Resurrection Row by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online Page B

finished.
    “Victim?” she repeated, turning it over in her mind. “Yes, I suppose you are right. In a sense we are all victims of this—the whole family.”
    He was not prepared yet to ask her about Dominic. “Tell me something about his mother,” he said instead. “She was in the church, wasn’t she? Does she live here?”
    “Yes. But I don’t know what I can tell you.”
    “Could she be the one intended to be hurt, do you think?”
    There was a small flicker over her face, like recognition, even perhaps a momentary harsh, self-mocking humor. Or perhaps that was something he imagined because it was in his own feelings.
    “Are you asking me if she has enemies?” She was looking at him very directly.
    “Has she?” It was now no longer a secret between them; he understood, and she had seen it.
    “Of course; no one can live to her age without earning enemies,” she agreed. “But by the same token, most of them are dead. All the rivals from her youth, or the days of her social power, they are gone, or too old to care. I imagine most scores have been settled long ago.”
    There was too much truth in that to argue. “And the daughter, Miss Verity?” he went on.
    “Oh, no.” She shook her head immediately. “She has only been out for a Season. There is no spite in her, and she has done no one harm, even inadvertently.”
    He was not quite sure how to say the inevitable. Usually it was hard to frame the words that led to accusation, especially when the person could not see them coming; but he had grown accustomed to it over the years, as one lives with early rheumatism, knowing there will be pain now and again, moving to accommodate it, anticipating when the prick would come, growing used to it. But this time it was harder than usual. At the last moment he became oblique again.
    “Could there not be envy?” he asked. “She is a charming girl.”
    Alicia smiled, and there was patience in it for his ignorance. “The only people to envy young ladies of society are other young ladies of society. Do you really imagine, Inspector, that one of them hired men to disinter her dead father?”
    He felt foolish. “No, of course not.” This time he abandoned tact; he was being clumsier with it than without. “Then if it is not the dowager Lady Fitzroy-Hammond, and it is not Miss Verity, could it be you?”
    She swallowed and waited a second before replying. Her fingers were stiff on the carved wooden arm of the settee, grasping onto the fringe.
    “I had not thought anyone hated me so much,” she said gently.
    He plunged in. He could not afford to let pity hold his tongue. She would not be the first murderess to be the supreme actor.
    “There has been more than one crime committed from jealousy.”
    She sat perfectly still. For a while he thought she was not going to answer.
    “Do you mean murder, Inspector Pitt?” she said at last. “It is horrible, sick and nightmarish, but it is not murder. Augustus died of heart failure. He had been ill for over a week. Ask Dr. McDuff.”
    “Perhaps someone wishes us to think it was murder?” Pitt kept his voice calm, almost unemotional, as if he were examining an academic problem, not talking of lives.
    Suddenly she perceived what he was thinking. “You mean they are—digging Augustus up to make the police take notice? Do you think someone could hate one of us so much?”
    “Is it not possible?”
    She turned a little to look into the fire. “Yes—I suppose it is; it would be foolish to say it couldn’t be. But it is a very frightening thought. I don’t know who—or why.”
    “I’m told you are acquainted with a Mr. Dominic Corde.” Now it was said. He watched the color rise up her cheeks. He had expected to dislike her for it, to disapprove; after all, she was newly widowed. Yet he did not. He found himself sorry for her embarrassment, even for the fact that she was probably in that uncertain stage of love when you can no longer deny your own feelings and are