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out of my house!”
    Pitt went to his superiors with his request for a postmortem on Lord Augustus, and they received him with anxiety, saying they would have to consider such a thing and could not put it to a magistrate without due weighing of all its aspects. One could not do such things lightly or irresponsibly, and they must be sure they were justified before committing themselves.
    Pitt was angry and disappointed, but he knew that he should have been prepared for it. One did not disembowel the corpses of the aristocracy and question their deaths without the most dire compulsion, and even then one obtained a justification that could not be denied before venturing forth.
    The following day McDuff had done his best. The answer was returned to Pitt in his office that there were no grounds for the application, and it would not be made. He went back to his own small room, not sure whether he was angry or relieved. If there were no autopsy, then it was unlikely there would ever be any murder proved; the certificate had been signed for a natural death from heart failure. And he had already seen enough of Dr. McDuff to believe it would take more than anything Pitt was capable of to make him reverse a professional opinion, and certainly not publicly. And if there were no murder, Pitt would still be obliged to make the motions of further investigations as to who had disinterred the body and left it so bizarrely displayed, but he did not for a moment hold any hope of discovering the answer. In time it would be overtaken by more urgent crimes, and Dominic and the Fitzroy-Hammonds would be left alone to get on with their lives.
    Except, of course, that whoever had dug up Augustus might not give up so easily. If someone believed, or even knew, that there had been murder, he—or she—might have more ideas on how to bring it to attention. God knew what could be next!
    And Pitt hated an open case. He liked Alicia; as far as his imagination stretched to a totally alien way of life, he even sympathized with her. He did not want to learn that she had either killed her husband or had been party to it. And for Charlotte’s sake, he did not want it to have been Dominic.
    For the time being there was nothing he could do. He turned his mind to a case of forgery he had been closing in on before Lord Augustus fell off the cab at his feet.
    It was half-past five and, outside, as dark as an unlit cellar between the fog-wrapped gas lamps when a junior constable opened his door to say that a Mr. Corde had come to see him.
    Pitt was startled. His first thought was that there had been some new outrage, that his extraordinary opponent was impatient and ready to prompt him again. It was a sick, unhappy feeling.
    Dominic came in with his collar turned up to his ears and his hat on far lower than his usual rakish angle. His nose was red and his shoulders hunched.
    “My God, it’s a wretched night.” He sat uncomfortably on the hard-backed chair, looking at Pitt with anxiety. “I pity any poor devil without a fire and a bed.”
    Instead of asking why Dominic had come, Pitt made the instinctive reply that was on his tongue. “There’ll be thousands of them.” He met Dominic’s eyes. “And without supper either, within a stone’s throw of here.”
    Dominic winced; he had never had much imagination when Charlotte had known him, but maybe the few years between had changed him. Or perhaps it was only distaste at Pitt’s literal reply to what had been meant only as a passing remark.
    “Is it true that you want to do a postmortem on Lord Augustus?” he asked, taking his gloves off and pulling a white linen handkerchief out of his pocket.
    Pitt could not let a chance for truth slip away unused. “Yes.”
    Dominic blew his nose, and when he looked up his face was tight. “Why? He died of heart failure; it’s in the family. McDuff will tell you it was all perfectly normal, even expected! He ate too much and seldom took any recreation. Men like that in