Resurrection Row

She stared at him, the towel hanging from her hands. “You mean one that had been dug up again?” she said incredulously.

“Yes; dead three or four weeks, I should say.”

“Oh, Thomas.” Her eyes were dark and horrified. “What sort of person digs up the dead and leaves them sitting on cabs and in churches? Why? There isn’t any sanity in it!” Her face suddenly went white as a new thought occurred to her. “Oh! You don’t think it could be different people, do you? I mean, if Lord Augustus was murdered, or someone thinks he was, and they dug him up to bring your attention to it—then whoever killed him, or fears to be suspected of it, digs up these other people they don’t even know to obscure the real murder?”

He looked at her slowly, the hot water forgotten. “You know what you are saying?” he asked, watching her face. “That means Dominic, or Alicia, or both of them.”

For several moments she said nothing. She handed him the towel and he dried his feet; then she took the basin and poured the water away down the sink.

“I don’t think I believe that,” she said with her back still toward him. There was no distress in her voice that he could hear, just doubt, and a little surprise.

“You mean Dominic wouldn’t commit murder?” he asked. He tried to make it impersonal, but the edge was still there, sharp with old fears.

“I don’t think so.” She wiped round the basin and put it away. “But even if he did kill someone, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t think to dig up other corpses and leave them around to hide it. Not unless he has changed more than I think people do.”

“Maybe Alicia changed him,” he suggested, but he did not believe that himself. He waited for her to say it could have been Alicia with someone else. She had money enough to pay; but Charlotte said nothing.

“They found him in the park.” He held out his hand for his dry socks, and she passed them off the airing rack, then winched it back up to the ceiling. “Sitting on a bench,” he added. “I think, from the description, it is the body from the grave that was robbed last week, Mr. W. W. Porteous.”

“Does he have anything to do with Dominic and Alicia or anyone in Gadstone Park?” she asked, going back to the stove. “Would you like some soup before your dinner?”

She lifted the lid, and the delicate odor of the steam caught his nostrils.

“Yes, please,” he said immediately. “What is for dinner?”

“Meat and kidney pudding.” She took a dish and a ladle and gave him a generous portion of soup, full of leeks and barley. “Mind, it’s very hot.”

He smiled up at her and took it, balancing it on his knee. She was right; it was very hot. He put a tea towel under it to protect himself.

“Nothing at all, as far as I know,” he replied.

“Where did he live?” She sat down again opposite him and waited for him to finish the soup before getting out the pie and vegetables. It had taken her awhile to learn how to cook economically and well, and she liked to watch the results of her efforts.

“Just off Resurrection Row,” he replied, holding up the spoon.

She frowned, puzzled. “I thought that was rather a—a shabby area?”

“It is. Worn down, and a little seedy. There are at least two brothels that I know of; all discreetly covered up, but that’s definitely what they are. And there’s a pawnshop where we have found rather more than the usual number of stolen goods.”

“Well that can’t have anything to do with Dominic, and certainly not Alicia!” Charlotte said with conviction. “Dominic might have been to such a place; even gentlemen get up to the oddest things—”

“Especially gentlemen!” Pitt put in.

She let the jibe pass. “—but Alicia would never even have heard of it.”

“Wouldn’t she?” He was genuinely not sure.

She looked at him patiently, and for a moment they were both aware of the social gulf between their backgrounds.

“No.” She shook her head minutely. “Women whose parents have social pretensions, real or imaginary, are far more protected—even imprisoned—than you know. Papa never allowed me to read a newspaper. I used to sneak them from the butler’s pantry, but Emily and Sarah didn’t. Papa considered anything controversial or in the least scandalous or distressing to be unsuitable for young ladies to know—and one should never mention them in discussion—”

“I know that—” he started.

“You think he was unusual?” She shook her head again, harder. “But he wasn’t! He was no stricter or more protective than anyone else. Women can know about illness, childbirth, death, boredom, or loneliness, but not anything that could be argued about—real poverty, endemic disease, or crime—and most of all—not about sex. Nothing disturbing must be considered, especially if one might feel moved to question it, or try to change it!”

He looked at her with surprise; he was seeing a side of her thoughts he had never recognized before.

“I didn’t know you were so bitter about it,” he said slowly, reaching out to put the soup dish on the table.

“Aren’t you?” she challenged. “Do you know how many times you come home and tell me about tragedy you’ve seen that need never happened? You’ve taught me at least to know there are rookeries behind the smart streets where people die of starvation and cold; where there is filth everywhere, and rats, and disease; where children learn to steal to survive as soon as they can walk. I’ve never been there, but I know they exist, and I can smell them on your clothes when you come back in the evening. There is no other smell like it.”

He thought of Alicia in her silks and innocence. Charlotte had been like that when he met her.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

She opened the door with a cloth and took out the pudding. “Don’t be,” she said sharply. “I’m a woman, not a child, and I can stand knowing just as well as you can! What are you going to do about this Mr. Porteous?” She took a knife and cut into the pudding; the thick suet crust was brown, and the gravy bubbled through it when she took out a slice. Rookeries or no rookeries, he was hungry at the smell of it.

“Make sure he is Porteous,” he replied; “then, I suppose, see what he died of and who knows anything about him.”

She dished up the carrots and cabbage. “If that corpse is Mr. Porteous, then who is the first corpse, the one from the cab?”

“I’ve no idea.” He sighed and took his plate from her. “He could be anybody!”

In the morning Pitt turned his attention to the unidentified corpse. There would be no solution to the whole business that did not include him, at least his name and the manner of his death. Perhaps he was the one who had been murdered, and Lord Augustus was the blind, the diversion. Or conceivably they had been involved in something together.

But what venture could possibly include Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond and Mr. William Wilberforce Porteous from Resurrection Row—and lead to murder? What about the man in the cab? And who was the other party to it, the one who dug them all up?

The first step was to discover the precise manner of death of the corpse from the cab. If it had been murder, or could have been, then that shed a totally new light on the disinterment of Lord Augustus. If, on the other hand, it had been natural, then since he had been burned, was it a lawful burial in a graveyard? Where was the empty grave, and why had it not been reported? Presumably it had been filled in again and left to appear like any other new grave.

But normal deaths are certified by a doctor. Once the nature of death was known, then the investigation could begin of all recorded deaths from that cause over the period. In time, they would narrow it down, the correct one would be found. They would have a name, a character, a history.

As soon as he reached the police station, he called his sergeant to take over the matter of the embezzlement and went upstairs to request permission for a postmortem on the unidentified corpse. No one demurred. Since it was not Lord Augustus, after all, and no one else had come forward to claim him, in the circumstances murder must be considered. Permission was granted immediately.

Next was the rather unpleasant job of making sure that the new corpse in the morgue was indeed W. W. Porteous, although he had little doubt about it. He put on his hat and coat again and went outside into the intermittent drizzle, and took an omnibus to Resurrection Row. He walked a hundred yards, turned to the right, and looked for number ten where Mrs. Porteous lived.

It was one of the larger houses, a little faded on the outside, but with prim white curtains at the windows and a whitened step. He pulled the bell and stood back.

“Yes?” A stout girl in black stuff dress and starched apron opened the door and stared at him inquiringly.

“Is Mrs. Porteous in?” Pitt asked. “I have information regarding her late husband.” He knew that if he said he was from the police the servants would have it all over the street within the day, and it would grow in scandal with each retelling.

The girl’s mouth fell open. “Oh! Oh, yes sir; you’d better come in. If you wait in the parlor, I’ll tell Mrs. Porteous you’re here, sir. What name shall I say?”

“Mr. Pitt.”

“Yes, sir.” And she disappeared to inform her mistress.

Pitt sat down. The room was crammed with furniture, photographs, ornaments, an embroidered sampler saying “Fear God and do your duty,” three stuffed birds, a stuffed weasel under glass, an arrangement of dried flowers, and two large, shining, green potted plants. He felt intensely claustrophobic. It gave him the rather hysterical feeling that it was all alive and, when he was not looking, creeping closer and closer to him, hungry and defensive against an alien in their territory. Eventually he preferred to stand.

The door opened and Mrs. Porteous came in, as robustly corseted as before, her hair perfect, her cheeks rouged. Her bosom was decorated with rows and rows of jet beads.

“Good morning, Mr. Pitt,” she said anxiously. “My maid says you have some news about Mr. Porteous?”

“Yes, ma’am. I think we have found him. He is in the morgue, and if you would be good enough to come and identify him, we can be sure, and then in due course we can have him reinterred—”

“I can’t have a second funeral!” she said in alarm. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

“No, naturally,” he agreed. “Just an interment, but first let us be sure it is indeed your husband.”

She called for the maid to fetch her coat and hat, and followed Pitt outside into the street. It was still raining lightly, and in Resurrection Row they hailed a hansom and rode in silence to the morgue.

Pitt was beginning to feel an antiseptic familiarity with the place. The attendant still had a cold and his nose was now bright pink, but he greeted them with a smile as wide as decorum before a widow allowed.

Mrs. Porteous looked at the corpse and did not require either the chair or the glass of water.

“Yes,” she said calmly. “That is Mr. Porteous.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I have some questions I must ask you, but perhaps you would prefer to discuss them in a more comfortable place? Would you like to go home? The cab is still waiting.”

“If you please,” she accepted; then, without looking at the attendant, she turned and waited for Pitt to open the door for her outside into the rain, preceded him down the path and back into the cab again.

Seated in the parlor of her own house, she ordered hot tea from the maid and faced Pitt, hands folded in her lap, jet beads glistening in the lamplight. On a day as dark as this, it was impossible to see clearly inside without the lamps lit.

“Well, Mr. Pitt, what is it you wish to ask me? That is Mr. Porteous; what else is there to know?”

“How did he die, ma’am?”

“In his bed! Naturally.”

“From what cause, ma’am?” He tried to make it clear without being offensive or distressing her more than was necessary. Her remarkable bearing might well hide deep emotion underneath.

“A complaint of digestion. No doubt it had a name, but I do not know it. He had been ill for some time.”

“I see. I’m sorry. Who was his doctor?”

Her arched eyebrows rose. “Dr. Hall, but I cannot see why you wish to know. Surely you do not suspect Dr. Hall of violating the grave?”

“No, of course not.” He did not know how to explain that he was questioning the cause of death. Obviously the whole train of thought had not occurred to her. “It is just that in order to find who did, we need all the information possible.”

“Do you expect to find out?” She was still perfectly composed.

“No,” he admitted frankly, meeting her eyes with something like a smile. There was no answer in her face, and he looked away, feeling a little foolish. “But it is not the only case,” he went on in a more businesslike tone. “And anything they have in common might help.”

“Not the only case?” She was startled now. “You mean you think Mr. Porteous’s grave robbing is connected to those others everyone is talking about? You ought to be ashamed, allowing such things to happen here in London, to respectable people! Why aren’t you doing your job, I should like to know?”

“I don’t know whether there is a connection, ma’am,” he said patiently. “That is what I am trying to establish.”

“It’s a lunatic,” she said firmly. “And if the police can’t catch a lunatic, I don’t know what the world is coming to! Mr. Porteous was a very respectable man, never mixed with fast society, every penny he had was earned, and he never put a wager in his life.”

“Perhaps there is no connection, apart from the time he died,” Pitt said wearily. “Lord Augustus was a respectable man, too.”

“That’s as may be,” she said darkly. “They didn’t find Mr. Porteous in that Gadstone Park, did they?”

“No, ma’am, he was sitting on a bench in St. Bartholomew’s Green.”

Her face paled. “Nonsense!” she said sharply. “Mr. Porteous would never be in such a place! I cannot believe it, you know what kind of people frequent it. You must be mistaken.”

He did not bother to argue; if it mattered to her to cling onto the distinction, even after death, then allow her to. It was a curious divergence. He remembered the rather worn clothes with the corpse. He had been buried very much in his second best. Perhaps at the last moment she had felt the best black all such men kept for Sundays to be too good to consign to the oblivion of the tomb. At least at that time she would expect it to be oblivion.

He stood up. “Thank you, ma’am. If I need to ask anything else, I shall call on you.”

“I shall make arrangements to have Mr. Porteous put away again.” She rang the bell for the maid to show him out.

“Not yet, ma’am.” He wanted to apologize because he knew the outrage before it came. “I’m afraid we shall have to do some more investigation before we can allow that.”

Her face mottled with horror, and she half rose in her chair.

“First you allow his grave to be desecrated and his body to be left in a park where public—‘women’—offer themselves, and now you want to investigate him! It is monstrous! Decent people are no longer safe in this city. You are a disgrace to your—” She had wanted to say “uniform”; then she looked at Pitt’s jumble of colors—hat still dripping in his hands, muffler end trailing down his front—and gave up. “You are a disgrace!” she finished lamely.

“I’m sorry.” He was apologizing not for himself but for the whole city, for the entire order that had left her with nothing but need and the trimmings of being respectable.

He spoke to the doctor and discovered that Porteous had died of cirrhosis of the liver, and had most assuredly visited the benches of St. Bartholomew’s Green before some grotesque chance had placed his corpse under its shade to be solicited by a prostitute to whom even the dead were no horror or surprise.

He left, wondering what had been the stuff of lives that ended like this: what failures; what bolstered-up loneliness, what constant small retreats.

Dominic put Somerset Carlisle and the disgraceful luncheon from his mind. He was looking forward to seeing Alicia again. The reinterment was over, and from now on, provided decent mourning was observed, at least outwardly, they could begin to think of the future. He would not wish to offend her sensibilities by speaking too quickly or cause her any embarrassment, but he could certainly call to pay his respects and spend a little time in her company. And in a few weeks she could afford to be seen out, not at theatres or parties, but at church with the family or during a carriage ride to take the air. He did not mind if Verity came also, for appearances; in fact, he liked her very well for her own sake. She was easy to talk to, once she felt comfortable with him and, although she was modest, she had her own opinions and quite a dry sense of humor with which to express them.

Altogether he was feeling in a very pleasant mood when he arrived at Gadstone Park on Thursday morning and presented his card to the maid.

Alicia received him with delight, almost relief, and they spent a totally happy hour talking trivialities, and meaning everything else. Just to be in each other’s company was sufficient; what was said was immaterial. Augustus was forgotten; empty graves and wandering corpses did not even stray into their minds.

He left a little before luncheon, walking briskly back across the Park, coat collar turned up against the north wind, finding it exciting and sharpening rather than bitter. He saw a figure coming the other way. There was something familiar about the step, the rather lean shoulders, that made him hesitate, even consider for a moment taking a sidecut across the grass, even though it was rough and wet. But he was not even sure who the person was. It was far too tidy for Pitt, too elegant, and not quite tall enough. Pitt’s coat always flapped, and his hat sat at a different angle on his head.

It was not until he was close enough to see the face, too close courteously to go another way, that he recognized Somerset Carlisle.

“Good morning,” he said without slackening his stride. He had no wish whatever to speak with the man.

Carlisle stood in his path. “Good morning,” he said, then turned and fell in step beside him. Short of being appallingly rude, there was nothing Dominic could do but make some attempt at conversation.

“Pleasant weather,” he remarked. “At least this wind should keep the fog away.”

“Good day for a walk,” Carlisle agreed. “Gets one an appetite for luncheon.”

“Quite,” Dominic replied. Really, the man was a confounded nuisance. He seemed to have no idea when he was intruding, and Dominic had no desire to be reminded of their previous meal together.

“Nice leisurely meal by a good fire,” Carlisle went on. “I should thoroughly enjoy a soup, something savory and delicate.”

There was no way to avoid it. Dominic owed the man a meal, and obligations must be honored if one wished to remain in society. Such a gaffe would quickly be remarked, and word spread like fire.

“An excellent idea,” he said with as much heart as he could muster. “And perhaps a saddle of mutton to follow? My club is not far, and I should be delighted if you would consent to dine with me.”

Carlisle smiled broadly, and Dominic had an uncomfortable feeling he saw something funny in the affair. “Thank you,” he said easily. “I should enjoy that.”

The meal fulfilled none of Dominic’s fears, in fact it was extremely pleasant. Carlisle did not mention politics at all and proved an agreeable companion, talking neither too little nor too much. When he did speak he was cheerful, and occasionally witty.

Dominic thoroughly enjoyed it and determined to repeat it as soon as opportunity arose. He was thinking along these lines when he found himself outside again, where the wind was sharper and beginning to carry a fine rain. Carlisle hailed a cab immediately, and, to Dominic’s astonishment, fifteen minutes later he was deposited in a filthy back street where precarious houses huddled together like a lot of drunken men supporting each other before the final collapse.

“Where in God’s name are we?” he demanded, alarmed and confused. The street was swarming with children, noses running, clothes dirty; women sat in areaways, hands blue with cold, presiding over rows of worn-looking shoes; and light glimmered from below-street rooms. The whole air was pervaded with a stale, sour smell he could not identify, but it clung to the back of the nose, and he seemed to swallow it with every breath. “Where are we?” he said again with mounting fury.

“Seven Dials,” Carlisle replied. “Dudley Street, to be precise. Those people are secondhand shoe sellers. Down there”—he pointed to the rooms below pavement level— “they take old shoes or stolen ones; remake them out of the bits that are worth saving, and then sell the botched-up results. In other places they do the same with clothes; unpick them and use whatever fabric is still good for a little while longer. Someone else’s remade wool is better than new cotton, which is all they could buy. No warmth in cotton.”

Dominic shivered. It was perishing out in this ghastly street, and he was white with rage at Carlisle for having brought him here.

Either Carlisle was oblivious to it, or he simply did not care.

“Call back that cab!” Dominic snarled. “You had no right to bring me here! This place is—” He was lost for words. He stared around him, appalled at it; the weight of the buildings seemed to overpower him. The squalor was everywhere, and the smell of dirt, old clothes, grime of soot and oil lamps, unwashed bodies, yesterday’s cooking. On top of the roast it was almost too much for his stomach.

“A preview of hell,” Carlisle said quietly. “Don’t speak so loudly; these people live here; this is their home. I dare say they don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s what they have. Show your disgust, and you may not get out of here as immaculately as you came in—in any sense. And this is only a foretaste; you should see Bluegate Fields down by the docks or Limehouse, Whitechapel, St. Giles. Walk with me. We’ve got about three hundred yards to go, along that way.” He pointed down a side street. “Over the square at the end of that is the local workhouse. That’s what I want you to see; this is only incidental. Then perhaps the Devil’s Acre, below Westminster?”

Dominic opened his mouth to say he wanted to leave, then saw the children’s faces gaping up at him: young bodies, young skins, and eyes as old as the roués’ he had seen with the prostitutes in the night houses of the Haymarket. It was the weary avariciousness in them that frightened him more than anything else; that and the smell.

He saw one urchin, chased by another in play, pass close to Carlisle, and, in a movement as smooth as a weasel, extract his silk handkerchief from his pocket and move on.

“Carlisle!”

“I know,” Carlisle said quietly. “Don’t make a fuss. Just follow me.” And he moved almost casually over the street, onto the pavement on the other side, then down the alleyway. At the far side of the square beyond, he stopped at the large, blind wooden door and knocked. It was opened by a stout man in a green frock coat. The sour expression on his face changed to one of alarm, but before he could speak, Carlisle stepped inside, forcing him back.

“Morning, Mr. Eades. Comes to see how you are today.”

“Well, thank you. Yes, very well, sir.” Eades said defensively. “You are too kind, sir. You pay too much attention. I’m sure your time is valuable, sir.”

“Very,” Carlisle agreed. “So don’t let us waste it. Any of your children gone to the schools since the last time I was here?”

“Oh, yes! As many as we had at the time of intake, sir, you may be sure.”

“And how many is that?”

