by Anne Perry
He felt foolish. “No, of course not.” This time he abandoned tact; he was being clumsier with it than without. “Then if it is not the dowager Lady Fitzroy-Hammond, and it is not Miss Verity, could it be you?”
She swallowed and waited a second before replying. Her fingers were stiff on the carved wooden arm of the settee, grasping onto the fringe.
“I had not thought anyone hated me so much,” she said gently.
He plunged in. He could not afford to let pity hold his tongue. She would not be the first murderess to be the supreme actor.
“There has been more than one crime committed from jealousy.”
She sat perfectly still. For a while he thought she was not going to answer.
“Do you mean murder, Inspector Pitt?” she said at last. “It is horrible, sick and nightmarish, but it is not murder. Augustus died of heart failure. He had been ill for over a week. Ask Dr. McDuff.”
“Perhaps someone wishes us to think it was murder?” Pitt kept his voice calm, almost unemotional, as if he were examining an academic problem, not talking of lives.
Suddenly she perceived what he was thinking. “You mean they are—digging Augustus up to make the police take notice? Do you think someone could hate one of us so much?”
“Is it not possible?”
She turned a little to look into the fire. “Yes—I suppose it is; it would be foolish to say it couldn’t be. But it is a very frightening thought. I don’t know who—or why.”
“I’m told you are acquainted with a Mr. Dominic Corde.” Now it was said. He watched the color rise up her cheeks. He had expected to dislike her for it, to disapprove; after all, she was newly widowed. Yet he did not. He found himself sorry for her embarrassment, even for the fact that she was probably in that uncertain stage of love when you can no longer deny your own feelings and are not yet sure of the other’s.
She still looked away from him. “Yes, I am.” She picked at the fringe of the settee. Her hands were very smooth, used to embroidery and arranging flowers. She was impelled to say more, not simply to leave the subject. “Why do you ask?”
Now he was more delicate. “Do you think someone else might be jealous of your friendship? I have met Mr. Corde; he is a most charming man, and eligible for marriage.”
The color deepened in her face, and, perhaps feeling its heat, her embarrassment became more painful.
“That may be, Mr. Pitt.” Her eyes came up sharply. He had not noticed before, but they were golden hazel. “But I am newly a widow—” She stopped. Possibly she realized how pompous it sounded. She began again. “I cannot imagine anyone being so deranged as to do such a thing because of a social envy, even over Mr. Corde.”
He was still sitting opposite her, only a few feet away. “Can you think of any kind of sane reason for a person to do it, ma’am?”
There was silence again. The fire crackled and fell in sparks. He reached forward for the tongs and put on another piece of coal. It was a luxury to burn fuel without thought of price. He put on a second piece, and a third. The fire blazed up in yellow heat.
“No,” she said gently. “You are quite right.”
Before he could say anything else, the door swung open and a stout old lady in black came in, banging ahead of herself with a stick. She surveyed Pitt with disdain as he automatically stood up.
Alicia stood up also. “Mama, this is Inspector Pitt, from the police.” She turned to Pitt. “My mother-in-law, Lady Fitzroy-Hammond.”
The old lady did not move. She did not intend to be introduced to a policeman as if he were a social acquaintance, and certainly not in what she still considered her own house.
“Indeed,” she said sourly. “I had assumed so. I imagine you have some duties to attend to, Alicia? The house does not grind to a halt because someone has died, you know. You cannot expect the servants to supervise themselves! Go and see to the menus for the day and that the maids are properly employed. There was dust on the window ledge in the upstairs landing yesterday. I soiled my cuff on it!” She drew in her breath. “Well, don’t stand there, girl. If the policeman wants to see you again, he can call again!”
Alicia glanced at Pitt, and he shook his head fractionally. She accepted his dismissal with the civility and the respect for the old that had been bred in her. After she was gone, the old lady waddled over to the settee and sat down, still holding her stick.
