PITT SET OUT THE following morning with Gillivray, bright and spring-stepped beside him. He hated Gillivray for his demeanor. An arrest for so intimately personal a crime was only the middle of a tragedy, the time when it became public and the wounds were stripped of their privacy. He wanted to say something to lacerate Gillivray’s comfortable, clean-faced satisfaction, something to make him feel the real, twisting pain in his own belly.
But no words came to mind that were broad enough to encompass the reality, so he strode on in silence, faster and faster with his long, gangling legs, leaving Gillivray to trot inelegantly to keep up. It was a small satisfaction.
The footman let them in with an air of surprise. He had the look of a well-bred person who observes someone else commit a gross breach of taste, but whose own code obliges him to pretend not to have noticed.
“Yes, sir?” he inquired without permitting them inside.
Pitt had already decided he ought to inform Waybourne before actually making the arrest; it would be easier as well as courteous, a gesture that might well repay itself later—they were far from the end. There was high suspicion, justification that necessitated arrest. There was only one reasonable solution, but there were hours of investigation before they could expect proof. There were many things still to be learned, such as where the crime had taken place, and why precisely now? What had precipitated the explosion into violence?
“It is necessary that we speak to Sir Anstey,” Pitt replied, meeting the footman’s eyes.
“Indeed, sir?” The man was flat-faced, as expressionless as a china owl. “If you care to come in, I shall inform Sir Anstey of your request. He is at breakfast at the moment, but perhaps he will see you when he is finished.” He stepped back and permitted them to pass, closing the door behind him with smooth, silent weight. The house still smelled of mourning, as though there were lilies somewhere just out of sight, and baked meats left over. There was a dimness from half-drawn blinds. Pitt was reminded of the pain of death again, that Waybourne had lost a son, a boy scarcely out of childhood.
“Will you please tell Sir Anstey that we are ready to make an arrest,” he said. “This morning. And we would prefer to acquaint him fully with the situation beforehand,” he added less coldly. “But we cannot afford to wait.”
The footman was startled out of his calm at last. Pitt was irritably pleased to see his jaw sag.
“An arrest, sir? In the matter of Mr. Arthur’s death, sir?”
“Yes. Will you please tell Sir Anstey?”
“Yes, sir. Of course.” He left them to make their own way into the morning room, went smartly toward the dining room doors, and knocked and went in.
Waybourne appeared almost immediately, crumbs in the folds of his waistcoat, a napkin in his hand. He discarded it and the footman picked it up discreetly.
Pitt opened the morning room door and held it as Waybourne walked in. When they were all inside, Gillivray closed the door and Waybourne began urgently.
“You’re going to arrest Jerome? Good. Wretched business, but the sooner it’s over the better. I’ll send for him.” He reached out and yanked at the bellpull. “I don’t suppose you need me here. Rather not be. Painful. I’m sure you understand. Obliged you let me know first, of course. You will take him out through the back, won’t you? I mean he’ll be somewhat—well, er—don’t want to make a scene. Quite—” His face colored and there was a blurring of distress over his features, as if at last his imagination had pierced the misery of the crime and felt a brush of its invading coldness. “Quite unnecessary,” he finished lamely.
Pitt could think of nothing appropriate to say—in fact nothing that was even decent, when he thought about it.
“Thank you,” Waybourne fumbled on. “You’ve been most—considerate, all things—well—taken into account, the—”
Pitt interrupted before he thought. He could not stand the comfortable ignorance.
“It’s not over yet, sir. There will be much more evidence to collect, and then of course the trial.”
Waybourne turned his back, perhaps in some attempt at momentary privacy.
“Of course.” He invested his reply with certainty, as if he had been aware of it all along. “Of course. But at least the man will be out of my house. It is the beginning of the end.” There was insistence in his voice, and Pitt did not argue. Perhaps it would be simple. Maybe now that they knew so much of the truth, the rest would follow easily, in a flood, not an extraction forced piece by piece. Jerome might even confess. It was possible the burden had grown so heavy he would be relieved, once there was no hope of escape anymore, just to be able to share it, to abandon the secrecy and its consuming loneliness. For many, that burden was the worst pain of all.
“Yes, sir,” Pitt said. “We’ll take him away this morning.”
“Good—good.”
There was a knock on the door, and on Waybourne’s command Jerome came in. Gillivray automatically moved closer to the door, in case he should try to get out again.
“Good morning.” Jerome’s eyebrows rose in surprise. If it was feigned, it was superbly well done. There was no uncertainty in him, no movement of eye or muscle, no twitch, not even a paleness to the skin.
It was Waybourne’s face that glistened with sweat. He looked at one of the dozen photographs on the wall as he spoke.
“The police wish to see you, Jerome,” he said stiffly. He then turned and left, Gillivray opening the door and closing it behind him.
“Yes?” Jerome inquired coolly. “I cannot imagine what you want now. I have nothing to add.”
Pitt did not know whether to sit or remain standing. It seemed vaguely irreverent to tragedy itself to be comfortable at such a moment.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said quietly. “But we have more evidence now, and I have no choice but to make an arrest.” Why did he still refuse to commit himself? He was keeping the man hanging like a fish safe on the hook, not yet feeling the tear in the mouth, not aware of the line and its long, relentless pull.
“Indeed?” Jerome was uninterested. “Congratulations. Is that what you wish me to say?”
Pitt felt as though his skin were scraped every time he met the man, and yet he was still reluctant to arrest him. Perhaps it was the very absence of guilt in him, of any sense of fear or even anticipation.
“No, Mr. Jerome,” he replied. He must make the decision. “It is you I have the warrant for.” He took a breath and removed the piece of paper from his pocket. “Maurice Jerome, I arrest you for the assault and murder of Arthur William Waybourne on or about the night of September 11, 1886, and I warn you that anything you say will be recorded and may be given in evidence at your trial.”
Jerome did not seem to understand; his face was perfectly blank. Gillivray, watching, stood stiffly by the door, his fist loosely knotted as if ready for sudden violence.
Pitt wondered for a ridiculous moment if he should repeat it. He then realized that of course it was not the words themselves that were unclear; it was simply that they had not had time to deliver their meaning. The impact was too immense, too totally inconceivable to be grasped in an instant.
“W—What?” Jerome stammered at last, still too staggered to be aware of real fear. “What did you say?”
“I am arresting you for the murder of Arthur Waybourne,” Pitt repeated.
“That’s ridiculous!” Jerome was angry, contemptuous of Pitt’s stupidity. “You can’t possibly believe I killed him! Why on earth should I? It makes no sense.” Suddenly, his face was sour. “I imagined you to have more integrity, Inspector. I see I was mistaken. You are not stupid—at least not as stupid as this. Therefore, I must assume you to be a man of convenience, an opportunist—or simply a coward!”
