Resurrection Row

Resurrection Row

Anne Perry

To MEG

for all her help

Contents

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3

4

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10

1

THE FOG SWIRLED thick and sour down the street, obscuring the distances and blurring the gas lamps above. The air was bitter and damp, catching in the throat, yet it did not chill the enthusiasm of the audience pouring out of the theatre, a few bursting into impromptu snatches of song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s new opera, The Mikado. One girl even lilted from side to side in imitation of the little Japanese heroine, before her mother told her sharply to remember herself and behave with the decorum her family had a right to expect.

Two hundred yards away Sir Desmond and Lady Cantlay were walking slowly in the general direction of Leicester Square, intending to hail a cab; they had not brought their own carriage because of the difficulty of finding a suitable place to meet afterwards. On such a January night one did not wish to keep the horses standing or roaming the area to pick one up. It was too hard to come by a really excellently matched pair to risk their health in such an unnecessary fashion. Cabs were plentiful enough and naturally gathered at the coming out of any theatre.

“I did enjoy that,” Lady Gwendoline said with a sigh of pleasure that turned into a shiver as a swirl of fog wreathed her and the damp touched her face. “I must purchase some of the music to play for myself; it really is delightful. Especially that song the hero sings.” She took a breath, coughed, and then sang in a very sweet voice, “A wandering minstrel I, a thing of rags and patches—er—what was next, Desmond? I recall the tune, but the words escape me.”

He took her arm to draw her away from the curb as a cab swished by, splashing manure where the street sweeper had gone home too early to clear it.

“I don’t know, my dear. I’m sure it will be in the music. It really is a miserable night, it is no pleasure at all to walk. We must find a cab immediately. I can see one coming now. Wait here and I’ll call him.” He stepped out into the street as a hansom loomed out of the mist, its slow hooves muffled in the blanketing damp, the horse dragging head down, almost directionless.

“Come on!” Sir Desmond said irritably. “What’s the matter with you, man? Don’t you want a fare?”

The horse drew level with him and raised its head, ears coming forward at the sound of his voice.

“Cabby!” Desmond said sharply.

There was no reply. The driver sat motionless on the box, his greatcoat collar turned up, hiding most of his face, the reins slack over the rail.

“Cabby!” Desmond was growing increasingly annoyed. “I presume you are not engaged? My wife and I wish to go to Gadstone Park!”

Still the man did not stir or steady the horse, which was moving gently, shifting from foot to foot, making it unsafe for Gwendoline to attempt to climb into the cab.

“For heaven’s sake, man! What’s the matter with you?” Desmond reached up and grabbed at the skirts of the driver’s coat and pulled sharply. “Control your animal!”

To his horror the man tilted toward him, overbalanced, and toppled down, falling untidily off the box over the wheel and onto the pavement at his feet.

Desmond’s immediate thought was that the man was drunken insensible. He would not be by any stretch the only cabby to fortify himself against endless hours in the bitter fog by taking more alcohol than he could handle. It was an infernal nuisance, but he was not without a flicker of understanding for it. Were he not in Gwendoline’s hearing he would have sworn fluently, but now he was obliged to hold his tongue.

“Drunk,” he said with exasperation.

Gwendoline came forward and looked at him.

“Can’t we do something about it?” She had no idea what such a thing might be.

Desmond bent down and rolled him over till the man was lying on his back, and at the same moment the wind blew a clear patch in the fog so the gaslight fell on his face.

It was appallingly obvious that he was dead—indeed, that he had been dead for some time. Even more dreadful than the livid, puffy flesh was the sweet smell of putrefaction, and a crumble of earth in the hair.

There was an instant’s silence, long enough for the in-drawing of breath, the wave of revulsion; then Gwendoline screamed, a high, thin sound smothered immediately by the night.

Desmond stood up slowly, his own stomach turning over, trying to put his body between her and the sight on the pavement. He expected her to faint; and yet he did not know quite what to do. She was heavy as she sank against him, and he could not maintain her weight.

“Help!” he called out desperately. “Help me!”

The horse was used to the indescribable racket of the London streets, and it was barely stirred by Gwendoline’s scream. Desmond’s shout did not move it at all.

He cried out again, his voice rising as he struggled to prevent her sliding out of his grip onto the filthy pavement and to imagine some way of dealing with the horror behind him before she regained her senses and became completely hysterical.

It seemed like minutes standing in the wreaths of coldness, the cab looming over him, silent except for the breathing of the horse. Then at last there were footsteps, a voice, and a shape.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” An enormous man materialized out of the fog, muffled in a woolen scarf, coattails flapping. “What happened? Have you been attacked?”

Desmond was still holding Gwendoline, who was at last beginning to stir. He looked at the man and saw an intelligent, humorous face of undoubted plainness. In the halo of the gaslight he was not so enormous, merely tall, and dressed in too many layers of clothes, none of which appeared to be done up correctly.

“Were you attacked?” the man repeated a little more sharply.

Desmond jerked himself into some presence of mind.

“No.” He grasped Gwendoline more tightly, pinching her without meaning to. “No. The—the cabby is dead.” He cleared his throat and coughed as the fog caught him. “I fear he has been dead some time. My wife fainted. If you would be kind enough to assist me, sir, I shall endeavor to revive her; and then I imagine we should summon the police. I suppose they take care of such things. The poor man is an appalling sight. He cannot be left there.”

“I am the police,” the man replied, looking past him to the form on the ground. “Inspector Pitt.” He fished absently for a card and turned up a penknife and a ball of string. He abandoned the effort and bent down by the body, touching the face with his fingers for a moment, then the earth on the hair.

“He’s dead—” Desmond began. “In fact—in fact, he looks almost as if he had been buried—and dug up again!”

Pitt stood up, running his hands down his sides as though he could rub off the feel of it.

“Yes, I think you’re right. Nasty. Very nasty.”

Gwendoline was now coming fully to consciousness and straightened up, at last taking the weight off Desmond’s arm, although she still leaned against him.

“It’s all right, my dear,” he said quickly, trying to keep her turned away from Pitt and the body. “The police are going to take care of it!” He looked grimly at Pitt as he said this, trying to make something of an order of it. It was time the man did something more useful than merely agree with him as to the obvious.

Before Pitt could reply, a woman came out of the darkness, handsome, and with a warmth in the curves of her face that survived even the dankness of this January street.

“What is it?” She looked straight at Pitt.

“Charlotte,” he hesitated, debating for an instant how much to tell her, “the cabby is dead. Looks as if he’s been dead a little while. I shall have to see that arrangements are made.” He turned to Desmond. “My wife,” he explained, leaving the words hanging.

“Desmond Cantlay.” Desmond resented being expected to introduce himself socially to a policeman’s wife, but he had been left no civil alternative. “Lady Cantlay.” He moved his head fractionally toward Gwendoline.

“How do you do, Sir Desmond?” Charlotte replied with remarkable composure. “Lady Cantlay.”

“How do you do?” Gwendoline said weakly.

“If you would be good enough to give me your address?” Pitt asked. “In case there should be any inquiry? Then I’m sure you would prefer to find another cab and go home.”

“Yes,” Desmond agreed hastily. “Yes—we live in Gadstone Park, number twenty-three.” He wanted to point out that he could not possibly help in any enquiry, since he had never known the man or had the least idea who he was or what had happened to him, but he realized at the last moment that it was a subject better not pursued. He was glad enough simply to leave. It did not occur to him until after he was in another cab and halfway home that the policeman’s wife was going to have to find her own way, or else wait with her husband for the mortuary coach and accompany him and the body. Perhaps he should have offered her some assistance? Still—it was too late now. Better to forget the whole business as soon as possible.

Charlotte and Pitt stood on the pavement beside the body. Pitt could not leave her alone in the street in the fog, nor could he leave the body unattended. He searched in his pockets again and after some moments found his whistle. He blew it as hard as he could, waited, and then blew it again.

“How could a cabby have been dead for more than an hour or two?” Charlotte asked quietly.. “Wouldn’t the horse take him home?”

Pitt screwed up his face, his long, curved nose wrinkled. “I would have thought so.”

“How did he die?” she asked. “Cold?” There was pity in her voice.

He put out a hand to touch her gently, a gesture that said more than he might have spoken in an hour.

“I don’t know,” he answered her very quietly. “But he’s been dead a long time, maybe a week or more. And there’s earth in his hair.”

Charlotte stared at him, her face paling. “Earth?” she repeated. “In London?” She did not look at the body. “How did he die?”

“I don’t know. The police surgeon—”

But before he had time to finish his thought, a constable burst out of the darkness and a moment later another behind him. Briefly Pitt told them what had happened and handed over responsibility for the entire affair. It took him ten minutes to find another cab, but by quarter-past eleven he and Charlotte were back in their own home. The house was silent, but warm after the bitter streets. Jemima, their two-year-old daughter, was spending the night with Mrs. Smith opposite. Charlotte had preferred to leave her there rather than disturb her at this hour.

Pitt closed the door and shut out the world, the Cantlays, dead cabbies, the fog, everything but a lingering of music from the gaiety and color of the opera. When he had first married Charlotte, she had given up the comfort and status of her father’s house without a word. This was only the second time he had been able to take her to the theatre in the city, and it was an occasion to be celebrated. All evening he had looked at the stage, and then at her face, and the joy he saw there was worth every careful economy, every penny saved for it. He leaned back against the door, smiling, and pulled her towards him gently.

The fog turned to rain, and then sleet. Two days later Pitt was sitting at his desk in the police station when a sergeant came in, his face puckered with unhappiness. Pitt looked up.

“What is it, Gilthorpe?”

“You remember that dead cabby you found night before last, sir?”

“What about him?” It was something Pitt would have preferred to forget, a simple tragedy but a common enough one, except for the amount of time he had been dead.

“Well,” Gilthorpe shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, it looks like ’e wasn’t no cabby. We found an open grave—”

Pitt froze; somewhere, pressed to the back of his mind, had been a fear of something like this when he had seen the puffy face and the touch of wet earth, something ugly and obscene, but he had ignored it.

“Whose?” he said quietly.

Gilthorpe’s face tightened. “A Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond, sir.”

Pitt shut his eyes, as if not seeing Gilthorpe might take it away.

“ ’E died just short o’ three weeks ago, sir,” Gilthorpe’s voice went on inexorably. “Buried a fortnight. Very big funeral, they say.”

“Where?” Pitt asked mechanically, carrying on while his brain still sought to escape.

“St. Margaret’s, sir. We put a guard on it, naturally.”

“Whatever for?” Pitt opened his eyes. “What harm is anyone going to do an empty grave?”

“Sightseers, sir,” Gilthorpe said without a flicker. “Someone might fall in. Very ’ard to get out of a grave, it is. Sides is steep and wet, this time o’ year. And o’ course the coffin is still there.” He stood a little more upright, indicating that he had finished and was waiting for orders from Pitt.

Pitt looked up at him.

“I suppose I had better go and see the widow and have her identify our corpse from the cab.” He climbed to his feet with a sigh. “Tell the mortuary to make it look as decent as possible, will you? It’s going to be pretty wretched, whether it’s him or not. Where does she live?”

“Gadstone Park, sir, number twelve. All very big ’ouses there; very rich, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“They would be,” Pitt agreed drily. Curious, the couple who had found the corpse had lived there also. Coincidence. “Right, Gilthorpe. Go and tell the mortuary to have his lordship ready for viewing.” He picked up his hat and put it hard on his head, tied his muffler round his neck, and went outside into the rain.

Gadstone Park was, as Gilthorpe had said, a very wealthy area, with large houses set back from the street and a well-tended park in the center with laurel and rhododendron bushes and a very fine magnolia—at least that was what he guessed it to be in its winter skeleton. The rain had turned back to sleet again, and the day was dark with coming snow.

He shivered as the water seeped down his neck and trickled cold over his skin. No matter how many scarves he put on, it always seemed to do that.

Number twelve was a classic Georgian house with a curved carriageway sweeping in under a pillared entrance. Its proportions satisfied his eye. Even though he would never again, since his childhood as a gamekeeper’s son, live in such a place, it pleased him to see it. These houses graced the city and provided the stuff of dreams for everyone.

He jammed his hat on harder as a gust of wind rattled a monumental laurel by the door and showered him with water. He rang the bell and waited.

A footman appeared, dressed in black. A thought flickered through Pitt’s mind that he had missed his vocation in life—nature had intended him for an undertaker.

“Yes—sir?” There was the barest hesitation as the man recognized one of the lower classes and immediately categorized him as someone who should have known well enough to go to the back door.

Pitt was long familiar with the look and was prepared for it. He had no time to waste with layers of relayed messages, and it was less cruel to tell the news once and plainly than ooze it little by little through the hierarchy of the servant’s hall.

“I am Inspector Pitt of the police. There has been an outrage with regard to the grave of the late Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond,” he said soberly. “I would like to speak to Lady Fitzroy-Hammond, so that the matter can be closed as soon and as discreetly as possible.”

The footman was startled out of his funereal composure. “You—you had better come in!”

He stood back, and Pitt followed him, too oppressed by the interview ahead to be glad yet of the warmth. The footman led him to the morning room and left him there, possibly to report the shattering news to the butler and pass him the burden of the next decision.

Pitt had not long to wait. Lady Fitzroy-Hammond came in, white-faced, and stopped when she was barely through the door. Pitt had been expecting someone considerably older; the corpse from the cab had seemed at least sixty, perhaps more, but this woman could not possibly be past her twenties. Even the black of mourning could not hide the color or texture of her skin, or the suppleness of her movement.

“You say there has been an—outrage, Mr.—?” she said quietly.

“Inspector Pitt, ma’am. Yes. I’m very sorry. Someone has opened the grave.” There was no pleasant way of saying it, no gentility to cover the ugliness. “But we have found a body, and we would like you to tell us if it is that of your late husband.”

For a moment he thought she was going to faint. It was stupid of him; he should have waited until she was seated, perhaps even have sent for a maid to be with her. He stepped forward, thinking to catch her if she crumpled.

She looked at him with alarm, not understanding.

He stopped, aware of her physical fear.

“Can I call your maid for you?” he said quietly, putting his hands by his sides again.

“No.” She shook her head, then, controlling herself with an effort, she walked past him slowly to the sofa. “Thank you, I shall be perfectly all right.” She took a deep breath. “Is it really necessary that I should—?”

“Unless there is someone else of immediate family?” he replied, wishing he could have said otherwise. “Is there perhaps a brother or—” He nearly said “son,” then realized how tactless it would be. He did not know if she was a second wife. In fact, he had neglected to ask Gilthorpe the age of his lordship: Presumably Gilthorpe would not have brought the matter to him at all if he could not have been the man on the cab.

“No.” She shook her head. “There is only Verity—Lord Augustus’s daughter, and of course his mother, but she is elderly and something of an invalid. I must come. May I bring my maid with me?”

“Yes, of course; in fact, it might be best if you did.”

She stood up and pulled the bell cord. When the maid came, she sent the message for her personal maid to bring her cloak, and make herself ready for the street. The carriage was ordered. She turned back to Pitt.

“Where—where did you find him?”

There was no point in telling her the details. Whether she had loved him or it had been a marriage of arrangement, it was not necessary for her to know about the scene outside the theatre.

“In a hansom cab, ma’am.”

Her face wrinkled up. “In a hansom cab? But—why?”

“I don’t know.” He opened the door for her as he heard voices in the hallway, led her out, and handed her into the carriage. She did not ask again, and they rode in silence to the mortuary, the maid twisting her gloves in her hands, her eyes studiously avoiding even an accidental glimpse of Pitt.

The carriage stopped, and the footman helped Lady Fitzroy-Hammond to alight. The maid and Pitt came unassisted. The mortuary building was up a short path overhung by bare trees that dripped water, startling and icily cold, in incessant, random splatters as the wind caught them.

Pitt pulled the bell, and a young man with a pink face opened the door immediately.

“Inspector Pitt, with Lady Fitzroy-Hammond.” Pitt stood back for her to go in.

“Ah, good day, good day.” The young man ushered them in cheerfully and led them down the hallway into a room full of slabs, all discreetly covered with sheets. “You’ll be after number fourteen.” He glowed with cleanliness and professional pride. There was a basket-sided chair close to the slab, presumably in case the viewing relatives should be overcome, and a pitcher of water and three glasses stood on a table at the end of the room.

The maid took out her handkerchief in preparation.

Pitt stood ready to offer physical support should it be necessary.

“Right.” The young man pushed his spectacles more firmly on his nose and pulled back the sheet to expose the face. The cabby’s clothes were gone and they had combed the sparse hair neatly, but it was still a repellent sight. The skin was blotched and in places beginning to come away, and the smell was cloying sick.

Lady Fitzroy-Hammond barely looked at it before covering her face with her hands and stepping back, knocking the chair. Pitt righted it in a single movement, and the maid guided her into it. No one spoke.

The young man pulled the sheet up again and trotted down the room to fetch a glass of water. He did it as imperturbably as if it were his daily habit—as indeed it probably was. He returned and gave it to the maid, who held it for her mistress.

She took a gulp, then clutched onto it, her fingers white at the knuckles.

“Yes,” she said under her breath. “That is my husband.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Pitt replied soberly. It was not the end of the case, but it was very probably all he would ever know. Grave robbing was of course a crime, but he did not hold any real hope that he would discover who had made this obscene gesture or why.

“Do you feel well enough to leave now?” he asked. “I’m sure you would be more comfortable at home.”

“Yes, thank you.” She stood up, wavered for a moment, then, followed closely by the maid, walked rather unsteadily towards the outer door.

“That all?” the young man inquired, his voice a little lowered but still healthily cheerful. “Can I mark him as identified and release him for burial now?”

“Yes, you may. Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. No doubt the family will tell you what arrangements they wish,” Pitt answered. “Nothing odd about the body, I suppose?”

“Nothing at all,” the young man responded ebulliently, now that the women were beyond the door and out of earshot. “Except that he died at least three weeks ago and has already been buried once. But I suppose you knew that.” He shook his head and was obliged to resettle his glasses. “Can’t understand why anybody should do that—dig up a dead body, I mean. Not as if they’d dissected him or anything, like medical students used to—or black magicists. Quite untouched!”

“No mark on him?” Pitt did not know why he asked; he had not expected any. It was a pure case of desecration, nothing more. Some lunatic with a bizarre twist to his mind.

“None at all,” the young man agreed. “Elderly gentleman, well cared for, well nourished, a little corpulent, but not unusual at his age. Soft hands, very clean. Never seen a dead lord before, so far as I know, but that’s exactly what I would have expected one to look like.”

“Thank you,” Pitt said slowly. “In that case there is little more for me to do.”

Pitt attended the reinterment as a matter of course. It was just possible that whoever had committed the outrage might be there to see the result of his act on the family. Perhaps that was the motive, some festering hatred still not worked through, even with death.

It was naturally a quiet affair; one does not make much of burying a person a second time. However, there was a considerable group of people who had come to pay their respects, perhaps more out of sympathy for the widow than further regard for the dead. They were all dressed in black and had black ribbons on their carriages. They processed in silence to the grave and stood, heads bowed in the rain. Only one man had the temerity to turn up his collar in concession to comfort. Everyone else ignored the movement in pretense that it had not happened. What was the small displeasure of icy trickles down the neck when one was faced with the monumental solemnity of death?

The man with the collar was slender, an inch or two above average height, and his delicate mouth was edged with deep lines of humor. It was a wry face, with crooked brown eyebrows; certainly there was nothing jovial in it.

The local policeman was standing beside Pitt to remark any stranger for him.

“Who is that?” Pitt whispered.