“What are you here for?” she demanded. She had on a white lace cap, and Pitt noticed that underneath it her hair was not yet dressed. He guessed she had heard his arrival reported by a maid and risen hurriedly in order not to miss him.
“To see if I can discover who disinterred your son,” he replied baldly.
“What in goodness!—Do you imagine it was one of us?” Her disgust at his stupidity was immense, and she took care he should be aware of it.
“Hardly, ma’am,” he answered levelly. “It is a man’s job. But I think it very likely it was directed at one of you. Since it has happened twice, we cannot assume it coincidence.”
She banged her stick on the floor. “You should investigate!” she said with satisfaction, her fat cheeks tight inside their skin. “Find out everything you can. A lot of people seem to be what they aren’t. I would start with a Mr. Dominic Corde, if I were you.” Her eyes never wavered from his face. “Much too smooth, that one. After Alicia’s money, shouldn’t wonder. Take a good look at him. Sniffing round here before poor Augustus was dead, long before! Turning her head with his handsome face and easy manners—stupid girl! As if a face were worth anything. Why, when I was her age I knew twenty just like him.” She snapped her fingers sharply. “Courts of Europe are full of them; grow a crop of them every summer, just like potatoes. Good for a season, then they’re gone. Rot! Unless they marry some rich woman who’s taken in by them. You go and inquire into his means, see what he owes!”
Pitt raised his eyebrows. He would have given a week’s pay to have been rude to her. Unfortunately, it would have been a lifetime’s.
“Do you think he could have disinterred Lord Augustus?” he asked innocently. “I don’t see why he should.”
“Don’t be such an idiot!” she spat. “If anything, he murdered him! Or put that silly girl up to it! I dare say someone knows and dug up Augustus to show it.”
He faced her without blinking. “Did you know, ma’am?”
She glared at him with stone-faced anger, while she decided which emotion to show.
“Dig up my own son!” she said at last. “You are a barbarian! A cretin!”
“No, ma’am.” Pitt refused to rise to her bait. “You mistake me. I meant, did you suspect that your son had been murdered?”
Suddenly she realized the trap, and her temper vanished. She looked at him with wary little eyes. “No, I did not. Not at the time. Although now I am beginning to consider the possibility.”
“So are we, ma’am,” Pitt stood up. He needed to learn everything he could, but venomous gossip from this old woman would only cloud the issue so early on. Murder was no more yet than a possibility, and there were still others left—hatred, or simply vandalism.
She snorted, held out her hand to be helped up, then remembered he was a policeman and withdrew it again, climbing to her feet unaided. She banged her stick on the floor.
“Nisbett!”
The ubiquitous maid appeared as if she had been leaning against the door.
“Show this man out,” the old lady ordered, lifting her stick in the air to point. “And then bring me a cup of chocolate up to my room. I don’t know, what’s the matter with the world; it gets colder every winter. It never used to be like this. We knew how to heat our houses properly!” She stumped out without looking at Pitt again.
Pitt followed Nisbett into the hallway and was about to go out when he heard voices in the withdrawing room to his left. One was a man’s, not loud but very clear, with words precisely spoken. It brought back a tide of memory—it could only be Dominic Corde.
He gave
Nisbett a flashing smile, leaving her startled and not a little alarmed, and turned sharply to the door, brushed it with his knuckles in the briefest of knocks, and strode in.
Dominic was standing with Alicia by the fireplace. They both looked round with surprise as he burst in. Alicia flushed, and Dominic made as if to demand an explanation; then he recognized Pitt.
“Thomas!” His voice rose a little in surprise. “Thomas Pitt!” Then his composure returned and he smiled, putting his hand out; it was genuine, and Pitt’s dislike evaporated in spite of himself. But he could not afford to forget why he was here. There might be murder, and either one of these two, or even both, could be involved. Even if it were only grave robbing—then surely they were the intended victims of malice.
He took Dominic’s outstretched hand. “Good morning, Mr. Corde.”
Dominic was quite innocent, as he had always been. “Good morning. How is Charlotte?”
