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‘Yes.’ Blackwell reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper with a flourish. ‘Duly signed and delivered. Permission to exhume the body of one Ebony Jane Graves.’ He put it down on the desk in front of Daniel.
Daniel looked at it, then at Blackwell. ‘Is it a forgery?’
Blackwell was affronted. ‘Certainly not! It’s a perfectly genuine order, signed by the judge whose name appears on it. Would I send you to a graveyard at midnight, to dig up a corpse, without genuine papers? Apart from that, to go to all that trouble of cutting it open, or whatever you’re going to do to it, without proper justification?’
Daniel thought he would, if he could get away with it, but it was not the time to say so.
‘How did you manage to do it?’ he asked instead.
‘Am I your client?’ Blackwell asked, eyes wide.
‘You mean if we get into trouble for this, would I defend you?’
‘No, I do not!’ Blackwell was indignant. ‘I mean, is anything I tell you privileged information?’
‘It can be . . .’
‘You don’t want to know. Your father’s career depends on solving this matter . . .’
‘Is he involved? My father?’
‘No!’
‘Then why . . . Blackwell! What have you done?’
‘I’m looking after you. That’s all you have to know. Shut up, and get Miss fford Croft to do the job! She’s not mentioned in this, and neither are you. If there’s any risk at all, it’s mine. Now stop wasting time and get hold of her.’ Blackwell’s face was suddenly devoid of all humour. ‘Midnight tonight. They’re going to hang the bastard, and when they do, you want your conscience to rest easy. Heaven only knows why. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I suppose you do?’
Daniel’s mind raced over the possibilities, and any other answer that fitted the facts. Was it worth it? What had Blackwell done? He had no answers.
Blackwell stared at him.
Daniel stood up. ‘All right, thank you, Roman. Don’t tell me any more.’
‘I wasn’t going to. You’re a good man, and quite clever at times, but you don’t know when to keep your mouth shut,’ Blackwell replied.
Daniel gave him a withering look, but he did not bother to respond to the jibe. ‘Thank you,’ he said instead. ‘Are you coming to the exhumation?’
‘I’m taking Mother to the theatre. It’s going to be a cold and a windy night,’ Blackwell replied.
Daniel gave the exhumation order to fford Croft, who had far more weight of authority to see it attended to immediately. It was possible an innocent man might hang because of unexamined evidence.
‘Don’t wait for this.’ fford Croft stood up from his desk, waving the paper in his hand. ‘I’ll get the information to the necessary people. The grave will be opened at midnight tonight. You go and tell Miriam. Here, I’ll write the address for you. You will find her, no doubt, working on something in the library, but it can wait. Now hurry up and go, for heaven’s sake, don’t stand there waiting.’ And he pushed past Daniel with an urgent enthusiasm.
Daniel turned and followed after him.
The butler showed him in, as if he had been expecting him, and took him straight to the door of the library. ‘Miss Miriam, the gentleman your father mentioned is here for you. Would you like to have some luncheon in the dining room?’
Daniel found Miriam exactly where her father said she would be, curled up with a book in the huge library in his house.
‘Oh?’ She looked up with a smile. ‘Not yet, Membury. We may not have time, thank you. Hello, Mr Pitt.’ She rose to her feet. ‘So, you have an exhumation order? That’s brilliant! How on earth did you do it?’ Her face was alight with interest. She was dressed in a plain white blouse and a dark skirt. Her wild auburn hair was so loosely tied back that half the pins had fallen out of it and were put back in anywhere, regardless of effectiveness.
He had thought beforehand how he was going to answer her. ‘I asked the help of a friend who knows the right people to ask,’ he said casually.
She looked at him very carefully. ‘Oh, yes? They are judges, I hope?’
‘Certainly, they are!’ He was very glad that he had asked Blackwell. He did not like being even slightly misleading to Miriam. She was willing to help where probably no other doctor would have, considering the case, not to mention the urgency. And he had liked her on the journey they had made together just a few days ago to see the site of Ebony’s death.
‘Then we will arrange for the grave to be—’
