Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [0]
Title Page
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
By Anne Perry
Copyright Page
To Carol Ann Lee in appreciation
CHAPTER ONE
The wraiths of mist curled up slowly from the gray-and-silver surface of the river, gleaming in the first light from the sun. Over the river the arch of Lambeth Bridge rose dark against a pearly sky. Whatever barges followed the tide down towards the Port of London and the docks were still invisible in the September fog.
Superintendent Thomas Pitt stood on the stormy wet ledge of Horseferry Stairs and looked at the punt which nudged gently against the lowest step. It was moored now, but an hour and a half ago, when the constable had first seen it, it had not been. Not that a drifting boat was of any interest to the head of the Bow Street police station, it was what lay in it, grotesque, like some obscure parody of Millais’s painting of Ophelia.
The constable averted his eyes, keeping them studiously on Pitt’s face.
“Thought we should report it to you, sir.”
Pitt looked down at the body reclining in the punt, its wrists encased in manacles chained to the wooden sides, its ankles apart, chained also. The long green robe looked like a dress, but so torn and distorted it was impossible to tell its original shape. The knees were apart, the head thrown back, mimicking ecstasy. It was a feminine pose, but the body was unmistakably male. He had been in his mid-thirties, fair-haired, with good features and a well-trimmed mustache.
“I don’t know why,” Pitt said quickly as the water slurped against the steps below him, perhaps the wash from some passing boat invisible in the coils of mist. “This is not Bow Street area.”
The constable shifted uncomfortably. “Scandal, Mr. Pitt.” He still did not look at the boat or its occupant. “Could get very nasty, sir. Best you’re in at the beginning.”
Very carefully, not to slip on the wet stone, Pitt went farther down. The melancholy sound of a foghorn drifted across the water, and from some unseen cargo barges a man’s voice called out a warning. The answer was lost in the cloying vapor. He looked again at the man lying in the punt. It was impossible from this angle to see how he had died. There was no apparent wound, no weapon, and yet if he had died of a heart attack, or a seizure, then someone else had certainly had a grotesque part in leaving his corpse in such a way. Some family was going to begin a nightmare today. Perhaps life would never be quite the same for them again.
“I suppose you’ve sent for the surgeon?” Pitt asked.
“Yes sir. Due any time now, I should think.” He swallowed, and moved his feet, scraping his boots a little on the stone. “Mr. Pitt—sir.”
“Yes?” Pitt was still staring at the punt scraping its wooden prow on the steps and juggling a little with the wash of another boat.
“Weren’t only the way ’e is that I called yer.”
Pitt caught something in his voice and swiveled to look up. “Oh?”
“No sir. I think as I might know ’oo ’e is, sir, which is goin’ ter be very nasty, an’ all.”
Pitt felt the river cold seep into him. “Oh. Who do you think it is, Constable?”
“Sorry, sir. I think it might be a Monsewer de Mornay, ’oo was reported missing day afore yesterday, an’ the French won’t ’alf kick up a fuss if this is ’im.”
“The French?” Pitt said warily.
“Yes sir. Missing from their embassy, ’e is.”
“And you think this is he?”
“Looks like it, Mr. Pitt. Slender, fair ’air, good-lookin’, small mustache, about five feet nine inches tall, an’ a gent. Eccentric, by all accounts. Likes a bit of a party, theatricals an’ the like.” His voice was heaving with incomprehension and disgust. “Mixes with them aesthetes, as they calls ’emselves . . .”
Pitt was saved further comment by the clatter of hooves and the rattle of wheels on the road above them, and a moment later the familiar figure of the police surgeon, top hat a trifle askew, came down the steps, bag in his