Resurrection Row (2 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pitt looked up at him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She looked at him with alarm, not understanding.

He stopped, aware of her physical fear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where—where did you find him?”

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

“In a hansom cab, ma’am.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

The maid took out her handkerchief in preparation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who is that?” Pitt whispered.

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

“What does he do?”

“He’s a gentleman, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Who are they?” Pitt asked.

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

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

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

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

“Beg pardon, sir?” the constable started.

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

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

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