Ashworth Hall (12 page)

Pitt strode over, put both hands on her shoulders to move her aside, and looked in.

Ainsley Greville lay in the bath, naked, his chest, shoulders and face under the water. There could be no question whatever that he was dead.

4

P
ITT SWUNG AROUND,
barring the way with his body. “Take her and look after her,” he said to Charlotte, who was now on the landing. It was obvious he was referring to Doll, who still stood swaying a little, gasping for breath. He met Charlotte’s eyes. “Greville is dead.”

She hesitated only a moment, her face tightening, then she walked forward and took the unresisting Doll and, putting her arm around her, guided her away.

There were now several other people gathered, newly awoken, anxious, but still with yesterday’s embarrassment high in their minds.

“What is it now?” Padraig Doyle moved past Piers, who was standing, startled and disheveled, next to the banister. A step behind him, Eudora looked worried but not frightened.

Fergal Moynihan was coming out of his room, opposite Pitt’s, blinking, his hair poking in spikes as if he were newly awakened. He left the door wide open, and Iona was plainly not present.

“What is it?” Padraig repeated, looking from Pitt to Charlotte and back again.

“I am afraid there has been an accident,” Pitt said quietly. There was no point in supposing it was anything else yet. “There is nothing to be done to help at the moment.”

“You mean … it is fatal?” Padraig looked only momentarily startled. He was not a man to panic or lose control of his composure. “Ainsley?”

“I am afraid so.” As he spoke, Pitt was reaching for the bathroom door to close it.

“I see.” Padraig turned to Eudora, a great gentleness in him. He put his arm around her shoulders, and the very tenderness of it alarmed her.

“What is it?” she demanded. “Padraig?” She pulled away, turning to face him.

“Ainsley,” he answered, looking at her very directly. “There’s nothing you can do. Come away. I’ll take you back to your room and sit with you.”

“Ainsley?” For a moment it was as if she had not understood.

“Yes. He’s dead, sweetheart. You must be strong.”

Carson O’Day was coming along the passage from behind them, Iona from the other direction, wearing a beautiful midnight-blue robe. It billowed out behind her with her movement, like clouds of night.

Fergal looked startled, perhaps by Padraig’s choice of words.

“Mr. Doyle …” Pitt began.

Padraig misunderstood him. “She’s my sister,” he explained.

“I was going to ask you to help Mrs. Greville to her room”—Pitt shook his head a little—“and ask Mrs. Radley’s maid to go to her. I don’t think her own maid is in any state to help. And would you ask someone, Tellman, to come up here, please?” He looked around. Emily had arrived, her face harassed as she envisioned some new social breach. Jack was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he had risen early again.

Emily looked at Pitt, and knew that this time it was no simple love affair. She took a deep breath and deliberately steadied herself.

“I’m sorry, but Ainsley Greville is dead,” Pitt said to everyone. “There is nothing that can be done to help him. It would be best if you all returned to your rooms and dressed as usual. We cannot be certain yet exactly what happened or what steps we should take next. Have someone find Mr. Radley and inform him.”

Padraig had already gone with Eudora.

“I’ll do that,” O’Day offered. He looked pale but in command of himself. “It’s a tragedy that it should happen now. He was a brilliant man. Our best hope for conciliation.” With a sigh he swiveled and went downstairs, tying his robe around his waist, his slippers soundless on the wooden stairs.

Piers came forward. “Can I help?” he offered, his voice husky but almost steady. His eyes were very wide and he shook a little, as if he had not yet fully understood. “I’ve almost completed my medical studies. It would be a lot quicker and more discreet than sending for someone from the village.” He gave a little cough. “Then I would like to go and be with my mother. Padraig’s marvelous, but I think I should … and Justine. She will feel dreadful when she hears. Perhaps I should be the one to tell her—”

“Later,” Pitt cut across him. “Now we need a doctor to look at your father.”

Piers was jolted. “Yes,” he agreed, his face tightening. “Yes, of course.”

Pitt pushed the door open and stepped back for Piers to follow him in. On the landing, people were moving away. Tellman should be there soon.

As soon as Piers was in, Pitt closed the door and watched as the young man walked over to the bath, which was full almost to the brim, and to the naked corpse of his father. He stood close behind him, in case the sight should cause him to feel faint. The strongest will is not always proof against sheer physical shock. However many bodies he had seen in the course of his studies, there would be no other like this.

Piers did sway for a moment or two, but he leaned forward and put his outstretched hands on the bath to steady himself. Slowly he knelt down and touched the dead face, then the arms and hands.

Pitt watched. He had never got used to it either, even when it seemed peaceful like this. He had known Ainsley Greville when he was alive, only hours before. He had been a man of unusual vigor and intelligence, a man of powerful personality. This shell lying half below the bathwater was so familiarly him, and yet not him at all. In a sense it was already no one. The will and intellect were somewhere else.

Pitt looked down at Piers’s hands. They were strong and slender. They could become a surgeon’s hands. They moved quite professionally, instinctively now, testing movement, temperature, exploring for injury without disturbing the body. How much effort did it cost him to be so composed? Whether he had loved him deeply or not, whether they had been close, the man was still his father, a unique relationship.

Pitt stared at the scene to mark in his memory every line, every aspect and detail of what he saw. There was no discoloration in the water.

Where the devil was Tellman?

