The Hyde Park Headsman by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online Page B

floor.
    She swung around, opened her mouth to speak, then saw his face.
    “What?” she said gently. “Something bad, I can see it.”
    “Murder,” he replied. “A beheading, in Hyde Park.”
    “Oh.” She took a deep breath, pushing her hair off her brow. It was bright like polished chestnuts in the lamplight. “Soup?”
    “What?”
    “Soup?” she repeated. “Some hot soup and bread? You look cold.”
    He smiled and nodded, beginning to relax.
    She opened the lid of the pot on the range and ladled some broth out into a dish. She knew he was too overwrought, too clenched with chill and emotion to eat yet. She placed it in front of him, with fresh bread and a pat of butter, then sat down again and waited for him to tell her. It was not courtesyor any form of kindness, he knew that. She would be intensely interested, she always was. No pretense was necessary.
    Briefly, in between spoonfuls of broth, he told her.

2
    “Y
ES SIR?”
Tellman stood in front of Pitt’s desk early the next morning, his face was hard and bleak as stone, his eyes focusing somewhere over Pitt’s left shoulder. “Didn’t come back in time to report to you, sir. Half past ten, it was. You’d gone home.”
    “What have you learned?” Pitt asked. He had done this to Drummond too many times himself to be irritated by Tellman’s implied criticism.
    “Far as the doc can judge, he died some time before midnight,” Tellman answered. “Not sure exactly. Maybe eleven or so. Not much blood in the boat, so it probably wasn’t there. In fact, unless he washed it out, it couldn’t have been.”
    “Shoes?” Pitt asked, imagining carrying a headless body across the grass to the Serpentine before midnight when there were still late partygoers returning home and several hansoms up and down Knightsbridge, any of them liable to let off a fare for a midnight walk.
    “Grass on them, sir,” Tellman said expressionlessly. “Several pieces.”
    “And when was the park grass last cut?” Pitt asked.
    Tellman’s nostrils flared very slightly and his mouth pinched in. “I’ll find out. But it doesn’t matter. He didn’t walk across it without his head.”
    “Maybe he was brought in another boat,” Pitt suggested, as much to annoy Tellman as because he thought it a serious possibility.
    “What for?” Tellman’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “Doesn’tmake any sense. What’s different about one boat from another? And not easy to lift a corpse in a boat. Turn yourself over as like as not.” He smiled sourly, his eyes meeting Pitt’s for the first time. “His clothes were quite dry, except a very slight damp in one or two places from the dew. But dry as a bone underneath … sir.”
    Pitt conceded all that without comment.
    “How deep is the water at the edge of the Serpentine?” he asked contentiously.
    Tellman took his point instantly. “Not more than just above the knee,” he agreed, then the smile came back to his lips. “But kind of noticeable, don’t you think, to walk back across the park soaked to the thighs? People might remember that—dangerous.”
    “People might remember seeing a man having his head cut off too,” Pitt said with an answering smile. “Tends to suggest there was no one around. What do you think yourself?”
    That was a question Tellman was not prepared for. He wanted to argue, to mock. His long face tightened and he looked at Pitt with dislike.
    “Too early to say … sir.”
    “Well when you’ve ruled out the impossible, what’s left?” Pitt insisted. “Specifically!”
    Tellman took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
    Pitt waited.
    “He was killed somewhere farther along the Serpentine, which we haven’t found yet,” Tellman replied. “And taken to where we found him in the boat. I’ve got Bailey and le Grange looking all along the banks now. I suppose someone could have brought him over the grass in some way. A trap or a cart maybe, but it would be a dreadful risk, not thought