Resurrection Row by Anne Perry Page A

them; grow a crop of them every summer, just like potatoes. Good for a season, then they’re gone. Rot! Unless they marry some rich woman who’s taken in by them. You go and inquire into his means, see what he owes!”
    Pitt raised his eyebrows. He would have given a week’s pay to have been rude to her. Unfortunately, it would have been a lifetime’s.
    “Do you think he could have disinterred Lord Augustus?” he asked innocently. “I don’t see why he should.”
    “Don’t be such an idiot!” she spat. “If anything, he murdered him! Or put that silly girl up to it! I dare say someone knows and dug up Augustus to show it.”
    He faced her without blinking. “Did you know, ma’am?”
    She glared at him with stone-faced anger, while she decided which emotion to show.
    “Dig up my own son!” she said at last. “You are a barbarian! A cretin!”
    “No, ma’am.” Pitt refused to rise to her bait. “You mistake me. I meant, did you suspect that your son had been murdered?”
    Suddenly she realized the trap, and her temper vanished. She looked at him with wary little eyes. “No, I did not. Not at the time. Although now I am beginning to consider the possibility.”
    “So are we, ma’am,” Pitt stood up. He needed to learn everything he could, but venomous gossip from this old woman would only cloud the issue so early on. Murder was no more yet than a possibility, and there were still others left—hatred, or simply vandalism.
    She snorted, held out her hand to be helped up, then remembered he was a policeman and withdrew it again, climbing to her feet unaided. She banged her stick on the floor.
    “Nisbett!”
    The ubiquitous maid appeared as if she had been leaning against the door.
    “Show this man out,” the old lady ordered, lifting her stick in the air to point. “And then bring me a cup of chocolate up to my room. I don’t know, what’s the matter with the world; it gets colder every winter. It never used to be like this. We knew how to heat our houses properly!” She stumped out without looking at Pitt again.
    Pitt followed Nisbett into the hallway and was about to go out when he heard voices in the withdrawing room to his left. One was a man’s, not loud but very clear, with words precisely spoken. It brought back a tide of memory—it could only be Dominic Corde.
    He gave Nisbett a flashing smile, leaving her startled and not a little alarmed, and turned sharply to the door, brushed it with his knuckles in the briefest of knocks, and strode in.
    Dominic was standing with Alicia by the fireplace. They both looked round with surprise as he burst in. Alicia flushed, and Dominic made as if to demand an explanation; then he recognized Pitt.
    “Thomas!” His voice rose a little in surprise. “Thomas Pitt!” Then his composure returned and he smiled, putting his hand out; it was genuine, and Pitt’s dislike evaporated in spite of himself. But he could not afford to forget why he was here. There might be murder, and either one of these two, or even both, could be involved. Even if it were only grave robbing—then surely they were the intended victims of malice.
    He took Dominic’s outstretched hand. “Good morning, Mr. Corde.”
    Dominic was quite innocent, as he had always been. “Good morning. How is Charlotte?”
    Pitt felt a strange mixture of elation, because Charlotte was his wife now, and resentment, because Dominic asked so easily, so naturally. But after all, he had lived in the same house with her all the years of his marriage to Sarah; he had seen her grow up from an adolescent to a young woman. And all the time it had never entered his head that Charlotte was infatuated with him.
    But this was different; he was thirty now, surely more mature, wiser to his effect upon women? And this was Alicia, not his young sister-in-law.
    “In excellent health, thank you,” Pitt replied. He could not resist adding, “And Jemima is two years old and full of conversation.”
    Dominic was a