Pitt was stung by Jerome’s accusations. They were unfair. He was arresting Jerome because there was too much evidence to leave him free. It was a necessary decision; it had nothing to do with self-interest. It would have been irresponsible to allow him to remain free.
“Godfrey Waybourne has said that you have interfered with him on several occasions, in a homosexual manner,” he said stiffly. “That is a charge we cannot ignore, or set aside.”
Jerome’s face was white, slack, as the horror dawned on him and he accepted its reality.
“That’s preposterous! It’s—it’s—” His hands moved up as if to cover his face, then fell away again weakly. “Oh, my God!” He looked around, and Gillivray stepped in front of the door.
Pitt felt the twinge of unease again; could not so superb an actor, so subtle and complete, have smoothed his way through life with a performance of charm? He could have won himself so much more than he now possessed; his influence could have been immense if he had wooed with friendship or a little humor, instead of the wall of pomposity he had consistently shown Pitt.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Jerome, but we must take you with us now,” Pitt said helplessly. “It would be far better for everyone if you would come without resistance. You’ll only make it worse for yourself if you don’t.”
Jerome’s eyebrows rose in amazement and anger.
“Are you threatening me with violence?”
“No, of course not!” Pitt said furiously. It was a ridiculous suggestion, and totally unjust. “I was thinking of your own embarrassment. Do you want to be hauled out struggling and yelling for the scullery maid and the bootboy to gawp at?”
Jerome’s face flamed but he found no words to answer. He was in a nightmare that moved too rapidly for him; he was left floundering, still trying to argue the original charge.
Pitt took a step closer.
“I didn’t touch him!” Jerome protested. “I never touched either of them! It’s a base slander! Let me speak to him—I’ll soon sort it out.”
“That’s not possible,” Pitt said firmly.
“But I—” Then he froze, his head jerking up sharply. “I’ll see you are reprimanded for this, Inspector. You can have no possible grounds for this charge, and if I were a man of private means, you would not dare do this to me! You are a coward—as I said! A coward of the most contemptible sort!”
Was there truth in that? Was the feeling Pitt had mistaken for compassion for Waybourne and his family really only relief at finding an easy answer?
Walking side by side, they took Jerome along the hallway, through the green baize door, the passage, and the kitchen, then up the areaway steps and into the waiting cab. If it was noticed that the police had come in by the front and left by the back, it might just have been attributed to the fact that they had asked first for Sir Anstey himself. And one had more control over the way by which people exited than entered. The cook nodded in approval. It was past time persons like the police were taught their place. And she had never cared for that tutor with his airs and criticisms, acting as if he was a gentleman just because he could read Latin—as if that was any use to a person!
They rode in silence to the police station, where the arrest was formally entered and Jerome was taken to the cells.
“Your clothes and toiletries will be sent for,” Pitt said quietly.
“How very civilized—you make it sound almost reasonable!” Jerome snapped. “Where am I supposed to have committed this murder? In whose bath, pray, did I drown the wretched boy? Hardly his own—even you could not imagine that! I do not care to ask you why. Your mind will have conjured up enough obscene alternatives to make me sick. But I should like to know where? I should like to know that!”
“So should we, Mr. Jerome,” Pitt replied. “The reasons are obvious, as you say. If you would care to talk about it, it might help.”
“I should not!”
“Some people do—”
“Some people are no doubt guilty! I find the whole subject disgusting. You will very soon find out your mistake, and then I shall expect reparation. I am not responsible for Arthur Waybourne’s death, or anything else that happened to him. I suggest you look among his own class for that sort of perversion! Or do I expect too much courage of you?”
“I have looked!” Pitt bit back at last, stung beyond control. “And all I have found so far is an allegation from Godfrey Waybourne that you interfered with him! It would seem you have the weakness which would provide the motive, and the opportunity. The means was simply water—anyone has that.”
There was fear in Jerome’s eyes this time—quick, before reason overrode it, but real enough. The taste of it was unique, unmistakable.
“Nonsense! I was at a musical recital.”
“But no one saw you there.”
“I go to musical recitals to listen to the music, Inspector, not to make idiotic conversation with people I barely know, and interrupt their pleasure by requiring them to mouth equal inanities back to me!” Jerome surveyed Pitt with contempt as one who listened to nothing better than public-house songs.
“Are there no intervals in your recitals?” Pitt asked with exactly the same chill. He had to look a little downward at Jerome from his superior height. “That’s uncommon, surely?”
“Are you fond of classical music, Inspector?” Jerome’s voice was sharp with sarcastic disbelief. Perhaps it was a form of self-defense. He was attacking Pitt, his intelligence, his competence, his judgment. It was not hard to understand; part of Pitt, detached, could even sympathize. A greater part of him was stung raw by the patronage.
“I am fond of the pianoforte when it is well played,” he replied with open-eyed candor. “And I like a violin, on occasions.”
For an instant there was communication between them, a little surprise; then Jerome turned away.
“So you spoke to no one?” Pitt returned to the pursuit, the ugliness of the present.
“No one,” Jerome answered.
“Not even to comment on the performance?” He could believe it. Who would, after listening to beautiful music, want to turn to a man like Jerome? He would sour the magic, the pleasure. His was a mind without softness or laughter, without the patina of romance. Why did he like music at all? Was it purely a pleasure of the senses, the sound and the symmetry answered in the brain?
Pitt went out, and the cell door clanged behind him; the bolt shot home and the jailer pulled out the key.
A constable was dispatched to collect Jerome’s necessary belongings. Gillivray and Pitt spent the rest of the day seeking additional evidence.
“I’ve already spoken to Mrs. Jerome,” Gillivray said with a cheerfulness Pitt could have kicked him for. “She doesn’t know what time he came in. She had a headache and doesn’t like classical music very much, especially chamber music, which apparently was what this was. There was a program published beforehand, and Jerome had one. She decided to stay at home. She fell asleep and didn’t waken until morning.”
“So Mr. Athelstan told me,” Pitt said acidly. “Perhaps next time you have such a piece of information you will do me the courtesy of sharing it with me as well?” Immediately he regretted allowing his anger to become so obvious. He should not have let Gillivray see it. He could at least have kept himself that dignity.
Gillivray smiled, and his apology was no more than the minimum of good manners.
They spent six hours and achieved nothing, neither proof nor disproof.
Pitt went home late, tired and cold. It was beginning to rain and scurries of wind sent an old newspaper rattling along the gutter. It was a day he was glad to leave behind, to close out with the door, leaving the space of the evening to talk of something else. He hoped Charlotte would not even mention the case.