“Mr. Somerset Carlisle, sir,” the man answered. “Lives in the Park, number two.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a gentleman, sir.”

Pitt did not bother to pursue it. Even gentlemen occasionally had occupations beyond the social round, but it was of no importance.

“That’s Lady Alicia Fitzroy-Hammond,” the constable went on quite unnecessarily. “Very sad. Only married to him a few years, they say.”

Pitt grunted; the man could take it to mean anything he chose. Alicia was pale but quite composed: probably relieved to have the whole thing nearly over. Beside her, also in utter black, was a younger girl, perhaps twenty, her honey-brown hair pulled away from her face and her eyes suitably downcast.

“The Honorable Miss Verity Fitzroy-Hammond,” the constable anticipated him. “Very nice young lady.”

Pitt felt no reply was required. His eye traveled to the man and woman beyond the girl. He was well built, probably had been athletic in youth, and still stood with ease. His brow was broad, his nose long and straight, only a certain flaw in the mouth prevented him from being completely pleasing. Even so, he was a handsome man. The woman beside him had fine, dark eyes and black hair with a marvelous silver streak from the right temple.

“Who are they?” Pitt asked.

“Lord and Lady St. Jermyn,” the constable said, rather more loudly than Pitt would have wished. In the stillness of the graveyard even the steady dripping of the rain was audible.

The burial was over, and they turned one by one to leave. Pitt recognized Sir Desmond and Lady Cantlay from the street outside the theatre and hoped they had had the tact not to mention their part in the matter. Perhaps they would; Sir Desmond had seemed a not inconsiderate person.

The last to leave, accompanied by a rather solid man with a plain, amiable face, was a tall, thin old lady of magnificent bearing and an almost imperial dignity. Even the gravediggers hesitated and touched their hats, waiting until she had passed before beginning their work. Pitt saw her clearly for only a moment, but it was enough. He knew that long nose, the heavy-lidded, brilliant eyes. At eighty she still had more left of her beauty than most women ever possess.

“Aunt Vespasia!” He was caught in his surprise and spoke aloud.

“Beg pardon, sir?” the constable started.

“Lady Cumming-Gould, isn’t it?” Pitt swung round to him. “That last lady leaving.”

“Yes, sir! Lives in number eighteen. Just moved ’ere in the autumn. Old Mr. Staines died in the February of 1885; that’d be just short a year ago. Lady Cumming-Gould bought it back end o’ the summer.”

Pitt remembered last summer extremely well. That was when he had first met Charlotte’s sister Emily’s great-aunt Vespasia, during the Paragon Walk outrage. More precisely, she was the aunt of Emily’s husband, Lord George Ashworth. He had not expected to see her again, but he recalled how much he had liked her asperity and alarming candor. In fact, had Charlotte married above herself socially instead of beneath, she might have grown in time to be just such a devastating old lady.

The constable was staring at him, eyes skeptical. “You know ’er, then, do you, sir?”

“Another case.” Pitt did not want to explain. “Have you seen anyone here who doesn’t live in the Park, or know the widow or the family?”

“No, no one ’ere except what you’d expect. Maybe grave robbers don’t come back to the scene o’ the crime? Or maybe they come at night?”

Pitt was not in the mood for sarcasm, especially from a constable on the beat.

“Perhaps I should post you here?” he said acidly. “In case!”

The constable’s face fell, then lightened again as suspicion hit him that Pitt was merely exercising his own wit.

“If you think it would be productive, sir?” he said stiffly.

“Only of a cold in the head,” Pitt replied. “I’m going to pay my respects to Lady Cumming-Gould. You stay here and watch for the rest of the afternoon,” he added with satisfaction. “Just in case someone comes to have a look!”

The constable snorted, then turned it into a rather inefficient sneeze.

Pitt walked away and, lengthening his stride, caught up with Aunt Vespasia. She ignored him. One does not speak to the help at funerals.

“Lady Cumming-Gould,” he said distinctly.

She stopped and turned slowly, preparing to freeze him with a glance. Then something about his height, the way his coat hung, flapping at his sides, struck a note of familiarity. She fished for her lorgnette and held it up to her eyes.

“Good gracious! Thomas, what on earth are you doing here? Oh, of course! I suppose you are looking for whoever dug up poor Gussie. I can’t imagine why anyone should do such a thing. Quite disgusting! Makes a lot of work for everyone, and all so unnecessary.” She looked him up and down. “You don’t appear to be any different, except that you have more clothes on. Can’t you get anything to match? Wherever did you purchase that muffler? It’s appalling. Emily had a son, you know? Yes, of course you know. Going to call him Edward, after her father. Better than calling him George. Always irritating to call a boy after his father; no one ever knows which one you are talking about. How is Charlotte? Tell her to call upon me; I’m bored to tears with the people in the Park, except the American with a face like a mud pie. Homeliest man I ever saw, but quite charming. He hasn’t the faintest idea how to behave, but rich as Croesus.” Her eyes danced with amusement. “They cannot make up their minds what to do about him, whether to be civil because of his money or cut him dead because of his manners. I do hope he stays.”

Pitt found himself smiling, in spite of the rain down his neck and the wet trouser cuffs sticking to his ankles.

“I shall give Charlotte your message,” he said, bowing slightly. “She will be delighted that I have seen you, and you are well.”

“Indeed,” Vespasia snorted. “Tell her to come early, before two, then she won’t run into the social callers with nothing to do but outdress each other.” She put her lorgnette away and swept down the path, ignoring the skirts of her gown catching in the mud.

2

ON SUNDAY ALICIA Fitzroy-Hammond rose as usual, a little after nine, and ate a light breakfast of toast and apricot preserve. Verity had already eaten and was now writing letters in the morning room. The dowager Lady Fitzroy-Hammond, Augustus’s mother, would have her meal taken up to her as always. On some days she got up; far more often she did not. Then she lay in her bed with an embroidered Indian shawl around her shoulders and reread all her old letters, sixty-five years of them, going back to her nineteenth birthday, July 12, exactly five years after the battle of Waterloo. Her brother had been an ensign in Wellington’s army. Her second son had died in the Crimea. And there were old love letters from men long since gone.

Every so often she would send her maid, Nisbett, down to see what was going on in the house. She required a list of all callers, when they came and how long they stayed, if they left cards, and most particularly how they were dressed. Alicia had learned to live with that; the thing she still found intolerable was Nisbett’s constant inquiry into the running of the house, passing her finger over the surfaces to see if they were dusted every day, opening the linen cupboard when she thought no one was looking to count the sheets and tablecloths and see if all the corners were ironed and mended.

This Sunday was one of the old lady’s days to get up. She enjoyed going to church. She sat in the family pew and watched everyone arrive and depart. She pretended to be deaf, although actually her hearing was excellent. It suited her not to speak, except when she wanted something, and occasional failure to know what was said could be not inconvenient.

She was dressed in black also, and she leaned heavily on her stick. She came into the dining room and banged sharply on the floor to attract Alicia’s attention.

“Good morning, mama-in-law,” Alicia said with an effort. “I’m glad you are well enough to be up.”

The old lady walked towards the table, and the ever-present Nisbett pulled out her chair for her. She stared at the sideboard with displeasure.

“Is that all there is for breakfast?” she demanded.

“What would you like?” Alicia had been trained all her life to be polite.

“It’s too late now,” the old lady said stiffly. “I shall have to put up with what there is! Nisbett, fetch me some eggs and some of that ham and kidneys, and pass me the toast. I assume you are going to church this morning, Alicia?”

“Yes, Mama. Do you care to come?”

“I never shirk church, unless I am too ill to stand upon my feet.”

Alicia did not bother to comment. She had never known precisely what ailed the old lady, or if indeed there was anything at all. The doctor came to call regularly and told her she had a weak heart, for which he prescribed digitalis; but Alicia privately thought it was little more than old age and a desire to command both attention and obedience. Augustus had always catered to her, possibly out of lifelong habit and because he hated unpleasantness.

“I presume you are also coming?” the old lady asked with raised eyebrows, then put an enormous forkful of eggs into her mouth.

“Yes, Mama.”

The old lady nodded, her mouth too full to speak.

The carriage was called at half-past ten, and Alicia, Verity, and the old lady were helped into it one by one, and then out again at St. Margaret’s Church, where for over a hundred years the family had had its own pew. No one who was not a Fitzroy-Hammond had ever been known to sit in it.

They were early. The old lady liked to sit at the back and watch everyone else arrive, then go forward to the pew at one minute before eleven. Today was no exception. She had survived the deaths of every member of her own blood, except Verity, with the supreme composure required of an aristocrat. The reburial of Augustus would not be different.

At two minutes before eleven she stood up and led the way forward to the family pew. At the end she stopped short. The unthinkable had happened. There was someone else already there! A man, with collar turned up, leaning forward in an attitude of prayer.

“Who are you?” the old lady hissed. “Remove yourself, sir! This is a family pew.”

The man did not stir.

The old lady banged her stick sharply on the ground to attract his attention. “Do something, Alicia! Speak to him!”

Alicia squeezed past her and touched the man gently on the shoulder. “Excuse me—” She got no further. The man swayed and fell sideways onto the seat, face up.

Alicia screamed—at the very back of her mind she knew what the old lady would say, and the congregation—but it tore out of her throat beyond her helping. It was Augustus again, his dead face livid and bloodless, gaping up at her from the wooden seat. The gray stone pillars wavered round her, and she heard her own voice go on shrieking like a quite disembodied sound. She wished it would stop, but she seemed to have no control over it. Blackness descended; her arms were pinned to her sides, and something had struck her in the back.

The next thing she knew she was lying propped up in the vestry. The vicar, pasty-faced and sweating, was crouching next to her, holding her hand. The door was open, and the wind rushed in, in an icy river. The old lady was opposite, her black skirts spread round her like a grounded balloon, her face scarlet.

“There, there,” the vicar said helplessly. “You’ve had a most appalling shock, my dear lady. Quite appalling. I don’t know what the world is coming to, when the insane are allowed loose amongst us like this. I shall write to the newspapers, and to my member of Parliament. Something really must be done. It is insupportable.” He coughed and patted her hand again. “And of course we shall all pray.” The position became too uncomfortable for him; he was beginning to get a cramp in his legs. He stood up. “I have sent for the doctor for your poor mama. Dr. McDuff, isn’t it? He will be here any moment. A pity he was not in the congregation!” There was a note of affront in his voice. He knew that the doctor was a Scot and a Presbyterian, and he disapproved vehemently. A physician to such an area as this had no business to be a nonconformist.

Alicia struggled to sit up. Her first thoughts were not for the old lady, but for Verity. She had not seen death before, and Augustus had been her father, even though they had not been close.

“Verity,” she said with a dry mouth. “What about Verity?”

“Don’t distress yourself!” His voice became agitated at the thought of imminent hysteria. He had no idea how to cope with such a thing, especially in the vestry of the church. The morning service was already a complete disaster; the congregation had either gone home or was standing outside in the rain, impelled by curiosity to watch the last gruesome act of the affair. The police had been sent for, right here to the church, and the whole business was become a scandal beyond retrieval. He dearly wanted to go home and have luncheon, where there would be a fire and a sensible housekeeper who knew better than to have “emotions.”

“My dear lady,” he started again, “please be assured Miss Verity has been taken care of with the utmost sensibility. Lady Cumming-Gould took her home in her carriage. She was most distressed, of course; who would not be—it is all quite dreadful! But we must bear these burdens with the grace of God to help us. Oh!” His face lit up with something akin to delight as he saw the thick figure of Dr. McDuff come in and slam the vestry door. Professional responsibility could be shed at last—perhaps even shifted entirely. After all, the doctor must care for the living, and he himself was duty-bound to see to the dead, because no one else was properly qualified.

McDuff went straight to the old lady, ignoring the other two. He took her wrist and felt it for several seconds, then peered at her face.

“Shock,” he said succinctly. “Severe shock. I advise you to go home and take as much rest as you feel you need. Have all your meals brought up, and don’t receive any visitors except the immediate family, and not them, if you don’t choose. Do nothing strenuous, and do not allow yourself to become upset about anything at all.”

The old lady’s face eased with satisfaction; the fierce color ebbed a little.

“Good,” she said, climbing to her feet with his help. “Knew you would know what to do. Can’t take any more of this—I don’t know what the world is coming to—never had anything like this when I was young. People knew their places then and kept them. Too busy working to go around desecrating graves of their betters. Too much education of the wrong people nowadays; that’s what’s responsible, you know. Now they’ve got curiosities and appetites that are no good for them. It isn’t natural! See what’s happened here! Even the church isn’t safe anymore. It’s worse than if the French had invaded, after all!” With that parting shot she stumped out, banging her stick furiously against the door.

“Poor dear lady,” the vicar muttered. “What a quite dreadful shock for her—and at her age, too. One would think she had earned a little respite from the sins of the world.”

Alicia was still sitting on the vestry bench in the cold. She suddenly realized how much she disliked the old lady. She could never recall a moment since the time she had become betrothed to Augustus when she had felt at ease with her. Until now she had hidden it from herself, for Augustus’s sake. But there was no need any longer. Augustus was dead.

With a lurch she remembered his body in the pew, and on the slab in that bitter mortuary with the little man in the white coat who was so terrifyingly happy all the time in his room full of corpses. Thank goodness the policeman at least had been a little more sober; in fact, quite pleasant, in his way.

As if she had conjured him out of her thoughts the door swung open, and Pitt appeared in front of her, shaking himself like a great wet dog and spraying water from his coattails and off his sleeves. She had not thought of the police coming, and now all sorts of ugly fears crowded into her mind. Why? Why had Augustus risen out of his grave again like some persistent, obscene reminder of the past, preventing her from stepping out of it into the future? The future could hold so much promise; she had met new people, especially one new person, slim, elegant, with all the laughter and charm Augustus had lost. Perhaps he had been like that in his youth, but she had not known him then. She wanted to dance, to make jokes of trivial things, to sing something round the spinet other than hymns and solemn ballads. She wanted to be in love and say giddy and uproarious things, have a past worth remembering, like the old lady who sat rereading her youth from a hundred letters. No doubt there was sadness in them, but there was passion, too, if there was any truth in her retelling.

The policeman was staring at her with bright gray eyes. He was the untidiest creature she had ever seen, not fit to be in a church.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I thought we’d seen the end of it.”

She could think of no answer.

“Do you know of anyone who might be doing this, ma’am?” he went on.

She looked up at his face, and a whole abyss of new horror opened up in front of her. She had presumed it was an anonymous crime, the work of insane vandals of some sort. She had heard of grave robbing, body snatchers; but now she realized that this extraordinary man thought that it might be personal, deliberately directed at Augustus—or even at her!

“No!” She gulped, and the breath caught in her throat. She swallowed hard. “No, of course not.” But she could feel the heat burning up her face. What would other people think? Twice Augustus had been uncovered out of his grave, almost as if someone were unwilling to let him rest—or, more pointedly, unwilling to let her forget him.

Who would do such a thing? The only one she knew was the old lady. She would certainly be annoyed if she thought Alicia could marry again, and so soon, this time for love!

“I have no idea,” she said as calmly as she could. “If Augustus had any enemies, he never spoke of them; and I find it hard to imagine that anyone he was acquainted with, whatever their feelings, would do such a thing as this.”

“Yes.” Pitt nodded. “It is beyond ordinary vengeance, even to us. It’s wretchedly cold in here; you’d better go home and warm yourself, take some food. There’s nothing you can do now. We’ll take care of it, see he’s handled decently. I think your vicar’s already ordered the proper observations.” He walked toward the door, then turned. “I suppose you are quite sure it was your husband, ma’am? You did see his face quite clearly—it wasn’t someone else, perhaps?”

Alicia shook her head. She could see the corpse with its gray-white skin in front of her sharply, more real than the cold walls of the vestry.

“It was Augustus, Mr. Pitt. There is no doubt of that at all.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I’m extremely sorry.” He went out and closed the door behind him.

Outside, Pitt stopped for a moment to glance at the remnants of the congregation, all affecting attitudes of sympathy, or else pretending to be there by chance and about to move; then he strode down the path and out into the street. The business had shaken him far more than the relative seriousness of the crime warranted. Far worse things were going on daily—beatings, extortions, and murders—and yet there was a relentless obscenity about this that disturbed some previously silent portion of his mind, an assumption that death at least was untouchable.

Why on earth should anyone keep on digging up the body of some elderly aristocrat whose death had been perfectly natural?

Or was this a bizarre but unignorable way of saying that it had not? Was it conceivable that Lord Augustus had been murdered, and someone knew it?

After a second disinterment it was a question he could not overlook. They could not simply replace him again—and wait!

There was nothing he could do today; it would be indiscreet. He needed to observe decorum or he would get no cooperation at all from those closest to him, and most likely to know or suspect. Not that he expected much help. No one wanted murder. No one wanted police in the house, investigations and questions.

Added to which, Sunday was his own day off. He wanted to be at home. He was making an engine for Jemima that pulled along on a string. It was proving harder than he had expected to make wheels round, but she was delighted with it anyway and talked to it incessantly in a mixture of sounds quite unintelligible to anyone else, but obviously of great significance to her. It gave him immeasurable happiness.

Late on Monday morning he set out through a fine, thick mist to ride to Gadstone Park and begin the questions. It was not as dismal as might be supposed, because he intended to call first upon Great-Aunt Vespasia. The memory of her in Paragon Walk brought a glow of pleasure to his mind, and he found himself smiling, alone in the hansom cab.

He had chosen his time with care, late enough for her to have finished breakfast but too early for her to have left the house for any morning business she might have.

Surprisingly, the footman informed him that she already had company, but he would acquaint her ladyship with Pitt’s arrival, if he desired.

Pitt felt a surge of disappointment and replied a little tartly that yes, he did desire, and then allowed himself to be taken into the morning room to wait.

The footman came back for him unexpectedly soon and ushered him into the withdrawing room. Vespasia was sitting in the great chair, her hair piled meticulously on her head and a chin-high blouse of Guipure lace giving her a totally deceptive air of fragility. She was about as delicate as a steel sword, as Pitt knew.

The others in the room were Sir Desmond Cantlay, Lady St. Jermyn, and Somerset Carlisle. Closer to, Pitt observed their faces with interest. Hester St. Jermyn was a striking woman; the silver streak in her hair appeared quite natural and was startling against its black. Somerset Carlisle was not so thin or so angular as he had seemed in black by the graveside, yet there was still the same suggestion of humor about him, the slightly aquiline nose and the sharp brows.

“Good morning, Thomas,” Vespasia said drily. “I was expecting you to call, but not quite so soon, I admit. I imagine you have already made yourself acquainted with the rest of the company, if not they with you?” She glanced round them. “I have met Inspector Pitt before.” Her voice crackled with a world of unexplained meaning. Hester St. Jermyn and Sir Desmond both looked at him with amazement, but Carlisle kept his face impassive except for a small smile. He caught Pitt’s eye.

Vespasia apparently did not intend to explain. “We are discussing politics,” she offered to Pitt. “An extraordinary thing to do in the morning, is it not? Are you familiar with workhouses?”

Pitt’s mind flew to the dour, airless halls he had seen crammed with men, women, and children picking apart and re-sewing new shirts from old for the price of their keep. Their eyes ached and their limbs stiffened. In the summer they fainted from heat, and in the winter bronchitis racked them. But it was the only shelter for those with families, or women alone who were too old, too ugly, or too honest to go on the streets. He looked at Vespasia’s lace and Hester’s minuscule pin tucks.

“Yes,” he said harshly. “I am.”

