Yes. Your butler, Albert Scarborough.” Pitt was obliged to step forward and steady Carvell as he swayed. He caught him by the elbow and steered him backwards to the fine oak settle a yard or so behind him. “You had better sit down.” He turned to the footman standing helplessly. “Get your master a small glass of brandy,” he ordered. Then, as the youth still stood rooted to the spot, eyes wide: “Jump to it!”

“Yes—yes, sir.” And the unfortunate young man ran out of the hall and disappeared, calling for the housekeeper in a shaking voice.

Pitt looked at Tellman.

“Go and start your search.”

Tellman had only been awaiting the order. He departed briskly, his face grim.

Pitt looked at Carvell, who appeared as if he might well be sick.

“You think I did it?” Carvell said huskily. “I can see it in your face, Superintendent. Why? Why in God’s name should I murder my butler?”

“I’m afraid the answer to that is unfortunately obvious, sir. He is in a perfect position to be aware of your liaison with Mr. Arledge, and of your possible involvement in his death. If that were so, you might well have felt it imperative, for your own safety, to be rid of him.”

Carvell struggled to speak, and failed. He stared up at Pitt for long, dreadful seconds, then with utter hopelessness, sank his head into his hands.

Pitt felt brutal. Tellman’s voice was drumming in his head, his contempt for Pitt’s squeamishness, Farnsworth’s charge that he was running away from his responsibility, both to his superiors, who had believed in him and had given him promotion, and to his juniors, whose loyalty he expected, and above all to the public. They had a right to believe they were getting the best the police force could offer and that he would set aside personal likes and dislikes, individual quirks of conscience or pity. He had accepted the job, with its honor and its reward. To do less than it required of him was a betrayal.

He looked at the wretched figure of Carvell in front of him. What had happened? What torrent of emotion had roared through him so that he had killed the man he loved? It could only be some kind of rejection, whether simply that the affair had died or that Arledge had found someone else.

Why Winthrop first? Winthrop must have been the other man. Somehow or other the bus conductor knew of it, not that night, but at some other time. And of course the sneering Scarborough had known it too. He tried to imagine the scene when the butler faced his master with his knowledge, standing very stiff and tall in his livery, his magnificent legs in silken stockings, his buttons and braid gleaming, his lip curled. He would have had no shred of an idea that his master would kill him too.

But that was stupid. He had already killed three other people. How could Scarborough have been so blindly confident as to have turned his back on a man he had threatened, and whom he knew to have murdered three times already? There could not have been a struggle. Scarborough was half Carvell’s weight again, and at least six inches taller. Any face-to-face
combat he would have won easily. Pitt would have to ask the medical examiner if there were wounds on Scarborough’s body, a stab to the heart or something of that nature.

Tellman would already be searching. Would he begin by asking questions, or by looking for the place where it had happened? Or for some conveyance in which Carvell had taken the inert body of the butler to the horse trough in the park? Or the weapon? Presumably he had kept the weapon right from the beginning. Dangerous. Was he supremely confident he had hidden it, or that it would never be searched for in the right place? Or that if it was found it would not implicate him?

“Mr. Carvell?”

Carvell sat motionless.

“Mr. Carvell?”

“Yes?”

“When did you last see Scarborough alive?”

“I don’t know.” Carvell lifted his face. “Dinner time? You should ask the other servants, they would have seen him after I did.”

“Did he lock up last night?”

“I really don’t know, Superintendent. Yesterday was Aidan’s Requiem service. Do you imagine I cared who locked up the house? It could have been open all night for all I thought of it”

“How long had Scarborough been in your service?”

“Five years—no, six.”

“Were you satisfied with him?”

Carvell looked bemused. “He was good at his job, if that’s what you mean. If you want to know if I liked the man, no I didn’t. He was an objectionable creature, but he ran the house excellently.” He stared at Pitt with unfocused eyes. “I never had domestic trouble of any sort,” he said hollowly. “Every meal was on time, well cooked, and the household accounts were in perfect order. If there was ever a crisis, I didn’t hear about it. I have friends who were always having complaints of one sort or another. I never did. If he sneered occasionally I really didn’t care.” A self-mocking smile touched his mouth. “He was superb at arranging to entertain. He would see to any size or scale of dinner party or reception. I never had to see to anything myself.”

A maid crossed the landing above them but Carvell did not seem to be aware of her, or of the sounds of movement now coming from beyond the green baize door at the end of the hall.

“I would simply say, ‘Scarborough, I wish to have ten people to dinner next Thursday evening,’ ” he went on. “ ‘Will you see to it,’ and he did, and supplied an elegant menu at very reasonable cost. He hired in extra staff if they were needed, and none of them were ever impertinent, slack or dishonest. Yes, he was a condescending devil, but he was good enough at his profession for me to overlook it. I don’t know how I shall find anyone to replace him.”

Pitt said nothing.

Carvell gulped and gave a choking little laugh that ended in a sob.

“Or perhaps I shall be hanged, and then I won’t have to bother.”

“Did you kill Scarborough?” Pitt said very gently.

“No I didn’t,” Carvell replied quite calmly. “And before you ask me, I haven’t the slightest idea who did, or why.”

He was wretchedly miserable and frightened. Pitt questioned him for a further ten minutes, but he learned nothing that added either to his knowledge or to his impression of the man. He left him sitting crumpled up in the hall and went to see what Tellman had discovered.

He found him in the servants’ hall, a comparatively small place compared with some he had been in, but very comfortably furnished and with a pleasant smell of lavender and beeswax polish. The odor of luncheon cooking made him suddenly aware of hunger. The white-faced footman was standing to attention. An upstairs maid was in tears, a duster in her hand, a broom leaning against the wall. The housekeeper sat upright in a wooden-backed chair, her keys at her waist, ink, presumably from the household ledgers, on her fingers, her face looking as if she had just found something unspeakable on her plate. The scullery maid and the cook were absent. The kitchen maid was facing Tellman, a smudge of black lead on her sleeve from the stove, her expression tearful and obstinate.

Tellman looked around at Pitt. Seemingly his questioning of the maid was not worth pursuing.

“What have you learned?” Pitt asked quietly.

Tellman came over to him. “Very little,” he said, his face showing some surprise. “After the reception the staff spent a great deal of the afternoon clearing up. The extra footmen and maids hired for the event were paid off and left. One of them had been dismissed earlier for unbecoming conduct, I don’t know what it amounted to, some domestic misdemeanor. Nobody
seemed to know exactly what. Carvell spent the afternoon out somewhere, the staff don’t know where, but the footman thinks it was simply to be alone and grieve in his own way.”

“Grieve?” Pitt said quickly.

Tellman looked at him without comprehension.

“Was the footman aware that Carvell had a profound feeling towards Arledge?” Pitt said under his breath, but with a sharpness to his voice.

Tellman shook his head. “Oh—no, I don’t think so. Seems he regarded any death as a very somber affair, needing a space for recovery.”

“Oh! What about Scarborough?”

“Spent the afternoon in his pantry, and checking the stock in the cellar,” Tellman replied, drawing Pitt a little farther away from the servants, who were all staring expectantly. “Dinner was a light affair, a cold collation of some sort. Carvell read in the library for a while, then retired early. Staff were excused at about eight. Scarborough locked up at ten and no one saw him after that.” Tellman’s face was uncompromising in its conviction, his dark, deep-set eyes level, his mouth in a hard line. “No one rang the doorbell, or the other staff would have heard. It rings in the kitchen, and in here.” He turned and gestured to the board with all the bells on, listed by room. The front door was plainly visible.