Anne Perry - [Thomas Pitt 04]

by Resurrection Row

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

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

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

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

  Dr. McDuff remembered the purse strings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Well?” he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

  “So he could have died of digitalis poisoning?”

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

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

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

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

  “Mr. Pitt, sir!”

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