‘Yes, sir, Mrs Kynaston has handkerchiefs similar to this,’ Norton agreed. ‘But I cannot say that this one is hers. She does occasionally give such things away, if she has new ones, or it is no longer … serviceable. Such as if it is frayed, or stained in some way. They do not last indefinitely.’ He looked at it again. ‘It is difficult to say, in this condition, what state it would be if washed and ironed.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Pitt agreed. ‘But the monogram is clearly an “R”.’
‘Many ladies’ names begin with an “R”,’ Norton pulled his lips tight. ‘As for the key, it is a very simple thing. I dare say half the houses in London have something it would open. I’m afraid we can be of no assistance to you.’
‘I have no wish that the poor woman in the gravel pit should be Miss Ryder,’ Pitt said with feeling. ‘But I am obliged to do all I can to find out who she was. She deserves a burial, and her family deserve to know what happened to her.’ He stood up from the stool where he had been sitting. ‘I preferred to come myself, since that was very much a possibility, rather than send a sergeant to disturb you at this hour.’
Norton stood also. ‘I apologise, sir. I was ungenerous,’ he said a little awkwardly. ‘It was a kindness that you came yourself. I hope you find out who the poor creature is. Apart from the handkerchief, and the fact that the gravel pit is not far away, is there anything that made you think it was Kitty Ryder?’
‘She was the height and build you described, and she had thick auburn hair,’ Pitt replied. ‘It is unusual colouring.’
Norton was momentarily stunned. ‘Oh dear. Oh — I’m very sorry. I … this is absurd. Whoever she is she deserves our pity. Just for a moment the thought of someone we know made it so much more … real.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I shall inform Mrs Kynaston of your call, sir, and your consideration. May I show you out?’
It took Pitt some time to find Zebediah Smith at his home, and confirm with him what the sergeant had told him. He was not surprised to learn nothing new. His real purpose was to satisfy his own mind that Zebediah was as straightforward as he seemed. The man was still visibly shaken when he told Pitt how he had set out for his usual walk, and in the darkness the keen nose of his dog had scented something different and gone to find it. Then it sat and howled until Smith had come up to it himself, and — in the light of his lantern — seen the pathetic corpse.
He shook his head. ‘Who’d do that to a woman?’ he said miserably. ‘What kind of a … I suppose I gotta call ’im a man, although ’e ain’t human. ’Ceptin’ animals don’t kill their own for nothing.’
‘There’ll be a reason, Mr Smith,’ Pitt replied. ‘It’s my job to find it — when we discover who she is.’
Zebediah looked up and met Pitt’s eyes. ‘Ain’t no reason to do that to anyone, sir, an’ I don’t care ’oo you are — government, police nor nothin’ — you find ’im, an’ when you do, God ’elp yer what you do to ’im.’
Pitt did not argue. He was satisfied that Zebediah was telling the exact truth, and also that since he walked the same paths every morning, the body could not have been there twenty-four hours earlier.
By mid-afternoon Pitt was in the morgue with Dr Whistler. There was no place he disliked more. Outside the wind had risen considerably. Gusting rain blew hard and cold one moment, then the next, in sheltered places, simply dripped with surprising power to soak through even the best coats. Now and then there were brief blue patches in the sky, bright, and then gone again.
Inside the morgue it seemed to be always winter. The windows were high, perhaps to conceal from the passing world what happened there. The cold was necessary to preserve the bodies as they were wheeled from one room to another for examination. Those stored for any length of time were kept in ice chambers, the chill of which permeated everything. The smell was mostly antiseptic, but it was impossible to forget what it was there to mask.
Whistler’s office, where he saw Pitt, was warm and — had it been anywhere else — would have been quite pleasant. Whistler himself was dressed in a grey suit and there was no outward sign of his grisly occupation, except a faint aroma of some chemical.
‘I’m not going to be very helpful,’ he said as soon as Pitt had taken a seat in one of the well-padded but still uncomfortable chairs. They seemed to have been constructed to oblige one to sit unnaturally upright.
‘Even the omission of something might be useful,’ Pitt said hopefully.
Whistler shrugged. ‘She’s been dead at least two weeks, but I imagine you had worked that out for yourself, from the state of her, poor creature. It is as I said: that abomination was done to her face by a clean, very sharp knife.’
Pitt said nothing.
‘I can tell you she was moved after she was dead,’ Whistler went on. ‘But you must have concluded that too. If she’d been lying there for a couple of weeks someone else would have found her before now. Apart from other people who walk their dogs on the paths across the old gravel pits, there’s Mr Smith himself.’
‘As you said,’ Pitt observed drily. ‘Not much help so far. I’ve spoken to Mr Smith. I agree, she wasn’t there yesterday. If she’s been dead a couple of weeks, where was she all that time? Do you know that? Or can you at least make an educated guess?’
‘Somewhere cold, or the deterioration would be worse than it is,’ Whistler answered.
‘Brilliant.’ Pitt was now openly sarcastic. ‘At this time of the year, that narrows it down to anywhere in England except somebody’s house who has decent fires in all the main rooms. Even then it could be someone’s outhouse.’
‘Not quite.’ Whistler pursed his lips. ‘She was pretty clean, apart from a smear or two of mud and bits of gravel and sand caught up in her clothes. And that could be from where she was lying. Wherever she was kept for the time in between death and being put in the gravel pit, it was clean. And although she’s badly mutilated, when I looked more closely, that appears to have been done recently, after the flesh had begun to decay. I suppose that could be useful?’ He shrugged. ‘It more or less rules out anywhere outside.’
‘More than that.’ Pitt sat forward a little. ‘If you’re quite sure about that: no rats? Absolutely no rats?’
Whistler took his point. There were rats almost everywhere, in cities or the country, in the sewers, in the streets and gutters, in people’s houses, even cellars, potting sheds, and outhouses of every kind. One did not see them so often, but any food left lying, certainly any dead and rotting body, they would have found.
‘Yes.’ Whistler nodded, his eyes meeting Pitt’s squarely for the first time. ‘You may safely conclude that wherever she was, it was cold and clean, and sufficiently well sealed that neither flies nor rats could get in. Of course there are no flies at this time of year, but there are always beetles of some sort. Narrows it down quite a lot.’
‘Any idea how she got there?’ Pitt pursued.
‘Impossible to tell. The body’s too badly damaged and too far deteriorated to find any marks of ropes, or whether she lay on slats, or boards, or anything else. You’ve got a nasty one …’
Pitt looked at him coldly. ‘That also I had worked out for myself.’
‘I’ll let you know if I find out anything more,’ Whistler said with a faint smile.
‘Please do.’ Pitt rose to his feet. ‘For example, how old she was, any distinguishing marks that might help identify her, what state of health she was in, any healed injuries, old scars, birthmarks? Particularly, I would like to know what killed her.’
Whistler nodded. ‘Believe me, Commander, I very much want you to find out who, and then exact everything from him the law allows, in some attempt at payment for it.’