‘A reasonable assumption,’ Pitt agreed. ‘No longer tenable?’
Whistler grunted and let his breath out between his teeth. ‘I examined the body very closely for the cause of death. While doing so I realised that the decay was much further advanced than I had supposed from the exterior. She had been kept somewhere extremely cold and …’ he took a deep breath before continuing, ‘… and she had been cleaned up quite a lot after the injuries that caused her death …’
‘What?’
Whistler glared at him. ‘You heard me correctly, Commander. Someone made an attempt to clean her up, then instead of disposing of her, kept her body somewhere very cold, but thoroughly sealed so no scavengers found her. Therefore it was not in an ordinary outhouse, even in this weather. Most of the damage we saw, particularly to her face, was indeed done with a very sharp blade of some sort, including the removal of the eyes … and the lips. It was not animal depredation occurring during the one night she lay exposed in the gravel pit. And don’t waste your time asking me for an explanation. I can only tell you the facts. Understanding them is your business, thank God!’
‘And the cause of death?’ Pitt felt cold again, in spite of the bright fire.
‘Extreme violence,’ Whistler replied. ‘Blows hard enough to break her bones, specifically her shoulder blade, four ribs, the humerus in her left arm, and her pelvis in three places. But that was some time before the mutilations to her face. That is my point!’ He glared at Pitt, his outrage aching for any other answer. ‘Ten days at the absolute minimum.’
Pitt was appalled. It was one of the most savage beatings he could imagine. Whoever did it must have been completely insane. No wonder Whistler looked so wretched. If she were a prostitute it was no ordinary quarrel she had fallen victim to, it was an attack by a raving madman. If he could do that once, how long would it be before he did it again?
Suddenly the room seemed not warm and comfortably protected from the elements. It was more like a suffocating, airless imprisonment from the clean, driving sleet outside, and he longed to escape into it.
‘What with?’ he asked, his voice wavering a little. ‘What did he use?’
‘Honestly?’ Whistler shook his head. ‘This side of a lunatic asylum, I would say he ran her down with a coach and four. Hard to tell after the passage of time, and I’d say it’s been three weeks or so by now. Some of the injuries could have been caused by horses’ hoofs or carriage wheels. Considerable impact, from several directions and it could have happened all at once, like horses panicking.’
A momentary fury welled up inside Pitt. The man could have told him that in the first place. Hideous accidents happened. The damage and the pain were the same, but the horror was nothing like that of imagining a homicidal human being doing such a thing deliberately. He longed to actually hit Whistler, which was childish and he was ashamed of himself. Nevertheless it was true. He clenched his fists and kept his voice level, even if it was tight and grated between his teeth.
‘Are you saying that this woman’s death could have been a traffic accident, and not a crime at all, Dr Whistler?’
‘It could have been any number of things!’ Whistler’s answer rose to all but a shout. ‘But if it was a traffic accident, why in God’s name was it not reported to the police?’ He waved his arms wide, only just missing the bookcase. ‘Where the devil was she for two or three weeks? Why put her out in one of the Shooters Hill gravel pits for the foxes and badgers to eat her and maul her about, and that poor soul walking his dog to find?’ He drew in a deep breath. ‘And why the terrible mutilations so long afterwards? To tear her face, so she was unrecognisable?’
This time it was Pitt who was silent.
Whistler gave a shuddering sigh and fought to regain control of himself. He looked slightly embarrassed by his emotion and avoided meeting Pitt’s eyes. Perhaps he thought himself unprofessional, but Pitt liked him the more for it.
‘Anything further about who she was?’ Pitt asked at last. ‘Something not obliterated by this … lunatic?’
‘Probably in good health, as far as I could tell at this stage,’ Whistler answered. ‘No apparent disease. Organs all fine, apart from beginning to decay. If you find whoever did this to her, I hope you hang him! If you don’t, don’t come back to me for any help!’ His glare swivelled to Pitt, then away again. There was a faint flush in his cheeks. ‘She was probably a domestic servant. Little things, you know? Good teeth. Well-nourished. Clean nails, good hands, but several small scars from burning, the sort you see on a woman who does a lot of ironing. Difficult things not to burn yourself with now and again, flat irons. Especially if you’re ironing something fiddly, like lace, or gathered sleeves, delicate collars, that kind of thing.’
‘A lady’s maid …’ Pitt said the inevitable.
‘Yes … or a laundry maid of a more general sort. Children’s clothes are fiddly too.’
‘So you still have no idea whether it is Kitty Ryder or not?’
‘No, I haven’t. Sorry. But she wasn’t a lady. Ladies don’t do their own ironing. And she wasn’t a prostitute — much too clean and healthy for that. She must have been in her mid-to late twenties. On the streets, by that age she’d have looked a lot worse. A servant, or a young married woman, taking in laundry. Not likely. Everyone around here has their own servants for that sort of thing. And she’d had no children. With the injuries and the rot I don’t know if she was still a virgin.’
‘Thank you,’ Pitt said grimly, as a matter of courtesy; it was the last thing he actually meant. He did not want the case, and he knew that Whistler would rather not have found the evidence, or have had to tell him about it. It was all inevitable now: the slow, sad unravelling of whoever’s tragedy it was. ‘Have you told the local police?’ he added, almost as an afterthought.
A bitter amusement flashed in Whistler’s eyes. ‘Yes.’ He did not add their reaction, but Pitt could guess it. They would be delighted it was a problem they would have to give up to Special Branch, just in case it should end up involving Dudley Kynaston.
Pitt took his damp overcoat and hat off the coat rack and put them on. He said goodbye to Whistler and went out into the passage, and then the cold street again. He could have got a hansom here and ridden all the way back to Lisson Grove, but he preferred to walk down to the river and sit in a ferry on the choppy grey water, alone with the wind and the rain, and think what he was going to do next, and how he was going to do it. He could get a cab on the far side.
There were too many questions unanswered. If this were the body of Kitty Ryder, had it also been her blood and hair on the steps of the Kynaston house? Was it a quarrel, but she had still eventually gone willingly? Or had she been taken by force? Why would her suitor have done such a thing? If he had killed her there, it had been an extraordinarily violent quarrel to conduct so close to an inhabited house. Why had no one heard anything? In fact, why had she not screamed, and brought the whole household out?
Why had he not left her there and escaped as fast as he could? She was a big woman for someone to have carried anywhere. If he had run off into the night, leaving her dead in the alleyway, he had an excellent chance of never being found. London was a large city to lose yourself in, and there was the whole of the countryside beyond that! Or, if you were desperate enough, ships sailed every day from the Pool of London for every part of the world.
Pitt looked across the rough water at them now: masts jostling against the sky in the distance; steamers heavier, and more solid; barges and lighters threading between them. A man could lose himself here in a day, never mind three weeks. None of this made sense. What was he missing?