Vespasia’s eyes gleamed in instant recognition of his thoughts. “And you do not approve,” she said slowly. “Abominable places, especially where the children are concerned.”

“Yes,” Pitt agreed.

“Nevertheless, necessary, and all the poor law allows,” she continued.

“Yes.” The word came hard.

“Politics have their uses.” She barely moved her head to indicate the others. “That is how things are changed.”

He reversed his opinion of her, mentally apologizing. “You are moving to change them?”

“It is worth trying. But no doubt you have come about that disgusting business yesterday in the church. A piece of the most appalling distaste.”

“If you please. I would appreciate speaking with you, if you will; certain investigations might be accomplished more—discreetly.”

She snorted. She knew perfectly well he meant that they might be accomplished with a good deal less trouble, and probably more accurately, but the presence of the others prevented her from saying so. He saw it in her face and smiled.

She understood precisely, and her eyes lit up, but she refused to smile back.

Carlisle stood up slowly. He was more solid and probably stronger than he had appeared at the internment.

“Perhaps there is little more that we can do at the moment,” he said to Vespasia. “I will have our notes written up, and we can consider them again. I fancy we have not yet all the information. We must supply St. Jermyn with everything there is; otherwise he will not be able to argue our case against those who have a few contradictions to it, however ill conceived.”

Hester rose also, and Desmond followed her.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m sure you are correct. Good morning, Lady Cumming-Gould—” He regarded Pitt indecisively, not able to address a policeman as a social equal, and yet confounded because he was apparently a fellow guest in the withdrawing room of his hostess.

Carlisle rescued him. “Good morning, Inspector. I wish you a rapid success in your business.”

“Good morning, sir.” Pitt bowed his head very slightly. “Good morning, ma’am.”

When they had gone and the door was closed, Vespasia looked up at him. “For goodness’ sake sit down,” she ordered. “You make me uncomfortable standing there like a footman.”

Pitt obeyed, finding the overstuffed sofa more accommodating than it appeared; it was soft and spacious enough for him to spread himself.

“What do you know about Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond?” he asked. Suddenly the lightness had evaporated, and there was only death left—and perhaps murder.

“Augustus?” She looked at him long and steadily. “Do you mean do I know anyone who might hire lunatics to disinter the wretched man? No, I do not. He was not a person I cared for; no imagination, and therefore, of course, no sense of humor. But that is hardly a cause to dig him up—rather the opposite, I would have thought.”

“So would I,” Pitt agreed very softly. “In fact, every reason to wish him in his grave.”

Vespasia’s face changed. It was the only time he could recall her losing that magnificent composure.

“Good God!” She breathed out a long sigh. “You don’t think he was murdered!”

“I have to consider it,” he answered. “At least as a possibility. He was dug up twice now; that is more than coincidence. It may be insanity, but it is not random insanity. Whoever it is means Lord Augustus to remain unburied—for whatever reason.”

“But he was so very ordinary,” she said with exasperation and a touch of pity. “He was wealthy, but not exceptionally so; the title is not worth anything, and anyway, there is no one to inherit it. He was pleasing enough to look at, but not handsome, and far too pompous to have a romantic affaire. I really can think of—” She stood with a tired little gesture of her hands.

He waited. There was sufficient understanding between them that it would have been faintly insulting for him to have reasoned with her. She was as capable as he of seeing the nuances, the shadings of suspicion and fear.

“I suppose it is better that I tell you than you learn it from backstairs gossip,” she said irritably, angry not with him but with the circumstances.

He understood. “And probably more accurate,” he agreed.

“Alicia,” she said simply. “It was an arranged marriage, as what else could it be between a sheltered girl of twenty and a comfortable, unimaginative man in his mid-fifties?”

“She has a lover.” He stated the obvious.

“An admirer,” she corrected him. “To begin with, no more than a social acquaintance. I wonder if you have any idea how small London Society really is? In time one is bound to meet practically everybody, unless one is a hermit.”

“But now it is more than an acquaintance?”

“Naturally. She is young and has been denied the dreams of youth. She sees them parading in the ballrooms of London—what else do you expect her to do?”

“Will she marry him?”

She raised silver eyebrows very slightly, her eyes bright. There was a dry recognition of social difference in them, but whether there was amusement at it or not, he was not sure.

“Thomas, one does not remarry, or even allow oneself to be seen considering it, within a year of one’s husband’s death; whatever one may feel, or indeed do in the privacy of the bedroom. Provided, of course, that the bedroom is in someone else’s house, at a weekend, or some such thing. But to answer your question, I should imagine it is quite likely, after the prescribed interval.”

“What is he like?”

“Dark and extremely handsome. Not an aristocrat, but sufficient of a gentleman. He has manners enough, and most certainly charm.”

“Money?”

“How practical of you. Not a great deal, I think, but he does not appear to be in need of it, at least not urgently.”

“Lady Alicia inherits?”

“With the daughter, Verity. The old lady has her own money.”

“You know a great deal about their affairs.” Pitt disarmed it with a smile.

She smiled back at him. “Naturally. What else is there to occupy oneself with, in the winter? I am too old to have any affaires of interest myself.”

His smile widened to a grin, but he made no comment. Flattery was far too obvious for her.

“What is his name, and where does he live?”

“I have no idea where he lives, but I’m sure you could find out easily enough. His name is Dominic Corde.”

Pitt froze. There could not be two Dominic Cordes, not both handsome, both charming, both young and dark. He remembered him so clearly, his easy smile, his grace, his obliviousness of his young sister-in-law Charlotte, so painfully in love with him. It had been four years ago, before she met Pitt, at the start of the Cater Street murders. But do the echoes of first love ever die away? Doesn’t something linger, perhaps more imagination than fact, the dreams that never came true? But painful. . . .

“Thomas?” Vespasia’s voice invaded his privacy, drawing him back to the present: Gadstone Park and the disinterment of Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. So Dominic was in love with Lady Alicia, or at least sought after her. He had seen her only twice, yet had gathered an opinion that she was utterly unlike Charlotte, far more a memory of Dominic’s first wife, Charlotte’s sister Sarah, who had been murdered in the fog. Pretty, rather pious Sarah, with the same fair hair as Alicia, the same smooth face. He could think only of Charlotte and Dominic.

“Thomas!” Vespasia’s face swam up at him as he lifted his head; she was leaning forward touched with concern now. “Are you quite well?”

“Yes,” he said slowly. “You said ‘Dominic Corde’?”

“You know him.” It was a statement rather than a question. She had lived a long time, known many loves and hurts. Little escaped her understanding.

He knew she would recognize a lie. “Yes. He was married to Charlotte’s sister, before she died.”

“Good gracious.” If she read anything more into it than that, she was far too tactful to say so. “So he is a widower. I don’t recall his mentioning it.”

Pitt did not want to talk about Dominic. He knew it would have to come, but he was not ready yet. “Tell me about the rest of Gadstone Park?” he asked.

She looked a little surprised.

He pulled a small, ironic face. “I can’t imagine Alicia dug him up,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Or Dominic?”

Her body relaxed, altering the line of the high lace neck. “No,” she sighed wearily. “Of course not. They would be the last ones to wish him back. It would appear, unless the whole thing is fortuitous after all, that either one of them murdered Augustus or someone believes they did.”

“Tell me about the other people in the Park,” he repeated.

“The old lady is a fearful creature.” Vespasia seldom minced words. “Sits upstairs in her bedroom all day devouring old love letters, and letters of blood and military vainglory from Waterloo and the Crimea. In her own eyes she is the last of a great generation. She savors over and over again every victory in her life, real or imagined, up to the last minute, so she can wring life dry before it is snatched away from her. She doesn’t like Alicia, thinks she has no courage, no style.” A sudden dry twist lit up her face. “I really don’t know whether she would like her better or worse if she thought her capable of having murdered Augustus!”

Pitt hid a smile by turning it into a grimace. “What about the daughter, Verity?”

“Nice girl. Don’t know where she gets it from; must be her mother’s side. Not especially good-looking, but quite a bit of life to her, underneath the well-drilled manners. Hope they don’t marry her off before she has a little fun.”

“How does she get on with Alicia?”

“Well enough, so far as I know. But you needn’t look at her; she would have no idea where to employ a grave robber, and she could hardly do it herself!”

“But she might prompt someone else,” Pitt pointed out. “Someone in love with her—if she thought her stepmother had murdered her father.

Vespasia snorted. “Don’t believe it. Far too devious. She’s a nice child. If she thought such a thing she would have come out and accused her, not gone around persuading someone to desecrate her father’s grave. And she seems genuinely fond of Alicia, unless she’s a far better actress than I take her for.”

Pitt had to agree. The whole thing was preposterous. Perhaps, after all, it was the work of a lunatic and the fact that it was the same body both times only a grotesque mischance. He said as much to Vespasia.

“I tend to disbelieve in coincidences,” she replied reluctantly, “but I suppose they do occur. The rest of the Park are ordinary enough, in their way. Lord St. Jermyn I cannot fault; neither can I like him, in spite of the fact that it is he who will sponsor our bill through Parliament. Hester is a good woman making the best of an indifferent situation. They have four children, whose names I cannot remember.”

“Major Rodney is a widower. He was not at the interment, so you have not seen him yet. He fought in the Crimea, I believe. No one can recall his wife, who must have died thirty-five years ago. He lives with his maiden sisters, Miss Priscilla and Miss Mary Ann. They talk too much and are always making jam and lavender pillows, but are otherwise perfectly pleasant. There is nothing to say about the Cantlays. I believe they are precisely what they seem to be: civil, generous, and a little bored.

“Carlisle is a dilettante; plays the piano rather well, tried to get into Parliament and failed, a bit too radical. Wants to reform. Good family, old money.”

“The only one of any interest is that appalling American who bought number seven, Virgil Smith. I ask you?” She raised her eyebrows as high as they would go. “Who on earth but an American would call a child Virgil? And with a name like Smith! He’s as plain as a ditch, and with manners to suit. He has not the least idea how to conduct himself, which fork to eat with, or how to address a duchess. He talks to cats and dogs in the streets!”

Pitt had spoken to cats and dogs himself, and he found he was warming to the man immediately. “Did he know Lord Augustus?” he asked.

“Of course not! Do you imagine Lord Augustus kept the company of people like that? He had not the imagination!” Her face softened. “Fortunately, I am old enough for it not to matter anymore what company I am seen to keep, and I rather like him. At least he is not a bore.” She looked at Pitt rather pointedly, and he knew that he himself was included in the same bracket of socially impossible people who redeem themselves by not being bores.

He could learn no more from her at present, so, after thanking her for her frankness, he took his leave. This evening he would have to tell Charlotte that Dominic Corde was involved, and he wanted to prepare himself.

Charlotte had not taken more than a cursory interest in the case of grave robbing. It did not concern anyone she knew, not like the murders at Paragon Walk the previous year. She had plenty to keep her busy in the house, and Jemima was consumed with curiosity every minute she was awake. Charlotte spent half her day in household duties, and the other half deciphering Jemima’s questions and supplying answers to them. Time after time she could, with a flash of instinct, understand what Jemima meant and repeat the words over clearly to be imitated with solemn diligence.

By six o’clock when Pitt came home, cold and wet, she was tired herself and as glad as he to sit down. It was in the comfortable silence after dinner that he told her. He had debated how to phrase it, whether to lead up to it or simply be bold. In the end his own urgency overtook him.

“I went to see Aunt Vespasia today.” He looked at her, then away again, into the fire. “About the grave robbing. She knows everyone in Gadstone Park.”

Charlotte waited for him to continue.

Usually he was good at being evasive, coming to things in his own way, but this was too powerful; it forced itself to be said.

“Dominic is involved!”

“Dominic?” She was incredulous; it was too unbelievable, too unexpected to have sense. “What do you mean?”

“Dominic Corde is involved with the Fitzroy-Hammonds. Lord Augustus died a few weeks ago, and his corpse has been unburied twice and left to be found, once on the box of a hansom cab and once in his own pew in church. Alicia, his wife, now his widow, had an admirer, and has had for some time—Dominic Corde!”

She sat quite still, repeating his words over inside her head, trying to grasp them. She had not even thought of Dominic for months; now all her adolescent dreams flooded back, embarrassing in their gaucheness and their fervor. She felt the color burn up her face and wished Pitt had never known anything about it, that she had been less transparent in her infatuation when he had first met her in Cater Street.

Then she began to realize the enormity of it. He had said Dominic was involved. Did he really imagine Dominic had had something to do with disinterring the body? She could not imagine it—not because of the cruelty or the desecration of it, but because she did not believe Dominic had the heat of emotion or the courage in him to do such a wild thing.

“How involved?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” His voice was unusually sharp. “I should imagine he means to marry her!”

For once he had misunderstood her. “I mean how is he involved with digging up the body?” she corrected. “Surely you don’t think he could have done it? Why should he?”

He hesitated, searching her eyes, trying to gauge what she was thinking, how much it mattered to her. He had seen the color in her face at the mention of Dominic’s name, and it brought a coldness to him, an uncertainty he had not known for years, not since his father had lost his job and the family had left the great estate where he had been born and grown up.

“I don’t imagine he did,” he answered. “But I have to consider the possibility that Lord Augustus did not die as naturally as was supposed at the time.”

The blood drained out of her face. “You mean murder?” Her tongue was dry. “You think Dominic might have murdered him? Oh, no—I don’t believe it! I know him—he is not—” She could not think of a way to say it without cruelty, and less than justice.

“Not what?” he asked, the edge back in his voice. “Not capable of murder?”

“No,” she said simply. “I don’t think so; not unless he was very frightened, or perhaps in a fit of temper, by accident. But if he did, he would give himself away afterwards. He would never be able to live with it.”

“He has such a delicate conscience?” Pitt said sarcastically.

She was hurt by the hardness in him. She had no idea why it should be. Had he remembered her youthful foolishness and been angered by it, found her silliness annoying, even after all this time? Surely he could not be so unforgiving of what had after all been no more than a girl’s romanticism. She had tortured no one but herself with it. She remembered all that had happened at Cater Street very clearly. Even Sarah had been unaware of her feelings, and Dominic certainly had.

“We all have sides of ourselves we prefer not to acknowledge,” she said quietly. “Sides we reason away with all sorts of arguments why it is wrong for others, but in our case quite justified. Dominic is as good at it as most, perhaps in some things better, but his were only the faults he was brought up to. He learned his values from other people, just as we all do. He could excuse himself easily enough for an affaire with a maid, because that is something most gentlemen accept; but nobody accepts murdering someone in order to marry his widow. There is no way Dominic could excuse that to himself, or to anyone else. After he had done it, he would be terrified. That is what I meant.”

“Oh.” He sat quite still.

For several minutes there was no noise but the crackle of the fire.

“How was Aunt Vespasia?” she asked at length.

“The same as always,” he replied politely. Then he wanted to say more, to establish contact again without exactly apologizing, because that would be to admit to the thoughts he had had. “She asked that you should call upon her sometime. She said that when I saw her at the interment, and I forgot to mention it.”

“Will they inter him again?” she asked. “It seems a bit—ridiculous!”

“I suppose so. But I shan’t let them do it immediately. The body is in police custody now. I want a postmortem.”

“A postmortem! You mean cut him up?”

“If you must put it that way.” Slowly he smiled, and she smiled back. Suddenly the warmth flooded into him again, and he sat grinning idiotically, like a boy.

“The family won’t be pleased,” she pointed out.

“They’ll be furious,” he agreed. “But I mean to—I have no choice now!”

3

IT WAS INEVITABLE the next day that Pitt should call on Alicia. No matter how distasteful it was, he must question her, obliquely, about Lord Augustus, about her relationship with him and with Dominic Corde. Then, of course, he would have to meet Dominic again.

They had not met since Pitt’s wedding to Charlotte nearly four years ago. Then Dominic had been newly a widower, still numb from his fear in the Cater Street murders; and Pitt had been too amazed at his own success in winning Charlotte to be more than dimly aware of anyone else.

Now it would be different. Dominic would be over the shock and would have found a new life for himself away from the Ellisons and memories of Sarah. He was bound to marry again; he could not be more than thirty-two or -three, and eminently eligible. Even if he did not have it in mind himself, Pitt knew enough of society to know that some ambitious mother would grasp him for her unmarried daughter. It would merely be a competition as to who would succeed first.

He did not dislike Dominic for himself, only for his relationship with Charlotte and the dreams she had woven about him, and he felt guilty that he had to be the one to drag him again into the shadow of murder.

If indeed he could not clear up the affair before murder need be put into words?

It was a gray, sullen morning with a sky threatening snow when Pitt pulled the bell of number twelve Gadstone Park and the funereal butler let him in with a sigh of resignation.

“Lady Fitzroy-Hammond is at breakfast,” he said wearily. “If you care to wait in the morning room, I will inform her that you are here.”

“Thank you.” Pitt followed him obediently, passing a small, elderly maid in a neat, white-lace-edged uniform. Her thin face sharpened as she saw him, and her eyes glittered. She turned around and retraced her steps upstairs, whisking across the landing and disappearing as he went into the silent, ice-chill morning room.

Alicia came in about five minutes later, looking pale and a little hurried, as if she had left the breakfast table without finishing her meal.

“Good morning, ma’am.” He remained standing. The room was too cold to conduct any discussion, especially the relaxed, rather rambling exploration he needed now.

She shivered. “What more can there possibly be to speak of? The vicar has assured me he will take care of all the—arrangements.” She hesitated. “I—I am not sure how it should be done—after all—there has already been a funeral—and—” She frowned and shook her head a little. “I don’t know anything more to tell you.”

“Perhaps we could talk somewhere more convenient?” he suggested. He did not wish to say, precisely, somewhere warmer.

She was confused. “Discuss what? I don’t know anything else.”

He spoke as gently as he could. “Desecration of a grave is a crime, ma’am. To disinter the same body twice seems unlikely to be merely an insane coincidence.”

The blood drained out of her face. She stared at him, speechless.

“Could we go to some room where we may speak comfortably?” This time he made it rather more of guidance, as one would instruct a child.

Still without answering, she turned and led him to a smaller, very feminine withdrawing room at the side of the house. A fire was already burning strongly, and there was a radiance of warmth from it. As soon as they were inside she swung round. Her composure was regained.

“What is it you are supposing, Inspector? More than a madman? Something intentional?”

“I’m afraid so,” he replied soberly. “Madness is not usually so—directed.”

“Directed at what?” She closed the door and walked over to sit down on the settee. He sat opposite her, feeling the warmth ease out the muscles knotted with cold.

“That is what I must find out,” he replied, “if I am to make sure it does not happen again. You said before that you knew of no enemy who would have wished your husband such harm or could conceivably have behaved in such a manner—”

“I don’t!”

“Then I am left to consider what other motives there could be,” he said reasonably. She was more intelligent than he had expected, calmer. He began to understand how Dominic might be very genuinely attracted to her; neither money nor position need be involved. He thought of what Vespasia had said about laughter and the dreams of youth, and he was angry at the restrictions, the insensitivities of a social convention that could have married her to a man like Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond and bred into her compliance with such a thing. “Or who else might be the intended victim,” he finished.

“Victim?” she repeated, turning it over in her mind. “Yes, I suppose you are right. In a sense we are all victims of this—the whole family.”

He was not prepared yet to ask her about Dominic. “Tell me something about his mother,” he said instead. “She was in the church, wasn’t she? Does she live here?”

“Yes. But I don’t know what I can tell you.”

“Could she be the one intended to be hurt, do you think?”

There was a small flicker over her face, like recognition, even perhaps a momentary harsh, self-mocking humor. Or perhaps that was something he imagined because it was in his own feelings.