“He’s been dead since last night,” Piers said, rising to his feet. “I suppose that’s really rather obvious. The bathwater is cold. I assume it must have been hot when he got into it. It will have delayed the onset of rigor, but I don’t suppose that is of any importance.” He straightened up and took a step backward. His face was very white and he seemed to be finding it difficult to catch his breath. “It is easy enough to see what must have happened. There is a very bad blow at the back of his head. I can feel the depression in the skull. He must have slipped when he was climbing in the bath, or maybe trying to get out.” His eyes deliberately avoided the bath. “Soap perhaps. I don’t see a tablet, but there is some dissolved in the water. Maybe you don’t need much? He struck his head and lost consciousness. People do drown in baths. It happens too often.”

“Thank you.” Pitt watched him closely. That calm might hide emotion almost beyond bearing, might give way to shock at any moment.

“You’ll have to get someone else for the certificate, of course,” Piers hurried on. “They wouldn’t accept it from me, even if I were not his … his son.” He swallowed. “I’m … I’m not qualified yet.”

“I understand.” Pitt was about to add more when there was a sharp rap on the door. He opened it and Tellman came in, looked hastily at Piers, then at the body in the bath. He turned back to Pitt.

“May I go to Justine?” Piers asked, frowning slightly at Tellman. He did not understand the intrusion of a manservant.

“Certainly,” Pitt answered. “And your mother, of course. Do I understand that Mr. Doyle is her brother?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I imagine he will help you in the arrangements that will need to be made, but I would be obliged if you could let me know before you contact anyone outside Ashworth Hall.”

“Why?”

“Your father was a government minister in a sensitive position, especially this weekend. The Home Office should be informed officially before anyone else.”

“Oh … yes, of course. I didn’t think ….” If he wondered why Pitt should consider such a thing, he did not say so. Probably his emotions were far too occupied for such trivialities.

As soon as he had gone Tellman bent forward and looked more closely at the body.

“Natural or accident?” he asked, although there was skepticism in his voice. “Odd, isn’t it, after all our fears and precautions.”

Pitt took the towel off the rail and spread it over the middle of the body in some sort of modesty.

“It looks as if he slipped and knocked himself unconscious on the back of the bath,” he said thoughtfully.

“What, then, drowned?” Tellman regarded the body with puckered brow. “I suppose so. Seems odd, first when he was threatened.” He walked over to the small window and examined it. It was about two feet square, the opening half that. They were twenty feet above the ground.

Pitt shook his head.

Tellman abandoned the idea. He returned to the bath.

“Any harm if we move him?” he asked.

“We’re going to have to,” Pitt conceded. “And long before we fetch any doctor from the village. I’ll have to call Cornwallis, but I want to know as much as I can before I do.”

Tellman snorted. “So we don’t have to play games anymore?”

Pitt looked at him with an ironic smile. “Let’s be discreet a little longer. Hold him up and I’ll have a closer look at the wound at the back of his head.”

“Suspicious?” Tellman glanced at him quickly.

“Careful,” Pitt replied. “Hold him up. Take his arms and pull him forward a bit, if you can. He’s very stiff still. I just want to see the wound.”

Tellman obliged, somewhat awkwardly, getting his cuffs wet to his considerable annoyance.

Pitt looked closely, then felt the wet hair very gently with the tips of his fingers. As Piers had said, the indentation of the crushed bone was easy to find, a long ridge at the very base of the skull, rounded, quite wide.

“Right?” Tellman asked.

Pitt felt it again. It was straight, absolutely regular, about the width of the rim of the back of the bath.

“What’s the matter?” Tellman said impatiently. “He’s very awkward to hold! He’s as stiff as a poker, and slipping. There must be soap in this water!”

“There often is in baths,” Pitt agreed. “But that suggests Piers was right, and he was about to get out when he slipped rather than getting in.”

“What does it matter?” Tellman was getting wetter, and the water was cold.

“It probably doesn’t,” Pitt conceded. “Just makes it more likely, that’s all. The soap, I mean. Slippery.”

“Should wash at a basin, like anyone else!” Tellman snapped. “Can’t drown yourself in a basin.”

“It’s not the right shape,” Pitt said very quietly.

Tellman was about to make a tart reply, then looked more closely at Pitt’s face. “What isn’t?”

“This wound. The back edge of the bath curves around. Look at it! The wound is straight.”

Tellman stared at him. “What are you saying?”

“I don’t think he hit himself on the rim of the bath.”

“What then?”

Pitt turned and looked around the room slowly. It was quite large, about ten feet by fourteen feet. The bath was in the center, opposite the door. There were two separate rails for towels, a washstand with basin and beside it a large, blue-and-white china ewer. Another smaller table held a vase with flowers and two or three ornaments. A screen against drafts was folded and stood near the door. Apparently Greville had not felt the need for it. There was a large mirror on the wall. On the opposite side of the room was a marble-topped table with brushes and jars of bath salts and oils.

“One of those?” Pitt suggested. “Perhaps that pink one. It looks about the right size.” He stood up and went over to it, leaving Tellman still holding the corpse. He looked at the jar closely without touching it. As far as he could see, there was no mark on it, no smudges of soap to indicate it had been picked up. He put his hand around it experimentally. It was quite easy to grasp. It was also heavy. It would have made an efficient weapon, if wielded with a swing and any weight behind it.

He took it back to the end of the bath and held it carefully against the back of Greville’s head. It was the right width, and it was straight.

“Murder?” Tellman said dourly, pursing his lips.

“I think so. Let him down slowly, and I’ll see if there is any way the edge of the bath could fit the wound.”