He stepped into the hall, took his coat off, and hung it up, then noticed the parlor door open and the lamps lit. Surely Emily was not here at this time in the evening? He did not want to have to be polite, still less to satisfy Emily’s inveterate curiosity. He was tempted to keep on walking to the kitchen. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he could get away with it, when Charlotte pulled the door wide open and it was too late.
“Oh, Thomas, you’re home,” she said unnecessarily, perhaps for the benefit of Emily, or whoever it was. “You have a visitor.”
He was startled. “I have?”
“Yes.” She stepped back a little. “Mrs. Jerome.”
The cold spread right through him. The familiarity of his home was invaded by futile and predictable tragedy. It was too late to avoid it. The sooner he faced her, explained the evidence as decently as he could to a woman, and made her understand he could do nothing, then the sooner he could forget it and sink into his own evening, into the safe, permanent things that mattered to him: Charlotte, the details of her day, the children.
He stepped into the room.
She was small, slender, and dressed in plain browns. Her fair hair was soft about her face and her eyes were wide, making her skin look even paler, almost translucent, as though he could see the blood beneath. She had obviously been weeping.
This was one of the worst parts of crime: the victims for whom the horror was only beginning. For Eugenie Jerome, there would be the journey back to her parents’ house to live—if she was fortunate. If not, she would have to take whatever job she could find, as a seamstress, a worker in a sweatshop, a ragpicker; she might even end up at the workhouse or, out of desperation, in the streets. But all of that she would not yet even have imagined. She was probably still grappling with the guilt itself, still hanging on to the belief that things were the same, that it was all a mistake—a reversible mistake.
“Mr. Pitt?” She stepped forward, her voice shaky. He was the police—for her, the ultimate power.
He wished there was something he could say that would ease the truth. All he wanted was to get rid of her and forget the case—at least until he was forced to go back to it tomorrow.
“Mrs. Jerome.” He began with the only thing he could think of: “We had to arrest him, but he is perfectly well and not hurt in any way. You will be permitted to visit him—if you wish.”
“He didn’t kill that boy.” The tears shone in her eyes and she blinked without moving her gaze from his. “I know—I know he is not always very easy”—she took a deep breath, steeling herself for the betrayal—“not very easy to like, but he is not an evil man. He would never abuse a trust. He has far too much pride for that!”
Pitt could believe it. The man he thought he had seen beneath that mannered exterior would take a perverse satisfaction in his moral superiority in honoring a trust of those he despised, those who, for entirely different reasons, despised him equally—if they gave him any thought at all.
“Mrs. Jerome—” How could he explain the extraordinary passions that can suddenly arise and swamp all reason, all the carefully made plans for behavior? How could he explain the feelings that could drive an otherwise sane man to compulsive, wide-eyed self-destruction? She would be confused, and unbearably hurt. Surely the woman had more than enough to bear already? “Mrs. Jerome,” he tried again, “a charge has been made against your husband. We must hold him under arrest until it has been investigated. Sometimes people do things in the heat of the moment that are quite outside their usual character.”
She moved closer to him and he caught a waft of lavender, faint and a little sweet. She had an old-fashioned brooch in the lace at her neck. She was very young, very gentle. God damn Jerome for his cold-blooded, bitter loneliness, for his perversion, for ever having married this woman in the first place, only to tear her life apart!
“Mrs. Jerome—”
“Mr. Pitt, my husband is not an impulsive man. I have been married to him for eleven years and I have never known him to act without giving the matter consideration, weighing whether it would be fortunate or unfortunate.”
That also Pitt found only too easy to accept. Jerome was not a man to laugh aloud, dance on the pavement, or sing a snatch of song. His was a careful face; the only spontaneity in it was of the mind. He possessed a sour appreciation for humor, but never impulse. He did not even speak without judging first what effect it would have, how it would profit or harm him. What extraordinary passions must this boy have tapped to break the dam of years in a torrent that ended in murder?
If Jerome were guilty ...
How could so careful, so self-preserving a man have risked a clumsy fondling of young Godfrey for the few instants of slight gratification it might have afforded him? Was it a façade beginning to crack—a first breach of the wall that was soon going to explode in passion and murder?
He looked at Mrs. Jerome. She was close to Charlotte’s age, and yet she looked so much younger, so much more vulnerable, with her slender body and delicate face. She needed someone to protect her.
“Have you parents near to you?” he asked suddenly. “Someone with whom you can stay?”
“Oh, no!” Her face puckered with consternation and she screwed up her handkerchief, absently letting her reticule slide down her skirt to the floor. Charlotte bent and picked it up for her. “Thank you, Mrs. Pitt, you are so kind.” She took it back and clutched it. “No, Mr. Pitt, I couldn’t possibly do that. My place is at home, where I can be of as much support to Maurice as I am able. People must see that I do not for a single moment believe this dreadful thing that has been said about him. It is completely untrue, and I only beg that for justice’s sake you will do everything you can to prove it so. You will, won’t you?”
“Please, Mr. Pitt? You will not allow the truth to be buried in such a web of lies that poor Maurice is—” Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away with a sob to rest in Charlotte’s arms. She wept like a child, lost in her own desperation, unconscious of anyone else’s thoughts or judgments.
Charlotte slowly patted her, her eyes meeting Pitt’s helplessly. He could not read what she thought. There was anger, but was it at him, at circumstances, at Mrs. Jerome for intruding and disturbing them with her distress, or at their inability to do anything for her?
“I’ll do my best, Mrs. Jerome,” he said. “I can only find out the truth—I can’t alter it.” How abrasively cruel that sounded, and how sanctimonious!
“Oh, thank you,” she said between sobs and gasps for breath. “I was sure you would—but I am so grateful.” She clung to Charlotte’s hands like a child. “So very grateful.”
The more Pitt thought about it, the less did he find it within what he had observed of Jerome’s character that he should be so impulsive and so inept as to pursue Godfrey while simultaneously conducting an affair with his elder brother. If the man was so driven by his appetite that he had lost all ordinary sense, surely others would have noticed it—many others?
He spent a miserable evening, refusing to talk about it with Charlotte. The next day, he sent Gillivray on what he sincerely believed would be a fool’s errand, searching for a room rented by Jerome or Arthur Waybourne. In the meantime, he took himself back to the Waybournes’ house to interview Godfrey again.
He was received with extreme disfavor.
“We have already been through this exceedingly painful matter in every detail!” Waybourne said sharply. “I refuse to discuss it any further! Hasn’t there been enough—enough obscenity?”
“It would be an obscenity, Sir Anstey, if a man were hanged for a crime we believe he committed but are too afraid of our own distaste to make sure!” Pitt replied very quietly. “It’s a crime of irresponsibility I am not prepared to commit. Are you?”
