Beside her, Ailsa, taller and so very much fairer, looked magnificent in soft greys. Pitt could not have said exactly how, but he recognised the latest cut in sweeping skirt, now short enough not to touch the ground and get wet. The whole costume needed only a fur hat to be perfect, and no doubt she had such a thing. She took Rosalind’s arm, without asking her permission, and guided her to the large, soft sofa, easing them both into it, side by side. She stared at Pitt with sharp blame in her blue eyes.
Kynaston remained standing, as though he felt that to sit down would somehow relax his guard.
‘We do not yet know what happened to Kitty, Mr Pitt,’ Ailsa said a little brusquely. ‘My sister-in-law told you that we would inform you if we did.’
‘Yes, Mrs Kynaston, I know that,’ Pitt replied. The woman irritated him and he had to remind himself that although she certainly did not look it, she was probably afraid, more for her sister-in-law than for her own sake. The thought flickered through his mind that she might be more aware of the domestic realities than the younger and apparently more delicate Rosalind. He had a sudden cold vision of Kynaston’s possible affair with a handsome maid: quarrels, embarrassment, even an attempt at blackmail, a flare of temper out of control.
Was that what he saw in Ailsa’s vivid eyes, and the fear of everything that exposure would bring? To whom? Scandal to Kynaston? Or disillusion to Rosalind? But he was days ahead of himself, and quite probably mistaken.
Ailsa was waiting, somewhat impatiently.
‘I am sorry to inform you that we have discovered the body of a young woman up at the gravel pit to the west of here,’ Pitt told her. ‘We do not know who she is, but we would like to assure ourselves, and you, that it is not Kitty Ryder.’ Out of the corner of his vision he saw Kynaston relax a little. It was no more than a slight change in his stance, as if he breathed more easily.
Ailsa gave the ghost of a smile. Rosalind did not stop staring straight at Pitt.
‘Why don’t you find out who she is, and then you would have no need to disturb my sister-in-law?’ Ailsa said with an edge of criticism in her voice. She did not like Pitt and she had no intention of concealing the fact. It might not have any meaning in this case, or with Kitty Ryder, but he wondered why. Rosalind did not seem to have any such feelings. But perhaps she was too numb to feel anything. Did she usually need Ailsa to protect her?
If the body were that of Kitty Ryder, Pitt suspected that there was going to be a difficult mass of emotions to untangle, many of them irrelevant. Everyone had secrets, old wounds that still bled, people they loved or hated, sometimes both.
‘You would have heard of it within a day or two at the outside,’ Pitt assured her. ‘And if we have not eliminated the possibility that it is anyone from your house, it will be far more distressing.’
‘For goodness’ sake why don’t you know now?’ Ailsa demanded. ‘She was a perfectly recognisable young woman. Get the butler, or someone, to go and look at her. Isn’t that your job? Why on earth are you here bothering us?’
Rosalind put her hand on her sister-in-law’s sleeve. ‘Ailsa, give him a chance to tell us. I dare say he has his reasons.’
Pitt avoided the answer, aware of Kynaston’s eyes on him and a sharp, almost electric tension in the air.
He looked at Rosalind. ‘Mrs Kynaston, I imagine that, like most ladies, you have a number of handkerchiefs, some of them embroidered with your initials?’
‘Yes, several,’ she replied with a frown.
‘Why on earth does that matter?’ Ailsa snapped.
Kynaston opened his mouth to reprove her, and changed his mind. He looked even tenser than before.
Pitt took the handkerchief from the corpse out of his pocket and passed it across to Rosalind.
She took it, damp in her fingers, and dropped it instantly, her face white.
Ailsa picked it up and examined it. Then she looked up at Pitt. ‘It’s a fairly ordinary lace-edged handkerchief, made of cambric. I have half a dozen like it myself.’
‘That one has an “R” embroidered on it,’ Pitt pointed out. ‘Does yours not have an “A”?’
‘Naturally. There are thousands like these. If she was not the kind of person to own one herself, she could have stolen it from someone.’
‘Did Kitty Ryder steal it from you, Mrs Kynaston?’ Pitt asked Rosalind.
Rosalind gave the slightest shrug: a delicate gesture but unmistakable. She had no idea. Taking it between her fingertip and thumb, she passed it back to Pitt.
‘Is that all?’ Kynaston asked.
Pitt replaced the handkerchief in his pocket. ‘No. She also had a small key, the sort that might open a cupboard or a drawer.’
No one responded. They sat stiff and waiting, not glancing at each other.
‘It fits one of the cupboards in your laundry room,’ Pitt added.
Ailsa raised her delicate eyebrows slightly. ‘Only one? Or did you not try the rest? In my house such a key would have fitted all of them.’
Rosalind drew in her breath as if to speak, and then changed her mind.
Was it anger in Ailsa, or fear? Or simply defence of someone she saw as more vulnerable than herself? Pitt replied to her levelly, politely. ‘I am aware that there are only a limited number of types of keys, especially of that very simple sort. I have cupboards in my own house, and I have found that all the doors in one piece of furniture can be opened by the same key. This one opened one set of doors, but nothing in your kitchen, or pantry, for example.’
Ailsa did not flinch. ‘Are you concluding from this … evidence … that the unfortunate woman in the gravel pit is Kitty Ryder?’
‘No, Mrs Kynaston. I am hoping there is some way of proving that she is not.’ It was perfectly honest: he would very much rather she were someone about whom he knew nothing, whose friends or relatives he would meet only when there was no hope left of her being alive. It was easier, he admitted to himself. You went prepared. Probably it would be a case for the local police, not Special Branch at all.
Kynaston cleared his throat, but when he spoke his voice was still hoarse.
‘Do you wish me to look at this poor woman and see if I recognise her?’
‘No, sir,’ Pitt said gently. ‘If you will permit me to take your butler, Norton, he will know her better and be in a position to tell us, if it is possible, whether this is Kitty Ryder, or not.’
‘Yes … yes, of course,’ Kynaston agreed, breathing out slowly. ‘I’ll tell him immediately.’ He seemed about to add something, but glancing first at Ailsa, then at Rosalind, instead he said goodbye to Pitt with a brief nod, and turned to go and seek Norton.
‘That is all we can do for you, Mr Pitt.’ Ailsa did not rise to her feet, but her dismissal was clear.
‘Thank you for your consideration,’ Rosalind added quietly.
Pitt and Norton travelled to the morgue by hansom cab. Norton sat bolt upright, his hands clenched in his lap, knuckles white. Neither of them spoke. There was no sound except the clatter of the horse’s feet and the hiss of the wheels on the wet road, then the occasional splash as they passed through a deeper puddle.
Pitt let the silence remain. Norton could have felt anything for the girl he was perhaps going to identify, from indifference, possibly irritation, dislike, through respect even to affection. Or the clearly intense emotion he suffered now could be quite impersonal, simply a dread of death. Anybody’s death was a reminder that it was the one unavoidable reality in all life.
Perhaps he had lost someone else young: a mother, a sister, even a daughter. It happened to many people. Pitt was lucky it had not happened to him — at least not yet. Please God — never!
Or it might be that Norton feared that if it were Kitty, then her murder had some connection with the Kynaston house and someone who lived in it, either family or staff.
And there was the other possibility also, as there was in every household, that close and intrusive police investigation would expose all kinds of other secrets, weaknesses, the petty deceits that keep lives whole, and private. Everyone needed some illusions; they were the clothes that kept them from emotional nakedness. It was sometimes more than a kindness not to see too much; it was a decency, a safety to oneself as well as to others.