The Hyde Park Headsman (15 page)

“You are right,” Charlotte said grimly. “Perhaps we had better try a little harder?”

“Well I am with you all the way,” Emily promised. “Anything I can do, or any other help I can give, it is yours.”

“Thank you, thank you, my dear. Now let us go and speak to people and see if we can learn anything further about the late Captain the Honorable Oakley Winthrop, and his family, and those who profess to have come here to mourn him.” And she took Emily’s arm as they moved forward together.

4

T
OM
I
LES 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?