The Hyde Park Headsman (6 page)

“Oh—I’m sorry.” Bart was contrite. He turned to his sister. “Mina, my dear, I do beg your pardon.” Then he looked at Pitt. “I don’t think there is anything else we can do for you, Superintendent. If you will be good enough to leave us, I would like to take care of my sister and begin whatever arrangements are most advisable in the circumstances.”

“Of course,” Pitt agreed. “Thank you for sparing me so much of your time. Good day, Mrs. Winthrop, Mrs. Garrick, Mr. Garrick.” And he inclined his head very slightly and took his leave, collecting his hat from the pale-faced butler in the hallway before stepping out into the sharp spring sunshine. His mind whirled with impressions of grief, anxiety, close family pain, and something else he could not as yet grasp clearly enough to name.

Later Pitt performed that other necessary but most disagreeable task at the outset of any such investigation: he visited the mortuary to look for himself at the body of Oakley Winthrop. He did not expect it to tell him anything that he could not have deduced from Tellman’s report. But there was always the remote chance that he would observe something, even gather some impression, however faint, which later would clarify into meaning.

He hated mortuaries, their very bareness smelled sour and sickly and there was always a chill, even in summer. He found himself shivering as he told the attendant his purpose. There had been no need to give his name, he was already only too familiar.

“Oh, yes sir,” the attendant said cheerfully. “I bin expectin’ yer. Thought as this one’d bring yer ’ere. Nasty, it is. Very nasty.” And turning on his heel, he led Pitt briskly to the room where the body was laid out under a sheet, its form unfamiliar, inhuman without the bump where one looked for the head.
“There y’are, Mr. Pitt, sir!” He whipped off the sheet with the air of a conjurer producing flowers from a hat.

Pitt had seen many corpses before, and each time he tried to prepare himself, and as always, failed. He felt a sinking in his stomach and a strange, slightly dizzy sensation in his head and throat. The remains of Oakley Winthrop lay naked and very white on the marble slab of the table. Without a head, a face, he seemed without dignity, even without humanity.

“What have you done with his head?” Pitt said involuntarily, then wished he had not. It exposed the rawness of his emotion.

“Oh …” the attendant said absentmindedly. “I put it on the bench. I suppose I’d better put ’im all together.” He went to the bench in question and carefully picked up a large object covered with a cloth, unwrapped it dextrously and brought it over to Pitt. “There y’are, sir. That’s all of ’im.”

Pitt swallowed. “Thank you.”

He looked conscientiously, avoiding nothing, but he did not learn any more than he already knew from Tellman’s report, and what the coroner would have said in time. Oakley Winthrop had been a big man, broad shouldered, deep chested, muscular but now running to softness and the beginning of fat. He looked well fed, smooth, his hands very clean. There were no marks or bruises on him at all, except the lividity Pitt had expected from the natural settling of blood in a corpse when its heart no longer pumped. There was no other discoloration, no breaking of the skin. His hands were immaculate, nails unbroken.

Then he looked at the head. The hair was sandy brown and clipped short. Across the top of the scalp there was hardly any at all. He did not try it, but he knew it would be impossible to pick it up that way. He turned to the features. They were unremarkable, and without expression or life it was hard to guess what character they had betrayed. He could not detect the marks of humor or imagination, but it was unfair to judge.

Finally he forced himself to look at the wound, if one could call a complete severing such a thing. It was fairly clean, done by a simple, very powerful blow with some very sharp weapon, possibly designed for the purpose. It might have been a person of great strength, or alternatively someone perfectly balanced and striking from a considerable height, and using the force of weight and a long swing, as with a broadax.

The smell of the place was catching in his throat, and he was very cold.

“Thank you. That’s all, at least for now.”

“Yes, Mr. Pitt. Want ter see ’is clothes? ’E were dressed very smart, like; naval captain, they say. Nice uniform. Pity about the blood. Never seen so much in all me life.”

“Anything in his pockets?”

“Only what yer’d expect, a little money, letter from ’is wine merchant, that’s ’ow we knew ’is name, I reckon. A few keys, reckon wine cupboard or desk or the like; domestic anyway. ’Andkerchief, couple o’ callin’ cards, cigar cutter. Nothing interestin’, no threatening letters.” He smiled sepulchrally. “Got another nasty one, Mr. Pitt. I reckon there’s a madman loose somewhere.”

“Do you,” Pitt said dryly. “Well cover him up and let us know when the coroner has been.”

“Yes sir. Good night sir!”

“Good night.”

Pitt arrived home tired and still unable to shake from himself the smell of the mortuary. He let himself in the door and took his boots off before going along to the warmth and light of the kitchen.

Charlotte did not turn around immediately; she was busy stirring a steaming pan on the large black cooking range.

“Hungry?” she asked without looking at him.

He sat down wearily at the scrubbed wooden table, letting the warmth surround him and breathing in the odor of the clean linen, flour, cooking, the coal and heat of the range, the well-washed floor.

She swung around, opened her mouth to speak, then saw his face.

“What?” she said gently. “Something bad, I can see it.”

“Murder,” he replied. “A beheading, in Hyde Park.”

“Oh.” She took a deep breath, pushing her hair off her brow. It was bright like polished chestnuts in the lamplight. “Soup?”

“What?”

“Soup?” she repeated. “Some hot soup and bread? You look cold.”

He smiled and nodded, beginning to relax.