“Are you asking me if she has enemies?” She was looking at him very directly.

“Has she?” It was now no longer a secret between them; he understood, and she had seen it.

“Of course; no one can live to her age without earning enemies,” she agreed. “But by the same token, most of them are dead. All the rivals from her youth, or the days of her social power, they are gone, or too old to care. I imagine most scores have been settled long ago.”

There was too much truth in that to argue. “And the daughter, Miss Verity?” he went on.

“Oh, no.” She shook her head immediately. “She has only been out for a Season. There is no spite in her, and she has done no one harm, even inadvertently.”

He was not quite sure how to say the inevitable. Usually it was hard to frame the words that led to accusation, especially when the person could not see them coming; but he had grown accustomed to it over the years, as one lives with early rheumatism, knowing there will be pain now and again, moving to accommodate it, anticipating when the prick would come, growing used to it. But this time it was harder than usual. At the last moment he became oblique again.

“Could there not be envy?” he asked. “She is a charming girl.”

Alicia smiled, and there was patience in it for his ignorance. “The only people to envy young ladies of society are other young ladies of society. Do you really imagine, Inspector, that one of them hired men to disinter her dead father?”

He felt foolish. “No, of course not.” This time he abandoned tact; he was being clumsier with it than without. “Then if it is not the dowager Lady Fitzroy-Hammond, and it is not Miss Verity, could it be you?”

She swallowed and waited a second before replying. Her fingers were stiff on the carved wooden arm of the settee, grasping onto the fringe.

“I had not thought anyone hated me so much,” she said gently.

He plunged in. He could not afford to let pity hold his tongue. She would not be the first murderess to be the supreme actor.

“There has been more than one crime committed from jealousy.”

She sat perfectly still. For a while he thought she was not going to answer.

“Do you mean murder, Inspector Pitt?” she said at last. “It is horrible, sick and nightmarish, but it is not murder. Augustus died of heart failure. He had been ill for over a week. Ask Dr. McDuff.”

“Perhaps someone wishes us to think it was murder?” Pitt kept his voice calm, almost unemotional, as if he were examining an academic problem, not talking of lives.

Suddenly she perceived what he was thinking. “You mean they are—digging Augustus up to make the police take notice? Do you think someone could hate one of us so much?”

“Is it not possible?”

She turned a little to look into the fire. “Yes—I suppose it is; it would be foolish to say it couldn’t be. But it is a very frightening thought. I don’t know who—or why.”

“I’m told you are acquainted with a Mr. Dominic Corde.” Now it was said. He watched the color rise up her cheeks. He had expected to dislike her for it, to disapprove; after all, she was newly widowed. Yet he did not. He found himself sorry for her embarrassment, even for the fact that she was probably in that uncertain stage of love when you can no longer deny your own feelings and are not yet sure of the other’s.

She still looked away from him. “Yes, I am.” She picked at the fringe of the settee. Her hands were very smooth, used to embroidery and arranging flowers. She was impelled to say more, not simply to leave the subject. “Why do you ask?”

Now he was more delicate. “Do you think someone else might be jealous of your friendship? I have met Mr. Corde; he is a most charming man, and eligible for marriage.”

The color deepened in her face, and, perhaps feeling its heat, her embarrassment became more painful.

“That may be, Mr. Pitt.” Her eyes came up sharply. He had not noticed before, but they were golden hazel. “But I am newly a widow—” She stopped. Possibly she realized how pompous it sounded. She began again. “I cannot imagine anyone being so deranged as to do such a thing because of a social envy, even over Mr. Corde.”

He was still sitting opposite her, only a few feet away. “Can you think of any kind of sane reason for a person to do it, ma’am?”

There was silence again. The fire crackled and fell in sparks. He reached forward for the tongs and put on another piece of coal. It was a luxury to burn fuel without thought of price. He put on a second piece, and a third. The fire blazed up in yellow heat.

“No,” she said gently. “You are quite right.”

Before he could say anything else, the door swung open and a stout old lady in black came in, banging ahead of herself with a stick. She surveyed Pitt with disdain as he automatically stood up.

Alicia stood up also. “Mama, this is Inspector Pitt, from the police.” She turned to Pitt. “My mother-in-law, Lady Fitzroy-Hammond.”

The old lady did not move. She did not intend to be introduced to a policeman as if he were a social acquaintance, and certainly not in what she still considered her own house.

“Indeed,” she said sourly. “I had assumed so. I imagine you have some duties to attend to, Alicia? The house does not grind to a halt because someone has died, you know. You cannot expect the servants to supervise themselves! Go and see to the menus for the day and that the maids are properly employed. There was dust on the window ledge in the upstairs landing yesterday. I soiled my cuff on it!” She drew in her breath. “Well, don’t stand there, girl. If the policeman wants to see you again, he can call again!”

Alicia glanced at Pitt, and he shook his head fractionally. She accepted his dismissal with the civility and the respect for the old that had been bred in her. After she was gone, the old lady waddled over to the settee and sat down, still holding her stick.

“What are you here for?” she demanded. She had on a white lace cap, and Pitt noticed that underneath it her hair was not yet dressed. He guessed she had heard his arrival reported by a maid and risen hurriedly in order not to miss him.

“To see if I can discover who disinterred your son,” he replied baldly.

“What in goodness!—Do you imagine it was one of us?” Her disgust at his stupidity was immense, and she took care he should be aware of it.

“Hardly, ma’am,” he answered levelly. “It is a man’s job. But I think it very likely it was directed at one of you. Since it has happened twice, we cannot assume it coincidence.”

She banged her stick on the floor. “You should investigate!” she said with satisfaction, her fat cheeks tight inside their skin. “Find out everything you can. A lot of people seem to be what they aren’t. I would start with a Mr. Dominic Corde, if I were you.” Her eyes never wavered from his face. “Much too smooth, that one. After Alicia’s money, shouldn’t wonder. Take a good look at him. Sniffing round here before poor Augustus was dead, long before! Turning her head with his handsome face and easy manners—stupid girl! As if a face were worth anything. Why, when I was her age I knew twenty just like him.” She snapped her fingers sharply. “Courts of Europe are full of them; grow a crop of them every summer, just like potatoes. Good for a season, then they’re gone. Rot! Unless they marry some rich woman who’s taken in by them. You go and inquire into his means, see what he owes!”

Pitt raised his eyebrows. He would have given a week’s pay to have been rude to her. Unfortunately, it would have been a lifetime’s.

“Do you think he could have disinterred Lord Augustus?” he asked innocently. “I don’t see why he should.”

“Don’t be such an idiot!” she spat. “If anything, he murdered him! Or put that silly girl up to it! I dare say someone knows and dug up Augustus to show it.”

He faced her without blinking. “Did you know, ma’am?”

She glared at him with stone-faced anger, while she decided which emotion to show.

“Dig up my own son!” she said at last. “You are a barbarian! A cretin!”

“No, ma’am.” Pitt refused to rise to her bait. “You mistake me. I meant, did you suspect that your son had been murdered?”

Suddenly she realized the trap, and her temper vanished. She looked at him with wary little eyes. “No, I did not. Not at the time. Although now I am beginning to consider the possibility.”

“So are we, ma’am,” Pitt stood up. He needed to learn everything he could, but venomous gossip from this old woman would only cloud the issue so early on. Murder was no more yet than a possibility, and there were still others left—hatred, or simply vandalism.

She snorted, held out her hand to be helped up, then remembered he was a policeman and withdrew it again, climbing to her feet unaided. She banged her stick on the floor.

“Nisbett!”

The ubiquitous maid appeared as if she had been leaning against the door.

“Show this man out,” the old lady ordered, lifting her stick in the air to point. “And then bring me a cup of chocolate up to my room. I don’t know, what’s the matter with the world; it gets colder every winter. It never used to be like this. We knew how to heat our houses properly!” She stumped out without looking at Pitt again.

Pitt followed Nisbett into the hallway and was about to go out when he heard voices in the withdrawing room to his left. One was a man’s, not loud but very clear, with words precisely spoken. It brought back a tide of memory—it could only be Dominic Corde.

He gave Nisbett a flashing smile, leaving her startled and not a little alarmed, and turned sharply to the door, brushed it with his knuckles in the briefest of knocks, and strode in.

Dominic was standing with Alicia by the fireplace. They both looked round with surprise as he burst in. Alicia flushed, and Dominic made as if to demand an explanation; then he recognized Pitt.

“Thomas!” His voice rose a little in surprise. “Thomas Pitt!” Then his composure returned and he smiled, putting his hand out; it was genuine, and Pitt’s dislike evaporated in spite of himself. But he could not afford to forget why he was here. There might be murder, and either one of these two, or even both, could be involved. Even if it were only grave robbing—then surely they were the intended victims of malice.

He took Dominic’s outstretched hand. “Good morning, Mr. Corde.”

Dominic was quite innocent, as he had always been. “Good morning. How is Charlotte?”

Pitt felt a strange mixture of elation, because Charlotte was his wife now, and resentment, because Dominic asked so easily, so naturally. But after all, he had lived in the same house with her all the years of his marriage to Sarah; he had seen her grow up from an adolescent to a young woman. And all the time it had never entered his head that Charlotte was infatuated with him.

But this was different; he was thirty now, surely more mature, wiser to his effect upon women? And this was Alicia, not his young sister-in-law.

“In excellent health, thank you,” Pitt replied. He could not resist adding, “And Jemima is two years old and full of conversation.”

Dominic was a little startled. Perhaps he had not thought of Charlotte with children. He and Sarah had not had any—instantly Pitt regretted his bragging. Already, with these few emotion-driven words, he had made detachment impossible, destroyed the professionalism he had intended to observe.

“I hope you’re well?” He floundered a little. “This is a very wretched business about Lord Fitzroy-Hammond.”

Dominic’s face colored, then the blood drained away. “Ghastly,” he agreed. “I hope you can find whoever did it and have him put away. Surely he must be mad and not too hard to recognize?”

“Unfortunately, insanity is not like the pox,” Pitt replied. “It doesn’t give you a rash that can be seen by the eye.”

Alicia stood silently, still absorbing the fact that the two men obviously knew each other and that it was no chance or merely formal acquaintance.

“Not by the untrained eye,” Dominic agreed. “But you are not untrained! And haven’t you doctors, or something?”

“Before you can do anything with a disease, you need to be familiar with it,” Pitt pointed out. “And grave robbing is not something that happens more than once in a policeman’s career.”

“What about selling them for medical research, wasn’t there a trade? I’m sorry, Alicia—” he apologized.

“Resurrectionists? That was quite a while ago,” Pitt replied. “They get cadavers quite legally now.”

“Then it can’t be that.” Dominic’s shoulders slumped. “It’s grisly. Do you think—no, it can’t be. They didn’t harm the body. It can’t be necromancers or satanists or anything like that—”

Alicia spoke at last. “Mr. Pitt is obliged to consider the possibility that they did not choose Augustus by chance, but quite deliberately, either out of hatred for him or for one of us.”

Dominic was not as surprised as Pitt would have expected. The thought occurred to him that perhaps she had already said as much before he came into the room. Perhaps that was even what they were discussing when he had broken in on them.

“I can’t imagine hating anyone so much,” Dominic said flatly.

It was Pitt’s chance, and he took it. “There can be many reasons for hatred,” he said, trying to make his voice lighter again, as though he were speaking impersonally. “Fear is one of the oldest. Although I have not yet been able to discover any reason why anybody should have feared Lord Augustus. It might turn out he had a power I know nothing of, a financial power, or even a power of knowledge of something someone else would greatly prefer kept secret. He may have learned of something, even unintentionally.”

“Then he would have kept it so,” Alicia said with conviction. “Augustus was very loyal, and he never gossiped.”

“He might consider it his duty to speak if the matter were a crime,” Pitt pointed out.

Neither Alicia nor Dominic spoke. They were both still standing, Dominic so close to the fire his legs must be scorching.

“Or revenge,” Pitt continued. “People can harbor a desire for revenge, nursing it over the years till it becomes monstrous. The original offense need not have been grave; indeed, it may not have been a genuine offense at all, merely a success where the other failed, something quite innocent.”

He drew in breath and came a little closer to what he really wanted to say.

“And of course there is greed, one of the commonest motives in the world. It may be that someone stood to benefit from his death in ways that are not immediately obvious—”

The blood ebbed out of Alicia’s face and then rushed back in scarlet. Pitt had not meant anything quite so simple as inheritance, but he knew she thought he did. Dominic too was silent, shifting from one foot to the other. It may have been unease, or merely that he was too close to the fire and unable to move without asking Pitt to move also.

“Or jealousy,” Pitt finished. “A desire for freedom. Perhaps he stood in the way of something someone else wished for desperately.” Now he could not look directly at either of them, and he was aware they did not look at each other.

“Lots of reasons.” He backed a little to allow Dominic away from the heat. “Any one of them possible, until we find otherwise.”

Alicia gulped. “Are—are you going to investigate all of them?”

“It may not be necessary,” he answered, feeling cruel as he said it and hating his job because already the suspicion was taking form in his mind and shaping like a picture in the fog. “We may discover the truth long before that.”

It was no comfort to her, as indeed he had not intended it to be. She came forward a little, standing between Pitt and Dominic. It was a gesture he had seen a hundred times in all manner and walk of women: a mother defending an unruly child, a wife lying about her husband, a daughter excusing her drunken father.

“I hope you will be discreet, Inspector,” she said quietly. “You may cause a great deal of unnecessary distress if you are not and wrong my husband’s memory, not to mention those you imply may have had such motives.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “Facts may have to be inquired into, but no implications will be made.”

She did not look as if she were able to believe him, but she said no more.

Pitt excused himself, and the footman made sure that he left this time.

Outside, the cold caught at him, seizing his body even through his layers of coat and jacket, chilling the skin and tying knots in the muscles of his stomach. The fog had blown away, and there was sleet on the wind. It sighed through the laurel and magnolia, and the rain blackened everything. There was no alternative now but to press for a postmortem of Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. The possibility of murder could not be ignored, discreetly tucked away because it could hurt too many people.

He had previously discovered where to find Dr. McDuff, and he took himself straight there. The less time he had to think about it the better. He would face telling Charlotte when he had to.

Dr. McDuff’s house was spacious and solid and conventional, like the man; it had nothing to wake the imagination, nothing to risk offending the complacent. Pitt was shown into yet another cold morning room and told to wait. After a quarter of an hour he was conducted to the study lined with leatherbound books, a little scuffed, where he stood before a vast desk to answer as a schoolboy might to a master. At least here there was a fire.

“Good morning,” Dr. McDuff said dourly. He may have been comely enough in his youth, but now his face was wrinkled with time and impatience, and self-satisfaction had set unbecoming lines round his nose and mouth. “What can I do for you?”

Pitt pulled up the only other chair and sat down. He refused to be treated like a servant by this man. After all, he was only another professional like himself, trained and paid to deal with the less pleasant problems of humanity.

“You were the physician in attendance to the late Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond up to the time of his death—” he began.

“Indeed,” Dr. McDuff replied. “That is hardly a matter for the police. The man died of a heart attack. I signed the certificate. I know nothing about this appalling desecration that has taken place since. That is your affair, and the sooner you do something about it the better.”

Pitt could feel the antagonism in the air. To McDuff he represented a sordid world beyond the grace and comfort of his own circle, a tide that must be forever held back with sandbags of discrimination and social distinction. If he were to get anything from him at all, it would not be by a headlong charge, but with deviousness and appeal to his vanity.

“Yes, it is an appalling business,” he agreed. “I have not had to deal with anything like it before. I would value your professional opinion as to what manner of person might be affected with such an insane desire.”

McDuff had opened his mouth to disclaim anything to do with it, but his professional standing had been called on. It was not what he had been expecting Pitt to say, and he was momentarily off guard.

“Ah.” He sought to rearrange his thoughts rapidly. “Ah! Now, that’s a very complex matter.” He had been going to say he knew nothing about it either, but he never admitted ignorance outright; after all, his years of experience had given him immense wisdom, knowledge of human behavior in all its comedies and tragedies. “You are quite right; it is an insanity to dig a man’s corpse out of its grave. No question about it.”

“Do you know of any medical condition that would lead to such a thing?” Pitt inquired with a perfectly sober face. “Perhaps some sort of obsession?”

“Obsession with the dead?” McDuff turned it over in his mind, casting about for something positive to say. “Necrophilia is the term you are seeking.”

“Yes,” Pitt agreed. “Perhaps even an obsessive hatred or envy of Lord Augustus himself—after all, the wretched creature has dug him up twice! That hardly seems like coincidence.”

McDuff’s face stiffened to even harder lines of dislike. It was his own world that was being threatened now, his social circle.

Pitt saw it and turned it into necessity. “Naturally, your professional ethics would not permit you to mention names, Dr. McDuff,” he said quickly. “Even obliquely. But you can tell me, as a man of long experience in medicine, if there is any such condition—then I must search for myself to see if I can find its victim. It is the duty of both of us to see that Lord Augustus is decently buried and allowed to rest—and of course his unfortunate family. His widow—and his mother—”

Dr. McDuff remembered the purse strings.

“Of course,” he said immediately. “I will do everything I can—within the bounds of ethical discretion,” he added. “But I cannot readily think of any disease whatever which would produce such a repulsive form of madness. I will give the matter deep thought, and if you care to call again, I will have a more considered opinion.”

“Thank you very much.” Pitt stood up and moved to the door; then, just before he opened it, he turned. “By the way, there are some very unpleasant suggestions that Lord Augustus might have been murdered, and someone knows of it and is digging up his body to draw our attention to the fact—force us to investigate. I suppose his death was perfectly natural—expected?”

McDuff’s face darkened. “Of course it was perfectly natural, man! Do you imagine I would have signed the certificate if it were not?”

“Expected?” Pitt insisted. “He had been ill for some time?”

“A week or so. But in a man of sixty that is not unusual. His mother has a weak heart.”

“But she is still alive,” Pitt pointed out. “And somewhat over eighty, I should judge.”

“That has nothing to do with it!” McDuff snapped, his fist tightening on the desk top. “Lord Augustus’s death was quite natural, and in a man of his years and health not unusual.”

“You did a postmortem?” Pitt knew perfectly well he had not.

McDuff was too angry to think of that. The very idea outraged him. “I did not!” His face mottled heavily with purple. “You have practiced too long in the back streets, Inspector. I would have you remember that my clients have no resemblance whatsoever to yours! There is no murder here, and no crime, except that of grave robbing; and doubtless it is one from your world, not one from mine, who is to blame for that! Good day to you, sir!”

“Then I shall have to get a postmortem now,” Pitt said softly. “I am obliged to tell you, I shall apply to the magistrate this afternoon.”

“And I shall oppose you, sir!” McDuff banged his fist down. “And you may allow yourself to be quite certain his family will also! They are not without influence. Now please take yourself out of my house!”

Pitt went to his superiors with his request for a postmortem on Lord Augustus, and they received him with anxiety, saying they would have to consider such a thing and could not put it to a magistrate without due weighing of all its aspects. One could not do such things lightly or irresponsibly, and they must be sure they were justified before committing themselves.

Pitt was angry and disappointed, but he knew that he should have been prepared for it. One did not disembowel the corpses of the aristocracy and question their deaths without the most dire compulsion, and even then one obtained a justification that could not be denied before venturing forth.

