“You mean Dominic wouldn’t commit murder?” he asked. He tried to make it impersonal, but the edge was still there, sharp with old fears.
“I don’t think so.” She wiped round the basin and put it away. “But even if he did kill someone, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t think to dig up other corpses and leave them around to hide it. Not unless he has changed more than I think people do.”
“Maybe Alicia changed him,” he suggested, but he did not believe that himself. He waited for her to say it could have been Alicia with someone else. She had money enough to pay; but Charlotte said nothing.
“They found him in the park.” He held out his hand for his dry socks, and she passed them off the airing rack, then winched it back up to the ceiling. “Sitting on a bench,” he added. “I think, from the description, it is the body from the grave that was robbed last week, Mr. W. W. Porteous.”
“Does he have anything to do with Dominic and Alicia or anyone in Gadstone Park?” she asked, going back to the stove. “Would you like some soup before your dinner?”
She lifted the lid, and the delicate odor of the steam caught his nostrils.
“Yes, please,” he said immediately. “What is for dinner?”
“Meat and kidney pudding.” She took a dish and a ladle and gave him a generous portion of soup, full of leeks and barley. “Mind, it’s very hot.”
He smiled up at her and took it, balancing it on his knee. She was right; it was very hot. He put a tea towel under it to protect himself.
“Nothing at all, as far as I know,” he replied.
“Where did he live?” She sat down again opposite him and waited for him to finish the soup before getting out the pie and vegetables. It had taken her awhile to learn how to cook economically and well, and she liked to watch the results of her efforts.
“Just off Resurrection Row,” he replied, holding up the spoon.
She frowned, puzzled. “I thought that was rather a—a shabby area?”
“It is. Worn down, and a little seedy. There are at least two brothels that I know of; all discreetly covered up, but that’s definitely what they are. And there’s a pawnshop where we have found rather more than the usual number of stolen goods.”
“Well that can’t have anything to do with Dominic, and certainly not Alicia!” Charlotte said with conviction. “Dominic might have been to such a place; even gentlemen get up to the oddest things—”
“Especially gentlemen!” Pitt put in.
She let the jibe pass. “—but Alicia would never even have heard of it.”
“Wouldn’t she?” He was genuinely not sure.
She looked at him patiently, and for a moment they were both aware of the social gulf between their backgrounds.
“No.” She shook her head minutely. “Women whose parents have social pretensions, real or imaginary, are far more protected—even imprisoned—than you know. Papa never allowed me to read a newspaper. I used to sneak them from the butler’s pantry, but Emily and Sarah didn’t. Papa considered anything controversial or in the least scandalous or distressing to be unsuitable for young ladies to know—and one should never mention them in discussion—”
“I know that—” he started.
“You think he was unusual?” She shook her head again, harder. “But he wasn’t! He was no stricter or more protective than anyone else. Women can know about illness, childbirth, death, boredom, or loneliness, but not anything that could be argued about—real poverty, endemic disease, or crime—and most of all—not about sex. Nothing disturbing must be considered, especially if one might feel moved to question it, or try to change it!”
He looked at her with surprise; he was seeing a side of her thoughts he had never recognized before.
“I didn’t know you were so bitter about it,” he said slowly, reaching out to put the soup dish on the table.
“Aren’t you?” she challenged. “Do you know how many times you come home and tell me about tragedy you’ve seen that need never happened? You’ve taught me at least to know there are rookeries behind the smart streets where people die of starvation and cold; where there is filth everywhere, and rats, and disease; where children learn to steal to survive as soon as they can walk. I’ve never been there, but I know they exist, and I can smell them on your clothes when you come back in the evening. There is no other smell like it.”
He thought of Alicia in her silks and innocence. Charlotte had been like that when he met her.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She opened the door with a cloth and took out the pudding. “Don’t be,” she said sharply. “I’m a woman, not a child, and I can stand knowing just as well as you can! What are you going to do about this Mr. Porteous?” She took a knife and cut into the pudding; the thick suet crust was brown, and the gravy bubbled through it when she took out a slice. Rookeries or no rookeries, he was hungry at the smell of it.
“Make sure he is Porteous,” he replied; “then, I suppose, see what he died of and who knows anything about him.”
She dished up the carrots and cabbage. “If that corpse is Mr. Porteous, then who is the first corpse, the one from the cab?”
“I’ve no idea.” He sighed and took his plate from her. “He could be anybody!”
In the morning Pitt turned his attention to the unidentified corpse. There would be no solution to the whole business that did not include him, at least his name and the manner of his death. Perhaps he was the one who had been murdered, and Lord Augustus was the blind, the diversion. Or conceivably they had been involved in something together.
But what venture could possibly include Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond and Mr. William Wilberforce Porteous from Resurrection Row—and lead to murder? What about the man in the cab? And who was the other party to it, the one who dug them all up?
The first step was to discover the precise manner of death of the corpse from the cab. If it had been murder, or could have been, then that shed a totally new light on the disinterment of Lord Augustus. If, on the other hand, it had been natural, then since he had been burned, was it a lawful burial in a graveyard? Where was the empty grave, and why had it not been reported? Presumably it had been filled in again and left to appear like any other new grave.
But normal deaths are certified by a doctor. Once the nature of death was known, then the investigation could begin of all recorded deaths from that cause over the period. In time, they would narrow it down, the correct one would be found. They would have a name, a character, a history.
As soon as he reached the police station, he called his sergeant to take over the matter of the embezzlement and went upstairs to request permission for a postmortem on the unidentified corpse. No one demurred. Since it was not Lord Augustus, after all, and no one else had come forward to claim him, in the circumstances murder must be considered. Permission was granted immediately.
Next was the rather unpleasant job of making sure that the new corpse in the morgue was indeed W. W. Porteous, although he had little doubt about it. He put on his hat and coat again and went outside into the intermittent drizzle, and took an omnibus to Resurrection Row. He walked a hundred yards, turned to the right, and looked for number ten where Mrs. Porteous lived.
It was one of the larger houses, a little faded on the outside, but with prim white curtains at the windows and a whitened step. He pulled the bell and stood back.
“Yes?” A stout girl in black stuff dress and starched apron opened the door and stared at him inquiringly.
“Is Mrs. Porteous in?” Pitt asked. “I have information regarding her late husband.” He knew that if he said he was from the police the servants would have it all over the street within the day, and it would grow in scandal with each retelling.
The girl’s mouth fell open. “Oh! Oh, yes sir; you’d better come in. If you wait in the parlor, I’ll tell Mrs. Porteous you’re here, sir. What name shall I say?”