Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [2]
“Yes,” Desmond agreed hastily. “Yes—we live in Gadstone Park, number twenty-three.” He wanted to point out that he could not possibly help in any enquiry, since he had never known the man or had the least idea who he was or what had happened to him, but he realized at the last moment that it was a subject better not pursued. He was glad enough simply to leave. It did not occur to him until after he was in another cab and halfway home that the policeman’s wife was going to have to find her own way, or else wait with her husband for the mortuary coach and accompany him and the body. Perhaps he should have offered her some assistance? Still—it was too late now. Better to forget the whole business as soon as possible.
Charlotte and Pitt stood on the pavement beside the body. Pitt could not leave her alone in the street in the fog, nor could he leave the body unattended. He searched in his pockets again and after some moments found his whistle. He blew it as hard as he could, waited, and then blew it again.
“How could a cabby have been dead for more than an hour or two?” Charlotte asked quietly.. “Wouldn’t the horse take him home?”
Pitt screwed up his face, his long, curved nose wrinkled. “I would have thought so.”
“How did he die?” she asked. “Cold?” There was pity in her voice.
He put out a hand to touch her gently, a gesture that said more than he might have spoken in an hour.
“I don’t know,” he answered her very quietly. “But he’s been dead a long time, maybe a week or more. And there’s earth in his hair.”
Charlotte stared at him, her face paling. “Earth?” she repeated. “In London?” She did not look at the body. “How did he die?”
“I don’t know. The police surgeon—”
But before he had time to finish his thought, a constable burst out of the darkness and a moment later another behind him. Briefly Pitt told them what had happened and handed over responsibility for the entire affair. It took him ten minutes to find another cab, but by quarter-past eleven he and Charlotte were back in their own home. The house was silent, but warm after the bitter streets. Jemima, their two-year-old daughter, was spending the night with Mrs. Smith opposite. Charlotte had preferred to leave her there rather than disturb her at this hour.
Pitt closed the door and shut out the world, the Cantlays, dead cabbies, the fog, everything but a lingering of music from the gaiety and color of the opera. When he had first married Charlotte, she had given up the comfort and status of her father’s house without a word. This was only the second time he had been able to take her to the theatre in the city, and it was an occasion to be celebrated. All evening he had looked at the stage, and then at her face, and the joy he saw there was worth every careful economy, every penny saved for it. He leaned back against the door, smiling, and pulled her towards him gently.
The fog turned to rain, and then sleet. Two days later Pitt was sitting at his desk in the police station when a sergeant came in, his face puckered with unhappiness. Pitt looked up.
“What is it, Gilthorpe?”
“You remember that dead cabby you found night before last, sir?”
“What about him?” It was something Pitt would have preferred to forget, a simple tragedy but a common enough one, except for the amount of time he had been dead.
“Well,” Gilthorpe shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, it looks like ’e wasn’t no cabby. We found an open grave—”
Pitt froze; somewhere, pressed to the back of his mind, had been a fear of something like this when he had seen the puffy face and the touch of wet earth, something ugly and obscene, but he had ignored it.
“Whose?” he said quietly.
Gilthorpe’s face tightened. “A Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond, sir.”
Pitt shut his eyes, as if not seeing Gilthorpe might take it away.
“ ’E died just short o’ three weeks ago, sir,” Gilthorpe’s voice went on inexorably. “Buried a fortnight. Very big funeral, they say.”
“Where?” Pitt asked mechanically, carrying