Thomas & Charlotte Pitt 29 - Death On Blackheath Read Online Free PDF Page A

by being denied the kitchen, but it had not worked. If Charlotte had had any sense, she would never have imagined it would!
    Pitt smiled, then thought of Kynaston’s kitchen and how different it would be there. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back,’ he said quietly, and turned to leave.
     
    Pitt reached the gravel pit, as he expected, just as the grey light spread over the waste where the earth had been dug and exploited. The wind from the east carried flecks of ice, stinging the exposed skin of his face and finding the vulnerable parts of his neck. In earlier days he would have worn a long woollen scarf, wound round and round to keep out the cold. Now he felt that would be a little scruffy and informal for his rank, and he had a silk one instead. It was difficult enough to impress people anyway. His predecessors had all been gentlemen from their birth, and in many cases senior officers in either the army or the navy, like Narraway, assuming the obedience of others quite naturally.
    ‘Morning, sir.’ Stoker walked towards him with an easy gait, his feet crunching on the frozen grass. He refused to huddle his body against the wind. ‘She’s over there.’ He indicated a small group of men about fifty feet away, standing close together, coats whipping a little around their legs, hats jammed on their heads. The light of bull’s-eye lanterns glowed with a false warmth, yellow in the gloom.
    ‘Who found her?’ Pitt asked curiously.
    ‘The usual,’ Stoker replied with a shadow of a smile. ‘Man walking his dog.’
    ‘What time, for heaven’s sake?’ Pitt demanded. ‘Who the devil walks his dog up here at half-past five on a winter morning?’
    Stoker lifted his shoulders slightly. ‘Ferryman down on the Greenwich waterfront. Takes people who cross the river to be there before seven. Sounds like a decent enough man.’
    Pitt should have thought of that. He had come over the river by ferry himself, but barely looked at the man at the oars. He had dealt with murders most of his police career, and yet they still disturbed him. He had never seen the victim alive, but the accounts of her by the other staff at Kynaston’s house had given her a reality, a vivid sense of laughter and friendship, even of dreams for the future.
    ‘He reported it to the local police station, and they remembered your interest, so they sent for you,’ Pitt said.
    ‘Yes, sir. And they telephoned my local station, who sent a constable around for me.’ Stoker looked uncomfortable, as if he were making some confession before it caught up with him anyway. ‘I came up here first, before calling you, sir, in case it wasn’t anything to do with us. Didn’t want to get you out here for nothing.’
    Pitt realised what he was doing – accounting for the fact that he was here first. He could have had his own local police call Pitt, and he had chosen not to.
    ‘I see,’ Pitt replied with a bleak smile, in this grey light, barely visible. ‘Where did you find a telephone up here?’
    Stoker bit his lip but he did not lower his eyes. ‘I went to the Kynaston house, sir, just to make sure the maid had not returned and they had forgotten to tell us.’
    Pitt nodded. ‘Very prudent,’ he said, almost without expression. Then he walked towards the group of men, who were openly shivering now as the wind increased. There were three of them: a constable, a sergeant and the third whom Pitt took to be the police surgeon.
    ‘Morning, sir,’ the sergeant said smartly. ‘Sorry to get you all the way up here so early, but I think this one might be yours.’
    ‘We’ll see.’ Pitt refused to commit himself. He did not want the case any more than the sergeant did. Even if the body was Kitty Ryder’s, her death probably had nothing whatever to do with Dudley Kynaston, but the danger of scandal was there, the pressure, the public interest, the possibility of injustice.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ the sergeant agreed, the relief not disappearing a whit from his