Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [31]
Beyond the evergreens the light danced on the river, and as he and Buckler walked across the grass it was easier to see the dark shadow where the willow made a cavern over the bank and about twenty yards of the stream.
They moved more slowly, eyes to the ground, looking for footprints, signs of anyone’s passing recently.
“There, sir,” Buckler said between his teeth. “I reckon that’s ’cos something was dragged. See where it’s all bent. Some o’ their stalks is broke.”
Pitt had seen it. Something heavy had fallen and then been pulled along.
“I expect he carried Cathcart as far as he could, then dropped him here and hauled him the rest of the way,” Pitt said. He stepped forward, leading Buckler to the edge of the river. Here the weed was deeply scored, but the tide had risen and fallen four times in the last two days, and the marks were obliterated below the high-water line. There was a post where a boat could be tied, and the ridges worn on its sides made its use apparent.
Pitt stood staring at the water, rippling, dark peat browns reflecting the sun. It was several moments before he noticed the white edge of another chip of porcelain, and then another. It was Buckler who saw the mass of the rolled-up rug half sunken under the willow, brushed by the branches. At first it had looked like a drifting log, and he had ignored it.
Loath to wade into the river, or ask Buckler to do it, Pitt went back up to the garden shed and fetched a long-handled rake, and together they managed to pull the mass ashore. They unrolled it and looked at it carefully, but it had been in the mud and water too long to tell if any of the marks were blood or not.
“It was done in the ’ouse, and then ’e were carried out ’ere and put in the boat,” Buckler said grimly. “An’ ’ooever done it broke the jar an’ threw the bits down ’ere, an’ took the rug up ’cos o’ the blood. Mebbe they ’oped it’d ’ide the fact ’e were dead, an’ we’d think ’e jus’ upped an’ took off somewhere.”
Pitt was inclined to agree with him, and said so. The longer an investigation was delayed the more difficult it was. But this evidence did not answer whether the crime had been spontaneous or premeditated, simply that the killer had been in sufficient possession of his wits to act with self-preservation afterwards.
“Must a’ bin quite a big feller,” Buckler said doubtfully, “ter carry ’im down ’ere from the ’ouse an’ put ’im in the boat.”
“Or else he had help,” Pitt pointed out, although he did not believe that. There was too much emotion, too much that was violent and twisted, for a collaboration between two people—unless both were affected with the same madness.
“There’s nothing more for us here.” Pitt looked around at the quiet garden and the fast-flowing river. The tide had risen several inches even while they stood there. “We’d better go back to your station. This is your patch.”
But Superintendent Ward had no desire to take the case, and told Pitt in no uncertain terms that since the body had been found at Horseferry Stairs, and Pitt had already started to investigate, he should continue to do so.
“Besides,” he pointed out forcefully, “Delbert Cathcart was a very important photographer. Done a lot of high society. This could be a very nasty scandal indeed. Needs to be handled with a great deal of discretion!”
Tellman returned form Dover hot and tired, and after a cup of tea and a sandwich at the railway station, he went to Bow Street and reported to Pitt.
“No sign of him in Dover now,” he said with a mixture of relief at not having had to arrest a French diplomat, and disappointment because he had been denied a trip to France. “But he was there. Booked a passage across to Calais, then never turned up to go. I questioned them up and down about that, but they were absolutely certain. Wherever he is, he’s still in England.”
Pitt leaned back in his chair, looking at Tellman’s dour face and reading the anxiety in him.
“The body in the boat wasn’t Bonnard,” Pitt said. “It’s a society photographer called Delbert Cathcart.