“You are damned impertinent, sir!” Waybourne snapped. “It is not my duty to see that justice is done. That is what people like you are paid for! You attend to your job, and remember who you are in my house.”
“Yes, sir,” Pitt said stiffly. “Now may I see Master Godfrey, please?”
Waybourne hesitated, his eyes hot, pink-rimmed, looking Pitt up and down. For several moments both men were silent.
“If you must,” he said at last. “But I shall remain here, I warn you.”
“I must,” Pitt insisted.
They stood in mutual discomfort, avoiding each other’s eyes, while Godfrey was sent for. Pitt was aware that his anger was born of confusion within himself, of a growing fear that he would never prove Jerome’s guilt and thereby wipe away the memory of Eugenie’s face, a face that reflected her conviction of the world as she knew it, and of the man whose life she shared in that world.
Waybourne’s hostility was even easier to read. His family had already been mutilated—he was now defending it against any unnecessary turning of the knife in the wounds. Had it been his family, Pitt would have done the same.
Godfrey came in. Then, when he saw Pitt, his face colored and his body suddenly became awkward.
Pitt felt a stab of guilt.
“Yes, sir?” Godfrey stood with his back to his father, close, as if he were a wall, something against which he could retreat.
Pitt ignored the fact that he had not been invited, and sat down in the leather-covered armchair. His position made him look up slightly at the boy, instead of obliging Godfrey to crane up at him.
“Godfrey, we don’t know Mr. Jerome very well,” he began, in what he hoped was a conversational tone. “It is important that we learn everything we can. He was your tutor for nearly four years. You must know him well.”
“Yes, sir—but I never knew he was doing anything wrong.” The boy’s clear eyes were defiant. His narrow shoulders were high and Pitt could imagine the muscles hunched underneath the flannel of his jacket.
“Of course not,” Waybourne said quickly, putting his hand on the boy’s arm. “No one imagines you knew about it, boy.”
Pitt restrained himself. He must learn, fact by fact, small impressions that built a believable picture of a man who had lost years of cold control in a sudden insane hunger—insane because it defied reality, because it could never have achieved anything but the most transient, ephemeral of pleasures while destroying everything else he valued.
Slowly, Pitt asked questions about their studies, about Jerome’s manner, the subjects he taught well and those that appeared to bore him. He questioned whether the tutor’s discipline was good, his temper, his enthusiasms. Waybourne grew more and more impatient, almost contemptuous of Pitt, as if he were being foolish, evading the real issue in a plethora of trivialities. But Godfrey became more confident in his answers.
A picture emerged so close to the man Pitt had imagined that it gave him no comfort at all. There was nothing new to grasp, no new perspective to try on all the fragments he already possessed. Jerome was a good teacher, a disciplinarian with little humor. And what humor he had was far too dry, too measured through years of self-control, to be understandable to a thirteen-year-old born and bred in privilege. Ambition that to Jerome was unachievable was to Godfrey an expected part of the adult life he was being groomed for. He was unaware of any injustice in the relationship with his tutor. They belonged to different levels of society, and would always do so. That Jerome might resent him had never occurred to the boy. Jerome was a schoolmaster; that was not the same thing as possessing the qualities of leadership, the courage of decision, the innate knowledge and acceptance of duty—or the burden, the loneliness of responsibility.
The irony was that perhaps Jerome’s very bitterness was partly born of a whisper at the back of his brain that reminded him of the gulf between them—not only because of birth but because he was too small of vision—too self-obsessed, too aware of his own position—to command. A gentleman is a gentleman because he lives unself-consciously. He is too secure to take offense, too certain of his finances to account for shillings.
All this went through Pitt’s mind as he watched the boy’s solemn, rather smug face. He was at ease now—Pitt was ineffectual, not to be feared after all. It was time to come to the point.
“Did Mr. Jerome show any consistent favoritism toward your brother?” he asked quite lightly.
“No, sir,” Godfrey answered. Then confusion spread on his face as he realized what had half dawned on him through the haze of grief—hints of something that was unknown but abominably shameful, that the imagination hardly dared conjure up, and yet could not help but try. “Well, sir, not that I realized at the time. He was pretty—sort of—well, he spent a lot of time with Titus Swynford, too, when he took lessons with us. He did quite often, you know. His own tutor wasn’t any good at Latin and Mr. Jerome was very good indeed. And he knew Greek, too. And Mr. Hollins—that’s Titus’s tutor—was always getting colds in the head. We called him ‘Sniffles.’ ” He gave a juicy, realistic imitation.
Waybourne’s face twitched with disapproval of mentioning to a person of Pitt’s social inferiority such details of frivolous and rather childish malice.
“And was he also overfamiliar with Titus?” Pitt inquired, ignoring Waybourne.
Godfrey’s face tightened. “Yes, sir. Titus told the that he was.”
“Oh? When did he tell you?”
Godfrey stared back at him without blinking.
“Yesterday evening, sir. I told him that Mr. Jerome had been arrested by the police because he had done something terrible to Arthur. I told him what I told you, about what Mr. Jerome did to me. And Titus said he’d done it to him, too.”
Pitt felt no surprise, only a gray sense of inevitability. Jerome’s weakness had shown itself after all. It had not been the secret thing, erupting without warning, that had struck Pitt as so unlikely. Perhaps surrender to it had been sudden, but once he had recognized it and allowed the hunger to release itself in action, then it had been uncontrollable. It could only have been a matter of time until some adult had seen it and understood it for what it was.
What a tragic mischance that the violence—the murder—had arisen so quickly. If even one of those boys had spoken to a parent, the greater tragedy could have been avoided—for Arthur, for Jerome himself, for Eugenie.
“Thank you.” Pitt sighed and looked up at Waybourne. “I would appreciate it, sir, if you would give me Mr. Swynford’s address so that I can call on him and verify this with Titus himself. You will understand that secondhand testimony, no matter from whom, is not sufficient.”
Waybourne took a breath as if to argue, then accepted the futility of it.
“If you insist,” he said grudgingly.
Titus Swynford was a cheerful boy, a little older than Godfrey. He was broader, with a freckled, less handsome face, but he possessed a natural ease that Pitt found attractive. Pitt was not permitted to see his young sister Fanny. And since he could put forward no argument to justify insisting, he saw only the boy, in the presence of his father.
Mortimer Swynford was calm. Had Pitt been less aware of society’s rules, he might have imagined his courtesy to be friendliness.
“Of course,” he consented, in his rich voice. His manicured hands rested on the back of the tapestried antimacassar. His clothes were immaculate. His tailor had cut his jacket so skillfully it all but disguised the thickening of his body, the considerable swell of his stomach under his waistcoat, the heaviness of his thighs. It was a vanity that Pitt could sympathize with, even admire. He had no such physical defects to mask, but he would dearly like to have possessed even a fraction of the polish, the ease of manner with which Swynford stood waiting, watching him.