“Ah, well now; I don’t have the precise figures to my mind; you must recall, people come and go here, as the necessity finds them. If they are not here on the day of intake, which you must know is only once a fortnight, then, naturally, they don’t go!”

“I know that as well as you do,” Carlisle said tartly. “I also know they check out the day before the intake, and back in again the day after.”

“Now, sir, that ain’t my fault!”

“I know it isn’t!” Carlisle’s voice was raw with anger at his own impotence. He strode past Eades and down the airless, dank corridor to the great hall, and Dominic was obliged to follow him or be left alone in the stone passage, his flesh standing out with cold.

The room was large and low, gaslit; one stove burned in the corner. About fifty or sixty men, women, and children sat unpicking old clothes, sorting the rags, and cutting and piecing them together again. The air was so fetid it caught in Dominic’s throat, and he had to concentrate to prevent himself from vomiting. Carlisle seemed to be used to it. He stepped over the rags and approached one of the women.

“Hello, Bessie,” he said cheerfully. “How are you today?”

The woman smiled, showing blackened teeth, and mumbled something in reply. She had a large, shambling figure, and Dominic would have judged her to be about fifty. He did not understand a word of her speech.

Carlisle led him on a few yards to where half a dozen children sat unpicking old trousers, some of them no more than three or four years old.

“Three of these are Bessie’s.” He looked at them. “They used to work at home, before putting the new railway through caused the slum clearance, and the house their room was in was demolished. Her husband and older children made match boxes at tuppence ha’ penny for a hundred and forty-four, and out of that they found their own twine and paste. Bessie herself worked in the Bryant and Mays match factory. That’s why she speaks so oddly—phossy jaw—a necrosis of the jaw caused by the phosphorus in the matches. She’s three years older than Alicia Fitzroy-Hammond—you wouldn’t think it, would you?”

It was too much. Dominic was bewildered and appalled. “I want to get out of here,” he said quietly.

“So do we all.” Carlisle embraced the room in a gesture. “Do you know third of London lives no better than this, either in the rookeries or the workhouses?”

“What can anybody do?” Dominic said helplessly. “It’s—it’s so—vast!”

Carlisle spoke to one or two more people; then he led Dominic back out into the square again, bidding Mr. Eades a tart farewell on the doorstep. After the thick air inside, even the gray drizzle seemed cleaner.

“Change some of the laws,” Carlisle replied. “The meanest ledger clerk who can write or add is a prince compared with these. Get pauper children educated and apprenticed. There’s little you can do for their parents, except charity; but we can try for the children.”

“Possibly.” Dominic had to walk sharply to keep up with him. “But what is the point in showing me? I can’t change laws!”

Carlisle stopped. He passed a few pence to a child begging and saw him immediately hand them over to an old man.

“Fancy sending your grandchild out to beg for you,” Dominic muttered.

“He’s more likely no relation.” Carlisle kept on walking. “He probably bought the child. Children make better beggars, especially if they are blind or deformed. Some women even cripple them on purpose; gives them a better chance of survival. To answer your question, you can talk to people like Lord Fleetwood and his friends, persuade them to go to the House and vote.”

Dominic was horrified. “I can’t tell them about this sort of thing! They’d—” He realized what he was saying.

“Yes,” Carlisle agreed. “They would be disgusted and offended. Most distasteful. Not the sort of subject a gentleman embarrasses others with. I think I rather spoiled your luncheon the other day. You don’t get the same pleasure out of roast goose when you think about something like this, do you? And yet how far do you think it is from Gadstone Park church pews to Seven Dials?” They turned the corner into another street and saw a cab at the far end. Carlisle increased his pace, and Dominic had almost to trot to keep up with him. “But if I can court a cold-blooded sod like St. Jermyn,” Carlisle continued, “to get a bill introduced, I think you can manage a little discomfort with Fleetwood, can’t you?”

Dominic spent a wretched evening and woke the next morning feeling no better. He told his valet to have all his clothes cleaned, and if the smell would not come out, then to give them away to whosoever would take them. But nothing so simple would get rid of the pictures from his mind. Part of him hated Carlisle for obliging him to see things he would much rather not ever have known of. Of course, he had always appreciated in his head that there was poverty, but he had never actually seen it before, one did not really see the faces of beggars in the streets; they were simply faces, there—like lamp posts or railings. One was always about some business of one’s own and too occupied to think of them.

But worse than the sight was the taste of it in his mouth, the smell that stayed at the back of the throat and tainted everything he ate. Perhaps it was guilt?

He had arranged to take Alicia on an errand she had some little distance away, and he had taken a carriage for the occasion. He called for her at a quarter-past ten, and she was ready, waiting for him, although of course she did not allow it to be obvious, in fact, might even have imagined he did not see it. Possibly she forgot he had been married and was acquainted with at least some of women’s habits.

She was dressed in black and looked particularly fine, her hair bright and her skin flawless, with the delicacy of alabaster. Everything about her was impeccably clean. It was impossible to equate her in any way with the woman in the workhouse.

She had been talking to him, and he was not listening. “Dominic?” she said again. “Are you unwell?”

He needed to share the turmoil inside him; indeed, he could not keep his mind upon anything else. “I met your friend Carlisle yesterday,” he said harshly.

She looked surprised, surely at his tone rather than the information. “Somerset? How was he?”

“We had luncheon together; then he tricked me into going with him into the most awful place I have ever seen in my life! I have never imagined anything so wretched—”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was full of concern. “Were you hurt? Are you sure you are well now? I can easily put off this call; it is not urgent.”

“No, I wasn’t hurt!” His voice was uglier than he meant it to be, but it would not stay in his control. Confusion and anger were boiling up inside him. He wanted someone to explain it away, to give back the ignorance that had been so much easier.

She obviously did not understand. She had never seen a workhouse in her life. She had never been permitted to read newspapers, and she did not handle money. The housekeeper kept the accounts, and her husband had paid the bills. The nearest she had ever come to poverty was a restriction in her dress allowance when her father had suffered a reverse in his investments.

He wanted to explain what he had seen and, above all, how he felt about it; but the only words for it were unseemly, and anyway, they described things that were completely beyond anything she could imagine. He gave it up and sank into silence.

After they returned from the visit he dropped her off at Gadstone Park, and then, feeling miserable and dissatisfied, he sent the carriage away and sat in front of his own fire for an hour. Finally he got up again and called a hansom.

Charlotte had put the matter of the corpses from her mind. Indeed, she had far too much of her own to do to interest herself in most of Pitt’s cases, and the identity of a corpse that had, so far as anyone knew, died quite naturally was not of concern to her. Jemima had sat in a puddle and required a complete change of clothing. She was now busy with a larger laundry then usual, and ironing was not quite one of her favorite chores.

She was startled when the doorbell rang because she was not expecting anyone. People seldom called in the middle of the day; they all had their own duties and meals to prepare. She was even more surprised when she saw Dominic standing on the step.

“May I come in?” he asked before she had time to speak.

She opened the door wider.

“Yes, of course. What’s wrong? You look—” She wanted to say “miserable” but decided “unwell” would be more tactful.

He passed her into the hall, and she closed the door and led the way to the kitchen again. Jemima was building bricks in her playpen in the corner. Dominic sat down on the wooden chair in front of the table. The room was warm, and the washed wood smelled good. There were sheets hanging from the airing rail on the ceiling, and he looked with curiosity at the rope and pulleys for hauling it up and down. The flatiron was warming on the stove.

“I’ve interrupted you,” he said without moving.

“No, you haven’t.” She smiled and picked up the iron to continue. “What’s the matter?”

He was irritated with himself for being so transparent. She was treating him like a child, but at the moment he wanted the reassurance enough to shelve the resentment.

“A man called Carlisle took me to see a workhouse yesterday, somewhere in Seven Dials. There were fifty or sixty people in one room, all unpicking clothes to remake them. Even children. It was foul!”

She remembered the anger she had felt when Pitt had first told her about the slums and tenements when she lived in Cater Street and thought herself terribly knowledgeable because she looked at the newspapers. She had been shocked, angry that she had not known before, and angry most of all with Pitt because he had know all the time and had chosen to disturb her world with ugliness and other people’s pain.

There was nothing comforting to say. She went on ironing the shirt. “It is,” she agreed. “But why did he take you—this Mr. Carlisle?”

The reason was at once the best and the worst side to it.

“Because he wants me to speak to a friend of mine in the House of Lords and see if I can influence him to be there when St. Jermyn’s bill is put up.”

She remembered what Aunt Vespasia had said, and it was immediately understandable. “And are you going to?”

“For heaven’s sake, Charlotte!” he said exasperatedly. “How on earth do you go up to a fellow you only know because of racing horses and things, and say to him, ‘By the way, I’d like you to take your seat in the House when they put up St. Jermyn’s bill because the workhouses really are awful, and the children need educating, you know! There ought to be a law to support and educate pauper children in London, so be a good chap and get all your friends to vote for it!’ It’s impossible! I can’t do it!”

“That’s a pity.” She did not look up from her ironing. She was sorry for him; she knew how nearly impossible it was to engage people in thoughts they do not like, especially those that make them uncomfortable and threaten their pleasures by questioning the order of things. But she was not going to tell him he had no obligation, or that it was up to someone else. Not that he was likely to have accepted it if she had. He had seen and smelled the streets of Seven Dials, and no words would wipe out that memory.

“A pity!” he said furiously. “A pity! Is that all you can say? Has Thomas ever told you what those places are like? It’s indescribable—you can taste the filth and despair.”

“I know,” she said calmly. “And there are worse places than workhouses, places inside the rookeries that even Thomas won’t describe.”

“He’s told you?”

“Something, not all.”

He screwed his face up and stared down at the white wood of the table. “It’s awful!”

“Would you like some luncheon?” She folded the shirt and put it away, then folded the ironing board also. “I’m going to have some. It’s just bread and soup, but you are welcome, if you wish.”

Suddenly the gulf opened, and he realized he had been speaking to her as if they were both still in Cater Street, with the same material possessions. He had forgotten his world was as different now from hers as hers was from Seven Dials. He was momentarily embarrassed for his clumsiness. He watched her as she took two clean plates out of the cupboard and set them on the table, then the bread out of the bin, a board and a knife. There was no butter.

“Yes, please,” he answered. “Yes, I would.”

She took the lid off the stockpot on the stove and ladled out enough to fill the two plates.

“What about Jemima?” he asked.

She sat down. “She’s had hers. What are you going to do about Mr. Carlisle?”

He ignored the question. He knew what the answer would be, but he did not want to admit it yet.

“I tried to tell Alicia about it.” He took a mouthful of the soup. It was surprisingly good, and the bread was fresh and crusty. He had not known Charlotte could make bread. Still—she must have had to learn.

“That was unfair.” She looked at him steadily. “You can’t tell people in words and expect them to understand, or feel the way you do.”

“No—she didn’t. She brushed it aside as so much conversation. She seemed like a stranger, and I thought I knew her so well.”

“That’s not fair either,” she said. “It’s you who have changed. What do you suppose Mr. Carlisle thought of you?”

“What?”

“Were you very impressed by what he said? Didn’t he have to take you to Seven Dials to see it for yourself?”

“Yes, but that’s—” He stopped, remembering his reluctance, disinterest. But he was nothing to Carlisle; whereas he and Alicia loved each other. “That’s—”

“Different?” Charlotte raised eyebrows. “It’s not. Caring for someone doesn’t alter it. Knowing might—” Straightaway she was sorry for saying it. Enchantment was such an ephemeral thing, and familiarity had so little to do with it. “Don’t blame her,” she said quietly. “Why should she know about it, or understand?”

“No reason,” he admitted, and yet he felt a void between himself and Alicia and realized how much of his feeling for her depended on the color of her hair, the curve of her cheek, a smile, and the fact that she responded to him. But what was inside her, in the part he could not reach?

Could there be even the simple removal of an object that stood between her and what she wanted, a little movement of the hand with a bottle of pills—and murder?

At the top of Resurrection Row was a cemetery, hence its name. A tiny chapel stood in the center; in a wealthier area it would have been a crypt or family tomb, but here it was only the pretension to one. Marble angels perched on a few of the better tombstones; here and there, there was a distant cross, but most of them rose bare and a little crooked with age. Subsidence in the earth from frequent digging caused them to lean askew, and half a dozen skeletal trees had not been removed. It was an unlovely place at any time, and on a damp February evening it boasted only one virtue, privacy. For a seventeen-year-old maid of all work like Dollie Jenkins, who was in the process of courting a butcher’s boy with excellent prospects, it was the only place in which she could give him just sufficient encouragement without losing her employment.

Arm in arm they walked in through the gates, whispering together, giggling under their breath; it was hardly decent to laugh out loud in the presence of the dead. After a little while they sat down, close together, on one of the tombstones. She allowed it to be known that she would not resent a little show of affection, and he responded enthusiastically.

After some fifteen minutes, she felt the situation was getting out of hand, and he might well end up taking liberties and afterwards think the worse of her for it. She pushed him away and saw, to her consternation, a figure sitting perched on one of the other gravestones, knees crossed, high stovepipe hat askew.

“ ’Ere, Samuel!” she hissed. “There’s an old geezer sittin’ over there spyin’ on us!”

Samuel got to his feet in awkward haste. “Dirty old goat!” he said loudly. “Go on! Get away wiv’ yer. Peepin’ Tom! Afore I thump yer!”

The figure did not move; indeed, he ignored Samuel completely, not even raising his head.

Samuel strode over to him. “I’ll teach yer!” he shouted. “I’ll box your ears for yer right proper. Go on, get out of ’ere, yer dirty old toad!” He seized the man by the shoulder and made as if to swing his fist at him.

To his horror the man swayed and toppled over sideways, his hat rolling onto the ground. His face was blue in the faint moonlight, and his chest was a most peculiar flat shape.

“Oh, God almighty!” Samuel dropped him and leapt away, falling over his own feet. He scrambled up again and backed toward Dollie, clutching onto her.

“What is it?” she demanded. “What ’ave you done?”

“I ain’t done nuffin! ’E’s dead, Doll—’e’s as dead as anybody in ’ere. Somebody’s gorn an’ dug ’im up!”

The news was conveyed to Pitt the following morning.

“You’ll never believe it!” the constable said, his voice squeaking up to top C.

“Tell me anyway.” Pitt was resigned.

“They’ve found another one. Courting couple found him last night.”

“Why shouldn’t I believe it?” Pitt said wearily. “I’d believe anything.”

“Because it was Horrie Snipe!” the constable burst out. “As I live and breathe, it was—sitting up on a gravestone in Resurrection Cemetery in his old stovepipe hat. He was run over three weeks ago, by a muck cart, and buried a fortnight—and there ’e was, sitting on a tombstone all by ’isself in the moonlight.”

“You’re right,” Pitt said. “I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it.”

“It’s ’im, sir. I’d know Horrie Snipe anywhere. He was the busiest procurer the Row ever had.”

“So it seems,” Pitt said drily. “But for this morning, I still refuse to believe it.”

7

ON MONDAY CHARLOTTE received a handwritten note from Aunt Vespasia, inviting her to call that morning and be prepared to stay for some little while, in fact, over luncheon and into the afternoon. No reason was given, but Charlotte knew Aunt Vespasia far too well to imagine it was idle. A request at such short notice, and stating such a specific time and duration, was not casual. Charlotte could not possibly ignore it; apart from good manners, curiosity made it absolutely imperative she go.

Accordingly, she took Jemima over the street to Mrs. Smith, who was always more than willing to tend her with great affection, in return for a little gossip as to the dress, manners, and especially foibles of the society that Charlotte kept. Her own resulting importance in the street, as Charlotte’s confidante, was immeasurable. She was also quite genuinely a kind woman and enjoyed helping, especially a young woman like Charlotte who was obviously ill prepared by her own upbringing to cope with the realities of life such as Mrs. Smith knew them.

Having been rather rash with the housekeeping in buying bacon three days in a row, instead of making do with oatmeal or fish as usual, Charlotte was obliged to catch the omnibus to its nearest point to Gadstone Park, instead of hiring a hansom, and then walk in rising sleet the rest of the way.

She arrived on the doorstep with wet feet and, she feared, a very red nose: not in the least the elegant image she would wish to have presented. So much for bacon for breakfast.

The maid who answered was too sensitive to her mistress’s own eccentricities to allow her thoughts to be mirrored in her face. She was becoming inured to any kind of surprise. She moved Charlotte into the morning room and left her standing as near to the fire as she dared without risking actually setting herself alight. The heat was marvelous; it brought life back into her numb ankles, and she could see the steam rising from her boots.

Aunt Vespasia appeared after only a few moments. She glanced at Charlotte, then took out her lorgnette. “Good gracious, girl! You look as if you came by sea! Whatever have you done?”

“It is extremely cold outside,” Charlotte attempted to explain herself. She moved a little forward from the fire; it was beginning to sting with its heat. “And the street is full of puddles.”

“You appear to have stepped in every one of them.” Vespasia looked down at her steaming feet. She was tactful enough not to ask why she had walked in the first place. “I shall have to find something dry for you, if you are to be in the least comfortable.” She reached out for the bell and rang it sharply.

Charlotte half thought of demurring, but she was wretched with cold, and if she was to be there for some time, it would be quite worth it to borrow something warm and dry.

“Thank you,” she accepted.

Vespasia gave her a look of sharp perception; she had seen the edge of argument and quite possibly understood. When the maid came, she treated the whole matter quite lightly.

“Mrs. Pitt has unfortunately been splashed, and quite soaked, on her journey here.” She did not even bother to look at the girl. “Go and have Rose put out dry boots and stockings for her, and that blue-green afternoon gown with the embroidery on the sleeve. Rose will know which one I mean.”

“Oh, dear.” The girl looked at Charlotte with sympathy. “Some of those hansom drivers don’t look in the least where they’re going, ma’am. I’m ever so sorry. Cook only took a step down the road the other day, and two of them lunatics passed, seein’ as they could race each other, and she was fair covered in mud. Said something awful, she did, when she got ’ome again. I’ll find something dry for you straightaway.” She whisked out of the door, bound on an errand of mercy, and hoping eternal punishment for cab drivers in general and careless ones in particular.

Charlotte smiled broadly. “Thank you, that was remarkably tactful of you.”

“Not at all.” Vespasia dismissed it. “I am holding a small soirée this afternoon, very small indeed.” She fluttered her hand slightly to indicate how very minor it was. “And I would like you to be here. I’m afraid this wretched business of Augustus is not going well.”

Charlotte was not immediately sure what she meant. Her mind flew to Dominic. Surely there could be no one who genuinely suspected him—

Vespasia saw her look and read it with an ease that made Charlotte blush, thinking if she were so transparent now, how truly painful she must have been in the past.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said hastily. “I had hoped people would put it from mind, now that he is reinterred. It does seem as if he was only the unfortunate victim of some insane creature who is tearing up graves all over the place. There have been two more, you know—apart from Lord Augustus and the man in the cab!”

She had the satisfaction of seeing Vespasia’s eyes widen in surprise. She had told her something she not only did not know but had not foreseen.

“Two more! I heard nothing of it. When, and who?”

“No one you would know,” Charlotte replied. “One was an ordinary man who lived near Resurrection Row—”

Vespasia shook her head. “Never heard of it. It sounds most insalubrious. Where is it?”

“About two miles away. Yes, it isn’t very pleasant, but nothing like a slum, just a back street, and of course there is a cemetery—there would be, with such a name. That is where the other corpse was found—in the graveyard.”

“Appropriate,” Vespasia said drily.

“Yes, but not sitting up on a tombstone, and with his hat on!”

“No,” Vespasia agreed, pulling a painful face. “And who was he?”

