Death On Blackheath

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Pitt stood shivering on the steps leading up from the areaway to the pavement and looked down at the clumps of blood and hair at his feet. There was blood on the shards of glass as well, and some of it had already congealed. Splinters lay on the steps below and above. The January wind whined across the open stretch towards the gravel pits in the distance.

‘And the maid is missing?’ Pitt asked quietly.

‘Yes, and sorry, sir,’ the police sergeant said unhappily. His young face was set hard in the grey early morning light. ‘Thought that seeing whose house it was, like, we should call you straight away.’

‘You did the right thing,’ Pitt assured him.

They were in Shooters Hill, a very pleasant residential area on the outskirts of London. It was not far from Greenwich, with the Naval College and the Royal Observatory from which the world took its time. The imposing house rising above them into the still, shadowed air was that of Dudley Kynaston, a senior government official deeply involved in matters of naval defence, a weapons expert of some kind. Violence so very close to his house was of concern to Special Branch, and thus to Pitt as its commander. It was a recent promotion for him and he was still uncomfortable with the extraordinary power it lent him. Perhaps he always would be. It was a responsibility that ultimately he could share with no one. His triumphs would be secret, but his disasters appallingly public.

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