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