The following day McDuff had done his best. The answer was returned to Pitt in his office that there were no grounds for the application, and it would not be made. He went back to his own small room, not sure whether he was angry or relieved. If there were no autopsy, then it was unlikely there would ever be any murder proved; the certificate had been signed for a natural death from heart failure. And he had already seen enough of Dr. McDuff to believe it would take more than anything Pitt was capable of to make him reverse a professional opinion, and certainly not publicly. And if there were no murder, Pitt would still be obliged to make the motions of further investigations as to who had disinterred the body and left it so bizarrely displayed, but he did not for a moment hold any hope of discovering the answer. In time it would be overtaken by more urgent crimes, and Dominic and the Fitzroy-Hammonds would be left alone to get on with their lives.

Except, of course, that whoever had dug up Augustus might not give up so easily. If someone believed, or even knew, that there had been murder, he—or she—might have more ideas on how to bring it to attention. God knew what could be next!

And Pitt hated an open case. He liked Alicia; as far as his imagination stretched to a totally alien way of life, he even sympathized with her. He did not want to learn that she had either killed her husband or had been party to it. And for Charlotte’s sake, he did not want it to have been Dominic.

For the time being there was nothing he could do. He turned his mind to a case of forgery he had been closing in on before Lord Augustus fell off the cab at his feet.

It was half-past five and, outside, as dark as an unlit cellar between the fog-wrapped gas lamps when a junior constable opened his door to say that a Mr. Corde had come to see him.

Pitt was startled. His first thought was that there had been some new outrage, that his extraordinary opponent was impatient and ready to prompt him again. It was a sick, unhappy feeling.

Dominic came in with his collar turned up to his ears and his hat on far lower than his usual rakish angle. His nose was red and his shoulders hunched.

“My God, it’s a wretched night.” He sat uncomfortably on the hard-backed chair, looking at Pitt with anxiety. “I pity any poor devil without a fire and a bed.”

Instead of asking why Dominic had come, Pitt made the instinctive reply that was on his tongue. “There’ll be thousands of them.” He met Dominic’s eyes. “And without supper either, within a stone’s throw of here.”

Dominic winced; he had never had much imagination when Charlotte had known him, but maybe the few years between had changed him. Or perhaps it was only distaste at Pitt’s literal reply to what had been meant only as a passing remark.

“Is it true that you want to do a postmortem on Lord Augustus?” he asked, taking his gloves off and pulling a white linen handkerchief out of his pocket.

Pitt could not let a chance for truth slip away unused. “Yes.”

Dominic blew his nose, and when he looked up his face was tight. “Why? He died of heart failure; it’s in the family. McDuff will tell you it was all perfectly normal, even expected! He ate too much and seldom took any recreation. Men like that in their sixties are dying all the time.” Dominic screwed up the handkerchief and shoved it in his pocket. “Can’t you see what it will do to the family, especially Alicia? That old woman is pretty good hell to live with now; imagine what she will be like if there is a postmortem. She will blame it all on Alicia and say that such a thing would never have happened to Augustus if he had not married her. If Alicia were not more than thirty years younger than he, no one would think anything of it!”

“It’s nothing to do with age,” Pitt said wearily. He wished he could leave the affair, put it out of his mind as well as his duty. “It is because the body was dug up twice and left where we could not help but find it. Quite apart from the fact that that is a crime, we have to prevent it happening again. Surely you can see that?”

“Then bury him and put a constable on watch!” Dominic said with exasperation. “No one is going to dig him up with a policeman standing there looking at them. It can’t be an easy job, or a quick one, moving all that earth and raising a coffin. They must do it at night and take a fair bit of equipment. Spades, ropes and things. And there must be more than one of them, it stands to reason.”

Pitt did not look at him. “One strong man could do it, with a little effort,” he argued. “And he wouldn’t need ropes; the coffin was left, only the actual corpse was taken. We could post a constable for a night or two, even a week, but sometime we’d have to take him away—and then he could go and do it again, if that was what he wanted.”

“Oh, God!” Dominic shut his eyes and put his hands over them.

“Or else he’ll do something else,” Pitt added. “If he is determined to make somebody act.”

Dominic lifted his head. “Something else? Such as what, for God’s sake?”

“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. “If I knew, then perhaps I could prevent it.”

Dominic stood up, the blood high in his face now. “Well, I’ll prevent a postmortem! There are plenty of people in the Park who will put their weight against it. Lord St. Jermyn, for one. And if necessary, we can hire somebody to keep a guard over the grave to see that the body rests in peace and decency. Nobody but a madman disturbs the dead!”

“Nobody but madmen do many things,” Pitt agreed. “I’m sorry about it, but I don’t know how to stop it.”

Dominic shook his head, moving slowly away. “It’s not your fault, and not your responsibility. We’ll have to do something—for Alicia’s sake. Remember me to Charlotte—and Emily, if you ever see her. Goodnight.”

The door closed behind him, and Pitt stared at it, feeling guilty. He had not told him there was no postmortem because he had wanted to see what Dominic would say. And now he knew he felt worse than before. A postmortem might have cleared up forever any suspicion of murder. Perhaps he should have said that. But why had Dominic not seen that himself?

Or was he afraid it would show the very opposite? That there had been murder! Was Dominic guilty himself—or afraid for Alicia? Or only afraid of the scandal and all the dark, corroding suspicions, the old sores opened up that investigation always brings? He could not have forgotten Cater Street.

But if Dominic wanted the matter silenced, there was at least one other who did not. In the morning Pitt received a rather stiff letter from the old lady reminding him that it was his duty to discover who had disturbed Lord Augustus in his grave—and why! If there had been murder done, he was paid by the community to learn of it and avenge it.

He called her an exceedingly uncomplimentary name and put the sheet of paper down. It was ordinary white note-paper—perhaps she kept the deckle-edged for her social acquaintances. The thought flickered through his mind that maybe he should take it to his superiors and let them fight among themselves as to which was the more imperative for their careers and duty—the establishment’s prohibition or the old lady’s social weight.

He was still considering the matter, with the letter in his top drawer, when Alicia came, wrapped in furs to her throat. She caused a few surprised comments in the outer office, and the constable who preceded her to tell Pitt had eyes as round and bulbous as marbles.

“Good morning, ma’am.” Pitt offered her the chair and waved the constable away. “I’m afraid I have nothing new to tell you, or I should have called to say so.”

“No.” She looked everywhere but at Pitt. He wondered whether she was simply avoiding him, or if she had any interest at all in the brownish walls and the austere prints on them, the boxes bulging with files. He waited, leaving her to find her own courage.

At last she looked at him. “Mr. Pitt, I have come to ask you not to continue with the matter of my husband’s grave being disinterred—” That was a ridiculous euphemism, and she realized it, stammering a little awkwardly. “I—I mean—the digging up of his body. I have come to the belief that it was someone deranged, vandals who knew no better. You will never catch them, and no good can be served by pursuing it.”

A sudden idea occurred to him. “No, I may not catch him,” he agreed slowly. “But if I do not pursue it, then there may be great distress, not least to you yourself.” He met her eyes squarely, and she was unable to look away without obviously avoiding him.

“I don’t understand you.” She shook her head a little. “We shall bury him and if necessary hire a servant to keep guard for as long as need be. I see no way in which that can cause distress.”

“It may well be that it was merely a lunatic.” He leaned a little forward. “But I’m afraid not everyone will believe so.”

Her face pinched. He did not need to use the word “murder.”

“They will have to think as they choose.” She lifted her head and gripped her fur tighter.

“They will,” Pitt agreed. “And some of them will choose to think you have refused to allow a postmortem precisely because there is something to hide.”

Her face paled, and she knotted her fingers unconsciously in the thick pelts.

“Unkindness is surprisingly perceptive,” he continued. “There will be those who have remarked Mr. Corde’s admiration for you, and no doubt those also who have envied it.” He waited a moment or two, allowing her to digest the thought, with all its implications. He was preparing to add that there would be suspicion, but it was not necessary.

“You mean they will wonder if he was murdered?” she said very softly, her voice dry. “And they will say it was Dominic, or me myself?”

“It is possible.” Now that he had come to it again, it was hard to say. He wished he could disbelieve it himself, but remembering Dominic and sitting here looking at her face, eyes hot and miserable, hands twisting at her collar, he knew that she was not sure beyond question even in her own heart.

“They are wrong!” she said fiercely. “I have done nothing to harm Augustus, ever, and I am sure Dominic—Mr. Corde—has not, either!”

It was the protest of fear, to convince herself, and he recognized it. He had heard just that tone so often before when the first doubt thrusts itself into the mind.

“Then would it not be better to allow a postmortem?” he said softly. “And prove that the death was natural? Then no one would consider the matter any further, except as an ordinary tragedy.”

He watched as the fears chased each other across her face: first a catching at the hope he held out; then doubt; then the sick pain that it might prove the exact opposite and make murder unarguable, a fact.

“Do you think Mr. Corde might have killed your husband?” he said brutally.

She glared at him with real anger. “No, of course I don’t!”

“Then let us prove that it was a natural death with a postmortem, which will put it beyond doubt.”

She hesitated, still weighing the public scandal against the private fears. She made a last attempt. “His mother would not permit it.”

“On the contrary.” He could afford to be a little gentler now. “She has written to request it. Perhaps she wishes these voices silenced as much as anyone else.”

Alicia pulled a face of derision. She knew as well as Pitt, who had read the letter, what the old lady wanted. And she also knew what the old lady would say, and go on saying until the day she died, if there were no postmortem. It was the deciding factor, as Pitt had intended it should be.

“Very well,” she agreed. “You may add my name to the request and take it to whoever it is who decides such things.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said soberly. The victory had no pleasure in it. He had seldom fought so hard for something that tasted so bitter.

The postmortem was a gruesome performance. They were never pleasant, but this one, performed on a body that had now been dead for nearly a month, was grimmer than most.

Pitt attended because in the circumstances it was expected that someone from the police be there, and he wanted to know for himself each answer the minute it was obtained. It was a day when the cold seemed to darken everything, and the autopsy room was as bleak and impersonal as a mass grave. God knew how many dead had passed across its scrubbed table.

The pathologist wore a mask, and Pitt was glad of one, too. The smell caught at the stomach. They worked for hours, calmly and in silence but for brief instructions as organs were removed and handed over, samples taken to search for poisons. The heart was looked at with particular care.

At the end Pitt walked out, numb with cold, his stomach tight from nausea. He huddled his jacket round him and pulled his muffler up to his ears.

“Well?” he asked.

“Nothing,” the pathologist replied dourly. “He died of heart failure.”

Pitt stood silently. Half of him had wanted that answer, and yet the other half could not believe it, could see no sense in it.

“Don’t know what brought it on,” the pathologist went on. “Heart’s not in a bad condition, for a man of his age. Bit fatty, arteries thickening a little, but not enough to kill him.”

Pitt was obliged to ask. “Could it have been poison?”

“Could have,” the pathologist answered. “Quite a lot of digitalis there, but his doctor says the old lady had it for her heart. He could have taken it himself. Doesn’t look like enough to have done him any harm—but I can’t say for certain. People don’t all react the same way, and he’s been dead awhile now.”

“So he could have died of digitalis poisoning?”

“Possibly,” the pathologist agreed. “But not likely. Sorry I can’t be more help, but there just isn’t anything definite.”

Pitt had to be content. The man was professional and had done his job. The postmortem had proved nothing, except confirm to the world that the police were suspicious.

Pitt dreaded having to tell the news to his superiors. He treated himself to a hansom from the hospital back to the police station and got out in the rain at the other end. He ran up the steps two at a time and dived into the shelter of the entrance. He shook himself, scattering water all over the floor, then went in.

Before he reached the far side of the room and went up the stairs to break the news, he was confronted by the red face of a young sergeant.

“Mr. Pitt, sir!”

Pitt stopped, irritated; he wanted to get this over as soon as possible. “What is it?” he demanded.

The sergeant took a deep breath. “There’s another grave, sir—I mean another open one—sir.”

Pitt stood stock-still. “Another grave?” he said fatuously.

“Yes, sir—robbed, like the last one. Coffin—but no corpse.”

“And whose is it?”

“A Mr. W. W. Porteous, sir. William Wilberforce Porteous, to be exact.”

4

PITT DID NOT tell Charlotte about the second grave, nor indeed about the result of the postmortem. She heard about the latter two days later in the early afternoon. She had just finished her housework and put Jemima to bed for her rest when the doorbell rang. The woman who came in three mornings a week to do the heavy work had gone before midday, so Charlotte answered the door herself.

She was startled to see Dominic on the step. At first she could not even find words but stood stupidly, without inviting him in. He looked so little different it was as if memory had come to life. His face was just as she had remembered it, the same dark eyes, the slightly flared nostrils, the same mouth. He stood just as elegantly. The only difference was that it did not tighten her throat anymore. She could see the rest of the street, with its white stone doorsteps and the net twitching along the windows.

“May I come in?” he asked uncomfortably. This time it was he who seemed to have lost his composure.

She recollected herself with a jolt, embarrassed for her clumsiness.

“Of course.” She stepped back. She must look ridiculous. They were old friends who had lived in the same house for years when he had been her brother-in-law. In fact, since he had apparently not remarried, even though Sarah had been dead for nearly five years, he was still a member of the family.

“How are you?” she asked.

He smiled quickly, trying to look comfortable, to bridge the immense gap.

“Very well,” he replied. “And I know you are. I can see, and Thomas told me when I met him the other day. He says you have a daughter!”

“Yes, Jemima. She’s upstairs, asleep.” She remembered that the only fire was in the kitchen. It was too expensive to heat the parlor as well, and anyway, she spent too little time in there for it to matter. She led him down the passage, conscious of the difference between this, with its well-worn furniture and scrubbed board floors, and the house in Cater Street with five servants. At least the kitchen was warm and clean. Thank goodness she had blackened the stove only yesterday, and the table was almost white. She would not apologize; not so much for herself as for Pitt.

She took his coat and hung it behind the door, then offered him Pitt’s chair. He sat down. She knew he had come for some reason, and he would tell her what it was when he had found the words. It was early for tea, but he was probably cold, and she could think of nothing else to offer.

“Thank you,” he accepted quickly. She did not notice his eyes going round the room, seeing how bare it was, how every article was old and loved, polished by owner after owner, and mended where use had worn it down.

He knew her too well to play with gentilities. He could remember her sneaking the newspaper from the butler’s pantry when her father would not allow her to read it. He had always treated her as a friend, a strong friend, rather than as a woman. It was one of the things that used to hurt.

“Did Thomas tell you about the grave robbing?” he asked suddenly and baldly.

She was filling the kettle at the sink. “Yes.” She kept her voice level.

“Did he tell you much?” he went on. “That it was a man called Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond, and that they dug him up twice and left him where he was bound to be found quickly—the second time in his own pew in church, where it would be his family who saw him?”

“Yes, he told me.” She turned off the tap and set the kettle on the stove. She could not think what to offer him to eat at this time of day. He was bound to have lunched, and it was far too early for afternoon tea. She had nothing elegant. In the end she settled for biscuits she had made, sharp, with a little ginger in them.

He was looking at her, his eyes following her round the room, anxious. “They did a postmortem. Thomas insisted on it, even though I begged him not to—”

“Why?” She met his eyes and tried to keep all guile out of her face. She knew he had come for some kind of help, but she could not give it if she did not understand the truth, or at least as much of it as he knew himself.

“Why?” He repeated her question as if he found it strange.

“Yes.” She sat down opposite him at the scrubbed table. “Why do you mind if they do a postmortem?”

He realized he had not told her about his connection with the family and assumed that that was why she was confused. She could see the thoughts crossing his mind and was surprised how easily she read them. In Cater Street he had seemed mysterious, private, and out of reach.

She allowed the mistake.

“Oh,” he acknowledged his omission. “I forgot to explain—I know Lady Alicia Fitzroy-Hammond, the widow. I met her at a ball some little time ago; we became—” He hesitated, and she knew he was debating whether to tell her the truth or not; not from any sensitivity to old feelings, because he had never been aware of them, but from a habitual delicacy in discussing such things. One did not speak freely of a relationship with a recent widow, still less of another man’s wife. Personal emotion of any sort was hinted at, rather than named.

She smiled very slightly, allowing him to flounder.

He met her eyes, and memory was too strong for him. “—friends,” he finished. “In fact, I hope to marry her—when a decent time has passed.”

She was glad she had been prepared for it; somehow it would have been a shock if it had come without any warning. Was her resentment for Sarah’s memory, or for her own, a final shedding of girlhood dreams?

She forced her mind back to the disinterment. “Then why do you mind there being a postmortem?” she asked frankly. “Are you afraid it will uncover something wrong?”

His face colored, but he remained looking at her fixedly. “No, of course not! It is the suspicion! If the police demand a postmortem, that means they must have a strong belief there is something to discover. In any event, they were wrong.”

She was surprised. Pitt had not told her it had been done. “You mean it is over?” she asked.

His eyebrows went up. “Yes. You didn’t know?”

“No. What did they find?”

He looked angry and unhappy. “They made it worse than before. It made their suspicions obvious, without proving anything. Alicia consented to it because Thomas told her it would put an end to all the speculation. But the answer was equivocal. It could have been natural heart failure, or it could have been an overdose of digitalis. And an overdose could have been accidental—his mother keeps it for her heart—or it could have been murder.”

Of course she knew he would say this, but now that he had, she did not know how to answer. She asked the obvious question.

“Is there any reason to suppose it was murder?”

“The damned corpse was dug up twice!” he said furiously, his helplessness breaking through in anger. “That isn’t exactly common, you know! Especially in that sort of society. Good God, Charlotte, have you forgotten what suspicion of murder did to us in Cater Street?”

“It stripped off the facade, so we saw all the weak and ugly things we had learned to hide from ourselves and each other,” she said quietly. “What are you afraid you will see here?”

He stared at her, something close to dislike in his face. She would have expected it to hurt her, and yet it did not, not closely, inside herself where real pain lived; rather, it was the distant ache one feels for someone unknown, whose misfortune one has seen before and known to expect.

“I’m sorry.” She meant it, not as an apology but as an expression of regret, even sympathy. “I really am sorry, but I don’t know of anything I can say or do to help.”

His anger vanished. He was caught; he knew all the disillusion, the malice, and the fear that almost inevitably would follow, and he was afraid.

He was still looking for an escape. “Can’t they leave it now?” he said quietly, his voice tight, his hands white on the wooden tabletop. “Alicia didn’t kill him; I didn’t; and the old lady wouldn’t have, unless she gave him a dose accidentally, and it was too much for him.” He looked up at Charlotte. “But no one can prove it; all they will do is raise a lot of doubts, make everyone look with suspicion at each other. Can’t Thomas just leave it now? Then there’ll be some hope that whoever did this wretched thing will give up, be convinced at last that there’s nothing to it?”

She did not know what to say. She would like to have believed him and accepted that it was simply either a natural death or an accident. But why the disinterment—twice? And why was he afraid? Was it no more than the shadow of Cater Street indelible in the memory, or was there growing in him a fear that Alicia could have become so in love with him, so frustrated by her husband that she had taken a simple, easily grasped opportunity and given him a fatal dose of his mother’s medicine? She looked at Dominic’s handsome face and felt as she sometimes did towards Jemima.

“He may do.” She wanted to comfort him; she had known him a long time, and he had been part of her life, part of the deepest of her emotions in those callow, vulnerable years before she met Pitt. Yet it would be both useless and stupid to lie. “But grave robbing is a crime,” she said clearly. “And if there is a chance he can find who did it, he will have to continue.”

“He won’t find out!” He spoke with such conviction she knew it was for himself he insisted, not for her.

“Probably not,” she agreed. “Unless, of course, they do it again? Or they do something else?”

