Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [78]
“Thank you, Maizie.” He clasped her hand with a warmth that positively alarmed her. “You are a jewel among women, a lily growing in a rubbish yard. May heaven reward you!” And he turned and charged out of the door into the thick darkness of Resurrection Row, crowing with delight.
9
ALICIA FIRST HEARD of the death of Godolphin Jones from Dominic. He had spent a morning with Somerset Carlisle, going over the names of those they could count on to support them when the bill came before the House in a few days’ time, and the news had come, whispered from servant to servant around the Park. Carlisle’s kitchen maid had been keeping company with Jones’s footman and had been among the first to hear.
Dominic arrived at the Fitzroy-Hammond house before luncheon, looking breathless and a little white. He was shown straight into the room where Alicia was writing letters.
As soon as she saw him, she knew something else was wrong. The joy she had expected to feel evaporated, and she was aware only of anxiety.
“What is it?”
He did not take her hands as usual. “They found the body of Godolphin Jones this morning. He was murdered.” He made no attempt to tell her gently or evade the unpleasantness. Perhaps association with Somerset Carlisle and the workhouse in Seven Dials had made such qualities ridiculous, even an offense against reality. “He was strangled to death about three or four weeks ago,” he went on, “and buried in someone else’s grave—the man who fell off the cab and you first thought was Augustus. He turned out to be someone’s butler.”
She was stunned, bemused by the rapidity of fact after fact, all new and jarringly ugly. She had never even thought of Godolphin Jones as having anything to do with the corpses. In fact, since Augustus was buried again, she had tried to dismiss the whole matter from her thoughts. Dominic was far more important, and over the last week her feelings about him had been becoming gradually less complete, tinged with an unhappiness, or perhaps an anxiety, that she had tried alternately to resolve or to put from her mind. Now she simply stared at him.
“Naturally, they’ll be looking in the Park,” he went on.
She was still confused, not understanding him.
“Why? Why should anyone in the Park kill him?”
“I don’t know why anyone at all should kill him,” he said a trifle tersely. “But since you cannot strangle yourself, even by accident, obviously someone did.”
“But why here?” she persisted.
“Because he lived here, and Augustus lived here, and Augustus’s corpse turned up here.” He sat down suddenly. “I’m sorry. It’s wretched. But I had to warn you because Pitt is bound to come. Did you know him—Godolphin Jones?” He looked up at her.
“No, not really. I met him once or twice; he was socially acquainted. He seemed pleasant enough. He painted Gwendoline, and Hester, you know. And I believe all three of the Rodneys.”
“He didn’t paint you?” he asked, frowning a little.
“No, I didn’t really care for his work. And Augustus never expressed any wish for a portrait.” She turned away a little and moved closer to the fire. She was thinking of the murder, but it seemed very impersonal. No one she knew appeared to be involved; no one was threatened by an investigation. She remembered how terrified she had been when it had been Augustus—afraid other people would suspect her, then even worse, that they would suspect Dominic. To begin with, the idea had been something outside herself, outside both of them, and she had felt they stood together facing an undeserved suspicion from those whose ignorance or malice would eventually be proved wrong.
Then the old woman had sowed seeds in her mind of doubt that the circle was really so simple. Assuredly, there was the circle that enclosed both of them in a common motive and held them apart from others; but there was also another circle that enclosed her alone, and it was a double barrier. She was ashamed and frightened by it—but the thought had crept into her mind that Dominic might have killed Augustus. The old