The Hyde Park Headsman (17 page)

“I’m not reluctant to do it,” Pitt explained as soon as Farnsworth finished speaking. “I simply don’t think peculiar
tastes, or even sadism, would make a pimp behead a client. They don’t care, as long as they get paid and the girl isn’t marked too much to be useful anymore.”

Farnsworth looked at him through heavy-lidded eyes. “Really? Well I suppose that is your field of expertise. It isn’t something I know a great deal about.” His lip curled in distaste. “All the same, I think you’ll find that’s the answer. Pursue it, Pitt. Do all the other things, of course. See where he was killed. Get your other witnesses, if there are any, but find those women!”

“Yes sir,” Pitt agreed.

“Do it.” Farnsworth stood up, still ignoring Bailey, and went to the door. He readjusted his jacket to make it hang more symmetrically, and went out without saying anything further.

“Shall I ask Mr. Tellman to do that, sir?” Bailey said helpfully now that Farnsworth was gone. He pulled a paper bag out of his pocket and put a peppermint in his mouth.

“No.” Pitt had made up his mind. “No thank you. I’ll do that myself. You can go on looking for where he was killed. There’ll be a lot of blood somewhere. Oh—and how he was moved, if you can.”

Bailey looked startled. “ ’Ow he was moved? Well, I suppose someone carried ’im. Bit messy, like, but if you’ve just ’acked a fellow’s ’ead orf, I suppose a bit o’ blood on yer clothes in’t goin’ ter upset yer too much.”

“Bit risky, carrying a headless corpse through the park,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “And why move him? Why not leave him where he was? Unless that place would lead us to whoever killed him. Find it, Bailey.”

“Yes sir,” Bailey said dubiously. “Anything else, Mr. Pitt?”

“Not yet.”

“Yes sir. Then I’ll go and get started, sir.”

By the middle of the afternoon Pitt had been back home to Bloomsbury and changed into his oldest clothes: an ill-fitting jacket, shirt with twice-turned collar and cuffs, and boots that were scuffed on top, their soles coming apart. His trousers were frayed at the bottoms and his battered hat hid half his face. He set out for the Edgware Road, to the north of Hyde Park, and some of the warrens behind the facades, where he knew he would find the men he was looking for and, more important, the women.

It was a wild late spring day and a warm wind blew the
clouds in white drifts across the sky. Late daffodils still shone gold against the grass. Nursemaids in stuff dresses pushed perambulators along the paths, and children followed after dutifully, some with horse heads on sticks or china-faced dolls. Two boys chased a hoop and a third brandished a wooden sword.

He should have loathed being dressed as he was and bound on a duty of finding pimps and prostitutes, and yet there was vitality in his step and a sense of freedom merely in being out of the station and in the open air, and even more of having no one looking over his shoulder with criticism poised on the tongue.

He turned off the Edgware Road left into Cambridge Street. Halfway along he went down the steps into an areaway and knocked on the basement door. He waited several moments, then knocked again, twice.

After a minute the door opened a crack and an eye and a nose appeared.

“Watcher want? ’ere, it’s Mr. Pitt. Come down in the world, ain’t yer? I ’eard as yer’ve bin made up ter one o’ the nobs. Threw yer out, did they? Serves yer right! Nobody should try ter get above their station wot they were born ter. Could ’ave told yer that. Yer weren’t born a gentleman, and nothing’ll make yer one. Not cleverness least of anything. Gentlemen ’ates them what’s clever. Back on the grubby cases, are yer?” The door remained firmly where it was.

“Don’t know,” Pitt prevaricated. “I could be. And yes, I’m on the grubby cases.”

The eye looked him up and down.

“I can see that. Yer looks awful. Watcher want wi’ me? I ain’t done nuffink. I don’t go in fer your kind of things.”

“Women,” Pitt said succinctly. “Some of your women work the park.”

“I ain’t sayin’ as they do or as they don’t. But wot’s it to you? They don’t go cutting people’s ’eads orf. Bad fer business, apart from why should they? It don’t make no sense. If yer think they did it, then yer should be back on the beat.” He laughed hollowly at his own joke.

“Are you going to let me in, or am I going to get every one of your girls down to the station and ask them?”

“You’re an ’ard man, Mr. Pitt, and unjust,” he complained, but the door opened and Pitt went into a pleasantly proportioned room, now appallingly overcrowded with all sorts of
furniture, chairs, sofas, desks, cheval glasses, upholstered stools and a chaise longue. Nearly all of it that was upholstered was either red or sharp pink. It was extraordinarily oppressive, giving Pitt the feeling that at any moment something would fall over, although actually everything seemed to be resting quite safely on its feet.

