Resurrection Row by Anne Perry Page B

didn’t kill him; I didn’t; and the old lady wouldn’t have, unless she gave him a dose accidentally, and it was too much for him.” He looked up at Charlotte. “But no one can prove it; all they will do is raise a lot of doubts, make everyone look with suspicion at each other. Can’t Thomas just leave it now? Then there’ll be some hope that whoever did this wretched thing will give up, be convinced at last that there’s nothing to it?”
    She did not know what to say. She would like to have believed him and accepted that it was simply either a natural death or an accident. But why the disinterment—twice? And why was he afraid? Was it no more than the shadow of Cater Street indelible in the memory, or was there growing in him a fear that Alicia could have become so in love with him, so frustrated by her husband that she had taken a simple, easily grasped opportunity and given him a fatal dose of his mother’s medicine? She looked at Dominic’s handsome face and felt as she sometimes did towards Jemima.
    “He may do.” She wanted to comfort him; she had known him a long time, and he had been part of her life, part of the deepest of her emotions in those callow, vulnerable years before she met Pitt. Yet it would be both useless and stupid to lie. “But grave robbing is a crime,” she said clearly. “And if there is a chance he can find who did it, he will have to continue.”
    “He won’t find out!” He spoke with such conviction she knew it was for himself he insisted, not for her.
    “Probably not,” she agreed. “Unless, of course, they do it again? Or they do something else?”
    It was a thought he had been trying to banish. Now she had brought it where it could not be denied.
    “It’s insane!” he said hotly. It was the easiest way to explain it, the only acceptable way. Insanity did not have to have reason; by its very nature any incongruity could be explained and wiped away.
    “Perhaps.”
    He had finished his tea, and she collected his cup to remove it.
    “Can’t you ask Thomas?” He leaned forward a little, urgently, his face puckered. “Point out the harm it will do to innocent people? Please, Charlotte? There will be such injustice! We won’t even have the chance to deny or disprove what has only been whispered, never said outright. When people whisper, lies become bigger and bigger as they are passed around—”
    The injustice convinced her. For a moment she placed herself in Alicia’s position, in love with Dominic; she could still remember how sharp that was, full of excitement and pain, wild hope and hot disillusion. And to be tied to a husband without imagination or laughter! Then if he died, and at last you were free? Suspicion reached out its ugly fingers and soils everything; no one says to you what they think; it is all smiles and sympathy to your face, polite smirks in the withdrawing room. The moment you are gone the acid overflows, creeping wider and wider, eating away the fabric of everything good. The gossips court you; old friends no longer call. She had seen enough of envy and opportunism before.
    “I’ll ask him,” she agreed. “I can’t say what he will do, but I’ll ask.”
    His face lit up, making her feel guilty for having promised when she knew she could influence Pitt very little where his job was concerned.
    “Thank you.” Dominic stood up, as graceful as always now that his fear had gone. “Thank you very much!” He smiled, and the last few years slipped away—they could have been conspirators again in something trivial, like the filching of Papa’s newspaper.
    When Pitt came home she said nothing at first, allowing him to warm himself, to speak with Jemima and see her to bed, and then to eat his meal and relax before the fire. The kitchen was comfortable from the day-long heat of the stove. The scrubbed wood was pale, almost white, and the pans gleamed on the shelves. Flowered china on the dresser reflected the gaslight.
    “Dominic came here