Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [108]
He turned over and looked at the clock beside the bed. It was ten minutes before five.
The banging was getting worse. It was downstairs at the front door.
He sat up reluctantly and pushed his fingers through his hair, then put his jacket on over his nightshirt and walked barefoot across the floor to open the window. Charlotte stirred but did not fully waken. He pushed up the sash and looked out.
The banging stopped and a foreshortened figure stepped back from the door and looked up. It was Tellman. His face was very white in the early morning light and he had come without his usual bowler hat. He looked disheveled and upset.
Pitt indicated that he would come down, and after closing the window again, he walked as quietly as he could back to the door to the landing and went down the stairs into the hall. He undid the lock and pulled the door open.
Tellman looked even worse closer to. His face was ashen and what little flesh there was seemed to be sunken away. He did not wait to be asked.
“Something terrible has happened,” he said as soon as he saw Pitt. “You’d better come and deal with it yourself. I haven’t told anybody yet, but Mr. Farnsworth’s going to be in a right state when he hears.”
“Come in,” Pitt ordered, standing back. “What is it?” All sorts of fears whirled around in his head; presumably some terrible news had come from the German Embassy. Although how would Tellman know that? Had someone absconded, taking papers with them? “What is it?” he demanded more urgently.
Tellman remained on the step. He was so pale he looked as if he might collapse. That in itself alarmed Pitt. He would have thought Tellman inured to anything.
“Mrs. Chancellor,” Tellman said, and coughed painfully, then gulped. “We’ve just found her body, sir.”
Pitt was stunned. His breath caught in his throat and the words came out in a whisper. “Her body?”
“Yes sir. Washed up in the river at the Tower.” He watched Pitt with hollow eyes.
“Suicide?” Pitt said slowly, unable to believe it.
“No.” Tellman stood motionless except that he shivered very slightly although the morning was mild. “Murder. She’d been strangled, and then put in the water. Sometime last night by the looks of it. But you’ll need the medical examiner to tell you for sure.”
Pitt felt a sorrow so sharp it exploded in him in a kind of wild anger. She had been such a beautiful, vulnerable woman, so full of life, so highly individual. He remembered her vividly at the Duchess of Marlborough’s reception. He could picture her face in his mind as Tellman was talking. It was so seldom he had known a victim in life, the sense of loss was personal, different from the pity that he usually felt.
“Why?” he said violently. “Why would anyone want to destroy a woman like that? It doesn’t make any kind of sense.” Without realizing it he had clenched his fists and his body was tight with rage under his jacket. He was not even aware of his bare feet on the step or the fact he had no trousers on.
“The treason at the Colonial Office …” Tellman said unhappily. “Maybe she knew something?”
Pitt thumped the door lintel with the heel of his clenched fist, and swore.
“You’d better get dressed, sir, and come,” Tellman said quietly. “There’s no one knows about it yet, except the boatman as found her and the constable who reported it to me, but we can’t keep it that way for long. Don’t matter what you say to ’em, discretion and all that, somebody’ll talk to someone.”
“They know who she is?” Pitt was startled.
“Yes sir. That’s why I was called.”
Pitt was irritated with himself; he should have thought of that before.
“How?” he demanded. “How could riverboat men know her?”
“The constables,” Tellman explained patiently. “They were the ones who knew who she was. She was obviously someone of quality, any fool could see that, but she had a locket ’round her neck, little gold thing that opened up, with a picture in it.” He sighed and there was a sadness for a moment in his eyes. “Linus Chancellor, it was, clear as you like.