The man who now stood in the small space in the middle of the red-and-gold carpet was of medium height with a straggly fair beard and mustache. His thin face with its aquiline nose did not seem to belong with the rest of his features. His shoulders were bent over, and his right side seemed to be withered in some fashion; his right arm was several inches shorter than the left. He looked at Pitt guardedly out of shrewd eyes.

“Life is unjust,” Pitt said without sympathy. “But make the best of it you can. I can always send Mr. Tellman here …”

The man spat and his eyes narrowed.

“ ’E’s a bastard, that one. I’d see ’im in the bottom o’ the river and dance on ’is grave, I would.”

Pitt forbore from pointing out the impossibility of such a feat.

“No doubt,” he said dryly. “Which girls do you have working the park at the moment? And don’t miss any out, because if I find out, I’ll see you’re dragged through every charge in the book.”

“Promotion’s gorn to yer ’ead,” the man said with a sour twist of his mouth. “And yer always was a nasty piece o’ work.”

“Rubbish. I never did anything to you you didn’t deserve. Nothing to what I could do, and will, if you don’t tell me who was in the park. And while we’re discussing this …” Pitt sat down on one of the overstuffed chairs. It was more comfortable than he had expected. He crossed his legs and leaned back. “Anyone new in the area?”

The man smiled and ran his long forefinger across his throat. Then as Pitt’s grin broadened, he blanched. “Oh no yer don’t. I never done it! I can run me rivals out without doin’ anything so—so dangerous.” He pulled a face. “Anyway, if I was goin’ ter do summink like that, which to my way of thinkin’ is pure vulgar and unnecessary, I wouldn’t do it in the park, now would I? If gents get too scared to come in the park on their own, what ’appens to me business, eh? I ain’t stupid. And if yer think I’d do summink like that—”

“I don’t,” Pitt interrupted impatiently. “But I think your girls
might have seen something. And more than that, they might know if there is someone strange around, someone with bizarre tastes, someone who carries a large blade.”

“No. No one any odder than always. Gents what comes into the park looking fer a bit o’ fun often ’as their own tastes.”

“Which might go too far?” Pitt said with eyebrows raised questioningly. “Which a new girl might resent?”

“Oh yeah? So she chops ’is ’ead orf?”

“Not personally.”

“Well I don’t follow me girls around. Gents don’t like it.” He laughed in a soft, whispering falsetto. “Daft bastards, think no one knows about ’em, so they like to keep things private.” He grimaced, showing dark teeth. “And ’ow would I do that anyway? I don’t carry an ax wi’ me.” He struck an absurd pose. “Pardon me, sir, but me girls don’t like that sort of thing and would yer mind just bending down on the grass, like, so I can chop yer ’ead orf—just ter teach other gents wi’ nasty ideas as it don’t pay.”

“They were hit on the head first,” Pitt said sourly, but he could see the reason in the man’s words.

“If I’d knocked ’im senseless, why cut ’is ’ead orf?” The man curled his lip with contempt.

“Someone did!” Pitt said. “Tell me which of your girls was in the park on those nights?”

“Marie, Gert, Cissy and Kate,” he answered readily enough.

“Fetch them,” Pitt said tersely.

The man hesitated only a moment, then disappeared, and a few moments later four women came in looking tired and drab in the daylight. By moonlight or gaslight they may have had a certain glamour, but now their skins were pasty, their hair lusterless and full of knots, their teeth stained and chipped, several gaps showing when they opened their lips. Kate, seemingly the leader, was a tall thin woman with red hair, and looked at Pitt with dislike. She appeared about forty, but she may well have been no more than twenty-five.

“Bert says as yer looking for the geezer what done them murders in the park. Well we dunno nuffink about it.”

The other three nodded in agreement, one pulling her soiled robe around herself, another pushing a mane of fair hair away from her eyes.

“But you were in the park those nights.” Pitt made it a statement.

“Some o’ the time, yeah,” Kate conceded.

“Did you see anyone on the Serpentine around midnight?”

“No.” Her face filled with amusement. Pitt had spoken to her several times before over one thing or another. She had been a seamstress until she became pregnant. Sewing coats at sevenpence ha’penny for a coat and by working a fifteen-hour day she could make two shillings and sixpence; but out of this she had to pay threepence for getting the buttonholes worked and fourpence for trimmings. Even eighteen hours a day was not enough to keep herself and her child. She had taken to the streets to earn a day’s wages in an hour. Let the future take care of itself. As she had said to Pitt, what was the use of a future if you didn’t live beyond today?

