Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [35]
They had cleaned the earth off the lid of the coffin and climbed out of the grave again for the ropes.
“I suppose they’ll want this thing all cleaned up fit to look at?” Arthur said with heavy disgust. “They’ll ’ave another service for ’im, like as not. They must be fair sick o’ payin’ their last respecs.”
“Only it ain’t last—is it?” Harry asked drily. “It’s second to last, or third, or fourth? Who knows when ’e’ll stay there? ’Ere, take the other end o’ this rope, will you?”
Together they eased the ropes under the coffin, heaving on its weight, and worked in silence except for grunts and the occasional expletive till it was laid on the wet earth beside the gaping hole.
“Cor, that bleedin’ thing weighs a ton!” Harry said furiously. “Feels like it ’ad a load o’ bricks in it. You don’t suppose they put suffink else in there, do you?”
“Like w’ot?” Arthur sniffed.
“I dunno! You want to look?”
Arthur hesitated for a moment; then curiosity overcame him, and he lifted one of the corners of the lid. It was not screwed and came up quite easily.
“God all-bloody-mighty!” Arthur’s face under the dirt went sheet-white.
“W’ot’s the matter?” Harry moved toward him instinctively, stubbing his toe on the coffin corner. “Damn the flamin’ thing! W’ot is it, Arfur?”
“ ’E’s in ’ere!” Arthur said huskily. His hand went up to his nose. “Rotten as ’ell, but ’e’s ’ere all right.”
“ ’E can’t be!” Harry said in disbelief. He came round to where Arthur was standing and looked in. “You’re bloody right! ’E is ’ere! Now w’ot in ’ell’s name do you make o’ that?”
Pitt was considerably shaken when he heard the news. It was preposterous, almost incredible. He did up his muffler, pulled his hat down over his ears, and strode out into the icy streets. He wanted to walk to give himself time to compose his mind before he got there.
There were two corpses—because the corpse from the church pew was still in the mortuary. Therefore one of them was not Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. His mind went back over the identification. The man from the cab outside the theatre had been identified only by Alicia. Now that he thought about it, she had been expecting it to be her husband. Pitt himself had as much as told her it was. She had only glanced at him and then looked away. He could hardly blame her for that. Perhaps her eyes had seen only what had been told them, and she had not actually examined him at all?
On the other hand, the second corpse, the one in the church pew, had been seen not only by Alicia but by the old lady, the vicar, and lastly by Dr. McDuff, who one would presume was reasonably used to the sight of death, even if not three weeks old.
He crossed the street, splashed with dung and refuse from a vegetable cart. The child who normally swept the crossing had bronchitis and was presumably holed up somewhere in one of the innumerable warrens behind the facade of shops.
Therefore the most reasonable explanation was that the second corpse was Lord Augustus, and the first was someone else. Since the grave of Mr. William Wilberforce Porteous had also been robbed, presumably it was his corpse they had buried in St. Margaret’s churchyard!
He had better make arrangements for the widow to see it—and properly this time!
It was half-past six and the wind had dropped, leaving the fog to close in on everything, deadening sound, choking the breath with freezing, cloying pervasiveness, when Pitt drove in a hansom cab with a very stout and painfully corseted Mrs. Porteous, flowing with black, toward the morgue where the first corpse was now waiting. They were obliged to travel very slowly because the cabby could not see more than four or five yards in front of him, and that only dimly. Gas lamps appeared like baleful eyes, swimming out of the night, and vanished behind them into the void. They lurched from one to the next, as alone as if it had been