Pitt felt a strange mixture of elation, because Charlotte was his wife now, and resentment, because Dominic asked so easily, so naturally. But after all, he had lived in the same house with her all the years of his marriage to Sarah; he had seen her grow up from an adolescent to a young woman. And all the time it had never entered his head that Charlotte was infatuated with him.
But this was different; he was thirty now, surely more mature, wiser to his effect upon women? And this was Alicia, not his young sister-in-law.
“In excellent health, thank you,” Pitt replied. He could not resist adding, “And Jemima is two years old and full of conversation.”
Dominic was a little startled. Perhaps he had not thought of Charlotte with children. He and Sarah had not had any—instantly Pitt regretted his bragging. Already, with these few emotion-driven words, he had made detachment impossible, destroyed the professionalism he had intended to observe.
“I hope you’re well?” He floundered a little. “This is a very wretched business about Lord Fitzroy-Hammond.”
Dominic’s face colored, then the blood drained away. “Ghastly,” he agreed. “I hope you can find whoever did it and have him put away. Surely he must be mad and not too hard to recognize?”
“Unfortunately, insanity is not like the pox,” Pitt replied. “It doesn’t give you a rash that can be seen by the eye.”
Alicia stood silently, still absorbing the fact that the two men obviously knew each other and that it was no chance or merely formal acquaintance.
“Not by the untrained eye,” Dominic agreed. “But you are not untrained! And haven’t you doctors, or something?”
“Before you can do anything with a disease, you need to be familiar with it,” Pitt pointed out. “And grave robbing is not something that happens more than once in a policeman’s career.”
“What about selling them for medical research, wasn’t there a trade? I’m sorry, Alicia—” he apologized.
“Resurrectionists? That was quite a while ago,” Pitt replied. “They get cadavers quite legally now.”
“Then it can’t be that.” Dominic’s shoulders slumped. “It’s grisly. Do you think—no, it can’t be. They didn’t harm the body. It can’t be necromancers or satanists or anything like that—”
Alicia spoke at last. “Mr. Pitt is obliged to consider the possibility that they did not choose Augustus by chance, but quite deliberately, either out of hatred for him or for one of us.”
Dominic was not as surprised as Pitt would have expected. The thought occurred to him that perhaps she had already said as much before he came into the room. Perhaps that was even what they were discussing when he had broken in on them.
“I can’t imagine hating anyone so much,” Dominic said flatly.
It was Pitt’s chance, and he took it. “There can be many reasons for hatred,” he said, trying to make his voice lighter again, as though he were speaking impersonally. “Fear is one of the oldest. Although I have not yet been able to discover any reason why anybody should have feared Lord Augustus. It might turn out he had a power I know nothing of, a financial power, or even a power of knowledge of something someone else would greatly prefer kept secret. He may have learned of something, even unintentionally.”
“Then he would have kept it so,” Alicia said with conviction. “Augustus was very loyal, and he never gossiped.”
“He might consider it his duty to speak if the matter were a crime,” Pitt pointed out.
Neither Alicia nor Dominic spoke. They were both still standing, Dominic so close to the fire his legs must be scorching.
“Or revenge,” Pitt continued. “People can harbor a desire for revenge, nursing it over the years till it becomes monstrous. The original offense need not have been grave; indeed, it may not have been a genuine offense at all, merely a success where the other failed, something quite innocent.”
He drew in breath and came a little closer to what he really wanted to say.
“And of course there is greed, one of the commonest motives in the world. It may be that someone stood to benefit from his death in ways that are not immediately obvious—”
The blood ebbed out of Alicia’s face and then rushed back in scarlet. Pitt had not meant anything quite so simple as inheritance, but he knew she thought he did. Dominic too was silent, shifting from one foot to the other. It may have been unease, or merely that he was too close to the fire and unable to move without asking Pitt to move also.