“A man called Horatio Snipe. Thomas would not tell me what he did, so I presume it must be something disreputable—I mean worse than merely a thief or a forger. I suppose he kept a house of women, or something like that.”

Vespasia looked down her nose. “Really, Charlotte,” she snorted. “But I dare say you are right. However, I don’t think it will help. Suspicion is a strange thing; even when it is proved to be entirely unjustified, the flavor of it stays on: rather like something disagreeable one has disposed of—the aroma remains. People will forget even what it was they suspected Alicia or Mr. Corde of having done—but they will remember that they did suspect them.”

“That is quite unjust!” Charlotte said angrily. “And it is unreasonable!”

“Of course,” Vespasia agreed. “But people are both unjust and unreasonable without the slightest awareness or intention of being either. I hope you will stay to the soirée; that is principally why I invited you today. You have something of a perception of people. I have not forgotten you understood what had really happened in Paragon Walk before any of the rest of us. Perhaps you can see something in this that we do not—”

“But in Paragon Walk there had been a murder!” Charlotte protested. “Here there has been no crime—unless you think Lord Augustus was murdered?” It was a horrible thought and she had not accepted it, nor did she now. She meant it as a criticism, a shock rather than a question.

Vespasia was not shaken. “Most probably he died quite naturally,” she replied, as if she had been discussing something that happened every day. “But one must face the possibility that he did not. We know a great deal less about people than we like to imagine. Maybe Alicia is as simple as she seems, a pleasant girl of good family and more than usual good looks, whose father married her advantageously; and she was, if not pleased by it, at least not imaginative or rebellious enough to object, even in her own mind.

“But, my dear, it is also possible that, as her marriage became more and more tedious, and she began to realize it would never be otherwise and could well last another twenty years, the thought became unbearable. And then when Dominic Corde came along and at precisely the same time an opportunity presented itself quite easily to be rid of her husband, in an instant she took it. It would be very easily done, you know, merely a small movement of the hand, a drop, two drops too much, nothing more: no evidence, no lies as to where she had been or with whom. She could almost forget it, wipe it from memory, convince herself it had not happened.”

“Do you believe that?” Charlotte was afraid. Even in front of the fire she became conscious of coldness again, of her feet being wet. Outside, the sleet clattered against the glass of the windows.

“No,” Vespasia said quietly. “But I do not deny its possibility.”

Charlotte stood still.

“Go and change out of those wet boots,” Vespasia ordered. “We will take luncheon in here, and you may tell me about your child. What is it you have called her?”

“Jemima,” Charlotte answered obediently, standing up.

“I thought your mother’s name was Caroline?” Vespasia raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“It is,” Charlotte agreed. She turned at the door and gave her a dazzling smile. “And Grandmama’s name is Amelia. I don’t care for that either!”

The soirée was informal, and there was a great deal more conversation than listening to the music, which Charlotte rather regretted, since it was good and she was fond of the piano. She had never played it well herself, but both Sarah and Emily had, and this young man’s gentle touch brought back memories of childhood and Mama singing.

Dominic was surprised to see her, but either he did not notice the excellence of Vespasia’s gown on her, or he was too sensitive to comment on it, knowing that in her circumstances it would have to be borrowed.

Charlotte had not seen Alicia before, and her curiosity had been mounting from the time the first guest, who was Virgil Smith, arrived. As Vespasia had said, he was remarkably plain. His nose was anything but aristocratic; it appeared less like marble than warm wax, put on with a careless hand. His haircut might have been executed with a pair of shears round the edge of a basin, but his tailor was exemplary. He smiled at Charlotte with a warmth that lit up his eyes and spoke to her in an accent she would have loved to mimic, as Emily could have, to retail it to Pitt. But she had no skill in the art.

Sir Desmond and Lady Cantlay did not remember her or, if they did, chose not to acknowledge it. She could hardly blame them; when a corpse lands in the street in front of one, one does not recall the faces of the passersby, even those who offer assistance. They greeted her with the well-bred, mild interest of acquaintances who have nothing in common, so far as they know, except the place in which they meet. Charlotte watched them go and wondered nothing about them, except if they suspected Dominic or Alicia of having entertained murder.

Major Rodney and his sisters held no involvement for her either, and she murmured polite nonsenses to them that reminded her of standing beside her mother and Emily at endless parties when she was single, trying to sound as if she were totally absorbed by Mrs. So-and-so’s most recent illness or the prospects of Miss Somebody’s engagement.

She had already built in her mind very clearly how she expected Alicia to look: fair skin and hair that curled quite naturally—unlike her own—medium height and with soft shoulders, a little inclined to plumpness. Afterward she realized she was creating a vague picture of Sarah again.

When Alicia came she was utterly different. It was not so much a matter of description; she did have fair skin, and her hair waved so softly and asymmetrically it must surely be natural. But she was as tall as Charlotte, and her body was quite slim, her shoulders almost delicate. Far more than that, there was a completely different look in her eyes. She was nothing like Sarah at all.

“How do you do?” Charlotte said after only a second’s hesitation. She did not know whether she had expected to like her or not, but she was startled by the reality. In her own mind, because Dominic was in love with her, she had created a shadow of Sarah. She was unprepared for a different and independent person. And she had forgotten that to Alicia she would be a stranger and, unless Dominic had told her of Sarah and their relationship, one of no importance.

“How do you do, Mrs. Pitt?” Alicia replied, and Charlotte knew instantly that Dominic had not told her; there was no curiosity in her face. Alicia took a step away, saw Dominic, and stood perfectly still for a moment. Then she turned to Gwendoline Cantlay and complimented her on her gown.

Charlotte was still considering her own instinctive understanding of the moment when she realized she was being spoken to.

“I understand you are an ally of Lady Cumming-Gould?”

She looked round at the speaker. He was lean, with winged eyebrows and teeth that were a little crooked when he smiled.

Charlotte scrambled to think what he could mean. “Ally?” It must have something to do with the bill Aunt Vespasia was concerned with, to get children out of workhouses and into some sort of school. He would be the man who had driven Dominic to the street in Seven Dials and shown him the workhouse that had upset him so profoundly. She looked at him with more interest. She could understand Thomas’s care for such things; his daily life brought him the results of its tragedies, every sort of victim. But why did this man care?

“Only in spirit,” she said with a smile. Now she knew who he was, she felt assured; perhaps in all the room he was the one who discomfited her least. “A supporter; nothing so useful as an ally.”

“I think you underrate yourself, Mrs. Pitt,” he replied.

It stung her to be patronized. The cause was too real for trivia and meaningless flattery. She found herself resenting it, as if he did not consider her worthy of the truth.

“You do me no favor by pretending,” she said rather sharply. “I am not an ally. I have not the means.”

His smile widened. “I stand rebuked, Mrs. Pitt, and I apologize. Perhaps I was precipitate, making the wish the fact.”

It would be churlish of her not to accept his apology. “If you can make it a fact, I shall be delighted,” she said more gently. “It is a cause worthy of anyone’s effort.”

Before he could reply, they were introduced to more people. Lord and Lady St. Jermyn came in, and Charlotte found herself presented. Her first impressions of people were frequently wrong: most often the people she afterwards came to like, she felt nothing toward at first; but she could not imagine ever being anything but uncomfortable in the presence of Lord St. Jermyn. There was something about his mouth that repelled her. He was in no way ugly, rather the opposite, but there was a way his lips met that stirred half a memory, half imagination in her that was unpleasant. She heard her voice replying some inanity and felt Carlisle’s eyes on her. He had every right to reproach her with the very dishonesty for which she had just criticized him.

A little later Alicia joined them, with Dominic at her elbow. Charlotte watched them and thought how well they looked together, a perfect complement. Odd how that thought would have hurt and bewildered her a few years ago, and now it gave her no feeling at all except anxiety, in case the picture broke and there was nothing behind its perfection strong enough to stand an injury to the balance, an assault.

The conversation turned back to the bill. St. Jermyn was talking to Dominic.

“I hear from Somerset that you are a friend of young Fleetwood? With him on our side we would have an excellent chance. He has considerable influence, you know.”

“I don’t know him very well.” Dominic was nervous, beginning to disclaim. Charlotte had seen him twist a glass stem like that in Cater Street; she realized now how many times. She had never been conscious of it before.

“Well enough,” St. Jermyn said with a smile. “You are a good horseman, and an even better judge of an animal. That’s all it takes.”

“I believe you have a fine stable yourself, sir.” Dominic was still trying not to be pushed.

“Racing.” St. Jermyn waved his hand. “Fleetwood prefers a good carriage pair; likes to drive himself, and that’s where you excel. Heard you even beat him once.” He smiled, curling his long mouth down at the corners. “Don’t make a habit of it! He won’t like it more than the occasional time.”

“I was driving to win, not to please Lord Fleetwood,” Dominic said a little tartly. His eyes flickered over to Charlotte, almost as if he were aware of her thoughts and of what she herself would have said.

“That is a luxury we cannot afford.” St. Jermyn was not pleased, but he ironed it out of his face the moment after Charlotte had seen it, and a second later there was no trace at all. She judged that Dominic had not even noticed. “If we want Fleetwood’s help, it would not be clever to beat him too often,” St. Jermyn finished.

Dominic drew breath to retort, but Charlotte spoke before he did. He was not quick to anger, in fact, most agreeable; he seldom took a hard position on any issue, but on the rare occasions that he did, she could not recall his ever having changed it. It would be easy for him to commit himself now and then be unable to move when he regretted it.

“I don’t believe Mr. Corde will do that,” she said, forcing herself to smile across at St. Jermyn. “But surely Lord Fleetwood will take more notice of a man who has beaten him at least once? To come second to him hardly marks one from the crowd, or earns his interest.”

Dominic flashed her one of his beautiful smiles, and for an instant she remembered how she used to feel about him; then the present returned, and she was staring at St. Jermyn.

“Quite,” Dominic agreed. “I would like him to see the workhouse in Seven Dials, as I did. It would not be a sight he would forget in a hurry.”

Alicia was looking puzzled, a slight frown on her face. “What is so dreadful about the workhouse?” she asked. “You said there was poverty, but no legislation is going to get rid of that. Workhouses at least provide people with food and shelter. There have always been rich and poor, and even if you were to alter it with some miracle, in a few years, or less, it would all be the same again—wouldn’t it? If you give a poor man money, it does not make him a rich man for long—”

“You are more perceptive than perhaps you intend,” Carlisle said with a lifting of his brows. “But if you feed the children and keep them clean from disease and despair, so they survive into adulthood without stealing to live, and give them some sort of education, then the next generation is not quite so poor.”

Alicia looked at him, absorbing the idea, realizing that he was very serious.

“God! If you’d seen it!” Dominic said sharply. “You wouldn’t be standing here discussing academic niceties; you would want to get out there and do something!” He looked across at Charlotte. “Wouldn’t they?”

A look of pain shot cross Alicia’s face, and she moved almost imperceptibly away from him. Charlotte saw it and knew exactly what she felt, the sudden sense of alienation, of being shut out of something important to him.

Charlotte looked at him hard, making her voice clear and light. “I should imagine they would. It has certainly affected you that way. You are totally changed. But I hardly think it is a suitable place to take Lady Fitzroy-Hammond, from what I have heard. My husband would not permit me to go there.”

But Dominic would not be told, nor read her hint.

“He doesn’t need to take you,” he said heatedly. “You already know about such places and the people in them, and you care. I can remember you telling me about it years ago; but I didn’t really understand what you meant then.”

“I don’t think you were listening to me!” she said quite honestly. “It has taken you a long time to believe. You must permit others a little time as well.”

“There isn’t time!”

“Indeed, there isn’t, Mrs. Pitt,” St. Jermyn said, raising his glass. “My bill comes up in a few days. If we are to get it through, we will have to have our support then. There isn’t any time to waste. Corde, I’d be most obliged if you’d tackle Fleetwood tomorrow, or the day after at the latest?”

“Of course,” Dominic said firmly. “Tomorrow.”

“Good.” St. Jermyn patted him on the shoulder, then drained his glass. “Come on, Carlisle, we’d better go and talk to our hostess; she knows simply everyone, and we need that.”

A flicker of distaste crossed Carlisle’s face for an instant and was gone almost before Charlotte was sure of it, and he moved to keep up with St. Jermyn. They walked together past the Misses Rodney and Major Rodney, holding a glass in his hand and looking anxiously over their heads as if searching for someone, or possibly fearing someone.

There was an uncomfortable silence; then Virgil Smith appeared. He looked a little doubtfully at Charlotte; then his face softened and he spoke to Alicia. It was only some common remark, quite trivial, but there was a gentleness in his voice that jarred Charlotte away from thoughts of poverty or parliamentary bills, and even suspicions of murder. It was sad, and perhaps unnoticed by anyone else, but she was quite sharply aware that Virgil Smith was in love with Alicia. Probably she had eyes only for Dominic and was not in the least conscious of it, and perhaps he would know its futility and never tell her. In those few seconds Charlotte became one person with Alicia in her mind and memory, reliving her own infatuation with Dominic, finding again the miseries and wild hopes, the silly self-deceptions, all the virtues she read into him, and how little she really knew him. She had done them both a disservice with her dreams, saddling him with virtues he had never claimed to possess.

She would not have seen Virgil Smith either, with his unsculpted face and his impossible manners, and certainly never known or wanted to know that he loved her. It would have embarrassed her. But perhaps she would have been the loser for it.

She excused herself and went to talk to Vespasia and Gwendoline Cantlay and saw more than once a look of unease pass over Gwendoline’s face as she recognized Charlotte vaguely, struggling to place her and failing. She was not sure if she knew her socially, and whether she ought to acknowledge it. With a faint malice, Charlotte allowed her to search; the satisfaction of telling her would not be as great and might possibly embarrass Aunt Vespasia. She might not care in the least if they all knew she kept company with policemen’s wives—but, on the other hand, she might prefer to select whom she told, and how!

It was late, with one or two guests departed and the gray afternoon already beginning to close in, when Charlotte found herself comparatively alone, near the entrance to the conservatory, and saw Alicia coming toward her. She had been expecting this moment; in fact, if Alicia had not chosen it, she would have contrived it herself.

Alicia had obviously been rehearsing in her mind just how she could begin; Charlotte knew it, because it was what she would have done.

“It has been a most pleasant afternoon, hasn’t it?” Alicia said quite casually as she drew level with Charlotte. “So considerate of Lady Cumming-Gould to arrange it in such a way that it is not inappropriate for me to come. Mourning seems to go on for so long, it only makes the bereavement worse. It allows no one diversion in order to relieve one’s mind from thoughts of death, or from loneliness.”

“Quite,” Charlotte agreed. “I think people do not realize the added burden it is, on top of the loss one has already sustained.”

“I did not know before today that Lady Cumming-Gold was an aunt of yours,” Alicia continued.

“I think that is rather more than the truth,” Charlotte smiled. “She is the great-aunt of my brother-in-law, Lord Ashworth.” Then she said what she intended to tell Alicia ever since the conversation with Lord St. Jermyn. “My sister Emily married Lord Ashworth a little while ago. My older sister, Sarah, was married to Dominic before she died; but then I’m sure you knew that—” She was, in fact, quite sure that she did not, but she wanted to allow Alicia room to pretend that she had.

Alicia disguised her confusion with a masterly effort. Charlotte affected not to have noticed.

“Yes, of course,” Alicia pretended. “Although he has been so taken up with this business of Mr. Carlisle’s lately that I have not talked with him much. I should be obliged if you could tell me a little more about it. You seem to be in their confidence, and I confess myself most dreadfully ignorant.”

Charlotte surprised herself by lying. “Actually, I think it is rather more Aunt Vespasia’s confidence I am in.” She kept her voice quite light. “She is very concerned with it, you know. Mr. Carlisle seems to speak to her on the subject, perhaps to gain her assistance in persuading others with seats in the House to go and support them—” She glanced at Alicia and saw the memory of St. Jermyn’s remark flicker across her face. “She does know a great many people. I have never seen a workhouse myself, naturally, but from what they have said, it is a most appalling distress which should be alleviated. And if this bill will provide maintenance and education for pauper children in the metropolis and remove them from the effects of living in the constant company of the vagrant of all sorts, I for one would hope and pray it will be passed.”

Alicia’s face softened with relief. “Oh, so do I,” she agreed intensely. “I must think if I know anyone who could help; there must be some of Augustus’s family or friends.”

“Oh, could you?” Charlotte was not playacting this time; she cared about both Dominic and Alicia because they were individual people she could understand; but perhaps if she were honest, the bill was far more important than a simple murder, whatever tragedy brought it about or followed in its wake.

Alicia smiled. “Of course. I shall begin as soon as I get home.” She held out her hand impulsively. “Thank you, Mrs. Pitt. You have been so kind, I feel as if I know you already. I hope you don’t consider that an impertinence?”

“I consider it the greatest compliment,” Charlotte said sincerely. “I hope you will feel so in the future.”

Alicia kept her word. Upon arriving home, the first thing she did after giving her cloak to the maid and changing into dry boots was to go to her writing room and take out her address book. She had very carefully composed and written four letters before going upstairs to change for the evening meal.

Verity was not home, having gone to visit a cousin for a few days, and there was no one at the table except the old lady and herself. She missed Verity, because she both enjoyed her company and would have liked to share with her the new project she had found and her thoughts on Mrs. Pitt, whom Alicia had changed from disliking intensely, because of Dominic’s obvious regard for and closeness to her, to liking her now as much; she was quite different from Alicia’s imagining.

“Did you enjoy your tea party?” the old lady asked, spearing a large portion of fish with her fork and putting it whole into her mouth. “No one commented it odd that you should be out so soon after your husband’s burial? I suppose they were too polite!”

“It is over five weeks since he died, Mama-in-law,” Alicia replied, removing the bone from her fish delicately. “And it was a soirée, not a tea party.”

“Music as well! Very unsuitable. All love songs, I suppose, so you could gape at Dominic Corde and make a fool of yourself. He won’t marry you, you know! He hasn’t the stomach for it. He thinks you poisoned Augustus!”

The full meaning of what she had said broke on Alicia only slowly. At first she was angry with the suggestion that she had disgraced herself at the soirée. Only after she had opened her mouth to deny it did she realize what the old lady had said about Dominic. It was ugly and utterly wrong! Of course he would never think anything so evil of her!

“Won’t be able to prove it, of course,” the old lady went on, eyes bright. “Won’t say anything—just be a little cooler every time you see him. Notice he didn’t call round the last few days! No more carriage rides—”

“It hasn’t been the weather,” Alicia said hotly.

“Never stopped him before!” The old lady took another mouthful of fish and spoke round it. “Seen him come here at Christmas when there was snow in the streets! Don’t make a fool of yourself, girl!”

Alicia was too angry to be polite any more. “Last week you were saying he killed Augustus himself!” she snapped. “If he did it, how could he be thinking I did? Or do you imagine we both did it quite independently? If that is the case, then you should be delighted to see us marry—we deserve each other!”

The old lady glared at her, pretending to have her mouth too full to speak, while she thought of a suitable reply.

“Perhaps he thinks you did it?” Alicia went on, gathering impetus with the idea. “After all, the digitalis is yours, not mine! Maybe he is afraid to come and live here in the same house with you?”

“And why should I poison my own son, pray?” The old lady swallowed her mouthful and immediately put in more. “I don’t want to marry some handsome young philanderer!”

“It’s as well,” Alicia snapped. “Since you don’t have the least opportunity.” She was appalled at herself, but years of good behavior had finally snapped, and it was a marvelous feeling, exhilarating, like riding too fast on a good horse.

“Neither do you, my girl!” The old lady’s face was scarlet. “And you’re a fool if you imagine you have. You’ve poisoned your husband for nothing!”