It was a thought he had been trying to banish. Now she had brought it where it could not be denied.

“It’s insane!” he said hotly. It was the easiest way to explain it, the only acceptable way. Insanity did not have to have reason; by its very nature any incongruity could be explained and wiped away.

“Perhaps.”

He had finished his tea, and she collected his cup to remove it.

“Can’t you ask Thomas?” He leaned forward a little, urgently, his face puckered. “Point out the harm it will do to innocent people? Please, Charlotte? There will be such injustice! We won’t even have the chance to deny or disprove what has only been whispered, never said outright. When people whisper, lies become bigger and bigger as they are passed around—”

The injustice convinced her. For a moment she placed herself in Alicia’s position, in love with Dominic; she could still remember how sharp that was, full of excitement and pain, wild hope and hot disillusion. And to be tied to a husband without imagination or laughter! Then if he died, and at last you were free? Suspicion reached out its ugly fingers and soils everything; no one says to you what they think; it is all smiles and sympathy to your face, polite smirks in the withdrawing room. The moment you are gone the acid overflows, creeping wider and wider, eating away the fabric of everything good. The gossips court you; old friends no longer call. She had seen enough of envy and opportunism before.

“I’ll ask him,” she agreed. “I can’t say what he will do, but I’ll ask.”

His face lit up, making her feel guilty for having promised when she knew she could influence Pitt very little where his job was concerned.

“Thank you.” Dominic stood up, as graceful as always now that his fear had gone. “Thank you very much!” He smiled, and the last few years slipped away—they could have been conspirators again in something trivial, like the filching of Papa’s newspaper.

When Pitt came home she said nothing at first, allowing him to warm himself, to speak with Jemima and see her to bed, and then to eat his meal and relax before the fire. The kitchen was comfortable from the day-long heat of the stove. The scrubbed wood was pale, almost white, and the pans gleamed on the shelves. Flowered china on the dresser reflected the gaslight.

“Dominic came here today,” she said casually.

She was sewing, mending a dress of Jemima’s where she had trodden on the hem and toppled over. She did not notice Pitt stiffen.

“Here?” he asked.

“Yes, this afternoon.”

“What for?” His voice was cool, guarded.

She was a little surprised. She stopped sewing, needle in the air, and looked up at him. “He said you’d done a postmortem on Lord whatever his name is—the man who fell off the cab after the theatre.”

“So we did.”

“And you didn’t discover anything conclusive. He died of heart failure.”

“That’s right. Did he come here to tell you that?” His voice was a beautiful instrument, precise and evocative. It was rich with sarcasm now.

“No, of course not!” she said sharply. “I don’t care what the wretched man died of. He was frightened that the suggestion of murder might cause gossip, whispering that would hurt a lot of people. It is very difficult to deny something that no one has said outright.”

“Such as that Alicia Fitzroy-Hammond murdered her husband?” he asked. “Or that Dominic did himself?”

She looked at him a little coolly. “I don’t think he was afraid for himself, if that is what you are trying to say.” As soon as the words were out she thought better of them. She loved Pitt, and she sensed in him a vulnerability, even though she did not know what it was. But justice was strong, too, and the old loyalty to Dominic died hard, perhaps because she knew his weaknesses. Pitt was the stronger; she had no need to defend him. He could be hurt, but he would not hurt himself, crumble under pressure.

“He ought not be,” Pitt said drily. “If Lord Augustus was murdered, Dominic is an obvious suspect. Alicia inherits a good deal, not to mention an excellent social position; she’s in love with Dominic—and she’s an extremely handsome woman.”

“You don’t like Dominic, do you?” She was listening not to his words, but to what she read in them.

He stood up and walked away, pretending to fiddle with the curtains. “Like and dislike have nothing to do with it,” he answered. “I am speaking of his position; he is a natural suspect if Lord Augustus was murdered. It would be naive to imagine otherwise. We cannot always have the world as we would like it, and sometimes even the most charming people, people we have known and cared for, for years, are capable of violence, deceit, and stupidity.” He let the curtains go and turned back to her because he had to know what she was feeling. He would not ask her what Dominic had meant under his words, how he had spoken, what he had left unsaid.

Her face was calm, but there was anger under the surface, and he was not sure exactly why. He had to press until he did, even if it hurt him in the end, because not knowing was worse.

“Don’t talk to me as if I were a child, Thomas,” she said quietly. “I know that perfectly well. I don’t think Dominic killed him, because I don’t think he would want to enough. But I think he is afraid that she did. That is why he came here.”

His eyes narrowed a little. “What did he expect you to do?”

“Point out to you the injustice that might be done if you continue with an investigation, especially since you are not even sure if there has been any crime.”

“You think I shall be unjust?” He was looking for a quarrel now. Better to hear it than leave it in the air, waiting.

She refused to reply, biting her tongue instead of telling him not to be idiotic. She would like to have said it, but she did not dare.

“Charlotte!” he demanded. “Do you think that because it is Dominic, I shall be unjust?”

She looked up from Jemima’s dress, the needle still in her fingers. “It does not need anyone to be unjust for injustice to happen,” she said a little tartly. Really, he was being stupid on purpose! “We all know what suspicion can do, and we have said as much. And in case you think otherwise, I told Dominic that you would do whatever was necessary, and I should have no influence upon you.”

“Oh.” He walked back across the room and sat down in his chair opposite her.

“But you still don’t like Dominic,” she added.

He did not answer. Instead, he pulled out the box where he kept the pieces he was making into a train for Jemima and began working on them skillfully with a knife. He had got enough of the answer he wanted. For tonight, he would prefer to leave it alone. She was still cross, but he knew it was not to do with Dominic, and that was all that mattered.

He carved at the wood with satisfaction, beginning to smile as it took shape.

The following day Charlotte determined to do something about the matter herself. She had not a really good winter dress, but she had one that, although it was very much last year’s fashion, flattered her. Its cut fit her extremely well, especially now that her figure was quite back to its weight before Jemima’s birth, in fact, if anything a little improved. The gown was the color of warm burgundy, complementary both to her hair and her complexion.

She remembered what Aunt Vespasia had said about a suitable hour to call, and she spent the next day’s housekeeping on a hansom cab to take her to Gadstone Park. She could not possibly be seen arriving on an omnibus, even if such a thing were to run anywhere near.

The parlormaid was surprised to see her but well trained enough to show it only slightly. Charlotte had no card to present, as most callers did in society, but she kept her chin in the air and begged the maid to be good enough to inform her mistress that Mrs. Pitt was here at her invitation.

She was more relieved than she had realized when the girl accepted this somewhat odd introduction and led her to an empty withdrawing room to wait, while Lady Cumming-Gould was apprised of the event. It was probably the word “invitation” that had decided it; after all, it was just possible Lady Cumming-Gould had invited her, the old lady being a trifle eccentric.

Charlotte was too tense to sit down. She stood with her hat and gloves still on and tried to affect an air of indifference, in case the maid should return before she heard her; anyway, it was good practice.

When the door opened it was Vespasia herself, dressed in dove gray and looking like a figure from a silversmith’s dream. She was more magnificent in her seventies than most women ever are.

“Charlotte! How delightful to see you. For goodness’ sake, girl, take off your hat and cloak! My house cannot possibly be as cold as that. Here. Eliza!” Her voice rang out in imperious disgust, and the maid appeared instantly. “Take Mrs. Pitt’s cloak, and bring us something hot to drink.”

“What would you like, m’lady?” The girl took the things obediently.

“I don’t know,” Vespasia snapped. “Use your imagination!” She sat down the moment the door was closed behind the maid and treated Charlotte to a detailed inspection. Finally she snorted and leaned back. “You look in excellent health. Time you had another child.” She disregarded Charlotte’s blush. “I suppose you’ve come about this disgusting business of the corpse? Old Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. He was always a nuisance; never knew when it was time to go, even when he was alive.”

Charlotte wanted to laugh; perhaps it was a relief from nervousness, especially after last evening’s wretched, silly conversation with Pitt.

“Yes,” she agreed warmly. “Dominic came to see me yesterday, you know. He is very afraid the continued investigation may cause a lot of unkind speculation.”

“No doubt,” Vespasia said drily. “And most of it to the effect that either he or Alicia killed him—or both together.”

She had said it so immediately Charlotte’s mind flew to the obvious. “Does that mean they have started already?”

“They are bound to have,” Vespasia replied. “There is little enough else to talk about at this time of the year. At least half of Society is in the country, and those of us who are left are bored to stupidity. What more exciting than the rumor of a love affaire or a murder?”

“That’s vicious!” Charlotte was angry at the callousness of it, the enjoyment of other people’s tragedies, almost as if the gossipers were willing it to be true.

“Of course.” Vespasia looked at her with amusement and regret under her hooded eyelids. “Nothing much changes; it is still bread and circuses. Why do you think they baited bears or bulls?”

“I’d hoped we had learned better,” Charlotte replied. “We are civilized now. We don’t throw Christians to the lions anymore.”

Vespasia raised her eyebrows, and her face was perfectly straight. “You are out of date, my dear, far out: Christians are passé now; it is Jews who are the fashion. They are the stuff for the circuses.”

Memories of delicate social cruelty came back to Charlotte. “Yes, I know. And I suppose if there isn’t a Jew or a social climber to hand, then Dominic will do as well.”

The maid came in with a tray with hot chocolate in a silver pot and very small cakes. She set it in front of Vespasia and waited for acceptance.

“Thank you.” Vespasia regarded it down her nose. “Very good. I’ll call if I wish for you again. For the time being, I am not at home.”

“Yes, m’lady,” and the girl departed, her face still wide open with surprise. Why in goodness’ name should her ladyship treat this Mrs. Pitt, whom no one had ever heard of, with such extra-ordinary regard? She could hardly wait to regale the other servants with the news and discover if anyone knew the answer.

Charlotte sipped the chocolate; she had a weakness for it, but it was something she could not often afford.

“I suppose someone must think he was murdered,” she said presently. “Or they would not keeping digging him up!”

“It seems the most likely explanation,” Vespasia agreed with a frown. “Although I cannot for the life of me imagine who would do such a thing. Unless, of course, it is the old woman.”

“What old woman?” For the moment Charlotte could not think whom she meant.

“His mother, the old dowager Lady Fitzroy-Hammond. Fearful old creature, lives in her bedroom most of the time, except Sundays, when she goes to church and watches everyone. She has ears like a ferret, although she affects to be deaf so people will not be discreet in front of her. She never comes anywhere near me; in fact, she took to her bed for a week when she heard I had come to live in the Park, because I am nearly as old as she is, and I can remember her perfectly well fifty years ago. She is forever recalling her youth and what a splendid time she had, the balls and the carriage rides, the handsome men and the love affaires. Only her memory has in it a great deal more than mine has, and a good deal more highly spiced. I recall her as a mouse-colored girl far too short in the leg for elegance, who married above herself, rather later than most. And winters were just as cold then, orchestras just as out of tune, and the handsome men just as vain and every bit as silly as they are now.”

Charlotte smiled into her chocolate cup. “I’m sure she must hate you soundly, even if you never say anything at all about it. No doubt part of her remembers the truth. Poor Alicia. I suppose she is in a constant comparison, a moth to the memories of a butterfly?”

“Very well put.” Vespasia’s eyes glittered in appreciation. “If it were the old woman who had been killed, I would hardly have blamed her.”

“Did Alicia love Lord Augustus—I mean in the beginning?” Charlotte asked.

Vespasia gave her a long stare. “Don’t be ingenuous, Charlotte. You are not so long out of society as that! I dare say she was fond enough of him; he had no intolerable habits, so far as I am aware. He was a bore, but no more so than many men. He was not generous, but neither was he mean. He certainly kept her well enough. He seldom drank to excess, nor was he indecently sober.” She sipped at her chocolate and looked Charlotte straight in the eye. “But he was no match for young Dominic Corde, as I dare say you know for yourself!”

Charlotte felt the color sweep up her face. Vespasia could not possibly know of her infatuation with Dominic, unless Pitt had told her; or Emily? But they would not! Vespasia must know he had been her brother-in-law. Thomas would say so. She knew he liked Vespasia and would tell her that much of the truth.

Charlotte chose her words very slowly. To lie would be pointless and lose Vespasia’s regard. She made herself look up and smile.

“No, I should imagine not,” she answered lightly. “Especially if he was her father’s choice rather than her own. There is nothing to put one off anything like not having chosen it yourself, even if you might have liked it well enough otherwise.”

Vespasia’s smile lit up her face, going all the way to her eyes. “Then you did well, my dear. I’m sure Thomas Pitt was not your father’s choice!”

Charlotte found herself grinning, a tide of memories coming back to her; although to be fair, Papa had not fought her nearly as hard as might have been expected. Perhaps he was glad enough she had at last made a choice at all? But she had not come here merely to enjoy herself. She must get back to the purpose.

“Do you think the old lady could have hired someone to dig up Lord Augustus, just to spite Alicia?” she asked a little too bluntly. “Jealousy can be very obsessive, especially in someone who has nothing else to occupy herself with but the past. Perhaps she has even convinced herself it is true?”

“It may be true.” Vespasia weighed it in her mind. “Although I doubt it. Alicia does not seem to have the desperation in her actually to have murdered the old fool, even for Dominic Corde. But then, one seldom knows what fires may burn underneath a comparatively passive exterior. And perhaps Dominic is greedier than we think, or more urgently pressed by creditors. He dresses extremely well. I should think his tailor’s bill is no small matter.”

The thought was ugly, and Charlotte refused to entertain it. She knew she might well have to eventually—but not yet, not until they had tried every other answer.

“What possibilities are there, apart from that?” she said cheerfully.

“None that I know of,” Vespasia admitted. “I cannot imagine anyone else of his social acquaintance either hating him enough to kill him, or loving him enough to wish him avenged. He was not the sort of man to inspire passion of any sort.”

Charlotte could not give up. “Tell me about the other people in the Park.”

“There are several who would be of no interest to you; they are away for the winter. Of those who are here, I can see no reason why any should be involved, but you may as well consider them. Sir Desmond and Lady Cantlay you have already met; they are pleasant enough, quite harmless, I should have judged. If Desmond has anything more to him, he should be on the stage; he is the finest actor I have seen. Gwendoline may be a little bored, like many women of her station with everything provided for her and nothing to complain of, but if she took a lover it would most assuredly not have been Augustus, even had he unbent himself so far as to be willing. He was a great deal more boring than Desmond.”

“Could it have anything to do with money?” Charlotte was clutching at extremes.

Vespasia’s eyebrows went up. “Not likely, my dear. Everyone in the Park has more than adequate means, and I don’t believe anyone lives significantly beyond them. But if one is temporarily embarrassed, one goes to the Jews, not to Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. And there are no fortunes to be inherited, except by the widow.”

“Oh.” It was disappointing. As always, it led back to Dominic and Alicia.

“The St. Jermyns were well acquainted,” Vespasia continued. “But I cannot conceive of any reason why they should wish him harm. In fact, Edward St. Jermyn is far too involved in his own affairs to have time or effort for anyone else’s.”

“Romantic affaires?” Charlotte’s hopes rose.

Vespasia pulled a small, dry face. “Certainly not. He is a member of the House of Lords and has great ambitions for office. At the moment he is drafting a private member’s bill to reform conditions in workhouses, particularly with regard to children. Believe me, Charlotte, it is very much needed. If you have any idea of the suffering of children in such places, that may well affect them all their lives— He will achieve a great thing if he succeeds, and a good deal of regard throughout the country.”

“Then he is a reformer?” Charlotte said eagerly.

Vespasia looked at her down her long nose. She sighed a little wearily, “No, my dear, I fear he is no more than a politician.”

“You are being unkind! That is quite cynical!” Charlotte accused.

“It is quite realistic. I have known Edward St. Jermyn for some time, and his father before him. Nevertheless, it is an excellent bill, and I am giving it every support I can. Indeed, we were discussing it when Thomas came here last week. I see he did not mention it.”

“No.”

“He seemed to feel strongly about it; in fact, I felt it was hard for him to be civil. He looked at my lace and Hester’s silk as if it had been a crime in itself. He must see a great deal more of poverty than any of us imagine, but if we did not buy the clothes, how would the seamstresses get even the few pence they do?” Her face tightened, and for the first time all the wit was gone out of her voice. “Although Somerset Carlisle says that even sewing eighteen hours a day, till their fingers bleed, they still do not earn enough to live. Many of them are driven to the streets, where they can make as much in a night as they would in a fortnight on the sweatshop floor.”

“I know,” Charlotte said quietly. “Thomas seldom speaks of it, but when he does I cannot rid myself of the visions it brings for nights afterwards: twenty or thirty men and women huddled together in a room, probably below the street, with no air and no sanitation, working, eating, and sleeping there, just to make enough to cling to life. It is obscene. God alone knows what a workhouse must be like, if they still prefer the sweatshop. I feel so guilty because I do nothing—and yet I go on doing nothing!”

Vespasia’s face warmed to her honesty. “I know, my dear. Yet there is very little we can do. It is not an isolated instance, or even a hundred instances; it is a whole order of things. You cannot relieve it by charity, even had you the means. It needs law. And to initiate laws, you must be in Parliament. That is why we need men like Edward St. Jermyn.”

For some time they sat silently; then at last Charlotte brought herself back to the thing that she could accomplish, or at least could try. “That doesn’t answer why Lord Augustus was dug up, does it?”

Vespasia took the last cake. “No, not in the least. Nor do I think the other people in the Park will enlighten the situation. Somerset Carlisle never showed anything for Augustus beyond the courtesy required of good manners; he, like St. Jermyn, is far too occupied with the bill. Major Rodney and his two sisters are very retiring. They are maiden ladies and will assuredly remain so. They busy themselves with domestic chores, largely of a refined nature, such as fine sewing and the making of endless preserves, and I think rather a lot of homemade wine from quite dreadful ingredients like parsnips and nettles. Perfectly appalling! Not that I have tasted it above once! Major Rodney has left the army now, of course, and collects butterflies, or something small that crawls around on dozens of legs. He has been writing his memoirs of the Crimea for the last twenty years. I had no idea so much had happened out there!”

Charlotte hid a smile.

“And there is a portrait artist,” Vespasia continued, “Godolphin Jones, but he has been absent for some little while, in France, I believe, so he could not have dug up Augustus. And I can think of no possible reason why he should wish to.

“The only other person,” she concluded, “is an American called Virgil Smith! Quite outrageous, of course. Society will abhor him if he is brazen enough to remain here next Season, but then on the other hand he is laden with money from something quite uncouth, like cattle, out in wherever it is he comes from, so they will not be able to refrain from courting him at the same time. It should be greatly entertaining. Except that I hope the poor creature does not get too hurt. He really is very good-natured and seems to be quite without airs, which is such a change. Of course, his manners and his appearance are both disasters, but money covers a multitude of sins.”

“And kindness even more,” Charlotte pointed out.

“Not in Society!” Vespasia stared at her. “Society is all to do with what seems, and nothing to do with what is. That is one of the reasons you will find it uncommonly difficult to discover whether Augustus was killed, by whom, or why—and still less if anybody cares!”

While Charlotte was sitting in Vespasia’s carriage being driven home, feeling self-conscious but utterly pampered, turning over in her mind the fruits of the journey, or rather the lack of them, in the churchyard of St. Margaret’s two gravediggers were standing in the rain for a moment’s respite from the long and heavy duty of preparing the earth to receive Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond yet again.

“I dunno, ’Arry,” one of them said, wiping the drop off the end of his nose. “I’m beginning to think as I could make me livin’ purely out o’ this, just buryin’ ’is lordship. No sooner does we ’ave ’im down there as some great fool goes an’ digs ’im up again!”