“Or jealousy,” Pitt finished. “A desire for freedom. Perhaps he stood in the way of something someone else wished for desperately.” Now he could not look directly at either of them, and he was aware they did not look at each other.
“Lots of reasons.” He backed a little to allow Dominic away from the heat. “Any one of them possible, until we find otherwise.”
Alicia gulped. “Are—are you going to investigate all of them?”
“It may not be necessary,” he answered, feeling cruel as he said it and hating his job because already the suspicion was taking form in his mind and shaping like a picture in the fog. “We may discover the truth long before that.”
It was no comfort to her, as indeed he had not intended it to be. She came forward a little, standing between Pitt and Dominic. It was a gesture he had seen a hundred times in all manner and walk of women: a mother defending an unruly child, a wife lying about her husband, a daughter excusing her drunken father.
“I hope you will be discreet, Inspector,” she said quietly. “You may cause a great deal of unnecessary distress if you are not and wrong my husband’s memory, not to mention those you imply may have had such motives.”
“Of course,” he agreed. “Facts may have to be inquired into, but no implications will be made.”
She did not look as if she were able to believe him, but she said no more.
Pitt excused himself, and the footman made sure that he left this time.
Outside, the cold caught at him, seizing his body even through his layers of coat and jacket, chilling the skin and tying knots in the muscles of his stomach. The fog had blown away, and there was sleet on the wind. It sighed through the laurel and magnolia, and the rain blackened everything. There was no alternative now but to press for a postmortem of Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. The possibility of murder could not be ignored, discreetly tucked away because it could hurt too many people.
He had previously discovered where to find Dr. McDuff, and he took himself straight there. The less time he had to think about it the better. He would face telling Charlotte when he had to.
Dr. McDuff’s house was spacious and solid and conventional, like the man; it had nothing to wake the imagination, nothing to risk offending the complacent. Pitt was shown into yet another cold morning room and told to wait. After a quarter of an hour he was conducted to the study lined with leatherbound books, a little scuffed, where he stood before a vast desk to answer as a schoolboy might to a master. At least here there was a fire.
“Good morning,” Dr. McDuff said dourly. He may have been comely enough in his youth, but no
w his face was wrinkled with time and impatience, and self-satisfaction had set unbecoming lines round his nose and mouth. “What can I do for you?”
Pitt pulled up the only other chair and sat down. He refused to be treated like a servant by this man. After all, he was only another professional like himself, trained and paid to deal with the less pleasant problems of humanity.
“You were the physician in attendance to the late Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond up to the time of his death—” he began.
“Indeed,” Dr. McDuff replied. “That is hardly a matter for the police. The man died of a heart attack. I signed the certificate. I know nothing about this appalling desecration that has taken place since. That is your affair, and the sooner you do something about it the better.”
Pitt could feel the antagonism in the air. To McDuff he represented a sordid world beyond the grace and comfort of his own circle, a tide that must be forever held back with sandbags of discrimination and social distinction. If he were to get anything from him at all, it would not be by a headlong charge, but with deviousness and appeal to his vanity.
“Yes, it is an appalling business,” he agreed. “I have not had to deal with anything like it before. I would value your professional opinion as to what manner of person might be affected with such an insane desire.”
McDuff had opened his mouth to disclaim anything to do with it, but his professional standing had been called on. It was not what he had been expecting Pitt to say, and he was momentarily off guard.
“Ah.” He sought to rearrange his thoughts rapidly. “Ah! Now, that’s a very complex matter.” He had been going to say he knew nothing about it either, but he never admitted ignorance outright; after all, his years of experience had given him immense wisdom, knowledge of human behavior in all its comedies and tragedies. “You are quite right; it is an insanity to dig a man’s corpse out of its grave. No question about it.”
“Do you know of any medical condition that would lead to such a thing?” Pitt inquired with a perfectly sober face. “Perhaps some sort of obsession?”
“Obsession with the dead?” McDuff turned it over in his mind, casting about for something positive to say. “Necrophilia is the term you are seeking.”
