Pitt knew he was being unfair.

“How did you identify him?” he asked.

“He had cards on him,” Talbot said simply, sitting back upright again. “She was going to dispose of the body. She hadn’t even bothered to remove them.”

“Is that what she said?”

“For God’s sake, man!” Talbot exploded. “She was caught in the garden with his body in a wheelbarrow! What else was she going to do with him? She wasn’t taking him to a doctor. He was already dead. She didn’t call the police, as an innocent woman would have done; she fetched the gardener’s barrow, heaved him into it, and started to wheel him away.”

“To go where?” Pitt asked, trying to imagine what had been in the woman’s mind, apart from hysteria.

Talbot looked slightly discomfited. “She won’t say,” he replied.

Pitt raised his eyebrows. “And what about Mr. Ryerson?”

“I haven’t asked!” Talbot snapped. “And I don’t want to know! He wasn’t on the scene when the police got there. He arrived a few moments afterwards.”

“What?” Pitt said incredulously.

Talbot colored. “He arrived a few moments afterwards,” he repeated stubbornly.

“He just happened to be passing at three in the morning, saw the light of the constable’s bull’s-eye shining on a woman with a corpse in a wheelbarrow, so he stopped to see if he could help?” Pitt said with heavy sarcasm. “He did arrive in a carriage, from the street, I assume? He didn’t by any chance come out of the house-in his nightshirt!”

“No, he did not!” Talbot retorted hotly, his thin face flushing. “He was fully dressed, and he walked over from the direction of the street.”

“Where his carriage was waiting, no doubt?”

“He said he came by hansom,” Talbot answered.

“Intending to call on the lady, only to find her conspicuously unprepared!” Pitt observed waspishly. “And you believe him?”