“If you think me a poisoner”—Alicia looked straight into her old eyes—“I am surprised you dine so voraciously at the same table with me and yet pursue my enmity so hard. Are you not afraid for yourself?”

The old lady choked, and her face went livid white. Her hand flew to her throat.

Alicia laughed with real and bitter humor. “If I were going to poison anyone, it would have been you in the beginning, not Augustus; but I am not, which you know as well as I do, or you would have thought of it long ago. You would have had Nisbett tasting everything before you put it in your mouth! Not that I wouldn’t cheerfully have poisoned Nisbett, too!”

The old lady coughed and went into a spasm.

Alicia ignored her. “If you have had sufficient of that fish,” she said coldly, “I’ll have Byrne bring in the meat!”

Pitt knew nothing about the soirée. He was determined to find the identity of the corpse from the cab, and as soon as he received the result of the postmortem he snatched it from the delivery boy and tore it open. He had worn himself out speculating what it might be, something exotic and individual, damning to someone, to account for the extraordinary circumstances. If it were not connected to some crime or scandal, why should anyone perform the grisly and dangerous job of disinterring him and leaving him on the box of a hansom cab? Naturally, they had traced the cab, only to find it had been removed while its owner had been refreshing himself a little too liberally at a local tavern. Not an entirely uncommon occurrence and, on a January night, one for which Pitt had considerable sympathy. Only policemen, cabbies, and lunatics frequented the streets all night long in such weather.

He read the piece of paper from the envelope. It was as ordinary as possible—a stroke. It was a common and utterly natural way to die. There were no marks of violence on the body; in fact, nothing to comment on at all. He had been a man of late middle years, in generally good health, well nourished and well cared for, clean, a little inclined to overweight. In fact, as the morgue attendant had said, precisely what one might expect a dead lord to look like.

Pitt thanked the boy and dismissed him; then put the paper into the drawer of his desk, jammed his hat on his head, tied his muffler up to his ears, and, taking his coat off the stand, went out the door.

There was no open grave. That was perhaps the most sinister part about it; he had three graves and four bodies: Lord Augustus, William Wilberforce Porteous, Horrie Snipe—and this unknown man from the cab. Where was his grave, and why had the grave robber chosen to fill it in again so carefully that it remained hidden?

The other graves had all been within a fairly small perimeter. He would begin looking in the same area. Obviously he could not search all the recent graves for an empty one—he would have to question all the doctors who might have certified a death from stroke within the last four to six weeks. He might be able to narrow it down until he had a mere one or two who could then be taken to see the very unpleasant remains still lying at the morgue.

It took him until the afternoon of the following day before, tired, cold, and very ragged of temper, he climbed the stone stairs to the office of one Dr. Childs.

“He doesn’t see patients this time o’ the day!” his housekeeper said sharply. “You’ll have to wait. ’E’s just ’avin’ ’is tea!”

“I’m not a patient.” Pitt made an effort to control his voice. “I am from the police, and I will not wait.” He met the woman’s eyes and stared until she looked away.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you want ’ere,” she said with a lift of her shoulder. “But I suppose you ’ad better come in. Mind you wipe your feet!”

Pitt followed her in and disturbed a somewhat startled doctor sitting with his boots off in front of the fire, crumpet in his hand and butter on his chin.

Pitt explained his errand.

“Oh,” the doctor said immediately. “Bring another cup, Mrs. Lundy. Have a crumpet, Inspector—yes, that would be Albert Wilson, I imagine. Warm yourself, man, you look perished. Mr. Dunn’s butler, poor fellow. Still, don’t know why I say that, very quick way to go. Dare say he never knew anything about it. Your boots are wet, man; take ’em off and dry your socks out. Can’t bear this weather. Why do you want to know about Wilson? Perfectly normal death. No relation and nothing to leave, anyway. Just a butler, good one, so I hear, but perfectly ordinary fellow. That’s right, make yourself comfortable. Have another crumpet; watch the butter, runs all over the place. What’s the matter with Wilson?” He raised his eyebrows and looked at Pitt curiously.

Pitt warmed to him as much as to the fire. “There was a disinterred corpse found on the box of a hansom cab outside the theatre about three weeks ago—”

“Good God! You mean that was poor old Wilson?” The doctor’s eyebrows shot up almost to his hairline. “Now, why on earth should anybody do that? Your case, is it? Thank you, Mrs. Lundy; now pour the inspector a cup of tea.”

Pitt took the tea gracefully and waited till the housekeeper was reluctantly out of the room.

“Terrible curious woman.” The doctor shook his head at her departing back. “But it has its uses—knows more about my patients than they ever tell me. Can’t cure a man if you know only half of what’s wrong with him.” He watched the steam rise from Pitt’s socks. “Shouldn’t walk around with wet feet. Not good for you.”

“Yes, it is my case.” Pitt could not help smiling. “And the odd thing is, there’s no open grave left. Albert Wilson was buried, I presume?”

“Oh, certainly! Of course he was. I can’t tell you where, but I’m sure Mr. Dunn could.”

“Then I shall ask him,” Pitt replied without moving. He bit into another crumpet. “I’m greatly obliged to you.”

The doctor reached for the teapot.

“Think nothing of it, my dear fellow. Professional duty. Have some more tea?”

Pitt went to the Dunns’ and learned the name of the church, but there was no use going to look for graves in the dark. It was the following morning when he found the grave of Albert Wilson, butler deceased, and obtained permission to open it. By eleven o’clock he was standing beside the gravediggers, watching as they took out the last of the black earth from the coffin lid. He passed the ropes down, waited as they poked them under the box and tied them, then stood back as they climbed out and began to haul. It was an expert job, a matter of balance and leverage. They seemed to find it heavy, finally laying it on the wet earth beside the cavity with a sigh of relief.

“That were rotten ’eavy, guv,” one of them said soberly. “It didn’t ’ardly feel like it were empty to me.”

“Not me.” The other shook his head and stared at Pitt accusingly.

Pitt did not reply but bent and looked at the fastenings on the lid. After a moment he fished in his pocket and pulled out a screwdriver. Silently, he started to work, moving round the coffin till he had all the screws in his hands. He put them in the other pocket, then inserted the blade between the lid and the box and lifted it up.

They were right. It was not empty. The man lying in it was slight, with thick red hair. He wore a loose-fitting white shirt, and there was paint on his fingers, thin, watercolor paint, such as an artist uses.

But it was the face that held Pitt. His eyes were closed, but the skin was bloated and puffy, the lips blue. Under the surface of the skin were dozens of tiny pinprick red marks where the capillaries had burst. But the most obvious of all were the dark bruises on the throat.

Here at last was the one who had been murdered.

8

SO MUCH HAD already centered on Gadstone Park it did not take Pitt long to discover the identity of the man buried in Albert Wilson’s grave. There had been only one artist mentioned—Godolphin Jones. It was but a short step to see if this was his body.

Pitt put down the lid again and stood up. He called over the constable waiting at the end of the path and told him to have the body taken immediately to the morgue; he himself would repair to Gadstone Park and fetch a butler or footman to look at it. He thanked the gravediggers and left them angry and confused, staring at the earth-stained coffin, while he tied his muffler still tighter, pulled his hat forward to keep the drizzle off his face, and went out into the street.

It was a short, grim business. It was a distinctive face, even under the puffing and the marks, and the butler needed only one look.

“Yes, sir,” he said quietly. “That is Mr. Jones.” Then he hesitated. “Sir—he”—He swallowed hard—” he does not look as if he met with a natural death, sir?”

“No,” Pitt said gently. “He was strangled.”

The man was very pale, indeed. The morgue attendant reached for the glass of water.

“Does that mean he was murdered, sir? And there will be an investigation?”

“Yes,” Pitt answered. “I’m afraid it does.

“Oh, dear.” The man sat down on the chair provided. “How very unpleasant.”

Pitt waited for a few minutes while the man collected his composure again; then they both went back to the hansom that was waiting and returned to Gadstone Park. There was a great deal to be done. No other event so far had included Godolphin Jones in any way. He had had no apparent relationship with Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond, or with Alicia or Dominic. In fact, he did not figure in anything that had been mentioned, not even the bill that Aunt Vespasia was so concerned with. No one had claimed any acquaintance with him beyond professional, or the merest sort that one has with any person who lives in the immediate neighborhood.

Charlotte had said Aunt Vespasia thought his paintings a little muddy and highly priced, but that was no cause for personal dislike, far less murder. If one did not like paintings, one simply did not purchase them. And yet he had been popular and, if his house was anything to judge by, of very considerable means.

The house was the place to begin. Possibly it was where he had been murdered, and if that could be established, it was a point from which to pursue time and witnesses. At the very least he would discover the last occasion Godolphin Jones was there, if he was seen leaving, who had called upon him, and when. Servants frequent knew a great deal more about their masters than their masters would have chosen to believe. Discreet and well-judged questioning might elicit all sorts of information.

And, of course, a thorough search must be made of his belongings.

Pitt, in company with a constable, began the long task.

The bedroom yielded nothing. It was orderly, a little consciously dramatic for Pitt’s taste, but clean and unremarkable in every other way. It held all the usual effects: washstand, mirror, chests of drawers for underwear and socks. Suits and shirts were kept in a separate dressing room. There were several guest bedrooms, unoccupied and out of use.

Nor did any of the downstairs rooms offer anything unusual until they came to the studio. Pitt opened the door and stared inside. There was nothing posed or indulgent about this room; the floor was uncarpeted, the windows enormous and taking up the most part of two walls. There was a clutter of odd pieces of statuary in one corner, and what looked like a white garden chair. A Louis Quinze chair was half draped with a length of pink velvet, and an urn lay on its side on the floor. On the wall beside the door were shelves stacked with brushes, pigments, chemicals, linseed oil, spirits, and several bundles of rags. On the floor underneath were a number of canvases, and in the center of the room an easel with two palettes beside it and a half-worked canvas propped on the pegs. There was nothing else immediately visible, except a shabby rolltop desk and a hard-backed kitchen chair beside it.

“Artist,” the constable said obviously. “Reckon to find anything here?”

“I hope so.” Pitt walked in. “Otherwise there’s nothing left but questioning the servants. You start over there.” He pointed and began to go through the canvases himself.

“Yes, sir,” the constable replied, dutifully climbing over the urn to begin and knocking the chair off its balance. It fell over and rolled onto its side with a clatter, carrying a vase of dried flowers with it.

Pitt refrained from comment. He already knew the constable’s opinion of art and artists.

The canvases were mostly primed but unused. There were only two with paint on, one with background and outline of a woman’s head, the other almost completed. He sat them up and stepped back to consider them. They were, as Vespasia had said, a little muddy in color, as if he had used too many pigments in the mixing, but the balance was good and the composition pleasing. He did not recognize the almost completed one, nor the one on the easel, but probably the butler would know who they were, and no doubt Jones himself kept a record, for financial purposes if nothing else.

The constable knocked over a piece of pillar and swore under his breath. Pitt ignored him and turned to the desk. It was locked, and he was obliged to fiddle for several minutes with a wire before getting it open. There were few papers inside, mostly bills for artist’s supplies. The household accounts must be kept somewhere else, probably by the cook or the butler.

“There’s nothing ’ere, sir,” the constable said hopelessly. “Couldn’t rightly tell if there’s been a struggle in among this lot or not, seein’ as it’s such a mess, anyway. I suppose it’s bein’ a hartist, like?” He did not approve of art; it was not an occupation for a man. Men should do a job of work, and women should keep house, a neat and tidy house, if they were any good at it. “They all live like this?” He eyed the room with disdain.

“I’ve no idea,” Pitt replied. “See if you can find any blood. There was a hell of a bruise on his head. Whatever he hit it on is bound to have traces.” And he resumed his search of the desk, picking up a bundle of letters. He read through them quickly; they were of no interest that he could see, all to do with commissions for portraits, detailing poses desired, colors of gowns, dates for sittings that might be convenient.

Next, he came to a small notebook with a series of figures which could have been anything, and after each figure a tiny drawing, either an insect or a small reptile. There was a lizard, a fly, two kinds of beetle, a toad, a caterpillar, and several small hairy things with legs. All of them were repeated at least half a dozen times, except the toad, which appeared only twice and toward the end. Perhaps if Jones had lived, the toad would have continued?

“Found something?” The constable climbed over the urn and the chair and came across, his voice lifting hopefully.

“I don’t know,” Pitt answered. “It doesn’t look like much, but maybe if I understood it—”

The constable tried to lean over his shoulder, found it too high, and peered over his elbow instead.

“Well, I dunno,” he said after a minute. “Was ’e interested in them kind o’ things? Some gentlemen is—who don’t ’ave anythin’ better to do wiv their time. Though why anybody wants to know about spiders and flies is a mystery to me.”

“No.” Pitt shook his head, frowning. “They’re not naturalist drawings; they are all repeated at fairly regular intervals, and exactly the same. They are more like hieroglyphics, a sort of code.”

“What for?” The constable screwed up his face. “It ain’t a letter, or anything.”

“If I knew what for, I should know the next step,” Pitt said tartly. “These figures are set out in groups like either dates or money, or both.”

The constable lost interest. “Maybe that was ’is way of doin’ ’is accounts, to keep out nosy ’ousekeepers, or the like,” he suggested. “There’s nothing much over there, just a lot o’ things like you see in paintings, bits o’ plaster made up to look like stone, colored bits o’ cloth, things like that. Ain’t no blood. And they’re all in such a mess you can’t tell whether they been knocked like that, or ’e just threw ’em there, anyway. Seems like hartists is just naturally untidy. Looks as if ’e took photographs as well, as there’s one o’ them cameras over there.”

“A camera?” Pitt straightened up. “I haven’t seen any photographs, have you?”

“No, sir, now as you mention it, I ’aven’t. Do you think ’e sold them?”

“He would hardly sell all of them,” Pitt answered, puzzled. “And there weren’t any in the rest of the house. Now, I wonder where they are?”

“Maybe ’e never used it,” the constable suggested. “It’s in among all them things ’e put in ’is pictures; maybe that’s what it’s for, part of a picture.”

“Doesn’t seem the sort of thing you’d put in a picture.” Pitt climbed carefully over the chair and the urn and the pillars till he came to the black camera on its tripod. “And it’s far from new,” he observed. “So he hadn’t just bought it, unless he got it secondhand. But we can find out from his past clients if anyone had a portrait painted with a camera in it, or if anyone commissioned such a thing for the future.”

“It ain’t a pretty thing.” The constable caught his feet in a piece of the velvet cloth and swore vociferously. Then he noticed Pitt’s face. “Beg pardon, sir.” He coughed in a mixture of embarrassment and irritation. “But maybe ’e took photographs o’ people ’e was goin’ to paint, so ’e could know what they looked like when they wasn’t ’ere, like?”

“And then destroyed them, or gave them away afterwards?” Pitt considered it. “Possible, but I would have thought he’d want to see them in color. After all, an artist works in color. Still, it could be.” He started to examine the camera, pressing the pieces experimentally. He had never worked one himself, although he had seen them used by police photographers a few times and had begun to appreciate their possibilities. He knew the imprint of the picture was made on a plate, which then had to be developed. It took him a little fiddling before he got the plate out of this one, carefully, keeping it wound in the black cloth away from the light, because he was not used to it and did not know how fragile it might be.

“What’s that?” the constable asked dubiously.

“The plate,” Pitt replied.

“Anything on it?”

“I don’t know. Have to have it developed. Probably not, or he wouldn’t have left it in there, but we might be lucky.”

“Probably only some woman ’e was painting.” The constable dismissed it.

“He may have been murdered because of some woman he was painting,” Pitt pointed out.

The constable’s face lit up hopefully. “ ’Avin’ an affaire? Well, now that’s a thought. Bit free with the posin’, you reckon?”

Pitt gave him a dry, humorous look.

“Go and get the servants one by one,” he ordered. “Starting with the butler.”

“Yes, sir.” The constable obeyed, but he was obviously turning over in his mind the limitless possibilities that had just dawned on him. He did not like effeminate men who made a great deal too much money by puddling around in smocks and painting pictures of people who ought to know better, but it was a good deal more interesting than the usual run-of-the-mill tragedies he saw. He did not want to be bothered with servants. He retired reluctantly.

The butler came in a few moments later, and Pitt invited him to sit down in the garden chair, while he himself sat in the one that had been beside the desk.

“Who was your master painting when he left?” he asked straightaway.

“No one, sir. He had just finished a portrait of Sir Albert Galsworth.”

That was a disappointment; not only someone Pitt had never heard of, but also a man.

“What about the picture on the floor?” he asked. “That’s a woman.”

The butler walked over and looked at it.

“I don’t know, sir. She appears to be a lady of quality by her clothes, but as you see, the face has not yet been filled in, so I cannot say who it may be.”

“Has no one been coming here for sittings?”

“No, sir, not that I am aware of. Perhaps she was due and had put it off until a more convenient time?”

“What about this one?” Pitt showed him the other, more nearly completed canvas.

“Oh, yes, sir. That is Mrs. Woodford. She did not care for the picture; she said it made her look lumpish. Mr. Jones never finished it.”

“Was there ill feeling?”

“Not on Mr. Jones’s part, sir. He is used to—certain persons’—vanity. An artist has to be.”

“He wasn’t prepared to alter it to suit the lady?”

“Apparently not, sir. I believe he had already made considerable adjustments to suit the lady’s view of herself. If he went too far, he would compromise his reputation.”

Pitt did not argue; it was academic now.

“Have you seen this before?” He pulled out the notebook and let it fall open.

The butler glanced at it, and his face went blank. “No, sir. Is it of importance?”

“I don’t know. Was Mr. Jones a photographer?”

The butler’s eyebrows shot up. “A photographer? Oh, no, sir, he was an artist. Sometimes watercolors and sometimes oil, but certainly not photographs!”

“Then whose camera is that?”

The butler looked startled. He had not noticed the contraption. “I really have no idea, sir. I have never seen it before.”

“Could someone else have borrowed his studio?”

“Oh, no, sir. Mr. Jones was most particular. Beside, if they had, I should have known. There have been no strangers here; in fact no caller has been inside this house since Mr. Jones—left.”

“I see.” Pitt was confused. The thing was becoming ridiculous. He wanted a mystery, something to investigate, but this was nonsensical. The camera had to have come from somewhere and belong to someone. “Thank you,” he said, standing up again. “Will you make me a list of all the people you can remember who came here to have their pictures painted, starting with the latest and going back as far as you can remember, with the best recollection you have as to dates?”

“Yes, sir. Has Mr. Jones no accounts you can check?”

“If he has, they are not here.”

The butler forbore from comment and retired to send in the next servant. Pitt interviewed them all, one by one, and learned nothing that seemed important. It was early afternoon when he had finished, and still time to visit at least one of the other houses in the Park. He chose the latest on the butler’s list of portraits—Lady Gwendoline Cantlay.

Obviously she had not heard the news. She received him with surprise and a hint of irritation.

“Really, Inspector, I see no purpose to be served by pursuing this unfortunate subject. Augustus is buried, and there has been no further vandalism. I suggest you now leave his family to recover as well as they may and do not refer to the matter again. Haven’t they been through enough?”

“I have no intention of raising the matter again, ma’am,” he said patiently. “Unless it should become necessary. I’m afraid I am here over something quite different. You were acquainted with the artist, Mr. Godolphin Jones, I believe?”

Did he imagine it, or was there a tightening of her fingers in her lap, a faint flush across her cheeks?

“He painted my picture,” she agreed, watching him. “He has painted many pictures and came highly recommended to me. He is a well-known artist, you know, and very much praised.”

