“Mr. Pitt.”
“Yes, sir.” And she disappeared to inform her mistress.
Pitt sat down. The room was crammed with furniture, photographs, ornaments, an embroidered sampler saying “Fear God and do your duty,” three stuffed birds, a stuffed weasel under glass, an arrangement of dried flowers, and two large, shining, green potted plants. He felt intensely claustrophobic. It gave him the rather hysterical feeling that it was all alive and, when he was not looking, creeping closer and closer to him, hungry and defensive against an alien in their territory. Eventually he preferred to stand.
The door opened and Mrs. Porteous came in, as robustly corseted as before, her hair perfect, her cheeks rouged. Her bosom was decorated with rows and rows of jet beads.
“Good morning, Mr. Pitt,” she said anxiously. “My maid says you have some news about Mr. Porteous?”
“Yes, ma’am. I think we have found him. He is in the morgue, and if you would be good enough to come and identify him, we can be sure, and then in due course we can have him reinterred—”
“I can’t have a second funeral!” she said in alarm. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
“No, naturally,” he agreed. “Just an interment, but first let us be sure it is indeed your husband.”
She called for the maid to fetch her coat and hat, and followed Pitt outside into the street. It was still raining lightly, and in Resurrection Row they hailed a hansom and rode in silence to the morgue.
Pitt was beginning to feel an antiseptic familiarity with the place. The attendant still had a cold and his nose was now bright pink, but he greeted them with a smile as wide as decorum before a widow allowed.
Mrs. Porteous looked at the corpse and did not require either the chair or the glass of water.
“Yes,” she said calmly. “That is Mr. Porteous.”
“Thank you, ma’am. I have some questions I must ask you, but perhaps you would prefer to discuss them in a more comfortable place? Would you like to go home? The cab is still waiting.”
“If you please,” she accepted; then, without looking at the attendant, she turned and waited for Pitt to open the door for her outside into the rain, preceded him down the path and back into the cab again.
Seated in the parlor of her own house, she ordered hot tea from the maid and faced Pitt, hands folded in her lap, jet beads glistening in the lamplight. On a day as dark as this, it was impossible to see clearly inside without the lamps lit.
“Well, Mr. Pitt, what is it you wish to ask me? That is Mr. Porteous; what else is there to know?”
“How did he die, ma’am?”
“In his bed! Naturally.”
“From what cause, ma’am?” He tried to make it clear without being offensive or distressing her more than was necessary. Her remarkable bearing might well hide deep emotion underneath.
“A complaint of digestion. No doubt it had a name, but I do not know it. He had been ill for some time.”
“I see. I’m sorry. Who was his doctor?”
Her arched eyebrows rose. “Dr. Hall, but I cannot see why you wish to know. Surely you do not suspect Dr. Hall of violating the grave?”
“No, of course not.” He did not know how to explain that he was questioning the cause of death. Obviously the whole train of thought had not occurred to her. “It is just that in order to find who did, we need all the information possible.”
“Do you expect to find out?” She was still perfectly composed.
“No,” he admitted frankly, meeting her eyes with something like a smile. There was no answer in her face, and he looked away, feeling a little foolish. “But it is not the only case,” he went on in a more businesslike tone. “And anything they have in common might help.”
“Not the only case?” She was startled now. “You mean you think Mr. Porteous’s grave robbing is connected to those others everyone is talking about? You ought to be ashamed, allowing such things to happen here in London, to respectable people! Why aren’t you doing your job, I should like to know?”
“I don’t know whether there is a connection, ma’am,” he said patiently. “That is what I am trying to establish.”
“It’s a lunatic,” she said firmly. “And if the police can’t catch a lunatic, I don’t know what the world is coming to! Mr. Porteous was a very respectable man, never mixed with fast society, every penny he had was earned, and he never put a wager in his life.”
“Perhaps there is no connection, apart from the time he died,” Pitt said wearily. “Lord Augustus was a respectable man, too.”
“That’s as may be,” she said darkly. “They didn’t find Mr. Porteous in that Gadstone Park, did they?”
“No, ma’am, he was sitting on a bench in St. Bartholomew’s Green.”
Her face paled. “Nonsense!” she said sharply. “Mr. Porteous would never be in such a place! I cannot believe it, you know what kind of people frequent it. You must be mistaken.”
He did not bother to argue; if it mattered to her to cling onto the distinction, even after death, then allow her to. It was a curious divergence. He remembered the rather worn clothes with the corpse. He had been buried very much in his second best. Perhaps at the last moment she had felt the best black all such men kept for Sundays to be too good to consign to the oblivion of the tomb. At least at that time she would expect it to be oblivion.
He stood up. “Thank you, ma’am. If I need to ask anything else, I shall call on you.”
“I shall make arrangements to have Mr. Porteous put away again.” She rang the bell for the maid to show him out.
“Not yet, ma’am.” He wanted to apologize because he knew the outrage before it came. “I’m afraid we shall have to do some more investigation before we can allow that.”
Her face mottled with horror, and she half rose in her chair.
“First you allow his grave to be desecrated and his body to be left in a park where public—‘women’—offer themselves, and now you want to investigate him! It is monstrous! Decent people are no longer safe in this city. You are a disgrace to your—” She had wanted to say “uniform”; then she looked at Pitt’s jumble of colors—hat still dripping in his hands, muffler end trailing down his front—and gave up. “You are a disgrace!” she finished lamely.
“I’m sorry.” He was apologizing not for himself but for the whole city, for the entire order that had left her with nothing but need and the trimmings of being respectable.
He spoke to the doctor and discovered that Porteous had died of cirrhosis of the liver, and had most assuredly visited the benches of St. Bartholomew’s Green before some grotesque chance had placed his corpse under its shade to be solicited by a prostitute to whom even the dead were no horror or surprise.
He left, wondering what had been the stuff of lives that ended like this: what failures; what bolstered-up loneliness, what constant small retreats.
Dominic put Somerset Carlisle and the disgraceful luncheon from his mind. He was looking forward to seeing Alicia again. The reinterment was over, and from now on, provided decent mourning was observed, at least outwardly, they could begin to think of the future. He would not wish to offend her sensibilities by speaking too quickly or cause her any embarrassment, but he could certainly call to pay his respects and spend a little time in her company. And in a few weeks she could afford to be seen out, not at theatres or parties, but at church with the family or during a carriage ride to take the air. He did not mind if Verity came also, for appearances; in fact, he liked her very well for her own sake. She was easy to talk to, once she felt comfortable with him and, although she was modest, she had her own opinions and quite a dry sense of humor with which to express them.
Altogether he was feeling in a very pleasant mood when he arrived at Gadstone Park on Thursday morning and presented his card to the maid.