She opened the lid of the pot on the range and ladled some broth out into a dish. She knew he was too overwrought, too clenched with chill and emotion to eat yet. She placed it in front of him, with fresh bread and a pat of butter, then sat down again and waited for him to tell her. It was not courtesy
or any form of kindness, he knew that. She would be intensely interested, she always was. No pretense was necessary.

Briefly, in between spoonfuls of broth, he told her.

2

“Y
ES SIR?”
Tellman stood in front of Pitt’s desk early the next morning, his face was hard and bleak as stone, his eyes focusing somewhere over Pitt’s left shoulder. “Didn’t come back in time to report to you, sir. Half past ten, it was. You’d gone home.”

“What have you learned?” Pitt asked. He had done this to Drummond too many times himself to be irritated by Tellman’s implied criticism.

“Far as the doc can judge, he died some time before midnight,” Tellman answered. “Not sure exactly. Maybe eleven or so. Not much blood in the boat, so it probably wasn’t there. In fact, unless he washed it out, it couldn’t have been.”

“Shoes?” Pitt asked, imagining carrying a headless body across the grass to the Serpentine before midnight when there were still late partygoers returning home and several hansoms up and down Knightsbridge, any of them liable to let off a fare for a midnight walk.

“Grass on them, sir,” Tellman said expressionlessly. “Several pieces.”

“And when was the park grass last cut?” Pitt asked.

Tellman’s nostrils flared very slightly and his mouth pinched in. “I’ll find out. But it doesn’t matter. He didn’t walk across it without his head.”

“Maybe he was brought in another boat,” Pitt suggested, as much to annoy Tellman as because he thought it a serious possibility.

“What for?” Tellman’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “Doesn’t
make any sense. What’s different about one boat from another? And not easy to lift a corpse in a boat. Turn yourself over as like as not.” He smiled sourly, his eyes meeting Pitt’s for the first time. “His clothes were quite dry, except a very slight damp in one or two places from the dew. But dry as a bone underneath … sir.”

Pitt conceded all that without comment.

“How deep is the water at the edge of the Serpentine?” he asked contentiously.

Tellman took his point instantly. “Not more than just above the knee,” he agreed, then the smile came back to his lips. “But kind of noticeable, don’t you think, to walk back across the park soaked to the thighs? People might remember that—dangerous.”

“People might remember seeing a man having his head cut off too,” Pitt said with an answering smile. “Tends to suggest there was no one around. What do you think yourself?”

That was a question Tellman was not prepared for. He wanted to argue, to mock. His long face tightened and he looked at Pitt with dislike.

“Too early to say … sir.”

“Well when you’ve ruled out the impossible, what’s left?” Pitt insisted. “Specifically!”

Tellman took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.

Pitt waited.

“He was killed somewhere farther along the Serpentine, which we haven’t found yet,” Tellman replied. “And taken to where we found him in the boat. I’ve got Bailey and le Grange looking all along the banks now. I suppose someone could have brought him over the grass in some way. A trap or a cart maybe, but it would be a dreadful risk, not thought out…” He stopped, waiting for Pitt to ask the question that had occurred to both of them.

“Any feeling as to whether it was planned or a sudden rage?” Pitt put it into words.

“Too early,” Tellman replied with a faint gleam in his eyes. “Might be clever thinking, might be luck. Know more when we’ve covered all the bank, or nothing. Looks clever, so far. I’ll tell you this, sir—it doesn’t look like any chance madman to me. And we did check, there’s been no maniacs escaped from Bedlam or anywhere else. And we’ve no record of a crime like it before.”

“Have you got the medical examiner’s report yet?”

“There’s a wound on the head,” Tellman answered. “He was probably hit to stun him before he was beheaded. Not hard enough to kill, just rob him of his senses for a while.” He looked at Pitt candidly at last. “Looks careful and nasty, doesn’t it … sir.”

“Yes it does. Is that all?”

Tellman opened his eyes wide, waiting for Pitt to continue.

“There was nothing on the rest of the body, so far as I could see,” Pitt said patiently. “No bruises, no scratches on his hands or knuckles. What about his clothes? I didn’t see them. Are they torn or scuffed? Green stains, mud?”

“No,” Tellman said flatly. “No. He didn’t put up a fight. Nothing at all.”

“How tall does he estimate him to have been—with his head? Six feet?”

“About that, as near as we can judge—and big, broad chested.”

“I know. I saw him. And yes, it does look nasty,” Pitt agreed. “I think we need to know a great deal more about Captain the Honorable Oakley Winthrop.”

Tellman’s face split into a grin.

“That’s why it’s your case, Mr. Pitt. The powers that be reckon as you’re good at that sort of thing. You’d better go and mix with the Honorable Winthrops and their kin. See who hated the good captain, and why.” He stood still in front of Pitt’s desk, amused and sharp with resentment. “We’ll get on with finding witnesses and that sort of regular police work. Will that be all, sir?”

“No it won’t.” Pitt kept the dislike out of his voice with intense difficulty. He must remember he was in command; he had no business indulging in personal irritations and pettiness. He forced it out of his mind. “What did the medical examiner say about a weapon? I assume you haven’t found anything or you would have said so.”

“No sir, nothing yet.” He preempted Pitt’s repeating the orders. “We’ll drag the Serpentine, of course, but makes sense to look in the easier places first.”

“What did the medical examiner tell you?”

“Clean cut Must have been quite a heavy weapon to do that in one blow, and with a very sharp blade. Either an ax with a broad head, or more likely a sword of some sort, again a big one, a cutlass or the like.”

With a wave of sickening memory Pitt saw again in his
mind the severed stump of neck, and smelled the overwhelming carbolic and wet stone.