“You think highly of him, ma’am?”

“I—” she drew in her breath—“I don’t really know sufficient to say. I am obliged to rest upon other people’s opinions.” She looked at him with a touch of defiance. Again her hands were tight in her lap, crunching the fabric of her dress. “Why do you ask?”

At last she had come to it. He had a sudden sense of anxiety, as if the knowledge might affect her more than he was prepared for.

“I’m very sorry to have to tell you, ma’am,” he began, unusually awkwardly for him. He had done this often before, and the words were practiced. “But Mr. Jones is dead. He had been murdered.”

She sat perfectly still, as if she did not understand. “He is in France!”

“No, ma’am, I’m sorry, but he is here in London. His body has been identified by his butler. There is no mistake.” He looked at her, then round the room to see where the bell was to call a maid, in case she should require assistance.

“Did you say murdered?” she asked slowly.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.”

“Why? Who would murder him? Do you know? Are there any clues?” She was agitated now. He would have sworn it came to her as a complete shock, but she had changed. She was frightened, and it was not hysterical or nameless; she knew what she was frightened of. Pitt would have given quite a lot if he could have known also.

“Yes, there are several clues,” he said, watching her, her face, her neck, her hands grasping the arms of the chair.

Her eyes widened. “May I ask what they are? Perhaps if I knew, I could help. I knew Mr. Jones a little, naturally, having sat for the portrait.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “There are unfinished canvases that the butler does not recognize as ladies who ever called at the house for sittings, or any other purpose. And there is a camera—”

He was quite sure her surprise was genuine. “A camera! But he was an artist, not a photographer!”

“Exactly. And yet one presumes it was his. It is very improbable someone else’s camera would be there in his studio. The butler is quite positive he has not permitted anyone else to use it.”

“I don’t understand,” she said simply.

“No, ma’am, neither do we, as yet. I take it Mr. Jones never took photographs of you, say to work from when you were not available?”

“No, never.”

“Perhaps I could see the portrait, if you still have it?”

“Of course, if you wish.” She stood up and led him to the withdrawing room where a large portrait of her sat over the mantelpiece.

“Excuse me.” He went forward and began to study it carefully. He did not like it much. The pose was quite good, if rather stylized. He recognized several of the props from the studio, especially a piece of pillar and a small table. The proportions were correct, but the colors lacked something, a certain clarity. They seemed to have been mixed with a permanent undertone of ocher or sepia, giving even the sky a heavy look. The face was definitely Gwendoline’s; the expression was pleasant enough, and yet there was no charm in it.

He began to study the background and was just about to leave it when he noticed in the bottom left-hand corner a small clump of leaves quite clearly drawn with a beetle on one of them, distinct and stylized, precisely like one of those he had seen in the notebook at least four or five times.

“May I ask you what it cost, ma’am?” he said quickly.

“I cannot see what that has to do with Mr. Jones’s murder,” she said with marked coolness. “And I have already said he is an artist of excellent repute.”

Pitt was aware he had mentioned a subject socially crass. “Yes, ma’am,” he acknowledged. “You did say so, and I have already heard that from others. Nevertheless, I have good reason for asking, even if only for comparison’s sake.”

“I do not wish half London to be familiar with my financial arrangements!”

“I shall not discuss it, ma’am; it is purely for police use, and then only should it be relevant. I would prefer to find it out from you rather than press your husband, or—”

Her face hardened. “You are overstepping your office, Inspector. But I do not wish you to disturb my husband with the affair. I paid three hundred and fifty pounds for the picture, but I don’t see what possible use that can be to you. It is quite a usual price for an artist of his quality. I believe Major Rodney paid something the same for his portrait, and that of his sisters.”

“Major Rodney has two pictures?” Pitt was surprised. He would not have imagined Major Rodney as a man who cared for, or could afford, such an indulgence in art.

“Why not?” she asked, eyebrows raised. “One of himself, and one of Miss Priscilla and Miss Mary Ann together.”

“I see. Thank you, ma’am. You have been very helpful.”

“I don’t see how!”

He was not quite sure of himself, but at least there were other places to search, and in the morning he would call on Major and the Misses Rodney. He excused himself and set out in the returning fog to go back to the police station, and then home.

If Lady Cantlay had been startled to hear of Godolphin Jones’s murder, Major Rodney was shattered. He sat in the chair like a man who has nearly been drowned. He gasped for breath, and his face was mottled with red.

“Oh, my God! How absolute appalling! Strangled, you say? Where did they find him?”

“In another man’s grave,” Pitt replied, unsure again whether to reach for the bell and call a servant. It was a reaction he had been totally unprepared for. The man was a soldier; he must have seen death, violent and bloody death, a thousand times. He had fought in the Crimea, and from what Pitt had heard of the tragic and desperate war, a man who had survived that ought to be able to look on hell itself and keep his stomach.

Rodney was beginning to compose himself. “How dreadful. How on earth did you know to look?”

“We didn’t,” Pitt said honestly. “We found him quite by chance.”

“That’s preposterous! You can’t go around digging up graves to see what you will find in them—by chance!”

“No, of course not, sir.” Pitt was awkward again. He had never known himself so clumsy. “We expected the grave to have been robbed, to be empty.”

Major Rodney stared at him.

“We had the corpse whose grave it was!” Pitt tried to make him understand. “He was the man we first took to be Lord Augustus—on the cab near the theatre—”

“Oh.” Major Rodney sat upright as though he were on horseback in a parade. “I see. Why didn’t you say so to begin with? Well, I’m afraid there is nothing I can tell you. Thank you for informing me.”

Pitt remained seated. “You knew Mr. Jones.”

“Not socially, no. Not our sort of person. Artist, you know.”

“He painted your picture, did he not?”

“Oh, yes—knew him professionally. Can’t tell you anything about him. That’s all there is to it. And I won’t have you distressing my sisters with talk about murders and death. I’ll tell them myself, as I see fit.”

“Did you have a picture painted of them, also?”

“I did. What of it? Quite an ordinary thing to do. Lots of people have portraits.”

“May I see them, please?”

“Whatever for? Ordinary enough. But I suppose so, if it’ll make you go away and leave us alone. Poor man.” He shook his head. “Pity. Dreadful way to die.” And he stood up, small, slight, and ramrod stiff, and led Pitt into the withdrawing room.

Pitt stared at the very formal portrait on the far wall above the sideboard. Instantly he disliked it. It was grandiloquent, full of scarlets and glinting metal, a child in an old man’s body playing at soldiers. Had it been intended as ironic it would have been clever, but again the colors were unsubtle and a little cloudy.

He went up to and found his eye drawn without consciousness to the left corner. There was a small caterpillar, totally irrelevant to the composition but cleverly masked in the background, a brown-bodied creature in a brown, mottled shadow.

“And I believe there is also one of your sisters?” He stepped back and turned to face the major.

“Can’t think what you want to see it for,” the major said with surprise. “Quite ordinary painting. Still, if you like—”

“Yes, please,” Pitt went after him into the next room. It was on the facing wall, between two jardinieres, a larger work than the first. The pose was fussy, the scenery cluttered with far too many props, the colors a little better but with too much pink. He looked in the left corner and found the same caterpillar, exactly the same stylized hair and legs, but green-bodied, to hide against the grass.

“What did you pay for them, sir?” he asked.

“Sufficient, sir,” the major said huffily. “I cannot see that it concerns your investigation.”

Pitt tried to visualize the figures after the caterpillars in the little book, but there had been so many of them, more caterpillars than anything else, and he could not remember them all.

“I do need to know, Major. I would prefer to ask you personally than have to discover by some other means.”

“Damn you, sir! It is not your business. Inquire as you like!”

Pitt would get nowhere by pressing the point, and he knew it. He would find the figures in the notebook in the column under £350, in line with the beetle, and total all those next to caterpillars. He would then try Major Rodney with that sum and observe his reaction.

The major snorted, satisfied with his victory. “Now, if that is all, Inspector?”

Pitt debated whether to insist on seeing the Misses Rodney now and decided there was little to learn from them. He could more profitably go and question the other person who had bought a Jones portrait, Lady St. Jermyn. He accepted the major’s dismissal and, a quarter of an hour later was standing rather uncomfortably in front of Lord St. Jermyn.

“Lady St. Jermyn is not at home,” he said coolly. “Neither of us can help you any further with the affair. It would be best left, and I counsel you to do so from now on.”

“One cannot leave murder, my lord,” Pitt said tartly. “Even did I wish to.”

St. Jermyn’s eyebrows rose slightly, not surprise so much as contempt. “What has made you suddenly believe that Augustus was murdered? I suspect a prurient desire to inquire into the lives of your betters.”

Pitt ached to be equally rude; he could feel it like a beat in his head. “I assure you, sir, my interest in other people’s personal lives is purely professional.” He made his own voice as precise and as beautiful as St. Jermyn’s, coolly caressing the words. “I have no liking either for tragedy or for squalor. I prefer private griefs to remain private, where public duty permits. And as far as I know, Lord Augustus died naturally—but Godolphin Jones was unmistakably strangled.”

St. Jermyn stood absolute still; his face paled and his eyes widened very slightly. Pitt saw his hands clasp each other hard. There was a moment’s silence before he spoke.

“Murdered?” he said carefully.

“Yes, sir.” He wanted to let St. Jermyn say all he would, not lead him and make his answers easy by suggesting them. The silence was inviting.

St. Jermyn’s eyes stayed on Pitt’s face, watching him, almost as if he were trying to anticipate.

“When did you discover his body?” he asked.

“Yesterday evening,” Pitt answered simply.

Again St. Jermyn waited, but Pitt did not help him. “Where?” he said at last.

“Buried, sir.”

“Buried?” St. Jermyn’s voice rose. “That’s preposterous! What do you mean ‘buried’? In someone’s garden?”

“No, sir, properly buried, in a coffin in a grave in a churchyard.”

“I don’t know what you mean!” St. Jermyn was growing angry. “Who would bury a strangled man? No doctor would sign a certificate if the man was strangled, and no clergyman would bury him without one. You are talking nonsense.” He was ready to dismiss it.

“I am relating the facts, sir,” Pitt said levelly. “I have no explanation for them, either. Except that it was not his own grave; it was that of one Albert Wilson, deceased of a stroke and buried there in the regular way.”

“Well, what happened to this—Wilson?” St. Jermyn demanded.

“That was the corpse that fell off the cab outside the theatre,” Pitt replied, still watching St. Jermyn’s face. He could see nothing in it but dark and utter confusion. Again for several moments he said nothing. Pitt waited.

St. Jermyn stared at him, eyes clouded and unreadable. Pitt tried to strip away the mask of authority and assurance and see the man beneath—he failed entirely.

“I presume you have no idea,” St. Jermyn said at last, “who killed him?”

“Godolphin Jones? No, sir, not yet.”

“Or why?”

For the first time Pitt overstepped the truth. “That’s different. We do have a possible idea as to why.”

St. Jermyn’s face was still very pale, nostrils flared gently as he breathed in and out. “Oh? And what may that be?”

“It would be irresponsible of me to speak before I have proof.” Pitt evaded it with a slight smile. “I might wrong someone, and suspicion once voiced is seldom forgotten, no matter how false it proves to be later.”

St. Jermyn hesitated as if about to ask something further, then thought better of it. “Yes—yes, of course,” he agreed. “What are you going to do now?”

“Question the people who knew him best, both professionally and socially,” Pitt replied, taking the opening offered. “I believe you were one of his patrons?”

St. Jermyn gave an answering smile, no more than a slight relaxation of the face. “What a curious word, Inspector. Hardly a patron. I commissioned one picture, of my wife.”

“And were you satisfied with it?”

“It is acceptable. My wife liked it well enough, which was what mattered. Why do you ask?

“No particular reason. May I see it?”

“If you wish, although I doubt you will learn anything from it. It is very ordinary.” He turned and walked out of the door into the hallway, leaving Pitt to follow. The picture was in an inconspicuous place on the stair wall, and, looking at the quality of it compared with the other family portraits, Pitt was not surprised. His eye scanned the face briefly, then went to the left-hand corner. The insect was there, this time a spider.

“Well?” St. Jermyn inquired with a touch of irony in his voice.

“Thank you, sir.” Pitt came down the stairs again to stand level with him. “Do you mind telling me, sir, how much you paid for it?”

“Probably more than it’s worth,” St. Jermyn said casually. “But my wife likes it. Personally, I don’t think it does her justice, do you? But then you wouldn’t know; you haven’t met her.”

“How much, sir?” Pitt repeated.

“About four hundred and fifty pounds, as far as I can remember. Do you want the precise figure? It would take me some time to find it. Hardly a major transaction!”

The vast financial difference between them was not lost on Pitt.

“Thank you, that will be near enough.” He dismissed it without comment.

St. Jermyn smiled fully for the first time. “Does that further your investigations, Inspector?”

“It may do, when compared with other information.” Pitt walked on to the front door. “Thank you for your time, sir.”

When he got home, cold and tired, Pitt was welcomed by the fragrance of steaming soup and dry laundry hanging from the ceiling. Jemima was already asleep, and the house was silent. He took his wet boots off and sat down, letting the calm wash over him, almost as capable of being felt with body as was the heat. For several minutes Charlotte said no more than a welcome, an acknowledgment of his presence.

When at last he was ready to talk, he put down the soup bowl she had given him and looked across at her.

“I’m making noises as if I knew what I was doing, but honestly, I can’t see sense in any of it,” he said with a gesture of helplessness.

“Whom have you questioned?” she asked, wiping her hands carefully and picking up an oven cloth before opening the door and reaching in for a pie. She pulled it out and put it quickly on the table. The crust was crisp and pale gold, a little darker in one corner, in fact, perilously close to burnt.

He looked at it with the beginning of a smile.

She saw him. “I’ll eat that corner!” she said instantly.

He laughed. “Why does it do that? Scorch one corner!”

She gave him a withering look. “If I knew that, I would prevent it!” She turned out the vegetables smartly and watched the steam rise with appreciation. “Whom have you seen about this artist?”

“Everyone in the Park who has portraits by him—why?”

“I just wondered.” She lifted the carving knife and held it in the air, suspended over the pie while she thought. “We had an artist paint a picture of Mama once, and another for Sarah. They were both full of compliments, told Sarah she was beautiful, made all sorts of outrageously flattering remarks; said she had a quality of delicacy about her like a Bourbon rose. She floated round insufferably with her head in the air, looking sideways at herself in all the mirrors for weeks.”

“She was good-looking,” he replied. “Although a Bourbon rose is a little extravagant. But what is the point you are making?”

“Well, Godolphin Jones made his money by painting pictures of people, which in a way is the ultimate vanity, isn’t it, having your face immortalized? Maybe he flattered them all like that? And if he did, I would imagine a fair few of them responded, wouldn’t you?

Suddenly he perceived. “You mean an affaire, or several affaires? A jealous woman who imagined she was something unique in his life and discovered she was merely one of many, and that the sweet images were just part of his professional equipment? Or a jealous husband?”

“It’s possible.” She lowered her knife at last and cut into the pie. Thick gravy bubbled through, and Pitt totally forgot about the scorched piece.

“I’m hungry,” he said hopefully.

She smiled up at him with satisfaction. “Good. Ask Aunt Vespasia. If it was anyone in the Park, I’ll bet she knows, and if she doesn’t, she will find out for you.”

“I will,” he promised. “Now, please get on with that and forget about Godolphin Jones.”

But the first person he saw the following day was Somerset Carlisle. By now, of course, everyone in the Park knew of the discovery of the body, and he no longer had any element of surprise.

“I didn’t know him very well,” Carlisle said mildly. “Not much in common, as I dare say you know? And I certainly had no desire to have my portrait done.”

“If you had,” Pitt said slowly, watching Carlisle’s face, “would you have gone to Godolphin Jones?”

Carlisle’s expression dropped a little in surprise. “Why on earth does it matter? I’m a bit late now, anyway.”

“Would you?”

Carlisle hesitated, considering. “No,” he said at length. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Pitt had expected that. Charlotte had said Carlisle had spoken slightingly of Jones as an artist. He would have contradicted himself had he praised him now.

Pitt pursued it. “Overrated, would you say?”

Carlisle looked levelly at him; his eyes were dark gray and very clear. “As a painter, yes, Inspector, I would say so. As an admirer and companion, possibly not. He was quite a wit, very even-tempered, and had learned the not inconsiderable art of suffering fools graciously. It is difficult to command more than you are worth for long.”

“Isn’t art something of a fashion?” Pitt inquired.

Carlisle smiled, still meeting his eyes without a flicker.

“Certainly. But fashions are frequently manufactured. Price feeds upon itself, you know. Sell one thing expensively, and you can sell the next even more so.”

Pitt took the point, but it did not answer the question as to why anyone should strangle Godolphin Jones.

“You mentioned other forms of worth,” he said carefully. “Did you mean purely as a companion, or perhaps more—as a lover in an affaire—or even several?”

Carlisle’s face remained impassive, amused. “It might be worth your while to investigate the possibility. Discreetly, of course, or you will rouse a lot of ill feeling that will rebound upon yourself.”

“Naturally,” Pitt agreed. “Thank you, sir.”

Discretion began with Aunt Vespasia.

“I was expecting you yesterday,” she said with slight surprise in her voice. “Where can you start? Is there anything you know about this wretched man? So far as I have heard, he had nothing to do with Augustus, and Alicia was one of the few beauties, or imagined beauties, around the Park that he did not paint. For goodness’ sake, man, sit down; you give me a crick in my neck looking at you!”

Pitt obeyed. He still did not care to take the liberty of making himself comfortable before he was invited. “Was he a good artist?” he asked. He would value her opinion.

“No,” she said baldly,. “Why?”

“Charlotte said as much.”

She looked at him a little sideways, her eyes narrowed. “Indeed. And what do you draw from that? You are trying to say something—what is it?”

“Why do you think he was able to charge so much, and get it?” he asked frankly.

“Ah.” She leaned back a little, and a very small smile curved her mouth. “Portrait artists who paint society women have to be courtiers as well, in fact, possibly even courtiers first. The best of them can afford to paint as they please, but the others must paint to suit whoever holds the purse strings. If they have the skill, they flatter with the brush; if not, they must do it with the tongue. Some even do both.”

“And Godolphin Jones?”

Her eyes flickered with amusement. “You have seen his work yourself—and you must know it was with his tongue.”

“Do you suppose it went further than flattery?” He was not sure if she would be affronted by his assuming such a possibility and asking it so bluntly. But, on the other hand, there was no point in being evasive with her, and he was too weary of the case and confused to be subtle.

She was silent for so long he began to be anxious she was offended. Then at last she spoke, choosing her words.

“You are asking me if I know of anyone having an affaire with Godolphin Jones. I suppose if I do not tell you, you will have to pursue it yourself? I had rather tell you; I imagine that will be the least painful. Yes, Gwendoline Cantlay had an affaire. It was nothing serious, a relief from boredom of a pleasant but growingly uninterested husband; certainly not a grand passion. And she was extremely discreet about it.”

“Do you know if Sir Desmond knew of it?”

She considered for a moment before replying.

“I should think he guessed but was tactful enough to look the other way,” she said at length. “I find it very hard indeed to believe he would have killed the wretched little man over it. One does not react in such a way, unless one is completely unhinged.”

Pitt had no understanding; he simply had to accept that she knew. He could not conceive of what his own behavior might have been had he discovered Charlotte in such a squalid involvement. It would shatter everything he cared about, desecrate and overturn all that was precious within him and held him islanded against daily wretchedness he saw. It was not beyond his imagination that he would strangle the man: the more so if it were merely part of his professional repertoire, and she were one of any number.

