Wants to reform. Good family, old money.”
“The only one of any interest is that appalling American who bought number seven, Virgil Smith. I ask you?” She raised her eyebrows as high as they would go. “Who on earth but an American would call a child Virgil? And with a name like Smith! He’s as plain as a ditch, and with manners to suit. He has not the least idea how to conduct himself, which fork to eat with, or how to address a duchess. He talks to cats and dogs in the streets!”
Pitt had spoken to cats and dogs himself, and he found he was warming to the man immediately. “Did he know Lord Augustus?” he asked.
“Of course not! Do you imagine Lord Augustus kept the company of people like that? He had not the imagination!” Her face softened. “Fortunately, I am old enough for it not to matter anymore what company I am seen to keep, and I rather like him. At least he is not a bore.” She looked at Pitt rather pointedly, and he knew that he himself was included in the same bracket of socially impossible people who redeem themselves by not being bores.
He could learn no more from her at present, so, after thanking her for her frankness, he took his leave. This evening he would have to tell Charlotte that Dominic Corde was involved, and he wanted to prepare himself.
Charlotte had not taken more than a cursory interest in the case of grave robbing. It did not concern anyone she knew, not like the murders at Paragon Walk the previous year. She had plenty to keep her busy in the house, and Jemima was consumed with curiosity every minute she was awake. Charlotte spent half her day in household duties, and the other half deciphering Jemima’s questions and supplying answers to them. Time after time she could, with a flash of instinct, understand what Jemima meant and repeat the words over clearly to be imitated with solemn diligence.
By six o’clock when Pitt came home, cold and wet, she was tired herself and as glad as he to sit down. It was in the comfortable silence after dinner that he told her. He had debated how to phrase it, whether to lead up to it or simply be bold. In the end his own urgency overtook him.
“I went to see Aunt Vespasia today.” He looked at her, then away again, into the fire. “About the grave robbing. She knows everyone in Gadstone Park.”
Charlotte waited for him to continue.
Usually he was good at being evasive, coming to things in his own way, but this was too powerful; it forced itself to be said.
“Dominic is involved!”
“Dominic?” She was incredulous; it was too unbelievable, too unexpected to have sense. “What do you mean?”
“Dominic Corde is involved with the Fitzroy-Hammonds. Lord Augustus died a few weeks ago, and his corpse has been unburied twice and left to be found, once on the box of a hansom cab and once in his own pew in church. Alicia, his wife, now his widow, had an admirer, and has had for some time-Dominic Corde!”
She sat quite still, repeating his words over inside her head, trying to grasp them. She had not even thought of Dominic for months; now all her adolescent dreams flooded back, embarrassing in their gaucheness and their fervor. She felt the color burn up her face and wished Pitt had never known anything about it, that she had been less transparent in her infatuation when he had first met her in Cater Street.
Then she began to realize the enormity of it. He had said Dominic was involved. Did he really imagine Dominic had had something to do with disinterring the body? She could not imagine it-not because of the cruelty or the desecration of it, but because she did not believe Dominic had the heat of emotion or the courage in him to do such a wild thing.
“How involved?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” His voice was unusually sharp. “I should imagine he means to marry her!”
For once he had misunderstood her. “I mean how is he involved with digging up the body?” she corrected. “Surely you don’t think he could have done it? Why should he?”
He hesitated, searching her eyes, trying to gauge what she was thinking, how much it mattered to her. He had seen the color in her face at the mention of Dominic’s name, and it brought a coldness to him, an uncertainty he had not known for years, not since his father had lost his job and the family had left the great estate where he had been born and grown up.
“I don’t imagine he did,” he answered. “But I have to consider the possibility that Lord Augustus did not die as naturally as was supposed at the time.”
The blood drained out of her face. “You mean murder?” Her tongue was dry. “You think Dominic might have murdered him? Oh, no-I don’t believe it! I know him-he is not-” She could not think of a way to say it without cruelty, and less than justice.
“Not what?” he asked, the edge back in his voice. “Not capable of murder?”
“No,” she said simply. “I don’t think so; not unless he was very frightened, or perhaps in a fit of temper, by accident. But if he did, he would give himself away afterwards. He would never be able to live with it.”
“He has such a delicate conscience?” Pitt said sarcastically.
She was hurt by the hardness in him. She had no idea why it should be. Had he remembered her youthful foolishness and been angered by it, found her silliness annoying, even after all this time? Surely he could not be so unforgiving of what had after all been no more than a girl’s romanticism. She had tortured no one but herself with it. She remembered all that had happened at Cater Street very clearly. Even Sarah had been unaware of her feelings, and Dominic certainly had.
“We all have sides of ourselves we prefer not to acknowledge,” she said quietly. “Sides we reason away with all sorts of arguments why it is wrong for others, but in our case quite justified. Dominic is as good at it as most, perhaps in some things better, but his were only the faults he was brought up to. He learned his values from other people, just as we all do. He could excuse himself easily enough for an
“Oh.” He sat quite still.
For several minutes there was no noise but the crackle of the fire.
“How was Aunt Vespasia?” she asked at length.
“The same as always,” he replied politely. Then he wanted to say more, to establish contact again without exactly apologizing, because that would be to admit to the thoughts he had had. “She asked that you should call upon her sometime. She said that when I saw her at the interment, and I forgot to mention it.”
“Will they inter him again?” she asked. “It seems a bit-ridiculous!”
“I suppose so. But I shan’t let them do it immediately. The body is in police custody now. I want a postmortem.”
“A postmortem! You mean cut him up?”
“If you must put it that way.” Slowly he smiled, and she smiled back. Suddenly the warmth flooded into him again, and he sat grinning idiotically, like a boy.
“The family won’t be pleased,” she pointed out.
“They’ll be furious,” he agreed. “But I mean to-I have no choice now!”
3
It was inevitable the next day that Pitt should call on Alicia. No matter how distasteful it was, he must question her, obliquely, about Lord Augustus, about her relationship with him and with Dominic Corde. Then, of course, he would have to meet Dominic again.
They had not met since Pitt’s wedding to Charlotte nearly four years ago. Then Dominic had been newly a widower, still numb from his fear in the Cater Street murders; and Pitt had been too amazed at his own success in winning Charlotte to be more than dimly aware of anyone else.
Now it would be different. Dominic would be over the shock and would have found a new life for himself away from the Ellisons and memories of Sarah. He was bound to marry again; he could not be more than thirty-two or — three, and eminently eligible. Even if he did not have it in mind himself, Pitt knew enough of society to know that
