Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [13]
“I have no idea where he lives, but I’m sure you could find out easily enough. His name is Dominic Corde.”
Pitt froze. There could not be two Dominic Cordes, not both handsome, both charming, both young and dark. He remembered him so clearly, his easy smile, his grace, his obliviousness of his young sister-in-law Charlotte, so painfully in love with him. It had been four years ago, before she met Pitt, at the start of the Cater Street murders. But do the echoes of first love ever die away? Doesn’t something linger, perhaps more imagination than fact, the dreams that never came true? But painful. . . .
“Thomas?” Vespasia’s voice invaded his privacy, drawing him back to the present: Gadstone Park and the disinterment of Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. So Dominic was in love with Lady Alicia, or at least sought after her. He had seen her only twice, yet had gathered an opinion that she was utterly unlike Charlotte, far more a memory of Dominic’s first wife, Charlotte’s sister Sarah, who had been murdered in the fog. Pretty, rather pious Sarah, with the same fair hair as Alicia, the same smooth face. He could think only of Charlotte and Dominic.
“Thomas!” Vespasia’s face swam up at him as he lifted his head; she was leaning forward touched with concern now. “Are you quite well?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “You said ‘Dominic Corde’?”
“You know him.” It was a statement rather than a question. She had lived a long time, known many loves and hurts. Little escaped her understanding.
He knew she would recognize a lie. “Yes. He was married to Charlotte’s sister, before she died.”
“Good gracious.” If she read anything more into it than that, she was far too tactful to say so. “So he is a widower. I don’t recall his mentioning it.”
Pitt did not want to talk about Dominic. He knew it would have to come, but he was not ready yet. “Tell me about the rest of Gadstone Park?” he asked.
She looked a little surprised.
He pulled a small, ironic face. “I can’t imagine Alicia dug him up,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Or Dominic?”
Her body relaxed, altering the line of the high lace neck. “No,” she sighed wearily. “Of course not. They would be the last ones to wish him back. It would appear, unless the whole thing is fortuitous after all, that either one of them murdered Augustus or someone believes they did.”
“Tell me about the other people in the Park,” he repeated.
“The old lady is a fearful creature.” Vespasia seldom minced words. “Sits upstairs in her bedroom all day devouring old love letters, and letters of blood and military vainglory from Waterloo and the Crimea. In her own eyes she is the last of a great generation. She savors over and over again every victory in her life, real or imagined, up to the last minute, so she can wring life dry before it is snatched away from her. She doesn’t like Alicia, thinks she has no courage, no style.” A sudden dry twist lit up her face. “I really don’t know whether she would like her better or worse if she thought her capable of having murdered Augustus!”
Pitt hid a smile by turning it into a grimace. “What about the daughter, Verity?”
“Nice girl. Don’t know where she gets it from; must be her mother’s side. Not especially good-looking, but quite a bit of life to her, underneath the well-drilled manners. Hope they don’t marry her off before she has a little fun.”
“How does she get on with Alicia?”
“Well enough, so far as I know. But you needn’t look at her; she would have no idea where to employ a grave robber, and she could hardly do it herself!”
“But she might prompt someone else,” Pitt pointed out. “Someone in love with her—if she thought her stepmother had murdered her father.
Vespasia snorted. “Don’t believe it. Far too devious. She’s a nice child. If she thought such a thing she would have come out and accused her, not gone around persuading someone to desecrate her father’s grave. And she seems genuinely fond of Alicia, unless she’s a far better actress than I take her for.”
Pitt had to agree. The whole thing was preposterous. Perhaps, after all, it was the work