Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [1]
“Then we’d better go and see,” he replied, ignoring the disarray around him and leaving his hat on the stand where he had thrown it on arriving in the morning.
“Yes, sir.” Stripe fell in behind him, following Pitt’s familiar disheveled figure along the corridor, down the steps past several other constables, and into the hot and dusty street. An empty hansom clattered past them, not believing Pitt, with his coattails flapping and his tie askew, to prove a likely fare. Stripe, in uniform, was not even worth considering.
Pitt waved his arm and ran a few steps. “Cabbie!” he shouted, his anger directed not at the personal slight but against all crime in general, and this one he was going to pursue in particular.
The cabbie drew rein and looked at him with disfavor. “Yes, sir?”
“St. Mary’s churchyard, Bloomsbury.” Pitt scrambled in and held the door for Stripe, behind him.
“Will that be the east side or the west side?” the cabbie inquired.
“The back gate, off the avenue,” Stripe put in helpfully.
“Thank you,” Pitt acknowledged; then, to the cabbie, “Get on with it, man!”
The cabbie flicked the whip and made encouraging sounds, and they moved off, rapidly increasing to a trot. They rode in silence, each absorbed in his own speculations as to what they might find.
“This ’ere where you wanta be, sir?” the cabbie leaned down and asked dubiously.
“Yes.” Pitt had already seen the little knot of people and the harassed constable in the middle. It was an ordinary, rather seedy suburban churchyard; dusty, grass dry with the summer heat, gravestones uneven and ornate, marble angels, and over on the right before the yew trees, a clump of dark laurels.
He climbed out, paid the driver, then crossed the pavement and spoke to the constable, who was obviously overwhelmed with relief to see him.
“What have you got?” Pitt asked dourly.
The constable jerked his elbow towards the high, spiked railings but did not turn his head. His face was pale and there was a heavy beading of sweat on his lip and across his brow. He looked wretched. “Top ’alf of a woman’s body, sir.” He swallowed hard. “Pretty ’orrible, it is. It was under them bushes.”
“Who found it, and when?”
“A Mrs. Ernestine Peabody, out walking ’er Pekingese dog by the name o’ Clarence.” He glanced down at his notebook. Pitt read from it upside down; 15th June, 1887, 3:25 P.M., called to St. Mary’s churchyard, woman screaming.
“Where is she now?” Pitt asked.
“Sittin’ on the seat in the church vestibule, sir. She’s took pretty bad, an’ I said as soon as you’d spoke to ’er she could go ’ome. It’s my opinion, sir, as she won’t be much use to us.”
“Probably not,” Pitt agreed. “Where is this ... parcel?”
“Where I found it, sir! I didn’t touch it more’n to make sure she wasn’t ’avin’—delusions, like. On the gin.”
Pitt went to the gates, heavy wrought iron and stuck fast, a little over a foot apart, wedged in the ruts of the dried mud. He squeezed through and walked along the inside of the railing till he came to the laurel bushes. He knew Stripe was immediately behind him.
The parcel was about nineteen inches square, lying where Clarence had left it, paper torn and pulled away to expose the meatlike flesh and several inches of fine-grained, white skin smeared a little with blood. There were flies beginning to gather. He did not have to touch it to see that the portion showing was part of a woman’s breast.
He straightened up, feeling so sick he was afraid he was going to faint. He breathed deeply—in and out, in and out—and heard Stripe blundering away, choking and retching behind a gravestone carved with cherubs.
After a moment of staring at the