Death in the Devil's Acre - Anne Perry [7]
“Good gracious—can the man not name himself?”
“People do not always tell the truth, ma’am,” he said dryly.
She colored at her own clumsiness for not having seen the obvious.
“And in this case I understand he is dead anyway,” the general added tartly. “It is nothing for you to concern yourself with, my dear. It is my duty to be of assistance, if I can. I dare say I shall not be long.”
“Have you forgotten we are dining with Sir Harry and Lady Lisburne tonight?” She ignored Pitt as if he had been one of the servants. “I do not intend to arrive late. I will not be thought ill-mannered, whatever you may imagine your duty to be.”
“The man is in a mortuary not half an hour away.” The general’s face flickered with irritation. He disliked dinner parties, and, with Harry Lisburne as host, this one was likely to be more tedious than ever. “I have only to look at him and say whether I know him or not. I shall be back before dark.”
She blew down her nose with a little sigh, and went out without looking at Pitt again. General Balantyne walked into the hall, collected his coat from the waiting butler, and accompanied Pitt out into the rain just as the coachman drove around from the mews and stopped at the curbside for them.
They rode in silence. Pitt did not want to prejudice the identification by discussing the case beforehand, and he felt no compulsion to make small talk of other things.
The carriage stopped a short distance from the mortuary, and Pitt and the general alighted and walked up the path, still silent. Inside, the duty attendant appeared startled to see a gentleman of Balantyne’s obvious quality, but he recognized Pitt, and conducted them to the body without hesitation.
“There you are, sir.” He whipped back the sheet with the air of a conjurer producing a rabbit.
Like Pitt before him, the general’s eyes went straight to the mutilation, not even glancing at the face. He took a deep breath and let it out. He had seen death before, a great deal of death, almost all of it by the violence of war or the ravages of disease. What made this uniquely appalling to him was that it had happened deliberately, here at home in the streets of London. The inexpert dismemberment was not the accident of random cannonfire, but looked to be the result of a passionate and individual hatred for one man in particular.
What man? The general looked up at the face. Pitt, watching him carefully, saw the start of recognition.
“General?” He lifted his voice only a little.
Balantyne looked up slowly. Pitt could not read the emotions in his eyes. Balantyne was an exceedingly private man, unused to the comforts of fellow sympathy. Pitt could never really understand him; their backgrounds were worlds apart. Balantyne was the last of generations of soldiers who had served monarch and country with unquestioning sacrifice in every foreign war since the days of Agincourt, whereas Pitt was the son of a country gamekeeper convicted unjustly of some petty offense. Pitt had grown up on the estate of his master and been educated to his excellent, almost beautiful diction, to provide companionship to the son of the house and to encourage the boy in his studies. Pitt’s hunger had been a challenge, and not infrequently a reproach to spur the boy out of indolence.
Yet he liked Balantyne, even admired him. He was a man who lived as strictly by the code he believed in as had any ancient knight or monk.
“Do you know him?” he prompted, although the question was now no more than academic; the answer was in the general’s face.
“Of course,” Balantyne replied quietly. “It is Max Burton, who used to be my footman.”
2
GRACIE CAME RUSHING INTO the parlor with the early editions of the afternoon newspapers. Her face was suffused with color, her eyes as round as gooseberries. “Oh, ma’am! There’s been an ’orrible murder—most terrible in London’s ’istory o’ crime, it says ’ere. Doin’s as’d make a strong man go white to ’is knees!”
“Indeed?” Charlotte did not stop her sewing. Newspapers always dealt in hyperbole—who stops in a January street to buy a paper that