“I know what you mean,” Harry sniffed. “I dreams about this, I does! Spend me life goin’ in an’ out o’ this bleedin’ grave. You should ’ear what my Gertie says about it! She says it’s only them wot’s murdered as won’t rest, an’ I tell you, Arfur, I’m beginnin’ to think as she’s right! I don’t suppose this is the last time we’ll be in an’ out of ’ere!”

Arthur spat and took up his spade again. The next blow hit the coffin lid. “Well, I’ll tell you this, ’Arry, it’s the last time I will! I don’t want no truck wiv murder, or them w’ot’s been murdered. I don’t mind buryin’ nice decent corpses what ’ave died natural. I’ll bury as many of them as you like. But there’s two things as really gets me. One is babies—I ’ate buryin’ kids—and the other is them w’ot’s been murdered. An’ I already buried this one twice! If’n ’e don’t stay there this time, they needn’t ask me to do ’im again—’cos I shan’t! Enough’s enough. Let the rozzers find out ’oo done ’im in, then maybe ’el’ll stay there, that’s w’ot I say.”

“Me too,” Harry agreed vehemently. “I’m a patient man, God knows I am. In this line you gets to see a lot o’ death, you gets to know w’ot’s important and w’ot ain’t. We all comes to this in the end, and some folks as forgets that might do better if they remembered. But my patience is wore out, and I won’t stand by for no murder. I agree wiv yer, let the rozzers bury ’im theirselves next time. Do ’em good, it would.”

They had cleaned the earth off the lid of the coffin and climbed out of the grave again for the ropes.

“I suppose they’ll want this thing all cleaned up fit to look at?” Arthur said with heavy disgust. “They’ll ’ave another service for ’im, like as not. They must be fair sick o’ payin’ their last respecs.”

“Only it ain’t last—is it?” Harry asked drily. “It’s second to last, or third, or fourth? Who knows when ’e’ll stay there? ’Ere, take the other end o’ this rope, will you?”

Together they eased the ropes under the coffin, heaving on its weight, and worked in silence except for grunts and the occasional expletive till it was laid on the wet earth beside the gaping hole.

“Cor, that bleedin’ thing weighs a ton!” Harry said furiously. “Feels like it ’ad a load o’ bricks in it. You don’t suppose they put suffink else in there, do you?”

“Like w’ot?” Arthur sniffed.

“I dunno! You want to look?”

Arthur hesitated for a moment; then curiosity overcame him, and he lifted one of the corners of the lid. It was not screwed and came up quite easily.

“God all-bloody-mighty!” Arthur’s face under the dirt went sheet-white.

“W’ot’s the matter?” Harry moved toward him instinctively, stubbing his toe on the coffin corner. “Damn the flamin’ thing! W’ot is it, Arfur?”

“ ’E’s in ’ere!” Arthur said huskily. His hand went up to his nose. “Rotten as ’ell, but ’e’s ’ere all right.”

“ ’E can’t be!” Harry said in disbelief. He came round to where Arthur was standing and looked in. “You’re bloody right! ’E is ’ere! Now w’ot in ’ell’s name do you make o’ that?”

Pitt was considerably shaken when he heard the news. It was preposterous, almost incredible. He did up his muffler, pulled his hat down over his ears, and strode out into the icy streets. He wanted to walk to give himself time to compose his mind before he got there.

There were two corpses—because the corpse from the church pew was still in the mortuary. Therefore one of them was not Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. His mind went back over the identification. The man from the cab outside the theatre had been identified only by Alicia. Now that he thought about it, she had been expecting it to be her husband. Pitt himself had as much as told her it was. She had only glanced at him and then looked away. He could hardly blame her for that. Perhaps her eyes had seen only what had been told them, and she had not actually examined him at all?

On the other hand, the second corpse, the one in the church pew, had been seen not only by Alicia but by the old lady, the vicar, and lastly by Dr. McDuff, who one would presume was reasonably used to the sight of death, even if not three weeks old.

He crossed the street, splashed with dung and refuse from a vegetable cart. The child who normally swept the crossing had bronchitis and was presumably holed up somewhere in one of the innumerable warrens behind the facade of shops.

Therefore the most reasonable explanation was that the second corpse was Lord Augustus, and the first was someone else. Since the grave of Mr. William Wilberforce Porteous had also been robbed, presumably it was his corpse they had buried in St. Margaret’s churchyard!

He had better make arrangements for the widow to see it—and properly this time!

It was half-past six and the wind had dropped, leaving the fog to close in on everything, deadening sound, choking the breath with freezing, cloying pervasiveness, when Pitt drove in a hansom cab with a very stout and painfully corseted Mrs. Porteous, flowing with black, toward the morgue where the first corpse was now waiting. They were obliged to travel very slowly because the cabby could not see more than four or five yards in front of him, and that only dimly. Gas lamps appeared like baleful eyes, swimming out of the night, and vanished behind them into the void. They lurched from one to the next, as alone as if it had been an ocean with no other ship upon it.

Pitt tried to think of something to say to the woman beside him, but rack his brains as he might, there seemed nothing at all that was not either trivial or offensive. He ended by hoping his silence was at least sympathetic.

When the cab finally stopped, he got out with inelegant haste and offered her his hand. She weighed heavily upon it, a matter of balance rather than degree of distress.

Inside, they were greeted by the same cheerfully scrubbed young man with his glasses forever sliding down his nose. Several times he opened his mouth to remark on the extraordinariness of the circumstance, never having had the same corpse twice in this manner, then cut himself off halfway, realizing that his professional enthusiasm was in poor taste and might be misunderstood by the widow—or Pitt, for that matter.

He pulled back the sheet and composed his face soberly.

Mrs. Porteous looked straight at the corpse, then her eyebrows rose and she turned to Pitt, her voice level.

“That is not my husband,” she said calmly. “It’s nothing like him. Mr. Porteous had black hair and a beard. This man is nearly bald. I’ve never seen him before in my life!”

5

SINCE THE UNNAMED CORPSE was in the morgue, there was no reason why Augustus should not be reinterred. Of course, it would have been ludicrous to have yet another ceremony, but it was felt indecent not at least to observe the occasion in some manner. It was a show of sympathy for the family, and perhaps of respect not so much for Augustus as for death itself.

Alicia naturally had no choice but to go; the old lady decided first that she was too unwell because of the whole miserable affair, then later that it was her duty to pay a final farewell—and please God it was final! She was attended, as always, by Nisbett, in dourest black.

Alicia was in the morning room waiting for the carriage when Verity came in from the hall. She was pale, and the black hat made her look even younger. There was an innocence about her that had often caused Alicia to wonder what her mother had been like, because Verity possessed a quality that had nothing to do with Augustus, and she was as unlike the old lady as a doe is unlike a weasel. It was an odd thought, but in the darkness of the night Alicia had even talked to the dead woman as if she had been a friend, someone who could understand loneliness, and dreams that were fragile but so very necessary. In Alicia’s mind, that first wife who had died at thirty-four had been very like herself.

Because of her, the ridiculous conversation in the dark, she could almost feel as if Verity were her own daughter, although there was only a handful of years between them.

“Are you sure you wish to come?” she asked now. “No one would misunderstand if you preferred not to.”

Verity shook her head a little. “I’d love not to come, but I can’t leave you to do it alone.”

“Your grandmother is coming,” Alicia replied. “I shan’t be alone.”

Verity gave a dry little smile; it was the first time Alicia had seen it. She had grown up a lot since her father’s death, or perhaps she had only now felt the freedom to show it.

“Then I shall definitely come,” she said. “That is worse than alone.”

At another time Alicia might have made some protest as a matter of form, but today the hypocrisy seemed emptier than ever. It was a time for substance, and form was irrelevant.

“Thank you,” she said simply. “It will be much less unpleasant for me if you are there.”

Verity gave a sudden, flashing smile, almost conspiratorial; then, before Alicia could make an answer, they both heard the old woman’s stick banging in the hall as she came toward them. Nisbett opened the door wide, right back on its hinges, and the old woman stood in the entrance, glaring. She examined both of them closely, every article of their clothing from black hats and veils to black polished boots, then nodded.

“Well, are you coming then?” she demanded. “Or do you mean to stand there all morning like two crows on a fence?”

“We were waiting for you, Grandmama,” Verity replied instantly. “We would not leave you to come alone.”

The old lady snorted. “Huh!” She looked venomously at Alicia. “I thought perhaps you were waiting for that Mr. Corde you are so fond of! Not here this time, I see. Perhaps he is afraid for his skin! After all, you seem to bury husbands more often than most!” She grabbed at Nisbett’s arm and went out, whacking the door lintel with her stick as if it might have moved out of her way were it more aware of its duty.

“It would hardly be appropriate for Mr. Corde to have come.” Alicia could not help defending him, explaining, even though the old lady was out of hearing and Verity had said nothing but lowered her eyes. “It is a very private affair,” she added. “I expect no one but the family, and perhaps a few of those who knew Augustus well.”

“No, of course not,” Verity murmured. “It would be silly to expect him.” Nevertheless there was a ring of disappointment in her voice, and as Alicia followed her outside and into the black-draped carriage, she could not help wondering why Dominic had not at least sent a message. Good taste would keep him from coming himself; that was simple to explain. Since he loved Alicia, it would be a little brazen to turn up yet again to an interment, but it would have been so easy to have sent a small message, just a sympathy.

A coldness jarred through Alicia which had nothing to do with the wind and the drafty carriage. Perhaps she had read too much into his flatteries, the soft looks, the seeking after her company? She would have sworn, a few days ago, that he loved her, and she loved him with all the excitement, the laughter ready to burst open at the silliest things, the sharing of very private thoughts and sudden understandings. But maybe it was only she who felt like that and had put her own joy into his heart quite falsely? After all, he had not actually said as much—she had assumed out of delicacy for her position’, first as a married woman, then as a very recent widow. Maybe he had not said so quite simply because it was not true? Many people loved to flirt; it was a kind of game, an exercise of skills, a vanity.

But surely Dominic was not like that? His face swam before her memory, the dark eyes, the fine brows, the curve of his mouth, the quick smile. The tears welled up and slid down her cheeks. At any other time she would have been mortified, but she was sitting in a dark carriage on a wet, bitter day, on the way to bury her husband. No one would remark her weeping, and anyway, under her veil it would take a careful eye even to notice it.

The carriage lurched to a stop, and the footman opened the door, letting in a blast of icy air. The old lady got out first, holding her stick across their legs so they could not precede her. The footman helped Alicia. It was raining even harder, and the water ran round the brim of her hat and fell off the front, blowing into her face.

The vicar spoke to the old lady, then held out his hand to Alicia. He was never a cheerful man, but he looked unusually wretched today. Far inside herself she half smiled, but it would not reach her lips. She could hardly blame the man, even though she did not like him. After all, it was an occasion for which he probably had no precedent, and he was at a loss to know what to say. He had stock phrases of piety for all the foreseeable events—baptisms, deaths, marriages, even scandals—but who could expect to bury the same man three times in as many weeks?

She could have laughed, albeit a little hysterically, but she saw in the distance the slim, elegant figure of a man, and for a moment her heart lurched. Dominic? Then she realized it was not; the shoulders were squarer, leaner, and there was something different about the way he stood. It was Somerset Carlisle.

He turned as she picked her way through the puddles on the path and offered her his arm.

“Good morning, Lady Fitzroy-Hammond,” he said gently. “I’m so sorry this should be necessary. Let us hope they get it over with as quickly as possible. Perhaps the rain will cut the vicar’s desire to expound.” He smiled very slightly. “He’s going to be as wet as a fish if he stands out here for long!”

It was a pleasing thought; to remain here by the grave while the vicar droned on imperviously would be the final wretchedness. The old woman looked like a sodden black bird, feathers ruffled, her whole stance bristling with anger. Verity stood with her head down and her eyes lowered so no one could read her face; whether it was out of grief for her father or because in mind she was not attending at all, Alicia could only guess, but she imagined the latter.

Lady Cumming-Gould, of all people, had also elected to attend. Her dignity was as superb as always. Indeed, but for her deep lavender mourning, she might have been at a garden party, rather than standing by a yawning grave in a winter churchyard in the rain.

Major Rodney was there, shifting unhappily from foot to foot, blowing water off his moustache, obviously acutely embarrassed by the whole business. Only knowledge of duty could have brought him. He kept darting furious glances at his sisters, who had presumably nagged him into coming. They huddled together, round-eyed, like little animals woken from hibernation and longing to return home.

The only other person was Virgil Smith, enormous in a heavy coat and bareheaded. She could not help noticing how thick his hair was and how it had been cut level at the bottom of his ears. Really, someone should find him a decent barber!

The vicar began to speak, then became increasingly unhappy with what he was saying, stopped, and began again quite differently. There was no other sound but the rain, swirling in blusters, and the far rattle of branches in the wind. No one else spoke.

Finally he became desperate and finished at a positive shout: “—commit the body of our brother—Augustus Albert William Fitzroy-Hammond—to the ground”—he took a deep breath, and his voice rose to a shriek—“until he come forth at the resurrection of the just, when the earth yields up her dead. And may the Lord have mercy on his soul!”

“Amen!” came the response with infinite relief.

They all turned and made with indecent haste for the shelter of the lychgate.

When they were crammed together underneath it, the old lady suddenly made a startling announcement. “There will be a funeral breakfast for anyone who cares to come.” She issued it rather as a challenge, a defiance to them to dare not to.

There was a moment’s silence, then a murmur of thanks. Hastily they stepped out into the rain again and splashed through the water now running down the paths and climbed into their respective carriages, sitting wrapped in wet clothes, trouser legs and skirt hems sodden, while the horses clopped back through the Park. On any other occasion they would have trotted, but it would be unthinkable for one to hurry leaving a funeral.

Back at home again, Alicia found the servants prepared to receive, although she had given no such instructions. Once, in the hall, she caught Nisbett’s eye and saw in it a gleam of satisfaction. It explained a great deal. One day she would deal with Nisbett; that was a promise.

In the meantime she must force herself to behave as was expected of her. The old lady might have invited them, but she was the hostess because this had been Augustus’s house, so now it was hers. She welcomed them in and thanked them for coming, ordered the footmen to bank up the fires and dry out as much clothing as possible, and then led the way into the dining room where the cook had prepared an array of suitable dishes. It was hardly the day for cold food, even as rich as game pies and salmon, but at least someone had thought to provide hot, mulled wine. She doubted it was the old lady; probably Milne, the butler. She must remember to thank him.

Conversation was stilted; no one knew what to say. All the sympathies had already been expressed; to say they were sorry yet again would be so jarring as to be offensive. Major Rodney made some mumbled remark about the weather, but since it was midwinter, it was hardly a subject for surprise. He began on some reminiscences about how many men had frozen to death on the heights Sevastopol, then trailed off into clearing his throat as everybody looked at him.

Miss Priscilla Rodney commented on the excellence of the chutney that was served with one of the pies but blushed when Verity thanked her, because they both knew that Priscilla made infinitely better herself. It was not the cook’s strength; she was far more skilled with soups and sauces. She always put too much pepper in pickles, and they bit like a cornered rat.

Lady Cumming-Gould seemed satisfied merely to observe. It was Virgil Smith who rescued them with the only viable conversation. He was staring at a portrait of Alicia over the fireplace, a large, rather formal study set against a brown background which did not flatter her. It was one of a long succession of family portraits going back over two hundred years. The old lady’s hung in the hallway, looking very young, like a memory from a history book, in an empire dress from the days just after Napoleon’s fall.

“I surely like that picture, ma’am,” he said, staring up at it. “It’s a good likeness, but I guess it don’t flatter you with that color behind it. I sort of see you inside, with all green and the like behind you, trees and grass, and maybe flowers.”

“You cannot expect Alicia to trail out to some countryside to sit for a portrait!” the old lady snapped. “You may spend your days in the wilderness where you come from, Mr. Smith, but we do not do so here!”

“I didn’t exactly have the wilderness in mind, ma’am.” He smiled at her, completely ignoring her tone. “I was thinking more of a garden, an English country garden, with willow trees with all of those long, lacy leaves blowing in the wind.”

“You cannot paint something blowing!” she said tartly.

“I reckon a real good artist could.” He was not to be cowed. “Or he could paint it so as you could feel as though it was.”

“Have you ever tried to paint?” She glared at him. It would have been more effective had she not been forced to stare upwards, but she was nearly a foot shorter than he, and even her voluminous bulk could not make up for the difference.

“No, ma’am.” He shook his head. “Do you paint, yourself?”

“Of course!” Her eyebrows shot up. “All ladies of good breeding paint.”

A sudden thought flashed into his face. “Did you paint that picture, ma’am?”

She froze to glacial rigidity. “Certainly not! We do not paint commercially, Mr. Smith!” She invested the idea with the same disgust she might have had he suggested she took in laundry.

“All the same, you know”—Somerset Carlisle eyed the picture critically—“I think Virgil is right. It would have been a great deal better against green. That brown is quite muddy and deadens the complexion. All the tones are spoiled.”

The old lady looked from him to Alicia, then back at the picture. Her opinion of Alicia’s complexion was plain.

“No doubt he did the best he could!” she snapped.

Miss Mary Ann joined in the conversation, her voice lifting helpfully.

“Why don’t you have it done again, my dear? I am sure in the summer it would be quite delightful to sit in the garden and have one’s portrait painted. You could ask Mr. Jones; I am told he is quite excellent.”

“He is expensive,” the old lady said witheringly. “That is not the same thing. Anyway, if we get any more pictures done, it ought to be of Verity.” She turned to look at Verity. “You probably are as good-looking now as you will ever be. Some women improve a little as they get older, but most don’t!” She flashed a glance back at Alicia, then away again. “We’ll see this man Jones—what is his name?”

“Godolphin Jones,” Miss Mary Ann offered.

“Ridiculous!” the old lady muttered. “Godolphin! Whatever was his father thinking of? But I am not paying an exorbitant price, I warn you.”

“You don’t need to pay at all,” Alicia finally responded. “I shall pay for it, if Verity would like a portrait. And if she would prefer someone other than Godolphin Jones, then we will get someone else.”

The old lady was momentarily silenced.

“Godolphin Jones seems to be away at the moment, anyway,” Vespasia observed. “I am informed he is in France. It seems to be the obligatory thing for artists to do. One can hardly call oneself an artist in society if one has not been to France.”

“Gone away?” Major Rodney sputtered in his drink and sneezed. “For how long? When is he due back?”

Vespasia looked a trifle surprised. “I have no idea. You might try sending to his house if it is important to you, although from what my own servants say, they have no idea either. Being unreliable seems also to be part of the professional character.”

“Oh, no!” Major Rodney said hastily, grabbing a game pastry and dropping it. “No, not at all! I was merely trying to be helpful!” He picked up the pasty again, and it fell apart on the tablecloth. Virgil Smith handed him a napkin and a plate, then helped him scoop it up with a knife.

The old lady made a noise of disgust and turned to look the other way. “I suppose he is a competent artist?” she said loudly.

“He fetches a very high price,” Miss Priscilla replied. “Very high, indeed. I saw the portrait of Gwendoline Cantlay, and she told me what she had paid for it. I must say, I thought it a great deal, even for a good likeness.”

“And that is about all it is.” Carlisle’s mouth turned down. “A good likeness. It catches something of her character; it would be hard for a likeness not to, but it is not art. One would not wish for it unless one was fond of Gwendoline herself.”

“Is that not the purpose of a portrait?” Miss Mary Ann inquired innocently.