Vespasia was looking at him, perhaps reading something of what was going through his mind.

“You must not judge Desmond Cantlay by yourself,” she said quietly. “But investigate the possibility, if you must. I suppose as late as this you cannot say when he was killed?”

“No; approximately three to four weeks ago, but that is hardly any use for establishing anyone’s whereabouts to prove him innocent or guilty. I should imagine he was killed shortly after the last time his servants saw him, which was three weeks ago last Tuesday. But even that is not proven. We don’t even know where he was killed yet.”

“You seem to know remarkably little,” she said grimly. “Don’t go seeking your information by spreading suspicions. Maybe Desmond didn’t know it. And doubtless, since it is a tool of his trade, Jones used it quite regularly.”

Pitt frowned. “Probably. But would he dare with Lady St. Jermyn?” He pictured that dark head with its severe silver streak. There was a remarkable dignity about her. It would have been a brash artist indeed who had tried to soften her with over-flattery.

Vespasia’s eyes widened very slightly, but her expression was beyond his reading.

“No,” he said simply. “Nor with the Misses Rodney, I suspect!”

The idea of an affaire with the Misses Rodney was ridiculous, but few people are impervious to flattery, and perhaps Jones had been skilled enough when he wished.

“I’ll have to find his other subjects,” he agreed. “I have a list from the butler.” He wanted to ask her more; in fact, he had a vague impression that she knew something that deliberately she was not telling him. A shield for Gwendoline Cantlay or for someone else? Surely not Alicia again? Or worse than that, Verity? There was no point in asking. It would only offend her.

He stood up. “Thank you, Lady Cumming-Gould. I appreciate your help.”

She looked at him dubiously. “Don’t be sarcastic with me, Thomas. I have been of uncommonly little help, and you know it. I have no idea who killed Godolphin Jones, but whoever it was, I have some sympathy with him. But I am really only marginally interested in the whole affair. It is a pity he could not have remained decently buried in the butler’s grave. The parliamentary bill is a great deal more important than the death of one opinionated and indifferent little artist. Do you have any conception of what it could mean in the lives of thousands of children in this wretched city?”

“Yes, ma’am, I have,” he said, equally soberly. “I have been in the workhouses and the sweatshops. I have arrested starving five-year-olds already schooled in thieving, and knowing of nothing else.”

“I apologize, Thomas.” She was unused to retreat, but this time she meant it.

He knew it. He smiled at her, brilliantly, honestly, and for an instant they were equals. Then it vanished. She rang the bell, and the butler showed Pitt to the door.

But there was something nagging at his mind, and, rather than take out the butler’s list, he hailed a cab and traveled for more than two miles before alighting, paying the driver, and climbing a dingy staircase up to a small room that had a great south-facing window and an even greater skylight. A scruffy little man with enormous eyes looked up at him.

“Hello, Froggy,” Pitt said cheerfully. “Can you spare me a few minutes?”

The man looked at him skeptically. “I ain’t got nothing as I oughtn’t to. You got no right to look!”

“I’m not looking, Froggy. I want your advice.”

“And I ain’t ratting on no one!”

“Your artistic advice,” Pitt elaborated. “On the worth of a perfectly legitimate picture. Or, to be more precise, an artist.”

“Who?”

“Godolophin Jones.”

“No good. Don’t touch it. But ’e’s bleedin’ hexpensive. Where d’you get that kind o’ money? You bin takin’ bribes, or suffink? D’you know what ’e sells for—four or five ’undred nicker a time, or near enough.”

“Yes, I do know that, and I won’t press you to tell me how you know. Why does he sell that highly, if he’s no good?”

“Oh, now there you ’as one o’ life’s mysteries. I dunno.”

“Maybe you’re wrong, and he is good?”

“Now, there’s no need to be rude, Mr. Pitt! I know my business. Couldn’t sell one o’ them Joneses, not if I was to give you a chicken with each one. People as buy from me wants suffink as they can keep for a while; then, when nobody’s lookin’ for it anymore, ship it out to some collector what ain’t too choosy as to ’ow they come by fings. No collector wants a Jones. You ask why they pays so ’igh—maybe it’s vanity? Don’t understand the Quality, never ’ave—and you’re wastin’ your time if you thinks you can. They’re a different sort of animal from you and me. No knowin’ what they’ll do, or why. Except I can tell you this—that Joneses never change ’ands; nobody sells ’em ’cos nobody buys ’em. Now, that’s a rule, that is—if it’s worth buying, somewhere, sometime, somebody’s goin’ to sell it!”

“Thank you, Froggy.”

“That all?”

“Yes, thank you, that’s all.”

“Does it ’elp?”

“I’ve no idea. But I think I’m glad to know it all the same.”

On his return to the police station before the end of the day, Pitt was greeted by the sergeant who had previously met him with news of one corpse after another. His heart sank as soon as he saw the wretched man’s face flushed with excitement again.

“What is it?” he snapped.

“That plate, sir, the photographic plate from the dead artist’s house.”

“What about it?”

“You sent it to be developed, sir.” He was practically fidgeting in his fever.

“Naturally—” Sudden hope seized Pitt. “What was on it? Tell me, man, don’t stand there!”

“A picture, sir, of a naked woman, naked as a babe, but nothing like a babe, if you get my meaning, sir?”

“Where is it?” Pitt demanded furiously. “What have you done with it?”

“It’s in your office, sir, in a brown envelope, sealed.”

Pitt strode past him and slammed the door. With shaking fingers he picked up the envelope and tore it open. The photograph was as the constable had said, an elegant but highly erotic pose of a woman without a shred of clothing. The face was perfectly clear. He had never seen her before, either in life or in paint. She was a total stranger.

“Damn!” he said fiercely. “Damnation!”

Pitt spent the next day trying to discover the identity of the woman in the photograph. If she was a person of social standing at all, the picture alone was motive for murder. He gave the sergeant a copy and had him try all the police stations in the inner city to see if anyone recognized her, and he took another copy himself, this time with the body carefully blocked out, to see if anyone in society knew her. She did not have to be a lady; even a maid, seeking to make a little money on the side with such things, would lose not only her present employment but any hope of future employment with all its security, clothes, regular meals, companionship, and certain status of belonging. That, too, could be cause for murder.

Of course, he went back to Vespasia.

She hesitated a long time before replying, weighing her answer so carefully he was more than half prepared for a lie.

“She reminds me of someone,” she said slowly, her head a little to one side, still considering it. “The hair is not right; I seem to feel it was done differently, if indeed I do know her. And perhaps it was a little darker.”

“Who is it?” he demanded, impatience boiling inside him. She might actually have the last clue to murder on the back of her tongue, and she was havering like a nervous bride.

She shook her head. “I don’t know—I just feel a certain familiarity.”

He let out his breath in a sigh of exasperation.

“There’s no use trying to goad me, Thomas,” she replied. “I am an old woman—”

“Rubbish!” he snapped. “If you are going to plead infirmity of mind—I’ll charge you with perjury!”

She smiled at him bleakly. “I do not know who it is, Thomas. Perhaps it is someone’s daughter, or even someone’s maid. Maybe I have normally seen that face under a lace cap? Hair makes a lot of difference, you know. But if I see her again, I shall send a messenger to you within the hour. You said you found this photograph in Godolphin Jones’s house, in his camera? Why is it so important?” She glanced at the picture still in her hand. “Is the rest of it indecent? Or is there some other person in it? Or perhaps both?”

“It is indecent,” he replied.

“Indeed.” She raised her eyebrows a little and handed it back to him. “Motive for murder then. I presumed so. Poor creature.”

“I must know who it is!”

“I appreciate your desire,” she said calmly. “You have not need to reinforce it.”

“If everyone were to go around murdering witnesses to indiscretion—” He was frustrated almost beyond the stretch of his temper. He was now nearly sure she was concealing something from him, if not knowledge, at least strong suspicion.

She cut across him. “I do not approve of murder, Thomas,” she said staring up at him. “If I remember who it is, I shall say so.”

He had to be content with that. He knew perfectly well she would say no more. He took his leave with as much grace as he could muster and went out into the thickening fog.

He spent most of the rest of the day inquiring, with the picture in his hand, but no one else was prepared to admit having known the woman, and by dusk he was cold, his legs and feet ached, there was a blister on his heel, and he was hungry and thoroughly miserable.

Then, as the fourth hansom cab passed him without stopping and left him islanded under the gas lamp in a sea of icy vapor, he had a sudden idea. He had temporarily forgotten all about the other corpses, presuming them incidental. They had all died naturally; only Godolphin Jones was murdered. But perhaps there was some bizarre connection? Horatio Snipe had been a procurer of women. Could his clientele have included Godolphin Jones—either for his own appetite or as subjects to photograph? Perhaps that was his particular fetish—lewd photography.

He ran out into the street, shouting at the next cab as it approached, and reluctantly it pulled to a halt.

“Resurrection Row!” he bellowed at the driver.

The man pulled a fearsome face but wheeled his horse round and started back, muttering angrily under his breath about darkness and graveyards, and what he hoped would happen to residents of such places if they hired cabs they could not pay for.

Pitt almost fell out at the other end, shoving coins at the alarmed driver, and strode down along the barely lit pavement to find number fourteen, where Horrie Snipe’s widow lived.

He had to knock and shout loudly enough to make a nuisance and send windows opening along the street with cries of abuse before she came to the door.

“All right!” she said furiously. “All right!” She opened it and glared at him; then, as she recognized him, her expression changed. “What do you want?” she said incredulously. “ ’Orrie’s dead, and buried twice! You oughta know that! It was you w’ot came wiv ’im the second time. Don’t say someone’s dug ’im up again?”

“No, Maizie, everything’s fine. Can I come in?”

“If you ’ave to. What do you want?”

He squeezed in past her. The room was small, but there was a fire burning strongly, and it was much cleaner than he would have expected. There was even rather a good pair of candlesticks on the mantel shelf, polished pewter, and lace antimacassars over the backs of the chairs.

“Well?” she demanded impatiently. “I ain’t got nuffink in ’ere as isn’t mine—if that’s what you’re thinking!”

“It wasn’t what I was thinking.” He pulled out the picture. “Do you know her, Maizie?”

She took it between her finger and thumb gingerly. “An’ what if I do?”

“There’s ten shillings in it for you,” he said rashly. “If you give me her name and where I can find her.”

“Bertha Mulligan,” she said, without hesitation. “Lodges with Mrs. Cuff, down at number one thirty-seven, straight down on the left-’and side. But you won’t find ’er at ’ome this time o’ the evening. I shouldn’t wonder. Beginning work about now.”

“Doing what?”

She gave a snort of disgust at his stupidity for asking. “On the streets, o’ course. Probably up in one of them cafes near the ’Aymarket. Good-lookin’ girl, Bertha.”

“I see. And does Mrs. Cuff have other lodgers?”

“If you mean does she run an ’ouse, then I says go and look for yourself. I don’t talk about me neighbors, same as I don’t expect no gossip about me, nor poor ’Orrie, when ’e was alive.”

“I see. Thank you, Maizie.”

“Where’s my ten bob?”

He fished in his pocket and brought out string, a knife, sealing wax, three pieces of paper, a packet of toffees, two keys, and about a pound’s worth of change. He counted out ten shillings for her, reluctantly; it had been a promise made in the heat of discovery. But her hand was out, and there was no going back on it. She snatched it, checking it minutely.

“Thank you.” She closed her grip on it like a dying man’s and put it into the reaches of her underskirts. “That’s Bertha, all right. Why do you want to know?”

“Her picture was found in a dead man’s house,” he replied.

“Murdered?”

“Yes.”

“Who was it, then?”

“Godolphin Jones, the artist.” She might not have heard of him. Probably she could not read, and the murder would be of little interest in this quarter.

She did not seem in the least surprised.

“Stupid girl,” she said imperturbably. “I told ’er not to go posin’ for ’im; better to stick to what she knows. But not ’er, would try to better ’erself. Greedy, she was. I never like things on paper, meself; only leads to trouble.”

He grabbed at her arm without thinking, and she pulled away sharply.

“You knew she posed for Godolphin Jones?” he demanded, holding onto her.

“Of course I did!” she snapped. “Do you take me for a fool? I know what goes on in that shop of ’is!”

“Shop! What shop?”

“That shop of ’is a number forty-seven, of course, where ’e takes all the photographs and sells them. Disgusting, I calls it. I can understand a man who wants a girl and can’t get one for ’isself, like what ’Orrie used to provide for; but one what gets ’is fun out o’ lookin’ at pictures, now that’s what I call un’ealthy!”

A flood of understanding washed over Pitt, and a whole world of possibilities opened.

“Thank you, Maizie.” He clasped her hand with a warmth that positively alarmed her. “You are a jewel among women, a lily growing in a rubbish yard. May heaven reward you!” And he turned and charged out of the door into the thick darkness of Resurrection Row, crowing with delight.

9

ALICIA FIRST HEARD of the death of Godolphin Jones from Dominic. He had spent a morning with Somerset Carlisle, going over the names of those they could count on to support them when the bill came before the House in a few days’ time, and the news had come, whispered from servant to servant around the Park. Carlisle’s kitchen maid had been keeping company with Jones’s footman and had been among the first to hear.

Dominic arrived at the Fitzroy-Hammond house before luncheon, looking breathless and a little white. He was shown straight into the room where Alicia was writing letters.

As soon as she saw him, she knew something else was wrong. The joy she had expected to feel evaporated, and she was aware only of anxiety.

“What is it?”

He did not take her hands as usual. “They found the body of Godolphin Jones this morning. He was murdered.” He made no attempt to tell her gently or evade the unpleasantness. Perhaps association with Somerset Carlisle and the workhouse in Seven Dials had made such qualities ridiculous, even an offense against reality. “He was strangled to death about three or four weeks ago,” he went on, “and buried in someone else’s grave—the man who fell off the cab and you first thought was Augustus. He turned out to be someone’s butler.”

She was stunned, bemused by the rapidity of fact after fact, all new and jarringly ugly. She had never even thought of Godolphin Jones as having anything to do with the corpses. In fact, since Augustus was buried again, she had tried to dismiss the whole matter from her thoughts. Dominic was far more important, and over the last week her feelings about him had been becoming gradually less complete, tinged with an unhappiness, or perhaps an anxiety, that she had tried alternately to resolve or to put from her mind. Now she simply stared at him.

“Naturally, they’ll be looking in the Park,” he went on.

She was still confused, not understanding him.

“Why? Why should anyone in the Park kill him?”

“I don’t know why anyone at all should kill him,” he said a trifle tersely. “But since you cannot strangle yourself, even by accident, obviously someone did.”

“But why here?” she persisted.

“Because he lived here, and Augustus lived here, and Augustus’s corpse turned up here.” He sat down suddenly. “I’m sorry. It’s wretched. But I had to warn you because Pitt is bound to come. Did you know him—Godolphin Jones?” He looked up at her.

“No, not really. I met him once or twice; he was socially acquainted. He seemed pleasant enough. He painted Gwendoline, and Hester, you know. And I believe all three of the Rodneys.”

“He didn’t paint you?” he asked, frowning a little.

“No, I didn’t really care for his work. And Augustus never expressed any wish for a portrait.” She turned away a little and moved closer to the fire. She was thinking of the murder, but it seemed very impersonal. No one she knew appeared to be involved; no one was threatened by an investigation. She remembered how terrified she had been when it had been Augustus—afraid other people would suspect her, then even worse, that they would suspect Dominic. To begin with, the idea had been something outside herself, outside both of them, and she had felt they stood together facing an undeserved suspicion from those whose ignorance or malice would eventually be proved wrong.

Then the old woman had sowed seeds in her mind of doubt that the circle was really so simple. Assuredly, there was the circle that enclosed both of them in a common motive and held them apart from others; but there was also another circle that enclosed her alone, and it was a double barrier. She was ashamed and frightened by it—but the thought had crept into her mind that Dominic might have killed Augustus. The old woman had said he did, and she had not brought the whole heart, the absolute conviction to denying it that she would have wished, indeed, expected. There was a streak in him, a childlike reaching for his wants, that had allowed her to believe it possible, even if only for an instant.

How well did she know him? She turned away from the fire to look at him now. He was still as handsome, with the elegant head and shoulders, the way the hair grew on his neck, strong, neatly curved to the nape. His face was the same, the lines of his smile, But how much more was there? What did he think, behind the face? Did she know those things, and did she love them, too?

When she looked at her own face in the glass, she saw even features, fine hair. When she moved closer, in the morning light, she saw all the tiny flaws, but she also knew how to disguise them. The whole was pleasing, even beautiful. Did Dominic see any more than that? Did he see the flaws and still love her, or would they disturb him, even repel him because it was not what he had looked for, believed in?

All he knew was the careful face she presented to him; her best. And perhaps she was at fault for that. She had taken so much trouble to hide all the other facets, the weaknesses and failings, because she wanted him to love her.

Had he wondered if she had killed Augustus? Was that why he had been cooler lately and so absorbed in this bill of Carlisle’s, not sharing it with her? She could have helped! She had every bit as many connections as he, in fact, more! If he had trusted her, felt that unity she believed was love, then he would have told her how he felt, what fear or pity Seven Dials had stirred in him. He would have tried to explain the confusion, in terms not of social wrong but of his own emotions.

He was looking at her now, waiting.

“I don’t suppose it has anything to do with us,” she said at last. “If Mr. Pitt comes here I shall see him, of course, but I cannot tell him anything of value.” She smiled, the nervousness all gone. Her stomach was as calm as sleep. They both knew what had happened, and it was a kind of release, like silence after a crescendo of music, too long and too loud—now she was back to reality again. “Thank you for coming. It was kind of you to tell me. It is always easier to learn of bad news from a friend than a stranger.”

He stood up very slowly. For a moment she thought he was going to argue, to try to pull back the threads; but he smiled, and for the first time they looked at each other without pretense or the delusionary quickening of the heart, the flutter, the urgent breath.

“Of course,” he said quietly. “Perhaps it will be solved before it needs to trouble us. Now I must go and see Fleetwood. The bill comes up very soon now.”

“I know several people I might approach,” she said quickly.

“Do you?” His face was keen, Jones forgotten. “Would you ask them? Anything you want to know, call on Carlisle; he’ll be terribly grateful.”

“I have already written a few letters—”

“That’s marvelous! You know, I think we really have a chance!”

After he had gone she felt a loneliness, but it was not a painful, anxious thing as it used to be, a longing to know when he would return, worrying about all she had said and done, whether she had been foolish, or too cold, or too forward, wondering what he felt, or thought of her. This was more like the emptiness of a summer morning when the whole sky is clear with the day before you, and you have no obligations and no idea what you intend to do.

The morning after he had spoken to Maizie Snipe, Pitt was back in Resurrection Row with a constable and a warrant to search the premises of number forty-seven.

It was what he had expected, a photographic studio complete with all the props necessary for rather glossy pornography: colored lights, animal skins, a few lengths of fabric of various vivid dyes, headdresses of feathers, strings of beads, and an enormous bed. The walls were covered with very skilled and very varied photographs, all of them highly erotic.

“Cor!” The constable breathed out tremulously, not sure what emotion he dare express. His eyes were as round as boiled sweets, and twice as glazed.

“Precisely,” Pitt agreed. “A flourishing business, I should say. Before you disturb anything, look at everything very carefully and see if you can see any marks of blood, or evidence of violence. He may well have been killed here. I should think there are a couple of hundred motives hanging on these walls or stuffed in the drawers.”

“Oh!” The constable stood motionless, appalled by the thought.

“Get on with it,” Pitt urged. “We’ve a lot to do. When you’ve searched everything, start putting those photographs in order; see how many different faces we’ve got.”

