“I know what you mean,” Harry sniffed. “I dreams about this, I does! Spend me life goin’ in an’ out o’ this bleedin’ grave. You should ’ear what my Gertie says about it! She says it’s only them wot’s murdered as won’t rest, an’ I tell you, Arfur, I’m beginnin’ to think as she’s right! I don’t suppose this is the last time we’ll be in an’ out of ’ere!”
Arthur spat and took up his spade again. The next blow hit the coffin lid. “Well, I’ll tell you this, ’Arry, it’s the last time I will! I don’t want no truck wiv murder, or them w’ot’s been murdered. I don’t mind buryin’ nice decent corpses what ’ave died natural. I’ll bury as many of them as you like. But there’s two things as really gets me. One is babies—I ’ate buryin’ kids—and the other is them w’ot’s been murdered. An’ I already buried this one twice! If’n ’e don’t stay there this time, they needn’t ask me to do ’im again—’cos I shan’t! Enough’s enough. Let the rozzers find out ’oo done ’im in, then maybe ’el’ll stay there, that’s w’ot I say.”
“Me too,” Harry agreed vehemently. “I’m a patient man, God knows I am. In this line you gets to see a lot o’ death, you gets to know w’ot’s important and w’ot ain’t. We all comes to this in the end, and some folks as forgets that might do better if they remembered. But my patience is wore out, and I won’t stand by for no murder. I agree wiv yer, let the rozzers bury ’im theirselves next time. Do ’em good, it would.”
They had cleaned the earth off the lid of the coffin and climbed out of the grave again for the ropes.
“I suppose they’ll want this thing all cleaned up fit to look at?” Arthur said with heavy disgust. “They’ll ’ave another service for ’im, like as not. They must be fair sick o’ payin’ their last respecs.”
“Only it ain’t last—is it?” Harry asked drily. “It’s second to last, or third, or fourth? Who knows when ’e’ll stay there? ’Ere, take the other end o’ this rope, will you?”
Together they eased the ropes under the coffin, heaving on its weight, and worked in silence except for grunts and the occasional expletive till it was laid on the wet earth beside the gaping hole.
“Cor, that bleedin’ thing weighs a ton!” Harry said furiously. “Feels like it ’ad a load o’ bricks in it. You don’t suppose they put suffink else in there, do you?”
“Like w’ot?” Arthur sniffed.
“I dunno! You want to look?”
Arthur hesitated for a moment; then curiosity overcame him, and he lifted one of the corners of the lid. It was not screwed and came up quite easily.
“God all-bloody-mighty!” Arthur’s face under the dirt went sheet-white.
“W’ot’s the matter?” Harry moved toward him instinctively, stubbing his toe on the coffin corner. “Damn the flamin’ thing! W’ot is it, Arfur?”
“ ’E’s in ’ere!” Arthur said huskily. His hand went up to his nose. “Rotten as ’ell, but ’e’s ’ere all right.”
“ ’E can’t be!” Harry said in disbelief. He came round to where Arthur was standing and looked in. “You’re bloody right! ’E is ’ere! Now w’ot in ’ell’s name do you make o’ that?”
Pitt was considerably shaken when he heard the news. It was preposterous, almost incredible. He did up his muffler, pulled his hat down over his ears, and strode out into the icy streets. He wanted to walk to give himself time to compose his mind before he got there.
There were two corpses—because the corpse from the church pew was still in the mortuary. Therefore one of them was not Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. His mind went back over the identification. The man from the cab outside the theatre had been identified only by Alicia. Now that he thought about it, she had been expecting it to be her husband. Pitt himself had as much as told her it was. She had only glanced at him and then looked away. He could hardly blame her for that. Perhaps her eyes had seen only what had been told them, and she had not actually examined him at all?
On the other hand, the second corpse, the one in the church pew, had been seen not only by Alicia but by the old lady, the vicar, and lastly by Dr. McDuff, who one would presume was reasonably used to the sight of death, even if not three weeks old.
He crossed the street, splashed with dung and refuse from a vegetable cart. The child who normally swept the crossing had bronchitis and was presumably holed up somewhere in one of the innumerable warrens behind the facade of shops.
Therefore the most reasonable explanation was that the second corpse was Lord Augustus, and the first was someone else. Since the grave of Mr. William Wilberforce Porteous had also been robbed, presumably it was his corpse they had buried in St. Margaret’s churchyard!
He had better make arrangements for the widow to see it—and properly this time!
It was half-past six and the wind had dropped, leaving the fog to close in on everything, deadening sound, choking the breath with freezing, cloying pervasiveness, when Pitt drove in a hansom cab with a very stout and painfully corseted Mrs. Porteous, flowing with black, toward the morgue where the first corpse was now waiting. They were obliged to travel very slowly because the cabby could not see more than four or five yards in front of him, and that only dimly. Gas lamps appeared like baleful eyes, swimming out of the night, and vanished behind them into the void. They lurched from one to the next, as alone as if it had been an ocean with no other ship upon it.
Pitt tried to think of something to say to the woman beside him, but rack his brains as he might, there seemed nothing at all that was not either trivial or offensive. He ended by hoping his silence was at least sympathetic.
When the cab finally stopped, he got out with inelegant haste and offered her his hand. She weighed heavily upon it, a matter of balance rather than degree of distress.
Inside, they were greeted by the same cheerfully scrubbed young man with his glasses forever sliding down his nose. Several times he opened his mouth to remark on the extraordinariness of the circumstance, never having had the same corpse twice in this manner, then cut himself off halfway, realizing that his professional enthusiasm was in poor taste and might be misunderstood by the widow—or Pitt, for that matter.
He pulled back the sheet and composed his face soberly.
Mrs. Porteous looked straight at the corpse, then her eyebrows rose and she turned to Pitt, her voice level.
“That is not my husband,” she said calmly. “It’s nothing like him. Mr. Porteous had black hair and a beard. This man is nearly bald. I’ve never seen him before in my life!”
5
SINCE THE UNNAMED CORPSE was in the morgue, there was no reason why Augustus should not be reinterred. Of course, it would have been ludicrous to have yet another ceremony, but it was felt indecent not at least to observe the occasion in some manner. It was a show of sympathy for the family, and perhaps of respect not so much for Augustus as for death itself.
Alicia naturally had no choice but to go; the old lady decided first that she was too unwell because of the whole miserable affair, then later that it was her duty to pay a final farewell—and please God it was final! She was attended, as always, by Nisbett, in dourest black.
Alicia was in the morning room waiting for the carriage when Verity came in from the hall. She was pale, and the black hat made her look even younger. There was an innocence about her that had often caused Alicia to wonder what her mother had been like, because Verity possessed a quality that had nothing to do with Augustus, and she was as unlike the old lady as a doe is unlike a weasel. It was an odd thought, but in the darkness of the night Alicia had even talked to the dead woman as if she had been a friend, someone who could understand loneliness, and dreams that were fragile but so very necessary. In Alicia’s mind, that first wife who had died at thirty-four had been very like herself.