“I’m sure you won’t press the matter any further than is absolutely necessary,” he went on. “But you must have enough to stand up in court—we all understand that. Titus—” He gestured toward his son with an embracing sweep. “Titus, answer Inspector Pitt’s questions quite frankly. Don’t hide anything. It is not a time for false modesty or any misplaced sense of loyalty. Nobody cares for a telltale, but there are times when a man is witness to a crime that cannot be permitted to continue, or to go unpunished. Then it is his duty to speak the truth, without fear or favor! Is that not so, Mr. Pitt?”
“Quite so,” Pitt agreed with less enthusiasm than he should have felt. The sentiment was perfect. Was it only Swynford’s aplomb, his supreme mastery of the situation, that made the words sound unnatural? He did not look like a man who either feared or favored anyone. Indeed, his money and his heritage had placed him in a situation where, with a little judgment, he could avoid the need for pleasing others. As long as he obeyed the usual social rules of his class, he could remain exceedingly comfortable.
Titus was waiting.
“You were occasionally tutored by Mr. Jerome?” Pitt rushed in, aware of the silence.
“Yes, sir,” Titus agreed. “Both Fanny and I were. Fanny’s rather clever at Latin, although I can’t see what good it will do her.”
“And what will you do with it?” Pitt inquired.
Titus’s face split with a broad grin.
“I say, you’re rather odd, aren’t you? Nothing at all, of course! But we aren’t allowed to admit that. It’s supposed to be fearfully good discipline—at least that’s what Mr. Jerome said. I think that’s the only reason he put up with Fanny, because she was better at it than any of the rest of us. It would make you sick, wouldn’t it? I mean, girls being better at class, especially a thing like Latin? Mr. Jerome says that Latin is fearfully logical, and girls aren’t supposed to have any logic.”
“Quite sick,” Pitt agreed, keeping a sober face with difficulty. “I gather Mr. Jerome was not very keen on teaching Fanny?”
“Not terribly. He preferred us boys.” His eyes darkened suddenly, and his skin flushed red under his freckles. “That’s what you’re here about, isn’t it? What happened to Arthur, and the fact that Mr. Jerome kept touching us?”
There was no point in denying it; apparently, Swynford had already been very frank.
“Yes. Did Mr. Jerome touch you?”
Titus pulled a face to express a succession of feelings.
“Yes.” He shrugged. “But I never thought about it till Godfrey explained to me what it meant. If I’d known, sir, that it was going to end up with poor Arthur dead, I’d have said something sooner.” His face shadowed; his gray-green eyes were hot with guilt.
Pitt felt a surge of sympathy. Titus was quite intelligent enough to know that his silence could have cost a life.
“Of course.” Pitt put out his hand without thinking and clasped the boy’s arm. “Naturally you would—but there was no way you could know. Nobody wishes to think so ill of someone, unless there is no possible doubt. You cannot go around accusing somebody on a suspicion. Had you been wrong, you could have done Mr. Jerome a fatal injustice.”
“As it is, it’s Arthur who’s dead.” Titus was not so easily comforted. “If I’d said something, I might have saved him.”
Pitt felt compelled to be bolder and risk a deeper wound. “Did you know it was wrong?” he asked. He let go the boy’s arm and sat back again.
“No, sir!” Titus colored, the blood rushing up again under his skin. “To be honest, sir, I still don’t really know exactly. I don’t know whether I wish to know—it sounds rather dirty.”
“It is.” Pitt was soiled himself, by all his knowledge, in the face of this child who would probably never know a fraction of the weakness and misery Pitt had been forced to see. “It is,” he repeated. “I’d leave it well alone.”
“Yes, sir. But do you—do you think I could have saved Arthur if I’d known?”
Pitt hesitated. Titus did not deserve a lie.
“Perhaps—but quite possibly not. Maybe no one would have believed you anyway. Don’t forget, Arthur could have spoken himself—if he’d wished to!”
Titus’s face showed incomprehension.
“Why didn’t he, sir? Didn’t he understand? But that doesn’t make any sense!”
“No—it doesn’t, does it?” Pitt agreed. “I’d like to know the answer to that myself.”
“No doubt frightened.” Swynford spoke for the first time since Pitt had begun questioning Titus. “Poor boy probably felt guilty—too ashamed to tell his father. I daresay that wretched man threatened him. He would, don’t you think, Inspector? Just thank God it’s all over now. He can do no more harm.”
It was far from the truth, but this time Pitt did not argue. He could only guess what the trial would bring. There was no need to distress them now, no need to tell them the sad and ugly things that would be exposed. Titus, at least, need never know.
“Thank you.” Pitt stood up, and his coat fell in creases where he had been sitting on it. “Thank you, Titus. Thank you, Mr. Swynford. I don’t think we shall have to trouble you again until the trial.”
Swynford took a deep breath, but he knew better than to waste energy arguing now. He inclined his head in acknowledgment and pulled the bell for the footman to show Pitt out.
The door opened and a girl of about fourteen ran in, saw Pitt, and stopped with an instant of embarrassment. She then immediately composed herself, stood quite upright, and looked at him with level gray eyes—a little coolly, as if it were he who had committed the social gaffe, and not she.
“I beg your pardon, Papa,” she said, with a little hitch of her shoulders under her lace-edged pinafore. “I didn’t know you had a visitor.” She had sized up Pitt already and knew he was not “company.” Her father’s social equals did not wear mufflers; they wore silk scarves, and they left them with whoever opened the door, along with their hats and sticks.
“Hello, Fanny,” Swynford replied with a slight smile. “Have you come down to inspect the policeman?”
“Certainly not!” She lifted her chin and returned her gaze to Pitt, regarding him from head to toe. “I came to say that Uncle Esmond is here, and he promised me that when I am old enough to ‘come out’ he will give me a necklace with pearls in it for my seventeenth birthday, so I may wear it when I am presented at court. Do you suppose it will be to the Queen herself, or only the Princess of Wales? Do you imagine the Queen will still be alive then? She’s fearfully old already, you know!”
“I have no idea,” Swynford answered with raised eyebrows, meeting Pitt’s glance with amusement. “Perhaps you could begin with the Princess of Wales, and progress from there—if the Queen survives long enough for you, that is?”
“You’re laughing at me!” she said with a note of warning. “Uncle Esmond dined with the Prince of Wales last week—he just said so!”
“Then I’ve no doubt it’s true.”
