Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [5]
“Do you feel well enough to leave now?” he asked. “I’m sure you would be more comfortable at home.”
“Yes, thank you.” She stood up, wavered for a moment, then, followed closely by the maid, walked rather unsteadily towards the outer door.
“That all?” the young man inquired, his voice a little lowered but still healthily cheerful. “Can I mark him as identified and release him for burial now?”
“Yes, you may. Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond. No doubt the family will tell you what arrangements they wish,” Pitt answered. “Nothing odd about the body, I suppose?”
“Nothing at all,” the young man responded ebulliently, now that the women were beyond the door and out of earshot. “Except that he died at least three weeks ago and has already been buried once. But I suppose you knew that.” He shook his head and was obliged to resettle his glasses. “Can’t understand why anybody should do that—dig up a dead body, I mean. Not as if they’d dissected him or anything, like medical students used to—or black magicists. Quite untouched!”
“No mark on him?” Pitt did not know why he asked; he had not expected any. It was a pure case of desecration, nothing more. Some lunatic with a bizarre twist to his mind.
“None at all,” the young man agreed. “Elderly gentleman, well cared for, well nourished, a little corpulent, but not unusual at his age. Soft hands, very clean. Never seen a dead lord before, so far as I know, but that’s exactly what I would have expected one to look like.”
“Thank you,” Pitt said slowly. “In that case there is little more for me to do.”
Pitt attended the reinterment as a matter of course. It was just possible that whoever had committed the outrage might be there to see the result of his act on the family. Perhaps that was the motive, some festering hatred still not worked through, even with death.
It was naturally a quiet affair; one does not make much of burying a person a second time. However, there was a considerable group of people who had come to pay their respects, perhaps more out of sympathy for the widow than further regard for the dead. They were all dressed in black and had black ribbons on their carriages. They processed in silence to the grave and stood, heads bowed in the rain. Only one man had the temerity to turn up his collar in concession to comfort. Everyone else ignored the movement in pretense that it had not happened. What was the small displeasure of icy trickles down the neck when one was faced with the monumental solemnity of death?
The man with the collar was slender, an inch or two above average height, and his delicate mouth was edged with deep lines of humor. It was a wry face, with crooked brown eyebrows; certainly there was nothing jovial in it.
The local policeman was standing beside Pitt to remark any stranger for him.
“Who is that?” Pitt whispered.
“Mr. Somerset Carlisle, sir,” the man answered. “Lives in the Park, number two.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a gentleman, sir.”
Pitt did not bother to pursue it. Even gentlemen occasionally had occupations beyond the social round, but it was of no importance.
“That’s Lady Alicia Fitzroy-Hammond,” the constable went on quite unnecessarily. “Very sad. Only married to him a few years, they say.”
Pitt grunted; the man could take it to mean anything he chose. Alicia was pale but quite composed: probably relieved to have the whole thing nearly over. Beside her, also in utter black, was a younger girl, perhaps twenty, her honey-brown hair pulled away from her face and her eyes suitably downcast.
“The Honorable Miss Verity Fitzroy-Hammond,” the constable anticipated him. “Very nice young lady.”
Pitt felt no reply was required. His eye traveled to the man and woman beyond the girl. He was well built, probably had been athletic in youth, and still stood with ease. His brow was broad, his nose long and straight, only a certain flaw