“Oh, very charitable.” Carlisle’s eyes were very bright, watching Dominic’s face. “Children of three or four years old in with the flotsam of society, learning hopelessness from the cradle onwards; those that don’t die of disease from rotten food, poor ventilation, cross infection—”
“Well, it should be stopped!” Dominic said flatly. “Clean the places up!”
“Of course,” Carlisle agreed. “But then what? If they don’t go to schools of some sort, they never learn even to read or write. How can they ever get out of the circle of vagrant to workhouse, and back again? What can they do? Sweep crossings summer and winter? Walk the streets as long as their looks last and then turn to the sweatshops? Do you know how much a seamstress earns for sewing a shirt, seams, cuffs, collars, buttonholes, and four rows of stitching down the front, all complete?”
Dominic thought of the prices of his own shirts. “Two shillings?” He hazarded a guess, a little on the mean side, but then Carlisle had suggested as much.
“How extravagant!” Carlisle said bitterly. “She would have to sew ten for that!”
“But how do they live?” The goose was going cold on Dominic’s plate.
Carlisle turned his hands up. “Most of them are prostitutes at night, to feed their children; and then when the children are old enough, they work as well—or else it is all back to the workhouse, and there’s your cycle again!”
“But what about their husbands? Some of them have husbands, surely?” Dominic was still looking for rationality, something sane to explain it.
“Oh, yes, some of them do,” said Carlisle. “But it’s cheaper to employ a woman than a man; you don’t have to pay her much, so the men don’t get the work.”
“That’s—” Dominic searched for a word and failed to find one. He sat staring at Carlisle over the congealing goose.
“Politics,” Carlisle murmured, picking up his fork again. “And education.”
“How can you eat that?” Dominic demanded; it was repulsive to him now, an indecency, if what Carlisle said was true.
Carlisle put it into his mouth and spoke round it. “Because if I were not to eat every time I think of sweated labor, uneducated children, the indigent, sick, filthy, or destitute, I should never eat at all—and what purpose would that serve? Parliament. I ran for it once and failed. My ideas were remarkably unpopular with those who have the vote. Sweated labor doesn’t vote, you know—female, mostly, too young, and too poor. Now I have to try the back door— House of Lords, people like St. Jermyn, with his bill, and your friend Fleetwood. They don’t give a damn about the poor, probably never really seen any, but an eye to a cause—great thing, a cause.”
Dominic pushed his plate away. If this were true, not a piece of melodramatic luncheon conversation designed to shock, then something ought to be done by people like Fleetwood. Carlisle was perfectly right.
He drank the end of the wine and was glad of its clean bite; he needed to wash his mouth out after the taste that had been on his tongue. He wished to God he had never seen Somerset Carlisle; the man was uncouth to invite him to a meal and then discuss such things. They were thoughts that were impossible to get rid of.
Pitt’s superiors had meantime directed his attention to a case of embezzlement in a local firm, and he was returning to the police station after a day of questioning clerks and reading endless files he did not understand when he was met at the door by a wide-eyed constable. Pitt was cold and tired, and his feet were wet. All he wanted was to go home and eat something hot, then sit by the fire with Charlotte and talk about anything, as long as it was removed from crime.
“What is it?” he said wearily; the man was practically wringing his hands with anxiety and pent-up apprehension.
“It’s happened again!” he said hoarsely.
Pitt knew, but he put off the moment. “What has?”
“Corpses, sir. There’s been another corpse. I mean one dug up like, not a new one.”
Pitt shut his eyes. “Where?”
“In the park, sir. St. Bartholomew’s Green, sir. Not really a park, just a stretch o’ longish grass with a few trees and a couple o’ seats. Found on one o’ the seats, ’e was, sitting up there like Jackie, bold as you like—but dead, o’ course, stone dead. And ’as been for a while, I’d say.”
“What does he look like?” Pitt asked.
The constable screwed up his face.
“ ’Orrible, sir, downright ’orrible.”
“Naturally!” Pitt snapped; his patience was worn thin to transparency. “But was he young or old, tall or short; come on, man! You’re a policeman, not a penny novelist! What kind of a description is ‘’orrible’?”
The constable blushed crimson. “ ’E was tall and corpulent, sir, with black ’air and black whiskers, sir. And ’e was dressed in an ’and-me-down sort o’ coat; didn’t fit ’im none too good, not like a gentleman’s would, sir.”
“Thank you,” Pitt said ungraciously. “Where is he?”
“In the morgue, sir.”
Pitt turned on his heel and went out again. He walked the few blocks to the morgue, head bent against the rain, mind turning over furiously every conceivable answer to the disgusting and apparently pointless happenings. Who on earth was going around digging up random corpses—and above all, why?
When he reached the morgue, the assistant was as buoyant as ever, in spite of a streaming cold. He led Pitt over to the table and whipped off the cloth with the air of a muscle-hall magician producing a clutch of rabbits.
As the constable had said, the corpse was a robust middle-aged man with black hair and whiskers.
Pitt grunted. “Mr. William Wilberforce Porteous, I presume?” he said irritably.
6
THERE WAS NOTHING for Pitt to do but go home, and after thanking the attendant he turned and went back out into the rain. It took him half an hours’ steady walking before he at last rounded the corner into his own street and five minutes later was sitting in front of the stove in the kitchen, the fender open to let out the heat, his trousers rolled up and his feet in a basin of hot water. Charlotte was standing next to him with a towel.
“You’re soaking!” she said exasperatedly. “You must get a new pair of boots. Where on earth have you been?”
“The morgue.” He moved his toes slowly in the water, letting the ecstasy ripple through him. It was hot and tingling, and it eased out the numbness with a caress almost like pain. “They found another corpse.”
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 hid
e 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 feeli
ng 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?”
Anne Perry - [Thomas Pitt 04] Page 11