but he had been left no civil alternative. “Lady Cantlay.” He moved his head fractionally toward Gwendoline.
“How do you do, Sir Desmond?” Charlotte replied with remarkable composure. “Lady Cantlay.”
“How do you do?” Gwendoline said weakly.
“If you would be good enough to give me your address?” Pitt asked. “In case there should be any inquiry? Then I’m sure you would prefer to find another cab and go home.”
“Yes,” Desmond agreed hastily. “Yes-we live in Gadstone Park, number twenty-three.” He wanted to point out that he could not possibly help in any enquiry, since he had never known the man or had the least idea who he was or what had happened to him, but he realized at the last moment that it was a subject better not pursued. He was glad enough simply to leave. It did not occur to him until after he was in another cab and halfway home that the policeman’s wife was going to have to find her own way, or else wait with her husband for the mortuary coach and accompany him and the body. Perhaps he should have offered her some assistance? Still-it was too late now. Better to forget the whole business as soon as possible.
Charlotte and Pitt stood on the pavement beside the body. Pitt could not leave her alone in the street in the fog, nor could he leave the body unattended. He searched in his pockets again and after some moments found his whistle. He blew it as hard as he could, waited, and then blew it again.
“How could a cabby have been dead for more than an hour or two?” Charlotte asked quietly.. “Wouldn’t the horse take him home?”
Pitt screwed up his face, his long, curved nose wrinkled. “I would have thought so.”
“How did he die?” she asked. “Cold?” There was pity in her voice.
He put out a hand to touch her gently, a gesture that said more than he might have spoken in an hour.
“I don’t know,” he answered her very quietly. “But he’s been dead a long time, maybe a week or more. And there’s earth in his hair.”
Charlotte stared at him, her face paling. “Earth?” she repeated. “In London?” She did not look at the body. “How did he die?”
“I don’t know. The police surgeon-”
But before he had time to finish his thought, a constable burst out of the darkness and a moment later another behind him. Briefly Pitt told them what had happened and handed over responsibility for the entire affair. It took him ten minutes to find another cab, but by quarter-past eleven he and Charlotte were back in their own home. The house was silent, but warm after the bitter streets. Jemima, their two-year-old daughter, was spending the night with Mrs. Smith opposite. Charlotte had preferred to leave her there rather than disturb her at this hour.
Pitt closed the door and shut out the world, the Cantlays, dead cabbies, the fog, everything but a lingering of music from the gaiety and color of the opera. When he had first married Charlotte, she had given up the comfort and status of her father’s house without a word. This was only the second time he had been able to take her to the theatre in the city, and it was an occasion to be celebrated. All evening he had looked at the stage, and then at her face, and the joy he saw there was worth every careful economy, every penny saved for it. He leaned back against the door, smiling, and pulled her towards him gently.
The fog turned to rain, and then sleet. Two days later Pitt was sitting at his desk in the police station when a sergeant came in, his face puckered with unhappiness. Pitt looked up.
“What is it, Gilthorpe?”
“You remember that dead cabby you found night before last, sir?”
“What about him?” It was something Pitt would have preferred to forget, a simple tragedy but a common enough one, except for the amount of time he had been dead.
“Well,” Gilthorpe shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, it looks like ’e wasn’t no cabby. We found an open grave-”
Pitt froze; somewhere, pressed to the back of his mind, had been a fear of something like this when he had seen the puffy face and the touch of wet earth, something ugly and obscene, but he had ignored it.
“Whose?” he said quietly.
Gilthorpe’s face tightened. “A Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond, sir.”
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.”