“Of course it’s true!” Esmond Vanderley appeared in the doorway behind Fanny. “I would never dare lie to anyone as perceptive or as unversed in the social arts as Fanny. My dear child.” He put his arm on Fanny’s shoulder. “You really must learn to be less direct, or you will be a social disaster. Never let people know that you know they have lied! That is a cardinal rule. Well-bred people never lie—they occasionally misremember, and only the ill-mannered are gross enough to remark it. Isn’t that so, Mortimer?”
“My dear fellow, you are the expert in society—how could I dispute what you say? If you wish to succeed, Fanny, listen to your mother’s cousin Esmond.” His words were perhaps a little tart, but, looking at his face, Pitt could see only goodwill. He also noted the relationship with a lift of interest: so Swynford, Vanderley, and the Waybournes were cousins.
Vanderley looked over the girl’s head at Pitt.
“Inspector,” he said with a return to seriousness. “Still chasing up that wretched business about young Arthur?”
“Yes, sir, I’m afraid there is a lot more we need to know yet.”
“Oh?” Vanderley’s face showed slight surprise. “For example?”
Swynford made a slight movement with his arm. “You may leave us now, thank you, Titus, Fanny! If your Latin requires improvement, then you had best be about studying it.”
“Yes, sir.” Titus excused himself to Vanderley, then a little self-consciously to Pitt, aware it was a socially unmapped area. Did he behave as if Pitt were a tradesman, and take his departure as a gentleman would? He decided on the latter, and collecting his sister’s hand, much to her annoyance because her curiosity was overwhelming, he escorted her out.
When the door was closed, Vanderley repeated his question.
“Well, we have no idea where the crime took place,” Pitt began, hoping that with their knowledge of the family they might have some idea. A new thought occurred to him. “Did the Waybournes ever possess any other property that might have been used? A country house? Or did Sir Anstey and Lady Waybourne ever travel and leave the boys behind with Jerome?”
Vanderley considered for a moment, his face solemn, brows drawn down.
“I seem to remember them all going to the country in the spring.... They do have a place, of course. And Anstey and Benita came back to town for a while and left the boys up there. Jerome must have been there—he does go with them, naturally. Can’t ignore the boys’ education. Poor Arthur was quite bright, you know. Even considered going up to Oxford. Can’t think what for—no need to work. Rather enjoyed the classics. Think he was meaning to read Greek as well. Jerome was a good scholar, you know. Damn shame the fellow was a homosexual—damn shame.” He said it with a sigh, and his eyes looked into some distance Pitt could not see. His face was sad, but without anger or the harsh contempt Pitt would have expected.
“Worse than that.” Swynford shook his head, his wide mouth somewhat curled, as if the sourness of it were in the room with them. “More than a damn shame. Anstey said he was riddled with disease. Gave it to Arthur—poor beggar!”
“Disease?” Vanderley’s face paled a little. “Oh, God! That’s awful. I suppose you are sure?”
“Syphilis,” Swynford clarified.
Vanderley stepped backward and sat down in one of the big chairs, putting the heels of his hands over his eyes as if to hide both his distress and the vision that leaped to his mind.
“How bloody wretched! What—what a ghastly mess.” He sat silent for a few more moments, then jerked up and stared at Pitt, his eyes as gray as Fanny’s. “What are you doing about it?” He hesitated, fished frantically for words. “God in heaven, man—if all this is true, it could have gone anywhere—to anyone!”
“We are trying to find out everything about the man that we can,” Pitt answered, knowing it was not enough, not nearly enough. “We know he was overfamiliar with other children, other boys, but we can’t find out yet where he conducted the intimacies of this relationship with Arthur—or where Arthur was killed.”
“What the hell does that matter?” Vanderley exploded. He shot to his feet, his clean, chisel-boned face flushed, his muscles tight. “You know he did it, don’t you? For pity’s sake, man, if he was that far demented in his obsession he could have hired rooms anywhere! You can’t be naïve enough not to know that—in your business!”
“I do know it, sir.” Pitt tried to keep his own voice from rising, from betraying his revulsion or his growing sense of helplessness. “But I’d still feel we had a better case if we could find it—and someone who has seen Jerome there—perhaps the landlord, someone who took money—anything more definite. You see, so far all we can prove is that Jerome interfered with Godfrey Waybourne and with Titus.”
“What do you want?” Swynford demanded. “He’s hardly likely to have seduced the boy with witnesses! He’s perverted, criminal, and spreading that filthy disease God knows where! But he’s not foolish—he’s never lost sight of the smaller sanities, like tidying up after himself!”
Vanderley ran his fingers through his hair. Suddenly he was calm again, in control.
“No—he’s right, Mortimer. He needs to know more than that. There are tens of thousands of rooms around London. He’ll never find it, unless he’s lucky. But there may be something he can find, somebody—somebody who knew Jerome. I don’t suppose poor Arthur was the only one.” He looked down and his face was heavy, his voice suddenly even quieter. “I mean—the man was in bondage to a weakness.”
“Yes, of course,” Swynford said. “But that’s the police’s job, thank God; not ours. We don’t need to concern ourselves with whatever else he needs—or why.” He turned to Pitt. “You’ve talked to my son—I would have thought that was enough, but if it isn’t, then you must pursue whatever else you want—in the streets, or wherever. I don’t know what else you think there is.”
“There must be something more.” Pitt felt confused, almost foolish. He knew so much—and so little: explanations that fitted—a growing desperation he could understand, a loneliness, a sense of having been cheated. Would it be enough to hang a man, to hang Maurice Jerome for the murder of Arthur Waybourne? “Yes, sir,” he said aloud. “Yes—we’ll go and look, everywhere we can.”
“Good.” Swynford nodded. “Good. Well, get on with it! Good day, Inspector.”
“Good day, sir.” Pitt walked to the door and opened it silently. He went out into the hall to collect his hat and coat from the footman.
Charlotte had sent an urgent letter to Dominic to ask him to hasten his efforts for a meeting with Esmond Vanderley. She had little idea what she expected to learn, but it was more important than ever that she try.
Today, at last, she had received a reply that there was an afternoon party of sorts to which, if she wished, Dominic would escort her, although he doubted she would find any enjoyment in it whatsoever; and did she possess anything she cared to wear for the occasion, because it was fashionable and a little risqué? He would call by in his carriage at four o’clock, in case she chose to go.
Her mind whirled. Of course she chose to go! But what gown had she that would not disgrace him? Fashionable and risqué! Emily was still out of town, and so could not be borrowed from, even had there been time. She raced upstairs and pulled open her wardrobe to see what it presented. At first it was hopeless. Her own clothes were all, at best, last year’s styles, or the year before. At worst, they were plain sensible—and one could hardly say less for a gown than that! Whoever wished to seem sensible, of all things?