“Gents like ter be a bit more private, like, even if they’ve a fancy for the open an’ in an ’urry. Yer ever tried it in one of them little boats? They tip over awful easy.”

Pitt smiled back at her. “I had to ask. Have you ever seen Captain Winthrop?”

“Yer mean was ’e a customer?”

“If you like. Or even just seen him walking?”

“Yeah—I’ve seen ’im a couple o’ times, but ’e weren’t a customer.”

Pitt grunted. He had no idea if she was telling the truth or not. She had looked at him with total candor, and that in itself made him vaguely dubious.

“Look, Mr. Pitt,” she said, suddenly serious, “it weren’t nothink to do with any o’ us, and that’s Gawd’s truth. Yer might get the odd bloke what gets stuck wi’ a shiv. Wee Georgie’s good at that, but it ain’t no good for business ter get violent. Puts people orf, and then we don’t eat. This ain’t one o’ us, it’s some geezer wot’s a real nutter. An’ it’s no use asking us ’oo, ’cos we don’t know.” She looked at the other girls.

Cissy pushed her blond hair out of her eyes again and nodded in agreement.

“We don’t like it no more’n you do,” she said, sucking on a rotten tooth and wincing, putting her hand up to her jaw. “Makes people un’appy about goin’ out, it does. They’re all spooked. And that’s our patch.”

“Yeah,” one of the other two agreed. “It in’t as if we could just move uptown, like. Fat George’d do us if we got onto ’is girls’ patch.” She shivered. “I in’t scared o’ Fat George. ’E’s just a bucket o’ lard. But that Wee Georgie, ’e scares the ’ell out o’ me. ’E’s a real evil little swine. I reckon as ’e in’t right in the ’ead. The way ’e looks at yer.”

“Eeurgh.” Cissy pulled a face and hugged herself.

“But it don’t make no sense fer ’im to cut nobody’s ’ead orf,” Kate insisted. “An’ ’onest, Mr. Pitt, we don’t know nothink about anyone around what’s a real nutter. There in’t nobody sleeps out that we knows of. Is there?” She looked at the others.

They all shook their heads, eyes on Pitt.

“Sleeping rough in the park?” Pitt suggested

“Nah. There’s them as sleeps rough, or tries ter,” Kate agreed. “But the park keeper is pretty ’ard. Comes and moves ’em on. And o’ course there’s rozzers ’round every now and again. That’s another reason why most gents don’t fancy doing their business in the park. Makes yer look a right fool ter get caught by a passin’ rozzer. We just makes acquaintance there.”

There was no point in asking if they had seen Aidan Arledge. His description was that of a hundred men who might have been in the park.

“See anything unusual the night of the second murder?” he asked, without any real hope of a useful answer.

Kate shrugged. “Some amateur tried to get on our patch and Cissy pulled ’er ’air out …”

“I did not!” Cissy protested. “I just give ’er a nice civil warning, like.”

“Sure she was an amateur?” Pitt asked. “She wouldn’t have had a pimp somewhere behind, who’d—” He stopped. It was too unlikely to be worth pursuing.

Kate gave him a wry glance.

“Seen no one else ’cept the usual gents,” she said, pulling a face.

“No one else at all?” he insisted.

“A rozzer a couple o’ times, but ’e don’t bother us if we behave proper and don’t accost”—she used the word with heavy sarcasm—“any gentlemen what’s taking a quiet respectable stroll by ’isself. ’E in’t a bad sort. ’E knows we gotter eat like anyone else. An’ the gentlemen wot pays ’is wages wouldn’t like to be driven out o’ their bit o’ pleasure.”

“Who else? Think, Kate! There is someone—someone with an ax or a cutlass …”

“Gawd!” She shivered. “Will yer quit yappin’ on about it! I jus’ saw ordinary-lookin’ gents, one or two wi’ a skinful, the rozzer, the park keeper goin’ ’ome wi’ ’is machine, or somethink. It were real quiet.”

“It’ll be a bloody sight quieter now,” Gert said angrily. She
looked up at Pitt. “Why the ’ell can’t yer catch the bleedin’ lunatic wot’s doin’ this and let us get on wi’ our business? It ain’t safe for no one anymore. I thought that was what the bleedin’ crushers were supposed to be for? To make the place safe!”

“I don’t think making it safe for ladies of trade was what the gentlemen of the government had in mind at the time,” Pitt said wryly. “Then—on the other hand …”

Kate gave a sharp laugh. Gert pulled a face.

“Were you anywhere near the bandstand?” Pitt asked, looking at them one at a time.