Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [110]
The cabby muttered something inaudible, but obeyed.
They glimpsed the Custom House to the west, already busy with men coming and going. Then they turned right facing the great medieval bastion of the Tower of London, a stone memory of a conquest that spanned back to the Dark Ages and a history recorded only in brief bursts by illuminated writing and quaint works of art and tales of bloody battles and exquisite, passionate islands of Christianity.
The hansom stopped at Queen’s Stairs. Pitt paid the cabby and he turned and left, his horses moving into a brisk trot.
It was two minutes before six. The great silver sheet of the river was utterly calm. Even the cargo barges, dark against the bright surface, barely made a ripple. The air was fresh and slightly damp and smelled of salt from the tide.
Tellman led the way along the water’s edge to the stairs, where a boatman was waiting for them. He looked up without a change of expression and deftly maneuvered the small craft around so they could get in.
Pitt looked questioningly at Tellman.
“Traitors Gate,” he said succinctly, climbing in ahead of Pitt and sitting down. He disliked boats, and it showed in his face.
Pitt followed him easily and thanked the boatman as he pulled away.
“She was washed up at Traitors Gate?” he asked with a catch in his voice.
“Tide left her there,” Tellman replied. It was only a few yards down the river to the gate itself, the entrance to the Tower by which condemned people had been brought to their execution, and which opened directly onto the water.
Pitt could see the little knot of people already gathered around: a constable in uniform looking cold in spite of the mildness of the morning, a scarlet tunic of a Yeoman of the Guard, the traditional Beefeaters who man the Tower, and the other of the two boatmen who had first found her.
Pitt climbed ashore, only just avoiding getting his feet wet on the slipway. Susannah was lying on the waterline where the high tide had left her, only her feet below the surface, a long, slender form barely crumpled, turned over half onto her face. One white hand was visible protruding from the wet, dripping cloth of her gown. Her hair had come unraveled from its pins and lay like seaweed around her neck, spilling onto the stone.
The constable turned as Pitt came ashore, recognized him and stepped back from the body.
“Morning, sir.” He looked very pale.
“Good morning, Constable,” Pitt replied. He did not remember the man’s name, if indeed he knew it. He looked down at Susannah. “When was she found?”
“‘Bout ’alf past three, sir. High tide’d be just before three, ‘cording to the boatman ’ere. Reckon as they were the first past ’ere on this side o’ the river after she were washed up, poor creature. Weren’t no suicide, sir. Poor soul was strangled, no two ways about that.” He looked sad and very solemn for his twenty-odd years. His beat was on the river’s edge, and this was not the first body he had seen, nor the first woman, but she was perhaps the first he had seen with beautiful clothes and—when the hair was pulled back, as it was now—such a passionate, vulnerable face. Pitt knelt down to look at her more closely. He saw the unmistakable finger marks purple on her throat, but from the lack of swelling or bloating on her face, he thought perhaps she had actually died of a broken neck rather than suffocation. It was a tiny thing, very tiny, but the fact that she was not disfigured eased the hurt. Possibly she had suffered only very briefly. He would think that as long as he could.
“We didn’t touch her, sir,” one of the boatmen said nervously. “’cept to make sure as she was dead, and we couldn’t ’elp ’er, poor creature.” He knew enough of the circumstances which drive people to suicide to have no judgment over it. He would have put them all in consecrated ground and left the decision to God. But he was not a churchgoing man by choice. He went only to please his wife.
“Thank you,” Pitt said absently, still looking at Susannah.