There was the lavender of Great-Aunt Vespasia’s that she had been given for a funeral. With black shawl and hat it had been half mourning, and suitable. She pulled it out and looked at it. It was definitely magnificent and very formal—a duchess’s gown, and an elderly duchess at that! But if she were to cut off the high neck and make it daringly low, take out the sleeves below the shoulder drape, it would look far more modem—in fact a little avant-garde!
Brilliant! Emily would be proud of her! She seized the nail scissors from the dresser and began before she could reconsider. If she were to stop and think what she was doing, she would lose her nerve.
It was completed in time. She coiled her hair high (if only Gracie were a lady’s maid!), bit her lips and pinched her cheeks to give herself a little more color, and splashed on some lavender water. When Dominic arrived, she sailed out, head high, teeth clenched, looking neither to right nor left, and certainly not at Dominic to see what he thought of her.
In the carriage, he opened his mouth to comment, then smiled faintly, a little confused, and closed it again.
Charlotte prayed that she was not making a complete fool of herself.
The party was like nothing she had ever attended before. It was not in one room but in a series of rooms, all lavishly decorated in styles she considered a trifle obtrusive, with vague suggestions of the last courts of France in one and of the sultans of the Turkish Empire in another; a third seemed Oriental, with red lacquer and silk-embroidered screens. It was rather overwhelming and a little vulgar; she began to have serious misgivings about the wisdom of having come.
But if she had been concerned about her dress, that at least was needless; some of the fashions were so outrageous that she felt quite mildly dressed by comparison. Indeed, her gown was low over the bosom and a little brief around the shoulders, but it did not look in any danger of sliding off altogether and producing a catastrophe. And, glancing around, that was more than she could say for some! Grandmama would have had apoplexy if she could have seen these ladies’ attire! As Charlotte stood watching them, keeping one hand on Dominic’s arm lest he leave her alone, their behavior was so brazen it would not have passed in the circles she was accustomed to before her marriage.
But Emily had always said high society made its own rules.
“Do you want to leave?” Dominic whispered hopefully.
“Certainly not!” she replied without giving herself time to consider, in case she accepted. “I wish to meet Esmond Vanderley.”
“Why?”
“I told you—there has been a crime.”
“I know that!” he said sharply. “And they have arrested the tutor. What on earth do you hope to achieve by talking to Vanderley?”
It was a very reasonable question and he did have a certain right to ask.
“Thomas is not really satisfied that he is guilty,” she whispered back. “There is a great deal we do not know.”
“Then why did he arrest him?”
“He was commanded to!”
“Charlotte—”
At this point, deciding that valor was the better part of discretion, she let go of his arm and swept forward to join in the party.
She discovered immediately that the conversation was glittering and wildly brittle, full of bons mots and bright laughter, glances with intimate meaning. At another time, she might have felt excluded, but today she was here just to observe. The few people who spoke to her she answered without effort to be entertaining, half her mind absorbed with watching everyone else.
The women were all expensively dressed, and seemed full of self-assurance. They moved easily from group to group, and flirted with a skill that Charlotte both envied and deplored. She could no more have achieved it than grown wings to fly. Even the plainest ones seemed peculiarly gifted in this particular skill, exhibiting wit and a certain panache.
The men were every bit as fashionable: coats exquisitely cut, cravats gorgeous, hair exaggeratedly long and with waves many a woman would have been proud of. For once, Dominic seemed unremarkable. His chiseled features were discreet, his clothes sober by comparison—and she discovered she greatly preferred them.
One lean young man with beautiful hands and a passionately sensitive face stood alone at a table, his dark gray eyes on the pianist gently rippling a Chopin nocturne on the grand piano. She wondered for a moment if he felt as misplaced here as she did. There was an unhappiness in his face, a sense of underlying grief that he sought to distract, and failed. Could he be Esmond Vanderley?
She turned to find Dominic. “Who is he?” she whispered.
“Lord Frederick Turner,” he replied, his face shadowing with an emotion she did not understand. It was a mixture of dislike and something else, indefinable. “I don’t see Vanderley, yet.” He took her firmly by the elbow and pushed her forward. “Let us go through the next room. He may be there.” Short of pulling herself free by force, she had no choice but to move as he directed.
A few people drifted up and spoke with Dominic, and he introduced Charlotte as his sister-in-law Miss Ellison. The conversation was trivial and bright; she gave it little of her attention. A striking woman with very black hair addressed them and skillfully led Dominic off, grasping his arm in an easy, intimate gesture, and Charlotte found herself suddenly alone.
A violinist was playing something that seemed to have neither beginning nor end. Within moments, she was approached by a Byronically handsome man with bold eyes, full of candid humor.
“The music is inexpressibly tedious, is it not?” he remarked conversationally. “I cannot imagine why they bother!”
“Perhaps to give those who desire it some easy subject with which to open a conversation?” she suggested coolly. She had not been introduced, and he was taking something of a liberty.
It seemed to amuse him, and he regarded her quite openly, looking at her shoulders and throat with admiration. She was furious to realize from the heat she felt in her skin that she was blushing. It was the very last thing she wished!
“You have not been here before,” he observed.
“You must come very regularly to know that.” She allowed considerable acid into her tone. “I am surprised, if you find it so uninteresting.”
“Only the music.” He shook his head a little. “And I am an optimist. I come in permanent hope of some delightful adventure. Who could have foretold that I should meet you here?”
“You have not met me!” She tried to freeze him with an icy glance, but he was impervious; in fact, it appeared to entertain him the more. “You have scraped an acquaintance, which I do not intend to continue!” she added.
He laughed aloud, a pleasant sound of true enjoyment.
“You know, my dear, you are quite individual! I believe I shall have a delicious evening with you, and you will find I am neither ungenerous nor overly demanding.”
Suddenly it all became abominably clear to her—this was a place of assignation! Many of these women were courtesans, and this appalling man had taken her for one of them! Her face flamed with confusion for her own obtuseness, and rage with herself because at least half of her was flattered! It was mortifying!
“I do not care in the slightest what you are!” she said with a choking breath. She added, quite unfairly, “And I shall have most unpleasant words with my brother-in-law for bringing me to this place. His sense of humor is in the poorest possible taste!” With a flounce of her skirts, she swept away from him, leaving him surprised but delighted, with an excellent story to recount to his friends.
“Serves you right,” Dominic said with some satisfaction when she found him. He half turned and moved his hand toward a man of casually elegant appearance, dressed in the height of fashion but managing to make it all seem uncontrived. His bones were good, his wavy, fair hair not especially long. “May I present Mr. Esmond Vanderley, my sister-in-law Miss Ellison!”
Charlotte was ill-prepared for it; her wits were still scattered from the last encounter.
“How do you do, Mr. Vanderley,” she said with far less composure than she had intended. “Dominic has spoken of you. I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”
“He was less kind to me,” Vanderley answered with an easy smile. “He has kept you a total secret, which I consider perhaps wise, but most selfish of him.”