“Oh, Mr. Pitt, sir! We’re never going to try and identify all them lot! It’ll take years! And who’s going to admit to it, anyway? Can you see any young girl saying ‘Yes, that’s me’? I ask you!”

“If it’s her face in the picture, she can’t very well argue, can she?” Pitt pointed to the far corner and jerked his head expressively. “Get on with it!”

“My wife’d have a fit if she knew I was doing this!”

“Then don’t tell her,” Pitt said sharply. “But I’ll have one if you don’t, and I’m much more of a force to be reckoned with than she is!”

The constable pulled a face and squinted at the photographs with one eye.

“Don’t you believe it, sir,” he said, but he obeyed and within a few minutes had discovered marks of blood on the floor and on an overturned stool. “This is where ’e was killed, I reckin,” he said decisively, pleased with himself. “See it plain, if you know where to look. Reckin ’e was likely ’it with this.” He touched the stool.

It was after the examination and the measuring that Pitt left the constable to begin the immense task of sorting the photographs to identify the girls. It was for Pitt to consider the other half of the trade—the clients. Naturally, Jones was more discreet than to write down names of those who might be sensitive, even violent, about their association, but Pitt thought he knew at least where he might begin: with the book of numbers and insects from Jones’s desk in his house. He had seen four of those elegant little hieroglyphics on pictures in Gadstone Park. Now he would go and question their owners,. Perhaps they held an explanation to at least one mystery: why anyone should pay so highly for the work of an artist that was at best of very moderate talent.

He began with Gwendoline Cantlay, and this time he came to the point after only the briefest of preliminaries.

“You paid a great deal of money for your portrait by Mr. Jones, Lady Cantlay.”

She was cautious, already sensing something beyond trivial enquiry. “I paid the usual price, Mr. Pitt, as I think you will discover if you look a little further.”

“The usual price for Mr. Jones, ma’am,” he agreed. “But not usual for an artist of his rather indifferent quality.”

Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. “Are you an art expert, Inspector?” she said heavily.

“No, but I have opportunity to counsel with experts, ma’am, and they seem to be agreed that Godolphin Jones was not worth anything like the prices he received here in the Park.”

She opened her mouth and began a question, then stopped. “Indeed. Perhaps art is only a matter of taste, after all.”

This was a scene he had played put so many times and always disliked. Secrets were almost always a matter of vulnerability, an attempt to hide or reject a hurt of some sort.

But he had no alternative. Plastering over truth was not his job, even though he would like it to have been.

“Are you sure, ma’am, that he was not selling something else with his painting—perhaps discretion?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” It was the standard response, and he could almost have said it for her. She was going to resist as long as possible, make him spell out his knowledge.

“Were you not at one time fonder of Mr. Jones than you would wish known, Lady Cantlay—especially, say, by your husband?”

Her face flushed scarlet, and it was several painful seconds before she could decide what to say to him, whether to continue to deny it, or if anger would help. In the end she recognized the certainty in his face and gave in.

“I was extremely foolish, carried away by the glamour of an artist, I suppose—and flattered—but it is all past, Inspector, some time ago. And yes, you are correct. I did commission the picture before my—relationship—and then paid rather more for it when it was completed, to insure his silence. I would not have accepted it for such an amount, otherwise.” She hesitated, and he waited for her. “I—I would be obliged if you would not discuss it with my husband. He does not know of it.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Oh, yes, of course I am! He would be—” All the color drained from her skin. “Oh! Godolphin was murdered! You cannot think Desmond—I assure you, I give you my most absolute word—that he did not know! He could not have. It was all most discreet—only when I went to sit for my portrait—” She did not know what else to say to convince him, and she cast around for some form of proof.

It was against all his convictions to feel sorry for her, and yet he did. They had nothing in common, and her behavior had been self-indulgent and thoughtless, but he found that he did believe her and had no wish to prolong her fear.

“Thank you, Lady Cantlay. If he did not know of the matter, he would have had no cause to wish Mr. Jones any harm, so far as we know. I appreciate your candor. The subject need not be raised again.” He stood up. “Good day.”

She was too relieved to say anything but a faint, automatic “good day” in return.

Pitt called next on Major Rodney, and here his reception was totally different, wiping away every trace of the rather ebullient feeling with which he had left the Cantlays’. Self-satisfaction disappeared like water down a large sink.

“You are extremely insolent, sir!” the major said furiously. “And I have not the least notion of what you are imagining! This is Gadstone Park, not one of your back streets. I don’t know what kind of behavior you are accustomed to, but we know how to conduct ourselves here! And if you persist in suggesting that my sisters have had some sort of liaison with this wretched artist, I shall sue you for slander, do you understand me, sir?”

Pitt tried with difficulty to keep his patience. The idea of Godolphin Jones in a romantic involvement with either of the two elderly jam-making ladies was ridiculous, and in taking refuge behind it, Major Rodney was obscuring the issue very effectively, whether on purpose or not. Pitt doubted him capable of the strategy, but the result was the same.

“I have not suggested anything of the kind, sir,” he said as calmly as he was able, but the hard, frayed edges of his temper showed. “Indeed, the possibility had not occurred to me. Both because I would not have considered your sisters to be ladies of a temperament or an age to indulge in such things, nor did I know they had purchased the pictures themselves. I had believed it to be you who had commissioned Mr. Jones?”

The major was temporarily thrown off balance. His cause for outrage had vanished just as he was getting into his stride and all ready to demand that Pitt leave the house.

Pitt pressed home his advantage. “Are the ladies of private property?” he asked. They were both unmarried and could not be heiresses since they had a brother, so it was almost impossible, and he knew it.

The major was growing increasingly redder in the face. “Our financial affairs are not your concern, sir!” he snapped. “I dare say it would seem like wealth to you, but it is merely adequate for us. We do not care to be ostentatious, but we have means, certainly. And that is all I am prepared to say.”

“But you did commission two large and expensive picture from Mr. Jones, costing nine hundred seventy-five pounds in total?” Pitt had added up the columns next to the caterpillars and had the satisfaction of seeing the major’s face pale and his neck tighten with shock.

“I—I demand to know where you gained such information. Who told you?”

Pitt opened his eyes wider, as if the question were foolish.

“Mr. Jones kept records, sir, very precise records; dates and amounts of payments. I had only to add them up to find the total. It was hardly necessary to trouble anyone else.”

The major’s body went slack, and he sat like a well-trained child at table, eyes forward, hands still, but no substance inside him. For a long time he was silent, and Pitt hated the necessity for digging out of him whatever wretched secret it was that Jones had blackmailed him with. But there was no alternative. There was no time of the crime to use to eliminate people, no weapon but hands, the strength of which would almost certainly rule out a woman, certainly any society woman. Possibly a servant used to manual work, wringing heavy, wet laundry, might have had the power? At the moment he could think of no avenue except to learn all the truth he could.

The major was a small man, inarticulate, rigidly stiff within himself both bodily and emotionally, but he had been a soldier; he had seen death before and been taught how to kill, had learned to become familiar with the idea and to accept it as part of himself, to know that at times it could be his duty. Was his secret of sufficient importance to him that he would have strangled Godolphin Jones and then buried him in Albert Wilson’s grave?

“Why did you pay so much for those two pictures, Major Rodney?” Pitt pressed again.

The major focused his eyes and looked at him with dislike.

“Because that was the man’s price,” he said coldly. “I am no expert in art. That was what everyone else paid him. If it was excessive, then I was misled. So were we all! The man was a charlatan, if what you say is true. But you will forgive me if I do not accept your opinion as final?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm, and from the weight of his tone, Pitt guessed it an unfamiliar sentiment.

Major Rodney stood up. “And now, sir, I have said all I have to say to you. I wish you good day.”

There was no point in struggling, and Pitt knew it. He would have to find out the secret some other way and return when he had more ammunition. Perhaps it was only some foolishness, something Jones had discovered from another patron, possibly an indiscretion with a woman, and Rodney’s sense of honor forbade him from saying so. Or maybe it was a genuine matter of shame to him, an incident of cowardice in the Crimea, or some other barrack-room weakness, a gambling debt welched on, or a drunken escapade.

For now he would have to leave it.

In the early afternoon he called on St. Jermyn and found that he was out, at the House of Lords. He was obliged to return in the evening, cold and tired and well past the best of his temper.

His lordship was also irritated at not being able to relax and forget the business of the day over a glass of something from the pick of his cellars before considering dinner. He was civil to Pitt with something of an effort.

“I have already told you everything I know about the man,” he said tartly, moving over to the fire. “He was a fashionable artist. I commissioned a picture from him to please my wife. I expect I have met him socially on one or two occasions; after all, he lived here in the Park, but I meet hundreds of people. I recall he was a trifle odd-looking; rather too much hair.” He gave Pitt a sour look, his eye going to Pitt’s own scruffy head. “But then, one expects artists to be a little affected,” he continued. “It was not enough to be offensive, just rather obvious. I’m sorry the fellow is dead, but I dare say he mixed with a few less salubrious people. Possibly he became over-familiar with one of his models. As well as society, artists frequently paint women of far lower classes who happen to have the coloring or the features they want. I imagine you know that as well as I do. I should look for a jealous lover or husband, if I were you.”

“We haven’t been able to trace any pictures of women other than society portraits,” Pitt replied. “He doesn’t seem to have been prolific at all; in fact, rather reserved, but anything he did do, he sold at greatly inflated prices.”

“So you implied before,” St. Jermyn said drily. “I don’t have any comment on that. I would have thought portraits needed only to please the sitter. One seldom would wish to resell them. They usually get relegated to a back hallway or stair if one loses one’s taste for them; otherwise, they remain wherever they were hung in the first place.”

“You paid a considerable amount for the portrait of Lady St. Jermyn,” Pitt tried again.

St. Jermyn’s eyebrows rose. “You also remarked on that the last time you were here. She seemed to like the picture, which was all that concerned me. If I did pay too much, then I was duped. I’m really not very concerned about it. I don’t see why you should be.”

Pitt had already racked his brain to think of some reason, any at all, why Jones should have been able to put pressure on St. Jermyn to buy a picture he did not like, or at a price he thought unfair, but he had come up with nothing. To press Lady Cantlay in return for discretion would be easy, and recalling the stiff, nervous figure of the major, that was certainly believable, although he did not yet know the reason. A middle-aged, socially inarticulate man living with two maiden sisters—the probability was obvious—another indiscretion. Pride would force the major to pay for silence.

But St. Jermyn was a totally different man. There was no fear in him. He would cover his indiscretions, if there were any and he cared about them, which again was doubtful. And there was no other crime that Pitt knew of. Lord Augustus had died normally, or if he had not it was unprovable, and of no interest he knew of to St. Jermyn either way. All the others—Arthur Wilson, Porteous, and Horrie Snipe—had also died naturally and again, as far as Pitt knew, had no connection with St. Jermyn.

“If it was a jealous lover or husband,” Pitt said slowly, “why was he found in another man’s grave?”

“To hide him, I presume!” St. Jermyn said impatiently “I would have thought that was obvious. A fresh-dug grave anywhere in London except in a graveyard would excite attention pretty quickly. You can’t go digging up parks, and if you put it in your own garden it would be damning if it were found. In someone else’s freshly turned grave, it would invite no remark at all.”

“But why put the corpse of Albert Wilson on a cab box?”

“I really don’t know, Inspector! It is your job to find that out, not mine! Possibly there was no reason at all. It sounds the bizarre kind of thing an artist might do. More likely the grave was already robbed, and he merely took an excellent opportunity when it was presented to him.”

Pitt had already thought of that for himself, but he was still hoping for a new thread, some error of control, a slip of the tongue that would give him another line to follow.

“Did Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond know Mr. Jones?” he asked as innocently as he could.

St. Jermyn looked at him coldly. “Not so far as I am aware. And if you are suggesting he might have had some sort of affaire with one of Jones’s models, I think it highly unlikely.”

Pitt had to admit to himself it would also be too much of a coincidence if Augustus had first killed Jones and taken advantage of the grave robber’s activities to hide him, and then immediately afterwards died himself and become a victim of the same robber. He looked across at St. Jermyn and fancied he saw a perception of the unlikelihood in his face also, and a barely concealed and rapidly growing impatience.

Pitt tried to think of something else to ask, anything that might draw more information, but St. Jermyn was not a man who could be manipulated, and Pitt gave in, at least for the time being.

“Thank you, my lord,” he said stiffly. “I appreciate your time.”

“A matter of duty,” St. Jermyn acknowledged drily. “The footman will see you out.”

There was nothing to do but accept it with as much grace as possible, and he left the bright room and accompanied the liveried footman to the step and out into the thick, obliterating fog.

Dominic had seldom been so enveloped and excited by anything as he was by St. Jermyn’s bill. Now that he had ceased to fight it in his mind and given himself over to it, he found more and more pleasure in Carlisle’s company. He was literate, intelligent, and, above all, an enthusiast. He had the rare gift of being able to pursue even the most appalling facts about workhouse conditions without losing his optimism that something could be done to alleviate them, or his ability to find humor, however wry, in the midst of what would otherwise have been despair.

Dominic found it hard to emulate. He had sought out Lord Fleetwood with trepidation and some self-consciousness. The friendship had increased more easily than he had expected; his natural charm was something he always underrated. But he never managed to guide the conversation successfully into the reality of workhouse tragedy. Every time it was acknowledged in words, they rang hollow, like one reciting with perfect pronunciation a language he does not understand.

After two attempts Dominic became more conscious of the urgency and admitted frankly to Carlisle that he needed his help.

Accordingly, the day after, because of the influence Fleetwood might have, Carlisle joined Dominic and Fleetwood in the Park for a spanking drive at a speed that scattered the few pedestrians and sent other drivers and riders into paroxysms of rage or envy, depending upon the strength and direction of their own ambitions.

Dominic had driven, and although it was with a recklessness he would not normally have dared, today he was past caring for anything so trivial as social outrage or a few thrown paraders landed hard upon their dignity on the damp ground.

“Marvelous!” Fleetwood said with delight, catching his breath. “My God, Dominic, you drive like Jehu! I swear I never though you had it in you. If you come and drive my team in the spring, I’ll consider it a favor from you.”

“Of course,” Dominic agreed instantly, his mind on the workhouse, and a trade favor for favor. He would not even consider now how he could find the courage to drive in such a fashion in cold blood, and with weeks to contemplate it beforehand and to fully appreciate all the possible disasters. He thrust it away to some improbable future. “Delighted to!”

“Brilliant,” Carlisle agreed, his tongue in his cheek, but Fleetwood did not see it. “You have a natural art, Dominic.” He turned to Fleetwood, both their faces red with cold and the fierce wind of their passage. “But you have a very fine team, indeed, my lord. I’ve seen few better animals. Though I think perhaps the springing of your carriage could be improved a little.”

Fleetwood grinned. He was a pleasant young man, not handsome, but of a countenance that spoke of abundant good nature.

“Bounce you around a bit, did it? Never mind, good for the digestion.”

“Wasn’t thinking of the digestion,” Carlisle replied with a smile. “Or the bruises. Rather more of the balance of the thing. A well-balanced carriage is a lot easier on the horses, takes the corners better, and is less likely to overturn if you get some idiot run into you. And of course if you do get an excitable animal, less likely for the whole thing to get away with you.”

“Damn, but you’re right!” Fleetwood said cheerfully. “Sorry I misjudged you. Sold you short a bit. I’ll have to get it seen to. Must have it right.”

“I know a chap in the Devil’s Acre who can spring a carriage to balance like a bird in flight,” Carlisle offered with a casual air as if it were of no interest to him, merely a graceful gesture after an early morning’s companionship.

“The Devil’s Acre?” Fleetwood said incredulously. “Where the deuce is that?”

“Around Westminster.” Carlisle threw it away. Dominic watched him with admiration. If he could have been so light, perhaps he could have interested Fleetwood. He had been too earnest, too full of urgency and the horror of it. No one but a ghoul wanted horror, least of all with breakfast!

“Around Westminster?” Fleetwood repeated. “You mean that awful slum area? Is that what they call it?”

“Appropriate, I would have thought.” Carlisle’s peaked eyebrows went up. “Filthy place.”

“What took you there?” Fleetwood handed the horse over to the groom, and the three of them went together toward the public house where breakfast and a steaming drink awaited them.

“Oh, this and that.” Carlisle dismissed it with a wave of his arm, as though it were gentleman’s business that any other gentleman would understand and be too discreet to mention further.

“It’s slums,” Fleetwood said again when they were inside and well started on a rich and excellent meal. “How would anyone there know about balancing and springing a carriage? There isn’t room to drive one, let alone race it.”

Carlisle finished his mouthful and swallowed. “Used to be an ostler,” he said easily. “Stole from his master, or anyway was accused of it, fell on hard times. Simple.”

Fleetwood loved and understood horses. He felt a comradeship with those who tended them and were obliged to make a living. He had spent many a companionable hour swapping opinions and tales with his own grooms.

“Poor beggar,” he said with feeling. “Maybe he’d be glad of a job, a few shillings for seeing what he can do to improve that carriage of mine.”

“I should think so,” Carlisle agreed. “Always try him, if you like. Moves around a bit, have to catch him soon.”

“Good idea, if you’d dome the kindness. Appreciate it. Where do I find him?”

Carlisle smiled broadly. “In the Devil’s Acre? You’d never find him alone this side of doomsday. I’ll take you.”

“I’d be obliged. Sounds an insalubrious spot.”

“Oh, it is,” Carlisle agreed. “It is, indeed. But skill is often to be found best where it grows the hardest. There is something in Mr. Darwin’s idea of survival of the fittest, you know; as long as you count cleverest, strongest, and most cunning as the fittest and don’t tangle it up with any moral ideas. Fittest needs to mean fittest to survive, not most virtuous, most patient, most charitable, or of most benefit to the rest of mankind.”

Dominic kicked him abruptly under the table and saw his face tweak with pain. He was terrified he would spoil the whole issue by moralizing and lose Fleetwood even now.

“You’re saying that the race does go to the swift and the battle to the strong, after all?” Fleetwood took himself another helping of kedgeree.

“No.” Carlisle refrained from rubbing his ankle with difficulty, but he did not look at Dominic. “Only that places like the Devil’s Acre breed peculiar skills, because without them the poor do not survive. The fortunate can be any kind of a fool and get by, but the unfortunate have to have a use to someone, or they assuredly perish.”

Fleetwood screwed up his face. “That seems a little cynical, if I may say so. Still, I would like to see this fellow of yours; you’ve convinced me he knows what he’s doing.”

Carlisle smiled, his face suddenly alight with warmth. Fleetwood responded like a flower opening to the sun. He smiled back, and Dominic found himself included in the blithe good fellowship. He felt a little guilty because he knew what Fleetwood had in front of him, but he refused to think of it now. It was a good cause, a necessary one. He smiled back with equal charm and an almost straight eye.

The Devil’s Acre was horrific. In the pall of smoke and fog the great towers of the minster hung over them, their Gothic glory lost in wraiths of vapor. All the bracing air of the Park was stilled and dampened to a chill stagnancy that sat like dead water from the shadows of the towers in the sky, past the pillared and porticoed homes of the rich and business houses, down to the modest dwellings of traders and clerks. Below them was a separate world of its own, a world of creaking, rat-ridden tenements with teeming alleys, of walls that were forever wet and crumbling, of air that was soured by rimed mold. Idlers, beggars, and drunks littered the way.

Carlisle strode through it as though it were nothing to remark.

“Oh, God!” Fleetwood clutched his nose and darted a desperate glance at Dominic, but Carlisle was not waiting. If they were not to lose him they must follow closely— heaven forbid they should become lost in such a hellhole as this!

