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 now 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.”
“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
