SEVERAL DAYS PASSED in fruitless search for any further evidence. Landladies and landlords were questioned, but there were too many to make anything but a cursory attempt, in the hope that for a little reward someone would come forward. Three did. The first was a brothelkeeper from Whitechapel, rubbing his hands, eyes gleaming in anticipation of a little future leniency from the police in recompense for his assistance. Gillivray’s delight was short-lived when the man proved unable to describe either Jerome or Arthur Waybourne with any accuracy. Pitt had never expected that he would, and was therefore left with a sense of superiority to soothe his irritation.
The second was a nervous little woman who let rooms in Seven Dials. Very respectable, she insisted—only let to gentlemen of the best moral character! She feared her good nature and innocence of the viler aspects of human nature had suffered her to be deceived in a most tragic manner. She moved her muff from one hand to the other, and beseeched Pitt to be assured of her total ignorance of the true purpose for which her house had been used; and was it not simply quite dreadful what the world was coming to these days?
Pitt agreed with her that it was, but probably no worse than always. She roundly disagreed with him on that—it had never been like that in her mother’s day, or that good woman, may her soul rest in peace, would have warned her not to let rooms to strangers.
However, she not only identified Jerome from a photograph shown her, but also three other people who were photographed for the purpose of just such identity quests—all of them policemen. By the time she got to the picture of Arthur—obtained from Waybourne—she was so confused she was quite sure the whole of London was seething with all manner of sin, and would be consumed like Sodom and Gomorrah before Christmas.
“Why do people do it?” Gillivray demanded furiously. “It’s a waste of police time—don’t they realize that? It ought to be punished!”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Pitt lost his patience. “She’s lonely and frightened—”
“Then she shouldn’t let rooms to people she doesn’t know!” Gillivray retorted waspishly.
“It’s probably her only living.” Pitt was getting genuinely angry now. It would do Gillivray good to walk the beat for a while, somewhere like Bluegate Fields, Seven Dials, or the Devil’s Acre. Let him see the beggars piled in the doorways and smell the bodies and the stale streets. Let him taste the dirt in the air, the grime from chimneys, the perpetual damp. Let him hear the rats squealing as they nosed in the refuse, and see the flat eyes of children who knew they would live and die there, probably die before they were as old as Gillivray was now.
A woman who owned a little property had safety, a roof over her head, and, if she let out rooms, food and clothing as well. By Seven Dials standards, she was rich.
“Then she ought to be used to it,” Gillivray replied, oblivious of Pitt’s thoughts.
“I daresay she is.” Pitt dug himself deeper into his feelings, glad to have the excuse to let go of the bridle he kept on them most of the time. “That hardly stops it hurting! She’s probably used to being hungry, and used to being cold, and used to being scared half the time she’s conscious at all. And probably she deceives herself as to what her rooms are used for and dreams that she’s better than she is: wiser, kinder, prettier, and more important—like the rest of humanity! Maybe all she wanted was for us to lend her a little fame for a day or two, give her something to talk about over the teacups—or the gin—so she convinced herself Jerome rented one of her rooms. What do you suggest we do—prosecute her because she was mistaken?” He let all his dislike for Gillivray and his comfortable assumptions thicken his voice with scorn. “Apart from anything else, that would hardly be conducive to having other people come forward to help us—now, would it?”
Gillivray looked at him, his face full of hurt.
“I think you are being quite unreasonable, sir,” he said stiffly. “I can see that for myself. It does not alter the fact that she wasted our time!”
And so did the third claimant, who came to the police station saying he had let rooms to Jerome. He was a rotund personage with rippling jowls and thick white hair. He kept a public house in the Mile End Road, and said that a gentleman answering the murderer’s description to a tee had rented rooms from him on numerous occasions, rooms immediately above his saloon bar. He had seemed perfectly respectable at the time, soberly dressed and well spoken, and had been visited while there by a young gentleman of good breeding.
But he also failed to identify Jerome among a group of photographs presented to him, and when he was questioned closely by Pitt, his answers became vaguer and vaguer, until finally he retreated altogether and said he thought after all that he had been mistaken. When he considered the matter more carefully, Pitt helped to bring back to mind that the gentleman in question had a North Country accent, had been a little on the portly side, and was definitely bald over the major portion of his head.
“Damn!” Gillivray swore as soon as he was out of the room. “Now he really was wasting time! Just after a little cheap notoriety for his wretched house! What sort of people want to go drinking in a place where a murder’s been committed anyway?”
“Most sorts,” Pitt said with disgust. “If he spreads it around, he’ll probably double his custom.”
“Then we ought to prosecute him!”
“What for? The worst we could do is give him a fright—and waste a great deal more time, not only ours but the court’s as well. He’d get off—and become a folk hero! He’d be carried down the Mile End Road shoulder high, and his pub would be crammed to the doors! He’d be able to sell tickets!”
Gillivray slammed his notebook down on the table, speechless because he did not wish to be vulgar and use the only words that sprang to his mind.
Pitt smiled to himself, and allowed Gillivray to see it.
The investigation continued. It was now October and the streets were hard and bright, full of the edge of autumn. Cold winds penetrated coats, and the first frost made the pavements slippery under one’s boots. They had traced Jerome’s career back through his previous employers, all of whom had found him of excellent scholastic ability. If admitting to no great personal liking for him, all felt definite satisfaction with his work. None of them had had the least notion that his personal life was anything but of the most regular—even, one might almost say, prim. Certainly he appeared to be a man of little imagination and no humor at all, except of the most perverse, which they failed to understand. As they had said: not likable, but of the utmost propriety—to the point of being a prig—and socially an unutterable bore.
