Free Resurrection Row by Anne Perry Page A

duty—the establishment’s prohibition or the old lady’s social weight.
    He was still considering the matter, with the letter in his top drawer, when Alicia came, wrapped in furs to her throat. She caused a few surprised comments in the outer office, and the constable who preceded her to tell Pitt had eyes as round and bulbous as marbles.
    “Good morning, ma’am.” Pitt offered her the chair and waved the constable away. “I’m afraid I have nothing new to tell you, or I should have called to say so.”
    “No.” She looked everywhere but at Pitt. He wondered whether she was simply avoiding him, or if she had any interest at all in the brownish walls and the austere prints on them, the boxes bulging with files. He waited, leaving her to find her own courage.
    At last she looked at him. “Mr. Pitt, I have come to ask you not to continue with the matter of my husband’s grave being disinterred—” That was a ridiculous euphemism, and she realized it, stammering a little awkwardly. “I—I mean—the digging up of his body. I have come to the belief that it was someone deranged, vandals who knew no better. You will never catch them, and no good can be served by pursuing it.”
    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,