“A portrait, perhaps,” Carlisle agreed. “But not of a painting. A good painting should be a pleasure to anyone, whether they know the subject or not.”

“Overrated,” the old lady nodded. “And overpaid. I shall not pay him that much. If Gwendoline Cantlay did, then she is a fool.”

“Hester St. Jermyn paid something similar,” Miss Priscilla said with her mouth full. “And I do know dear Hubert paid a good deal for the picture Mr. Jones painted of us, didn’t you, dear?”

Major Rodney colored painfully and treated her to a look of something close to loathing.

“I’ve seen the one of Lady Cantlay.” Virgil Smith screwed up his face. “I wouldn’t buy it if it were on sale. It seems kind of—heavy—to me. Not like a lady should look.”

“What do you know about such things?” the old lady snapped derisively. “Do you have ladies wherever it is you come from?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t reckon you would call them ladies,” he said slowly. “But I’ve seen a few over here. I think Miss Verity is surely a lady and deserves a portrait that says so.”

Verity blushed with pleasure and treated him to one of her rare smiles. Alicia found herself suddenly liking him very much, in spite of his manners and his plain face.

“Thank you,” Verity said quietly. “I think I shall like to have a portrait done, in the summer, if Alicia does not mind?”

“Of course not,” Alicia agreed. “I shall make inquiries to find someone.” She was aware of Virgil Smith looking at her. She was a handsome woman and she was used to admiration, but there was something more personal in his gaze, and she found it uncomfortable. She wanted to break the silence, and she rushed to find something to say. She turned to Vespasia. “Lady Cumming-Gould, can you recommend anyone who might paint Verity pleasingly? You must have been painted many times yourself.”

Vespasia looked a trifle pleased. “Not lately, my dear. But I will ask among my acquaintances, if you wish. I am sure you can do better than Godolphin Jones. I believe he is very highly regarded by some, or so the price he fetches would indicate, but I agree with Mr. Smith; he is somewhat heavy-handed, a little fleshy.”

The old lady glared at her, opened her mouth, met Vespasia’s unflinching stare, and closed it again. Her eyes swept over Virgil Smith as if he had been an unpleasant stain on the carpet.

“Precisely,” Carlisle said with satisfaction. “There is an abundance of portrait painters about. Just because Godolphin lives in the Park, that is not a reason to patronize him, if you prefer someone else.”

“Gwendoline Cantlay had two pictures done,” Miss Priscilla offered. “I cannot imagine why.”

“Perhaps she likes them?” Miss Mary Ann suggested. “Some people must, or they would not pay so very much money.”

“Art is very much a matter of taste, isn’t it?” Alicia looked from one to the other.

The old lady snorted. “Naturally. Good taste—and bad taste! Only the vulgar, who know no better, judge anything as a matter of money.” Once more her eyes darted to Virgil Smith and away again. “Time is the thing—whatever has lasted, that is worth something! Old paintings, old houses, old blood.”

Alicia felt embarrassed for him, as if she were both receiving the hurt herself, and at the same time responsible for it because the old lady was part of her family.

“Pure survival alone is hardly a mark of virtue.” She surprised herself by speaking so vehemently and with something that could only be regarded as insolence by the old lady, but she wanted to contradict her so badly it was like a bursting in her head. “After all, disease survives!”

Everyone was staring at her, the old lady with a look as if her footstool had risen up and smitten her.

Somerset Carlisle was the first to react. “Bravo!” he said cheerfully. “An excellent argument, if somewhat eccentric! I’m not sure Godolphin would appreciate it, but it just about sums up the relationship between art, survival, and price.”

“I don’t understand.” Miss Priscilla squinted painfully. “I don’t see the relationship at all.”

“That is precisely what I mean,” he agreed. “There is none.”

The old lady banged her stick on the ground. She had been aiming at Carlisle’s foot and missed. “Of course there is!” she snapped. “Money is the root of all evil! Bible says so. Do you argue with that?”

“You misquote.” Carlisle was not daunted, and he did not move his feet. “What it says is that ‘the love of money is the root of all evil.’ Things are not evil; it is the passions they stir in people that may be.”

“A piece of sophistry,” she said with disgust. “And this is not the place for it. Go to your club if you have a taste for that kind of conversation. This is a funeral breakfast. I would oblige you to remember that!”

He bowed very slightly. “Indeed, ma’am, you have my sympathies.” He turned to Alicia and Verity. “And you also, of course.”

Suddenly everyone remembered this was the third time they had attended such an affair, and Major Rodney excused himself rather loudly in the awkwardness that followed. He took his sisters by the arms and almost propelled them out into the hallway, where the footman had to be sent for to bring their coats.

Vespasia and Carlisle followed; Virgil Smith hesitated a moment by Alicia.

“If there is anything I can do, ma’am?” He looked uncomfortable, as if he wanted to say something and could not find the words.

She was aware of the kindness in him, and it made her also feel a little clumsy. She thanked him more hastily than she meant to, and with a faint color in his face, he followed the others out.

“I see your Mr. Corde didn’t come!” the old lady said spitefully. “Other fish to fry, maybe?”

Alicia ignored her. She did not know why Dominic had sent no word, no flowers or letter of sympathy. It was something she did not want to think about.

On the morning of the interment Dominic had been in two minds as to what to do. He had got up and dressed, intending to go, as a support to Alicia in a time which was bound to be extremely trying for her. Verity was too young and too vulnerable herself to afford much comfort, and he knew the old lady would, if anything, make matters worse. No one would find his attendance odd; it was a mark of respect. After all, he had been invited to the original funeral.

Then as he stared at himself in the mirror, making the final adjustment to his appearance, he remembered his visit to Charlotte. He had never been inside a house of working people before, not something on a level with a tradesman’s house, like Pitt’s. All things considered, it was odd how comfortable he had felt, and how little Charlotte had changed. Of course, it would have been different if he had stayed there long! But for that hour or so, the surroundings had been unimportant.

But what Charlotte had said was a totally different matter. She had asked him if he thought Alicia capable of murdering her husband in all but as many words. Charlotte had always been frank to the point of tactlessness; he smiled even now to recall some of the more socially disastrous incidents.

The image smiled back at him from the mirror.

Of course, he denied it—Alicia would never even think of such a thing! Old Augustus had been a bore; he talked endlessly and fancied himself an expert on the building of railways, and since his family had made money in their construction perhaps he was. But it was hardly a subject to pontificate on interminably over the dinner table. Dominic had never met a woman yet who cared in the slightest about railway construction, and very few men!

But that does not move to murder! Actually to kill someone, you have to care desperately over something, whether it is hate, fear, greed, or because they stand in the way between you and something you hunger for—he stopped, his hand frozen on his collar. He imagined being married to some sixty-year-old woman, twice his age, boring, pompous, with all her dreams in the past, looking forward to nothing more than a sinking into slow, verbose old age—a relationship without love. Perhaps one day, or one night, the need to escape would become unbearable, and if there were a bottle of medicine on the table, what would be simpler than to dose a little too much? How easy just to step it up a fraction each time, until you got the amount that was not massive but just precisely enough to kill?

But Alicia could never have done that!

He pictured her in his mind, her fair skin, the curve of her bosom, the way her eyes lit up when she laughed—or when she looked at him. Once or twice he had touched her more intimately than mere courtesy required, and he felt the quick response. There was a hunger underneath her modesty. There was something about her, perhaps a mannerism, a way of holding her head, that reminded him of Charlotte; he was not sure how. It was indefinable.

And Charlotte cared enough to kill! That he was as sure of as his own reflection in the glass. Morality would stop her—but never indifference.

Was it possible Alicia really had killed Augustus—and the old lady knew it? If that were so, then he was bound up in it, the catalyst for the motive.

Slowly he undid the tie and took off the black coat. If that were so, and it could be—it was not completely impossible—then it would be better for everybody, especially Alicia, if he did not go today. The old lady would be waiting for it, waiting to make some stinging remark, even to accuse outright!

He would send flowers—tomorrow; something white and appropriate. And then perhaps the day after he would call. No one would find that odd.

He changed from the black trousers into a more usual morning gray.

He did send the flowers the next morning and was appalled at the price. Still, as the icy wind outside reminded him, it was the first day of February, and there was hardly a thing in bloom. The sun was shining fitfully, and the puddles in the street were drying slowly. A barrow boy whistled behind a load of cabbages. Today funerals and thoughts of death seemed far away. Freedom was a precious thing, but every man’s gift, not something that needed fighting for. He walked briskly round to his club and was settled behind his newspaper when a voice interrupted his half thought, half sleep.

“Good morning. Dominic Corde, isn’t it?”

Dominic had no desire for conversation. Gentlemen did not talk to one in the morning; they knew better, most especially if one had a newspaper. He looked up slowly. It was Somerset Carlisle. He had met him only two or three times, but he was not a man one forgot.

“Yes. Good morning, Mr. Carlisle,” he replied coolly. He was lifting his paper again when Carlisle sat down beside him and offered him his snuffbox. Dominic declined; snuff always made him cough. To sneeze was acceptable; lots of people sneezed when taking snuff, but to sit coughing with one’s eyes running was merely clumsy.

“No, thank you.”

Carlisle put the snuff away again without taking any himself.

“Much pleasanter day, isn’t it,” he remarked.

“Much,” Dominic agreed, still holding onto the paper.

“Anything in the news?” Carlisle inquired. “What’s happening in Parliament?”

“No idea.” Dominic had never thought of reading about Parliament. Government was necessary; any sane man knew that, but it was also intensely boring. “No idea at all.”

Carlisle looked as nonplussed as courtesy would allow. “Thought you were a friend of Lord Fleetwood?”

Dominic was flattered; friend was perhaps overstating it a little, but he had met him lately, and they had struck up an acquaintance. They both liked riding and driving a team. Dominic had perhaps less courage than Fleetwood, but far more natural skill.

“Yes,” he identified guardedly, because he was not sure why Carlisle asked.

Carlisle smiled, sitting back in the chair easily and stretching his legs. “Thought he’d have talked politics with you,” he said casually. “Could be quite a weight in the House, if he wished. Got a following of young bloods.”

Dominic was surprised; they had never discussed anything more serious than good horses, and of course the occasional woman. But come to think of it, he had mentioned a number of friends who had hereditary titles; whether they ever attended was quite another thing. Half the peers in England went nowhere nearer the House of Lords than the closest club or party. But Fleetwood did have a large circle, and it was not an exaggeration to say that Dominic was now on the fringes of it.

Carlisle was waiting.

“No,” Dominic replied. “Horses, mostly. Don’t think he cares much about politics.”

Carlisle’s face flickered only very slightly. “Dare say he doesn’t realize the potential.” He raised his hand and signaled to one of the club servants and, when the man arrived, looked back at Dominic. “Do join me for luncheon. They have a new chef who is quite excellent, and I haven’t tried his specialty yet.”

Dominic had intended having a quiet meal a little later, but the man was pleasant enough, and he was a friend of Alicia’s. Also, of course, an invitation should never be turned down without sound reason.

“Thank you,” he accepted.

“Good.” Carlisle turned to the servant with a smile. “Come for us when the chef is ready, Blunstone. And get me some of that claret again, same as last time. The bordeaux was awful.”

Blunstone bowed and departed with murmurs of agreement.

Carlisle allowed Dominic to continue with his newspaper until luncheon was served; then they repaired to the dining room and were halfway through a richly stuffed and roasted goose garnished with vegetables, fruit, and delicate sauce when Carlisle spoke again.

“What do you think of him?” he inquired, eyebrows raised.

Dominic had lost the thread. “Fleetwood?” he asked.

Carlisle smiled. “No, the chef.”

“Oh, excellent.” Dominic had his mouth full and found it hard to reply gracefully. “Most excellent. I must dine here more often.”

“Yes, it’s a very comfortable place,” Carlisle agreed, looking round at the wide room with its dark velvet curtains, Adam fireplaces on two sides with fires burning warmly in each. There were Gainesborough portraits on the blue walls.

It was something of an understatement. It had taken Dominic three years to get himself elected as a member, and he disliked having his achievement taken so lightly.

“Rather more than comfortable, I would have said.” His voice had a slight edge.

“It’s all relative.” Carlisle took another forkful of goose. “I dare say at Windsor they dine better.” He swallowed and took a sip of wine. “Then, on the other hand, there are thousands in the tenements and rookeries within a mile of here who find boiled rats a luxury—”

Dominic choked on his goose and gagged. The room swum before him, and for a moment he thought he was going to disgrace himself by being sick at the table. It took him several seconds to compose himself, wipe his mouth with his napkin, and look up to meet Carlisle’s curious eyes. He could not think what to say to him. The man was preposterous.

“Sorry,” Carlisle said lightly. “Shouldn’t spoil a good meal by talking politics.” He smiled.

Dominic was completely unguarded. “P-politics?” he stammered.

“Most distasteful,” Carlisle agreed. “Much pleasanter to talk about horseracing, or fashion. I see your friend Fleetwood has adopted that new cut of jacket. Rather flattering, don’t you think? I shall have to see if I can get my tailor to do something of the sort.”

“What in hell are you talking about?” Dominic demanded. “You said ‘rats.’ I heard you!”

“Perhaps I should have said ‘workhouses.’ ” Carlisle chose the words carefully. “Or pauper-children laws. So difficult to know what to do. Whole family in the workhouse, children in with the idle or vagrant, no education, work from waking to sleeping—but better than starvation, which is the alternative, or freezing to death. Have you seen the sort of people that get into the workhouses? Imagine how they affect a child of four or five years old. Seen the disease, the ventilation, the food?”

Dominic remembered his own childhood: a nurse, recalled only hazily, mixed in his mind with his mother, a governess, then school—with long summer holidays; rice pudding, which he loathed, and afternoon teas with jam, especially raspberry jam. He remembered songs round the piano, making snowballs, playing cricket in the sun, stealing plums, breaking windows, and receiving canings for insolence.

“That’s ridiculous!” he said sharply. “Workhouses are supposed to be temporary relief for those who cannot find legitimate work for themselves. It is a charitable charge on the parish.”

“Oh, very charitable.” Carlisle’s eyes were very bright, watching Dominic’s face. “Children of three or four years old in with the flotsam of society, learning hopelessness from the cradle onwards; those that don’t die of disease from rotten food, poor ventilation, cross infection—”

“Well, it should be stopped!” Dominic said flatly. “Clean the places up!”

“Of course,” Carlisle agreed. “But then what? If they don’t go to schools of some sort, they never learn even to read or write. How can they ever get out of the circle of vagrant to workhouse, and back again? What can they do? Sweep crossings summer and winter? Walk the streets as long as their looks last and then turn to the sweatshops? Do you know how much a seamstress earns for sewing a shirt, seams, cuffs, collars, buttonholes, and four rows of stitching down the front, all complete?”

Dominic thought of the prices of his own shirts. “Two shillings?” He hazarded a guess, a little on the mean side, but then Carlisle had suggested as much.

“How extravagant!” Carlisle said bitterly. “She would have to sew ten for that!”

“But how do they live?” The goose was going cold on Dominic’s plate.

Carlisle turned his hands up. “Most of them are prostitutes at night, to feed their children; and then when the children are old enough, they work as well—or else it is all back to the workhouse, and there’s your cycle again!”

“But what about their husbands? Some of them have husbands, surely?” Dominic was still looking for rationality, something sane to explain it.

“Oh, yes, some of them do,” said Carlisle. “But it’s cheaper to employ a woman than a man; you don’t have to pay her much, so the men don’t get the work.”

“That’s—” Dominic searched for a word and failed to find one. He sat staring at Carlisle over the congealing goose.

“Politics,” Carlisle murmured, picking up his fork again. “And education.”

“How can you eat that?” Dominic demanded; it was repulsive to him now, an indecency, if what Carlisle said was true.

Carlisle put it into his mouth and spoke round it. “Because if I were not to eat every time I think of sweated labor, uneducated children, the indigent, sick, filthy, or destitute, I should never eat at all—and what purpose would that serve? Parliament. I ran for it once and failed. My ideas were remarkably unpopular with those who have the vote. Sweated labor doesn’t vote, you know—female, mostly, too young, and too poor. Now I have to try the back door— House of Lords, people like St. Jermyn, with his bill, and your friend Fleetwood. They don’t give a damn about the poor, probably never really seen any, but an eye to a cause—great thing, a cause.”

Dominic pushed his plate away. If this were true, not a piece of melodramatic luncheon conversation designed to shock, then something ought to be done by people like Fleetwood. Carlisle was perfectly right.

He drank the end of the wine and was glad of its clean bite; he needed to wash his mouth out after the taste that had been on his tongue. He wished to God he had never seen Somerset Carlisle; the man was uncouth to invite him to a meal and then discuss such things. They were thoughts that were impossible to get rid of.

Pitt’s superiors had meantime directed his attention to a case of embezzlement in a local firm, and he was returning to the police station after a day of questioning clerks and reading endless files he did not understand when he was met at the door by a wide-eyed constable. Pitt was cold and tired, and his feet were wet. All he wanted was to go home and eat something hot, then sit by the fire with Charlotte and talk about anything, as long as it was removed from crime.

“What is it?” he said wearily; the man was practically wringing his hands with anxiety and pent-up apprehension.

“It’s happened again!” he said hoarsely.

Pitt knew, but he put off the moment. “What has?”

“Corpses, sir. There’s been another corpse. I mean one dug up like, not a new one.”

Pitt shut his eyes. “Where?”

“In the park, sir. St. Bartholomew’s Green, sir. Not really a park, just a stretch o’ longish grass with a few trees and a couple o’ seats. Found on one o’ the seats, ’e was, sitting up there like Jackie, bold as you like—but dead, o’ course, stone dead. And ’as been for a while, I’d say.”

“What does he look like?” Pitt asked.

The constable screwed up his face.

“ ’Orrible, sir, downright ’orrible.”

“Naturally!” Pitt snapped; his patience was worn thin to transparency. “But was he young or old, tall or short; come on, man! You’re a policeman, not a penny novelist! What kind of a description is ‘’orrible’?”

The constable blushed crimson. “ ’E was tall and corpulent, sir, with black ’air and black whiskers, sir. And ’e was dressed in an ’and-me-down sort o’ coat; didn’t fit ’im none too good, not like a gentleman’s would, sir.”

“Thank you,” Pitt said ungraciously. “Where is he?”

“In the morgue, sir.”

Pitt turned on his heel and went out again. He walked the few blocks to the morgue, head bent against the rain, mind turning over furiously every conceivable answer to the disgusting and apparently pointless happenings. Who on earth was going around digging up random corpses—and above all, why?

When he reached the morgue, the assistant was as buoyant as ever, in spite of a streaming cold. He led Pitt over to the table and whipped off the cloth with the air of a muscle-hall magician producing a clutch of rabbits.

As the constable had said, the corpse was a robust middle-aged man with black hair and whiskers.

Pitt grunted. “Mr. William Wilberforce Porteous, I presume?” he said irritably.

6

THERE WAS NOTHING for Pitt to do but go home, and after thanking the attendant he turned and went back out into the rain. It took him half an hours’ steady walking before he at last rounded the corner into his own street and five minutes later was sitting in front of the stove in the kitchen, the fender open to let out the heat, his trousers rolled up and his feet in a basin of hot water. Charlotte was standing next to him with a towel.

“You’re soaking!” she said exasperatedly. “You must get a new pair of boots. Where on earth have you been?”

“The morgue.” He moved his toes slowly in the water, letting the ecstasy ripple through him. It was hot and tingling, and it eased out the numbness with a caress almost like pain. “They found another corpse.”