Now that she was faced with him, how on earth could she bring up the subject of Arthur Waybourne or anything to do with Jerome? The whole idea of meeting Vanderley in this place had been ridiculous. Emily would have managed it with far more aplomb—how thoughtless of her to be absent just when she was needed! She should have been here in London to hunt murderers, not galloping about in the Leicestershire mud after some wretched fox!
She lowered her eyes for a moment, then raised them with a frank smile, a little shy. “Perhaps he thought with your recent bereavement you would find being bothered with new acquaintances tiresome. We have had such an experience in our own family, and know that it can take one in most unexpected ways.”
She hoped the smile, the sense of sympathy, extended to her eyes, and that he understood it as such. Dear heaven! She could not bear to be misunderstood again! She plunged on, “One moment one wishes only to be left alone; the next, one desires more than anything else to be among as many people as possible, none of whom have the faintest idea of your affairs.” She was proud of that—it was an embroidery of truth worthy of Emily at her best.
Vanderley looked startled.
“Good gracious! How perceptive of you, Miss Ellison. I had no idea you were even aware of it. Dominic apparently was not. Did you read it in the newspapers?”
“Oh, no!” she lied instantly. She had not yet forgotten that ladies of good society would not do such a thing. Reading the newspaper overheated the blood; it was considered bad for the health to excite the mind too much, not to mention bad for the morals. The pages of social events might be read, perhaps, but certainly not murders! A far better answer occurred to her. “I have a friend who also has had dealings with Mr. Jerome.”
“Oh, God, yes!” he said wearily. “Poor devil!”
Charlotte was confused. Could he possibly mean Jerome? Surely whatever sympathy he felt could only be for Arthur Waybourne.
“Tragic,” she agreed, lowering her voice suitably. “And so very young. The destruction of innocence is always terrible.” It sounded sententious, but she was concerned with drawing him out and perhaps learning something, not with creating a good impression upon him herself.
His wide mouth twisted very slightly.
“Would you consider the very discourteous to disagree with you, Miss Ellison? I find total innocence the most unutterable bore, and it is inevitably lost at one point or another, unless one abdicates from life altogether and withdraws to a convent. I daresay even there the same eternal jealousies and malice still intrude. The thing to desire is that innocence should be replaced with humor and a little style. Fortunately, Arthur possessed both of those.” He raised his eyebrows slightly. “Jerome, on the other hand, has neither. And of course Arthur was charming, whereas Jerome is a complete ass, poor sod. He has neither lightness of touch nor even the most basic sense of social survival.”
Dominic glared at him, but obviously could find no satisfactory words to answer such frankness.
“Oh.” Vanderley smiled at Charlotte with candid charm. “I beg your pardon. My language is inexcusable. I have only just learned that the wretched man also forced his attentions upon my younger nephew and a cousin’s boy. Arthur was dreadful enough, but that he should have involved himself with Godfrey and Titus I still find staggering. Put my appalling manners down to shock, if you will be so generous?”
“Of course,” she said quickly, not out of courtesy but because she truly meant it. “He must be a totally depraved man, and to discover that he has been teaching one’s family for years is enough to horrify anybody out of all thought of polite conversation. It was clumsy of me to have mentioned it at all.” She hoped he would not take her at her word and let the subject fall. Was she being too discreet? “Let us hope that the whole matter will be proved beyond question, and the man hanged,” she added, watching his face closely.
The long eyelids lowered in a movement that seemed to reflect pain and a need for privacy. Perhaps she should not have spoken of hanging. It was the last thing she wished herself—for Jerome, or anyone else.
“What I mean,” she hastened on, “is that the trial should be brief, and there be no question left in anyone’s conscience that he is guilty!”
Vanderley regarded her with a flash of honesty that was oddly out of place in this room of games and masquerades. His eyes were very clear.
“A clean kill, Miss Ellison? Yes, I hope so, too. Far better to bury all the squalid little details. Who needs to strip naked the pain? We use the excuse of the love for truth to inquire into a labyrinth of things that are none of our affair. Arthur is dead anyway. Let the wretched tutor be convicted without all his lesser sins paraded for a prurient public to feed its self-righteousness on.”
She felt suddenly guilty, a raging hypocrite. She was trying to do precisely what he condemned and by silence she was agreeing with: the turning over of every private weakness in an endless search for truth. Did she really believe Jerome was innocent, or was she merely being inquisitive, like the rest?
She shut her eyes for a moment. That was immaterial! Thomas did not believe it—at least he had desperate doubts. Prurient or not, Jerome deserved an honest hearing!
“If he is guilty,” she said quietly.
“You think he is not?” Vanderley was looking at her narrowly now, unhappiness in his eyes. Perhaps he feared another sordid and drawn-out ordeal for his family.
She had trapped herself; the moment of candor was over.
“Oh—I have no idea!” She opened her eyes wide. “I hope the police do not often make mistakes.”
Dominic had had enough.
“I should think it very unlikely,” he said with some asperity. “Either way, it is a most unpleasant subject, Charlotte. I am sure you will be pleased to hear that Alicia Fitzroy-Hammond married that extraordinary American—what was his name? Virgil Smith! And she is to have a child. She has retired somewhat from public functions already. You do remember them, don’t you?”
Charlotte was delighted. Alicia had had such a miserable time when her first husband died, just before the murders in Resurrection Row.
“Oh, I’m so glad!” she said sincerely. “Do you think she would recall me if I wrote to her?”
Dominic made a face. “I cannot conceive of her forgetting!” he said dryly. “The circumstances were hardly commonplace! One is not littered with corpses every week!”
A woman in hot pink buttonholed Vanderley and led him away. He glanced over his shoulder at them once, reluctantly, but his habitual good manners overcame his desire to avoid the new involvement, and he went gracefully.
“I hope you are satisfied now?” Dominic said waspishly. “Because if you are not, you are going to leave here unhappy. I refuse to stay any longer!”
She thought of arguing, as a matter of principle. But in truth, she was just as pleased to retreat as he was.
“Yes, thank you, Dominic,” she said demurely. “You have been very patient.”
He gave her a suspicious look, but decided not to question what seemed to be a compliment, and to accept his good fortune. They walked out into the autumn evening, each with a considerable sense of relief, for their separate reasons, and took the carriage home again. Charlotte had a profound desire to change out of this extraordinary gown before any necessity arose to explain it to Pitt—a feat that would be virtually impossible!
And Dominic had little wish for such a confrontation either, much as his regard had developed for Pitt—or perhaps because of it. He was beginning to grow suspicious that Pitt had not countenanced a meeting with Vanderley at all!