The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [49]
Tellman glared at him.
“Yes sir,” he said with an answering smile that was a baring of the teeth, which were oddly irregular in his symmetrical lantern face. “I’m sure I shall solve it, one way or another.”
“Excellent. You’d better find out about this Aidan Arledge, who he was, if there’s any possible connection between him and Oakley Winthrop …”
“Probably just the same place,” Tellman said dismissively. “Lunatics don’t ask if people know each other.”
“I said a connection,” Pitt corrected. “Not necessarily a relationship. Did they look alike? Dress alike? Pass in exactly the same spot at the same time? Did they have some habit or interest in common? There must be some reason why our lunatic killed those two, and not any of the other people who were regularly in the park at night”
“Give ’im time,” Tellman said dryly. “That’s two in two weeks. At this rate he could do fifty in a year. That is if fifty people go on walking in the park. Which doesn’t seem very likely. I wouldn’t cross the park alone at night now.” He looked at Pitt steadily, and Pitt knew what he was thinking. They both knew the atmosphere of fear that was rising, the whispers, the jumpiness, the ugly jokes and the beginning of accusation and persecution of anyone new in an area or a trifle different. Some had even awoken memories of Whitechapel and that other awful madman never found.
“How far away was the bandstand from the Serpentine where Winthrop was found?” Pitt asked aloud.
“Just under half a mile.”
“Was he killed at the bandstand where your trumpeter found him?”
“No,” Tellman said immediately. “No blood at all, worth speaking of, and it would have been all over the place with a beheading like that. No grass on his feet even, but then the grass in the park hasn’t been cut for several days, from the look of it. None on my feet when I walked across it. But I’ll see the park keeper of course,” he added before Pitt could tell him.
“Clean wound, was it?” Pitt asked.
“No, much messier than the first. Took two or three strokes, from the look of it.” Tellman’s face crumpled in disgust in spite of himself. “Takes a pretty good blow to cut through a man’s neck. Maybe he was lucky the first time.”
“And he was hit on the head first as well?” Pitt pursued.
“Yes, looks like it. Bad bruise under the hair at the back.”
“Enough to render him senseless?”
“Don’t know. Have to see the medical examiner for that.”
“Any guess as to what time he died?”
Tellman shrugged. “About the same, midnight or soon after.”
“Witnesses?”
“Not yet, but I’ll find them.” There was a note of hard deliberation in Tellman’s voice, and looking at his face, Pitt felt sorry for any hapless passerby who refused to swear to all he knew.
“You’d better put someone else onto that, to begin with,” Pitt directed. “Find out who Aidan Arledge was, anything you can about him, where he lived, what he did, who he knew, if he owed money, had a mistress, anything you can.”
“Yes sir. I’ll put le Grange onto it.”
“You’ll do it yourself!”
“But that’s simple, Mr. Pitt,” he protested. “And probably doesn’t matter. Our lunatic won’t give a cuss who the man was. He probably never saw him before last night, and I daresay never knew his name anyway!”
“Maybe,” Pitt agreed. “But I still want a senior officer to go and speak to the widow.”
“Oh, I’ll do that.” Again Tellman bared his teeth. “Unless you think he may have been important enough you should do it yourself, sir?”
“I might. When you find out something about him!”
Tellman’s face hardened again. “Yes sir.” And without waiting to see if Pitt had any further instructions, he turned on his heel and went out, leaving Pitt angry and disturbed.
He sat still for some time, trying to absorb the impact of this new crime, the difference it made to all the conclusions he had come to, albeit tentatively. He had been so sure the murder of Winthrop was a personal crime, now this new development made nonsense of it. No sane lover, however vicious, murdered his rival, then some