“That’s ridiculous!” he said sharply. “Workhouses are supposed to be temporary relief for those who cannot find legitimate work for themselves. It is a charitable charge on the parish.”
“Oh, very charitable.” Carlisle’s eyes were very bright, watching Dominic’s face. “Children of three or four years old in with the flotsam of society, learning hopelessness from the cradle onwards; those that don’t die of disease from rotten food, poor ventilation, cross infection—”
“Well, it should be stopped!” Dominic said flatly. “Clean the places up!”
“Of course,” Carlisle agreed. “But then what? If they don’t go to schools of some sort, they never learn even to read or write. How can they ever get out of the circle of vagrant to workhouse, and back again? What can they do? Sweep crossings summer and winter? Walk the streets as long as their looks last and then turn to the sweatshops? Do you know how much a seamstress earns for sewing a shirt, seams, cuffs, collars, buttonholes, and four rows of stitching down the front, all complete?”
Dominic thought of the prices of his own shirts. “Two shillings?” He hazarded a guess, a little on the mean side, but then Carlisle had suggested as much.
“How extravagant!” Carlisle said bitterly. “She would have to sew ten for that!”
“But how do they live?” The goose was going cold on Dominic’s plate.
Carlisle turned his hands up. “Most of them are prostitutes at night, to feed their children; and then when the children are old enough, they work as well—or else it is all back to the workhouse, and there’s your cycle again!”
“But what about their husbands? Some of them have husbands, surely?” Dominic was still looking for rationality, something sane to explain it.
“Oh, yes, some of them do,” said Carlisle. “But it’s cheaper to employ a woman than a man; you don’t have to pay her much, so the men don’t get the work.”
“That’s—” Dominic searched for a word and failed to find one. He sat staring at Carlisle over the congealing goose.
“Politics,” Carlisle murmured, picking up his fork again. “And education.”
“How can you eat that?” Dominic demanded; it was repulsive to him now, an indecency, if what Carlisle said was true.
Carlisle put it into his mouth and spoke round it. “Because if I were not to eat every time I think of sweated labor, uneducated children, the indigent, sick, filthy, or destitute, I should never eat at all—and what purpose would that serve? Parliament. I ran for it once and failed. My ideas were remarkably unpopular with those who have the vote. Sweated labor doesn’t vote, you know—female, mostly, too young, and too poor. Now I have to try the back door— House of Lords, people like St. Jermyn, with his bill, and your friend Fleetwood. They don’t give a damn about the poor, probably never really seen any, but an eye to a cause—great thing, a cause.”
Dominic pushed his plate away. If this were true, not a piece of melodramatic luncheon conversation designed to shock, then something ought to be done by people like Fleetwood. Carlisle was perfectly right.
He drank the end of the wine and was glad of its clean bite; he needed to wash his mouth out after the taste that had been on his tongue. He wished to God he had never seen Somerset Carlisle; the man was uncouth to invite him to a meal and then discuss such things. They were thoughts that were impossible to get rid of.
Pitt’s superiors had meantime directed his attention to a case of embezzlement in a local firm, and he was returning to the police station after a day of questioning clerks and reading endless files he did not understand when he was met at the door by a wide-eyed constable. Pitt was cold and tired, and his feet were wet. All he wanted was to go home and eat something hot, then sit by the fire with Charlotte and talk about anything, as long as it was removed from crime.
“What is it?” he said wearily; the man was practically wringing his hands with anxiety and pent-up apprehension.
“It’s happened again!” he said hoarsely.
Pitt knew, but he put off the moment. “What has?”
“Corpses, sir. There’s been another corpse. I mean one dug up like, not a new one.”
Pitt shut his eyes. “Where?”
“In the park, sir. St. Bartholomew’s Green, sir. Not really a park, just a stretch o’ longish grass with a few trees and a couple o’ seats. Found on one o’ the seats, ’e was, sitting up there like Jackie, bold as you like—but dead, o’ course, stone dead. And ’as been for a while, I’d say.”
“What does he look like?” Pitt asked.
The constable screwed up his face.
“ ’Orrible, sir, downright ’orrible.”
“Naturally!” Pitt snapped; his patience was worn thin to transparency. “But was he young or old, tall or short; come on, man! You’re a policeman, not a penny novelist! What kind of a description is ‘’orrible’?”
The constable blushed crimson. “ ’E was tall and corpulent, sir, with black ’air and black whiskers, sir. And ’e was dressed in an ’and-me-down sort o’ coat; didn’t fit ’im none too good, not like a gentleman’s would, sir.”
“Thank you,” Pitt said ungraciously. “Where is he?”
“In the morgue, sir.”
Pitt turned on his heel and went out again. He walked the few blocks to the morgue, head bent against the rain, mind turning over furiously every conceivable answer to the disgusting and apparently pointless happenings. Who on earth was going around digging up random corpses—and above all, why?
When he reached the morgue, the assistant was as buoyant as ever, in spite of a streaming cold. He led Pitt over to the table and whipped off the cloth with the air of a muscle-hall magician producing a clutch of rabbits.
As the constable had said, the corpse was a robust middle-aged man with black hair and whiskers.
Pitt grunted. “Mr. William Wilberforce Porteous, I presume?” he said irritably.
6
THERE WAS NOTHING for Pitt to do but go home, and after thanking the attendant he turned and went back out into the rain. It took him half an hours’ steady walking before he at last rounded the corner into his own street and five minutes later was sitting in front of the stove in the kitchen, the fender open to let out the heat, his trousers rolled up and his feet in a basin of hot water. Charlotte was standing next to him with a towel.
“You’re soaking!” she said exasperatedly. “You must get a new pair of boots. Where on earth have you been?”
“The morgue.” He moved his toes slowly in the water, letting the ecstasy ripple through him. It was hot and tingling, and it eased out the numbness with a caress almost like pain. “They found another corpse.”
She stared at him, the towel hanging from her hands. “You mean one that had been dug up again?” she said incredulously.
“Yes; dead three or four weeks, I should say.”
“Oh, Thomas.” Her eyes were dark and horrified. “What sort of person digs up the dead and leaves them sitting on cabs and in churches? Why? There isn’t any sanity in it!” Her face suddenly went white as a new thought occurred to her. “Oh! You don’t think it could be different people, do you? I mean, if Lord Augustus was murdered, or someone thinks he was, and they dug him up to bring your attention to it—then whoever killed him, or fears to be suspected of it, digs up these other people they don’t even know to obscure the real murder?”
He looked at her slowly, the hot water forgotten. “You know what you are saying?” he asked, watching her face. “That means Dominic, or Alicia, or both of them.”
For several moments she said nothing. She handed him the towel and he dried his feet; then she took the basin and poured the water away down the sink.
“I don’t think I believe that,” she said with her back still toward him. There was no distress in her voice that he could hear, just doubt, and a little surprise.