Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [25]
A sudden idea occurred to him. “No, I may not catch him,” he agreed slowly. “But if I do not pursue it, then there may be great distress, not least to you yourself.” He met her eyes squarely, and she was unable to look away without obviously avoiding him.
“I don’t understand you.” She shook her head a little. “We shall bury him and if necessary hire a servant to keep guard for as long as need be. I see no way in which that can cause distress.”
“It may well be that it was merely a lunatic.” He leaned a little forward. “But I’m afraid not everyone will believe so.”
Her face pinched. He did not need to use the word “murder.”
“They will have to think as they choose.” She lifted her head and gripped her fur tighter.
“They will,” Pitt agreed. “And some of them will choose to think you have refused to allow a postmortem precisely because there is something to hide.”
Her face paled, and she knotted her fingers unconsciously in the thick pelts.
“Unkindness is surprisingly perceptive,” he continued. “There will be those who have remarked Mr. Corde’s admiration for you, and no doubt those also who have envied it.” He waited a moment or two, allowing her to digest the thought, with all its implications. He was preparing to add that there would be suspicion, but it was not necessary.
“You mean they will wonder if he was murdered?” she said very softly, her voice dry. “And they will say it was Dominic, or me myself?”
“It is possible.” Now that he had come to it again, it was hard to say. He wished he could disbelieve it himself, but remembering Dominic and sitting here looking at her face, eyes hot and miserable, hands twisting at her collar, he knew that she was not sure beyond question even in her own heart.
“They are wrong!” she said fiercely. “I have done nothing to harm Augustus, ever, and I am sure Dominic—Mr. Corde—has not, either!”
It was the protest of fear, to convince herself, and he recognized it. He had heard just that tone so often before when the first doubt thrusts itself into the mind.
“Then would it not be better to allow a postmortem?” he said softly. “And prove that the death was natural? Then no one would consider the matter any further, except as an ordinary tragedy.”
He watched as the fears chased each other across her face: first a catching at the hope he held out; then doubt; then the sick pain that it might prove the exact opposite and make murder unarguable, a fact.
“Do you think Mr. Corde might have killed your husband?” he said brutally.
She glared at him with real anger. “No, of course I don’t!”
“Then let us prove that it was a natural death with a postmortem, which will put it beyond doubt.”
She hesitated, still weighing the public scandal against the private fears. She made a last attempt. “His mother would not permit it.”
“On the contrary.” He could afford to be a little gentler now. “She has written to request it. Perhaps she wishes these voices silenced as much as anyone else.”
Alicia pulled a face of derision. She knew as well as Pitt, who had read the letter, what the old lady wanted. And she also knew what the old lady would say, and go on saying until the day she died, if there were no postmortem. It was the deciding factor, as Pitt had intended it should be.
“Very well,” she agreed. “You may add my name to the request and take it to whoever it is who decides such things.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said soberly. The victory had no pleasure in it. He had seldom fought so hard for something that tasted so bitter.
The postmortem was a gruesome performance. They were never pleasant, but this one, performed on a body that had now been dead for nearly a month, was grimmer than most.
Pitt attended because in the circumstances it was expected that someone from the police be there, and he wanted to know for himself each answer the minute it was obtained. It was a day when the cold seemed to darken everything, and the autopsy room was as bleak and impersonal as a mass grave. God knew how many dead