Carlisle appeared to know where he was going. He picked his way over sleeping drunks under a pile of newspapers, kicked an empty bottle out of the way, and climbed up a flight of rickety stairs. They swayed under his weight, and Fleetwood looked alarmed as Dominic hastened him onto them also.

“Do you think they’ll hold?” he asked, knocking his hat askew on the beam above.

“God knows,” Dominic replied, stepping past him and going up. A good deal of his mind sympathized with Fleetwood, recalling his own feelings in Seven Dials, which had been less fearful than this. But there was also a strong tide in him that enjoyed it, tasting what Carlisle knew, the passion to alter this world, to force the innocent, the unknowing to look at it, to see and taste all of it, and to care. The emotion inside him was fierce, almost volcanic. He went up the stairs two by two and dived after Carlisle into a fetid mass of rooms where families of tens and dozens sat in the sickly light, carving, polishing, sewing, weaving, or gluing together to make all manner of articles to be sold for a few pence. Children as small as three or four years old sat tied to their mothers by string so they did not wander from work. Every time one of them stopped his labor or fell asleep, the mother would clout him over the head to wake him up and remind him that idle hands made for empty stomachs.

The smell was fearful, a mixture of wet mold, smoke and coal fumes, sewage, and unwashed bodies.

At the far end of the particular tenement they emerged into a dank courtyard that must once have been a mews, and Carlisle stopped and knocked on a cutaway door.

Dominic looked at Fleetwood. His face was pale, and his eyes looked deep and frightened. Dominic guessed he would long ago have run away had he had even the faintest idea which way to go or how to get back to the world he knew. He must have seen things even his nightmares had not conjured up.

The door opened, and a lean, bent little man peered out. He seemed to be lop-shouldered, as if one side of him were longer than the other. It was a moment before he recognized Carlisle.

“Oh, it’s you, is it? What do you want this time?”

“A little of your skill, Timothy,” Carlisle said with a smile. “For a consideration, naturally.”

“What kind of skill?” Timothy demanded, looking suspiciously over Carlisle’s shoulder at Dominic and Fleetwood. “Not rozzers, are they?”

“Shame on you, Timothy!” Carlisle said with heavy disgust. “When did you ever know me to keep company with the police?”

“What skill?” Timothy repeated.

“Why, the balancing of fine carriages, of course,” Carlisle said with a twist to his face. “His lordship here,” he indicated Fleetwood, “has an excellent pair, and a fine chance of winning a few gentlemen’s races, private wagers and the like, if he can get his carriage balanced to do justice to them.”

Timothy’s face lit up. “Ah! Course I can do suffink about that! Balancin’ makes all the difference. Where’s this ’ere carriage, then? You tell me, and I’ll fix it for yer to run smooth as a weasel, I will. For a consideration, like?”

“Of course,” Fleetwood agreed quickly. “Holcombe Park House. I’ll write the address for you—”

“No good, guv—I don’t read. Tell me—I remember anything. Reckon it dulls the memory, readin’? Don’t do you no good, in the long run. Reckon them as writes down everythin’ don’t remember their own name, if they keeps it up long enough.”

Carlisle never missed a chance. He took this one as a swift bird takes an insect on the wing, with barely a flicker.

“But there’s work for men who can read and write, Timothy,” he said, leaning on the door. “Regular work, in offices that close in the evening and send you home. Jobs that pay enough money to live on.”

Timothy spat. “I’d die of hunger and old age afore I learn to read and write now!” he said in disgust. “Don’t know what you want to say a thing like that for!”

Carlisle patted the man’s shoulder. “For the future, Timothy,” he said quietly. “And for those who don’t know how to balance a racing gig.”

“There’s ’undreds o’ thousands what can’t read nor write!” Timothy looked at him sourly.

“I know that,” Carlisle conceded. “And there are hundreds of thousands who are hungry—in fact, I believe it’s roughly one in four in London—but is that any reason why you shouldn’t have a good meal, if you can get it?”

Timothy’s face screwed up, and he looked at Fleetwood.

Fleetwood rose to the occasion.

“A good meal, all you can eat before you do the job,” he promised. “And a guinea afterwards. I’ll make a wager—a fiver if I win the first race with it after that—”

“You’re on!” Timothy said instantly. “I’ll be there for dinner tonight, start work in the morning.”

“Good. You can sleep in the stable.”

Timothy lifted his scruffy hat in a sort of salute, perhaps a sealing of the bargain, and Carlisle turned to leave again.

Fleetwood repeated the address, with instructions on how to reach it, then ran after Carlisle before he was lost to sight and he found himself marooned in the nightmare place.

They passed through the worst of the rookery again and toppled out into the fine rain of a narrow street almost underneath the shadow of the church.

“Dear God!” Fleetwood wiped his face. “Makes me think of Dante and the gates of hell—what was it written over the cave?”

“‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,’” Carlisle said quietly.

“How in the name of humanity do they bear it?” Fleetwood turned up his collar and drove his hands into his pockets.

“It’s better than the workhouse,” Carlisle replied. “At least they reckon it is. Personally, it seems much the same to me.”

Fleetwood stopped. “Better!” he said in broad disbelief. “What are you talking about, man? The workhouse provides food and shelter, safety! It’s a charitable place.”

All the anger was purged out of Carlisle’s face; his voice was a gentle as milk. “Have you ever been to one?”

Fleetwood was surprised. “No,” he said honestly. “Have you?”

“Oh, yes.” Carlisle started walking again. “I’ve been working quite hard on this bill of St. Jermyn’s. I dare say you’ve heard of it?”

“Yes,” Fleetwood said slowly. “Yes, I have.” He did not look at Dominic, and Dominic did not dare to look at him. “I suppose you’d like my help when it comes up in the House?” Fleetwood said casually.

Carlisle flashed him a dazzling smile.

“Yes—yes, please, I would.”

Alicia had written to everyone she could think of, recalling a good few of Augustus’s relatives who had married well and whom she would never have contacted for any other reason. She found most of them insufferably dull, but the cause overrode all her previous inhibitions.

When she had exhausted her imagination on the subject and everything was sealed and in the post, she decided to go for a walk in the Park, in spite of the miserable weather. She had a feeling of good spirits inside her that simply cried for exercise, for the stretching of the body and opening of the lungs. Had it not been so absolutely ridiculous she would have liked to run and skip like a child.

She was striding along in a fashion unbefitting a lady, her head in the air, enjoying the bleak beauty of the trees against the ragged clouds far above. In the Park it was almost still; heavy drops glistened and dripped from twigs. She had never considered February had any loveliness before, but now she took pleasure in the stark simplicity of it, the soft, subdued colors.

She had stopped to watch a bird in branches above her when she was aware of overhearing a conversation immediately the other side of the tree.

“Did you really?” The voice was so soft that she did not at first recognize it.

There appeared to be no answer.

“Come and tell me all about it then,” the voice continued.

Again there was silence, except for a faint squeak.

“My, well, how about that! You are a clever girl.”

Then she knew it; at least she was almost sure she did. It sounded too soft, too American to be anyone but Virgil Smith.

But whom on earth was he talking to?

“My, you are beautiful! Well, come on now, tell me all about it.”

An appalling thought came to her; he must be making advances to some servant or streetwalker! How dreadful! And she had accidentally come upon him. How could she possibly get away without embarrassing them both quite unforgettably? She froze.

Still there was no reply from whomever he was speaking to.

“You pretty thing.” He was still talking gently, softly. “You beautiful girl.”

She could not stay any longer overhearing a conversation that was obviously desperately private. She took a step to creep, in the lee of the tree trunk, till she was back on the path and could affect not to have noticed him.

Her foot cracked on a twig, and it broke loudly.

He stood up and came around, enormous in a greatcoat; square, like the tree itself.

Alicia shut her eyes, her face burning up with her distress for him. She was sure it must be scarlet. She would have given anything not to have been witness to his shameful conduct.

“Good morning, Lady Alicia,” he said with the softness she had heard in it before.

“Good morning, Mr. Smith,” she replied, swallowing hard. She must force herself to carry it off with some aplomb. He was an American and a social impossibility, but she should know how to conduct herself whatever the occasion.

She opened her eyes.

He was standing in front of her, holding a little calico cat that was stretching and curling under his arms. He saw her glazed look and glanced down at the animal, his fingers running gently over its fur. She could hear the little creature singing even from where she was.

The color rose up to his face also when he realized she had overheard him talking to it.

“Oh,” he said a little awkwardly. “Don’t mind me, ma’am. I often talk to animals, especially cats. I’m kind of fond of this one in particular.”

She breathed out a sigh of immense relief. She found she was grinning foolishly, a sudden, bubbling happiness inside her. She stretched out her fingers to touch the cat.

Virgil Smith was smiling, too, a shining tenderness in his face.

For the first time she recognized it and knew what it was. Only for a moment did it surprise her; then it seemed like something familiar, amazing and beautiful, like the leaves bursting open in the milky sunshine of spring.

10

PITT CONSIDERED WHAT might be reasonable, what he might expect to receive, and then requested three additional constables to help him with the enormous task of sorting and identifying the photographs in Godolphin Jones’s shop.

He was granted one, along with the one he already had.

He dispatched them both back to Resurrection Row with instructions to find a name for every face, and then an occupation and a social background, but not to allow any part of the picture to be seen other than the head and to ask no questions and to give no information as to where or in what circumstances the photographs had been found. This last instruction had been repeated to him by his superiors with much anxiety and a great deal of hemming and hawing as to whether there might not be some other way of tackling the whole matter. One superintendent even suggested tentatively that perhaps it would be advisable to overlook the tragedy as insoluble and turn their attention to something else. There was, for example, a nasty case of burglary that was still outstanding, and it would be a most useful thing if they could recover the property.

Pitt pointed out that Jones had been a society artist and that anyone who had lived in an area like Gadstone Park could not be murdered and then merely forgotten, or other residents of such areas would feel distinctly uneasy as to their own future safety.

The point was conceded him, unhappily.

Then Pitt himself went back to the Park and Major Rodney. This time he would not be put off by the major’s anger or protestations; he could no longer afford to be. If the murderer of Godolphin Jones had taken advantage of the grave robbings to hide his own crime, as St. Jermyn had suggested, then the death of Lord Augustus was irrelevant. There was no point in looking any further for sense or connection between Albert Wilson, Horrie Snipe, W. W. Porteous, and Lord Augustus, because there was none. As far as either motive or means was concerned, the murder of Godolphin Jones stood alone. The key to them surely lay in the pornography shop in Resurrection Row, or in the little book with its hieroglyphic insects, or both.

It was possible the murderer was one of any number of women whose faces were on those photographs, or perhaps someone else he had blackmailed as he had done Gwendoline Cantlay. But surely the number of affaires he had had must be severely limited by both time and opportunity. By all accounts he was not an abnormally charming man. He might have flattered liberally, but society beauties were used to that. On the whole, Pitt inclined to think his romantic opportunities slight. The blackmail must lie in other areas as well, which brought Pitt back once again to Resurrection Row and the photographs.

He was at Major Rodney’s door. The butler answered and suffered him to enter with the look of weary acceptance of one who is resigned to something unpleasant but inevitable. Pitt had felt the same when toothache had finally driven him to the dentist.

The major received him with ill-concealed impatience.

“I have nothing else to add, Inspector Pitt,” he said, waspishly. “If you cannot do better than to go over and over old ground, pestering people, then it would be better if you were to pass the case over to someone more competent. You are making a nuisance of yourself!”

Pitt would not be pressured to apologize. It stuck in his throat. “Murder is an untidy and annoying business, sir,” he replied.

He towered over the major, putting him at a disadvantage. The major waved to a chair and ordered Pitt to sit down. He sat on a straight-backed chair himself, ramrod-stiff, reversing the advantage so now he could look down on Pitt, sprawled in a deep sofa, his coat falling open and his scarf undone in the warmth of the room.

The major’s confidence was somewhat restored.

“Well, what is it now?” he demanded. “I have told you that I had very little personal acquaintance with Mr. Jones, no more than civility required, and I have shown you the portraits. I really cannot think of anything else. I am not a man to make other people’s business my concern. I do not listen to gossip, and I will not permit my sisters to repeat such as they cannot help overhearing, since it is in the nature of women to talk, mostly upon trivial matters.”

Pitt would like to have argued—he could imagine what Charlotte would have said to such a condemnation of women—but the major would not have understood him, and he had no place to discuss such subjects. This was not a friendship and they were not equals; it was not for him to question the major’s convictions.

“Indeed,” he replied. “Gossip can be a great evil, and much of it is false. Although I have often gained valuable insight into the nature or personality of people by listening to it. What one man says of another may be false, but the fact that he says it at all tells me—”

“That the man is a gossipmonger and a liar to boot!” the major snapped. “I have nothing but contempt for you, or for an occupation which obliges you to indulge in such vices!” He stared at Pitt fiercely, seeming to burn him with indignation.

“Precisely,” Pitt agreed. “What a man says may tell nothing of the object of his speech, but it tells a great deal about him.”

“What?” The major was startled. It took him several moments to digest Pitt’s meaning.

“When you open your mouth you may or may not betray another, but you assuredly betray yourself,” Pitt repeated. A new thought had come to him, about Major Rodney and his feelings towards women.

“Huh!” the major snorted. “Never went in for sophistry. Soldier—all my life. Man for doing things, not sitting around talking about it. Better for you if you’d been in the army, make a man of you.” He looked at Pitt’s clothes, the way he was sitting, and Pitt could almost see in his face the vision of the drill sergeant, the barber, and the parade ground, and the miraculous change that could be wrought in a man. He smiled, blissful that it would never be.

“Of course, there are many women with mischievous tongues,” Pitt observed, feeding the major the thoughts he wanted. “And idleness is a schoolmaster of evil.”

The major was again surprised. He had not expected such perception in a policeman, especially this one. “Quite,” he agreed. “That is why I do all I can to see that my sisters are kept occupied. Good, homely tasks, and of course such study as they are capable of, in the care of homes and gardens, and so forth.”

“What about current affairs, or a little history?” Pitt inquired, leading him gently.

“Current affairs? Don’t be foolish, man. Women have neither the interest nor the capacity for such things. And it is unsuitable in them. I see you don’t know women very well!”

“Not very,” Pitt lied. “I believe you were married, sir?”

The major blinked. He had not anticipated the question. “I was. My wife died a long time ago.”

“Very unfortunate,” Pitt commiserated. “Were you married long?”

“A year.”

“Tragic.”

“All over now. Got over it years ago. Not like getting used to a thing. Hardly knew her, really. I was a soldier—away fighting for my Queen and country. Price of duty.”

“Quite so.” Pitt did not have to affect pity; he was beginning to feel it like a welling, bitter spring inside him as his idea grew stronger. “And women are not always the companions one hopes,” he added.

The major’s face sank into lines of quiet reflection, looking back on disillusions. The reality was unpleasing, but the recognition of it gave him a certain satisfaction in having overcome, even a sense of superiority over those who had yet to face it.

“They are different from men,” he agreed. “Shallow creatures, for the most; nothing to talk about but fashion, the way they look, and other similar foolishness. Always laughing at nothing at all. A man cannot take much of that, unless he’s as big a fool as they are.”

The idea crystallized in Pitt’s brain. Now was the time to put it to the test. “Extraordinary thing about these bodies,” he said casually.

The major’s head jerked up. “Bodies? What bodies?”

“Keep turning up.” Pitt watched him. “First the man on the cab box, then Lord Augustus, then Porteous, then Horatio Snipe.” He saw the major’s eye flicker and his Adam’s apple move. “Did you know Horrie Snipe, sir?”

“Never heard of him.” The major swallowed.

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Do you question my word?”

“Shall we say, your memory, sir?” Pitt hated it, but he had to continue, and the more quickly it was done, the shorter the pain. “He was a procurer of women, and he worked in the Resurrection Row area. The same place Godolphin Jones kept his pornography shop. Perhaps that revives your recollection a bit?” He caught the major’s eye and held it in a hard, candid gaze that allowed no retreat, no mercy of pretended ignorance.

The color wavered, then swept up the major’s mottled skin. He was ugly and pathetic, hurting Pitt in a way perhaps he did not hurt himself. He could not see how fragile, how unused he looked, how much of him had never grown.

He could find no words. He could not admit it, and he dared no longer deny it.

“Was that what Godolphin Jones was blackmailing you with?” Pitt asked quietly. “He knew about Horrie Snipe’s woman, and he sold you photographs?”

The major sniffed. Tears started running down his cheeks, and he was furious with himself for showing weakness, hating Pitt for seeing it.

“I did—I did not kill him!” he said between gulps to control himself. “Before God, I did not kill him!”

Pitt did not doubt it for a moment. The major would never have killed him—he needed him for his private dreams, his pictures and fantasies where he could live out the mastery he could never achieve in life. Jones was doubly precious to him since Horrie Snipe had died just before him, cutting the major off from his brief, wild adventure into the realms of live women.

“No,” Pitt said quietly. “I don’t suppose you did.” He stood up, looking down on the rigid little man, wanting to get out into the fog and drizzle, and escape from the despair inside. “I’m sorry it has been necessary to discuss this. It need not be mentioned again.”

The major looked up, his eyes watering. “Your— report?”

“You are not a suspect, sir. That is all I shall say.”

The major sniffed. He could not bring himself to thank Pitt.

Pitt let himself out and breathed in the bitter fog with a sense of release, almost of warmth within him.

But it was not a solution. Suddenly the little notebook seemed much less promising. Without searching the drawing rooms of London, he knew of no way of finding all the rest of the pictures that carried the hieroglyphic insects. And there was no proof that the owners were all victims of blackmail, or any other sort of pressure. Possibly they were simply customers for the photographs as well, and Godolphin Jones had chosen this disguised and highly profitable way of collecting his fee. To have his art paid for at such inflated prices was a double reward, because it enhanced his professional reputation in a way his skill never could. Pitt was obliged to admire his ingenuity, if nothing else about him.

But if they were customers for his pornographic pictures, they would be the last people to wish him dead! One did not cut off one’s source of supply, especially of something that one desperately wished to be kept secret and that was presumably, in its own way, addictive.

There was, of course, another possibility: a rival in the market. That was a thought that had not occurred to him before. Jones’s work was good; at least he had a better eye than most practitioners in the field that Pitt had come across, although admittedly his experience was slight. He had not worked in the vice areas by choice, but it fell to the lot of every policeman now and again. And all the photographs he had seen before had been pathetic and obvious in their banality: portrayals of nakedness, and very little more. These of Jones’s had at least some pretensions to art, of a decadent sort. There was a little subtlety in them, a use of light and shade, even a certain wit.

Yes, very possibly some other merchant in the same trade had found himself squeezed out of the market and had rebelled in the only way he knew how; effective—and permanent.

Pitt spent the rest of that day and all the following one questioning his colleagues in all of the stations within three or four miles of either Gadstone Park or Resurrection Row to catch up on whatever was known about current dealers in pornographic pictures. When he finally reached home after seven o’clock and found Charlotte waiting for him a little anxiously, he was beyond giving her an explanation and inside himself blessed her for not asking one. Her silence was the most companionable thing he could think of. He sat all evening in front of the fire without speaking. She was wise enough to occupy herself with knitting, making no sound but the clicking of her needles. He did not wish to relive the squalor he had seen, the twisting of minds and emotions until all affections became mere appetites, and the titillation of those appetites for financial gain. So many sad little people clutching paper women, fornicating in and dominated by fantasies: all flesh and prurient, frightened mind, and no heart at all. And he had learned nothing of use, except that no one knew of a rival with either the need or the imagination to have killed Godolphin Jones and buried him in Albert Wilson’s grave.