Free Resurrection Row by Anne Perry

their sixties are dying all the time.” Dominic screwed up the handkerchief and shoved it in his pocket. “Can’t you see what it will do to the family, especially Alicia? That old woman is pretty good hell to live with now; imagine what she will be like if there is a postmortem. She will blame it all on Alicia and say that such a thing would never have happened to Augustus if he had not married her. If Alicia were not more than thirty years younger than he, no one would think anything of it!”
    “It’s nothing to do with age,” Pitt said wearily. He wished he could leave the affair, put it out of his mind as well as his duty. “It is because the body was dug up twice and left where we could not help but find it. Quite apart from the fact that that is a crime, we have to prevent it happening again. Surely you can see that?”
    “Then bury him and put a constable on watch!” Dominic said with exasperation. “No one is going to dig him up with a policeman standing there looking at them. It can’t be an easy job, or a quick one, moving all that earth and raising a coffin. They must do it at night and take a fair bit of equipment. Spades, ropes and things. And there must be more than one of them, it stands to reason.”
    Pitt did not look at him. “One strong man could do it, with a little effort,” he argued. “And he wouldn’t need ropes; the coffin was left, only the actual corpse was taken. We could post a constable for a night or two, even a week, but sometime we’d have to take him away—and then he could go and do it again, if that was what he wanted.”
    “Oh, God!” Dominic shut his eyes and put his hands over them.
    “Or else he’ll do something else,” Pitt added. “If he is determined to make somebody act.”
    Dominic lifted his head. “Something else? Such as what, for God’s sake?”
    “I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. “If I knew, then perhaps I could prevent it.”
    Dominic stood up, the blood high in his face now. “Well, I’ll prevent a postmortem! There are plenty of people in the Park who will put their weight against it. Lord St. Jermyn, for one. And if necessary, we can hire somebody to keep a guard over the grave to see that the body rests in peace and decency. Nobody but a madman disturbs the dead!”
    “Nobody but madmen do many things,” Pitt agreed. “I’m sorry about it, but I don’t know how to stop it.”
    Dominic shook his head, moving slowly away. “It’s not your fault, and not your responsibility. We’ll have to do something—for Alicia’s sake. Remember me to Charlotte—and Emily, if you ever see her. Goodnight.”
    The door closed behind him, and Pitt stared at it, feeling guilty. He had not told him there was no postmortem because he had wanted to see what Dominic would say. And now he knew he felt worse than before. A postmortem might have cleared up forever any suspicion of murder. Perhaps he should have said that. But why had Dominic not seen that himself?
    Or was he afraid it would show the very opposite? That there had been murder! Was Dominic guilty himself—or afraid for Alicia? Or only afraid of the scandal and all the dark, corroding suspicions, the old sores opened up that investigation always brings? He could not have forgotten Cater Street.
    But if Dominic wanted the matter silenced, there was at least one other who did not. In the morning Pitt received a rather stiff letter from the old lady reminding him that it was his duty to discover who had disturbed Lord Augustus in his grave—and why! If there had been murder done, he was paid by the community to learn of it and avenge it.
    He called her an exceedingly uncomplimentary name and put the sheet of paper down. It was ordinary white note-paper—perhaps she kept the deckle-edged for her social acquaintances. The thought flickered through his mind that maybe he should take it to his superiors and let them fight among themselves as to which was the more imperative for their careers and