On October 5, Gillivray came into Pitt’s office without knocking, his cheeks flushed either with success or by the sharpening wind outside.
“Well?” Pitt asked irritably. Gillivray might have ambition, and might consider himself a cut above the average policeman, as indeed he was, but that did not give him the right to walk in without the courtesy of asking.
“I’ve found it!” Gillivray said triumphantly, his face glowing, eyes alight. “I’ve got it at last!”
Pitt felt his pulse quicken in spite of himself. It was not entirely pleasure, which was unexplainable. What else should he feel?
“The rooms?” he asked calmly, then swallowed hard. “You’ve found the rooms where Arthur Waybourne was drowned? Are you sure this time? Could you prove it in a court?”
“No, no!” Gillivray waved his arms expansively. “Not the rooms. Far better than that, I’ve found a prostitute who swears to a relationship with Jerome! I’ve got times, places, dates, everything—and perfect identification!”
Pitt let out his breath with disgust. This was useless—and a sordid contradiction he did not want to know. He saw Eugenie Jerome’s face in his mind, and wished Gillivray had not been so zealous, so self-righteously successful. Damn Maurice Jerome! And damn Gillivray. And Eugenie, for being so innocent!
“Brilliant,” he said sarcastically. “And totally pointless. We are trying to prove that Jerome assaulted young boys, not that he bought the services of street women!”
“But you don’t understand!” Gillivray leaned forward over the desk, his face, shining with victory, only a foot from Pitt’s. “The prostitute is a young boy! His name is Albie Frobisher, and he’s seventeen—just a year older than Arthur Waybourne. He swears he’s known Jerome for four years, and been used by him all that time! That’s all we need! He even says Arthur Waybourne took his place—Jerome admitted as much. That’s why Jerome was never suspected before—he never bothered anyone else! He paid for his relationship—until he became infatuated with Arthur. Then, when he seduced Arthur, he stopped seeing Albie Frobisher—no need! It explains everything, don’t you see? It all fits into place!”
“What about Godfrey—and Titus Swynford?” Why was Pitt arguing? As Gillivray said, it all fell into place; it even answered the question of why Jerome had never been suspected before, why he had been able to control himself so completely that his appearance was perfect—until Godfrey. “Well?” he repeated. “What about Godfrey?”
“I don’t know!” Gillivray was confused for a moment. Then comprehension flashed into his eyes, and Pitt knew exactly what he was thinking. He believed Pitt was envious because it was Gillivray who had found the essential link, and not Pitt himself. “Perhaps once he’d seduced someone he resented paying for it?” he suggested. “Or maybe Albie’s prices had gone up? Maybe he was short of money? Or, most likely, he’d developed a taste for a high class of youth—a touch of quality. Perhaps he preferred seducing virgins to the rather shop-soiled skills of a prostitute?”
Pitt looked at Gillivray’s smooth, clean face and hated it. What he said might well be true, but his satisfaction in it, the ease with which the words came out between his perfect teeth, was disgusting. He was talking of obscenity, of intimate human degradation, with no more pain or difficulty than if they had been items on a bill of fare. Shall we have the beef or the duck tonight? Or the pie?
“You seem to have thought of every aspect of it,” he said with a curl of his lip, at once bracketing Gillivray with Jerome in intent—in nature of thought, if not in act. “I should have dwelt on its possibilities longer, then maybe I would have thought of these things for myself.”
Gillivray’s face flamed as sharp red as the blood rose, but he could think of no reply that did not involve language that would only confirm Pitt’s charge.
“Well, I suppose you have an address for this prostitute?” Pitt went on. “Have you told Mr. Athelstan yet?”
Gillivray’s face lightened instantly, satisfaction returning like a tide.
“Yes, sir, it was unavoidable. I met him as I was coming in, and he asked the what progress we had made.” He allowed himself to smile. “He was delighted.”
Pitt could imagine it without even looking at the pleasure in Gillivray’s eyes. He made an immense effort to hide his own feelings.
“Yes,” he said. “He would be. Where is this Albie Frobisher?”
Gillivray handed him a slip of paper and he took it and read it. It was a rooming house of known reputation—in Bluegate Fields. How appropriate, how very suitable.
The following day, late in the afternoon, Pitt finally found Albie Frobisher at home and alone. It was a seedy house up an alley off one of the wider streets, its brick front grimy, its wood door and window frames peeling and spongy with rot from the wet river air.
Inside there was a hempen mat for a distance of about three yards, to absorb the mud from boots, and then a well-worn carpet of brilliant red, giving the hallway a sudden warmth, an illusion of having entered a cleaner, richer world, an illusion of promises behind the closed doors, or up the dim stairs to the gaslit higher floors.
Pitt walked up quickly. In spite of all the times he had been inside brothels, bawdy houses, gin mills, and workhouses, it made him unusually uncomfortable to be visiting a house of male prostitution, especially one that employed children. It was the most degrading of all human abuses, and that anyone, even another customer, should imagine for an instant that he had come for that purpose made his face flush hot and his mind revolt.
He took the last stairs two at a time and knocked sharply on the door of room 14. He was already shifting his weight and turning his shoulder toward the door in preparation to force it if it was not opened. The thought of standing here on the landing begging for admittance sent the sweat trickling down his chest.
But it was unnecessary. The door opened a crack almost immediately, and a light, soft voice spoke.
“Who is it?”
“Pitt, from the police. You spoke to Sergeant Gillivray yesterday.”
The door swung wide without hesitation and Pitt stepped inside. Instinctively he looked around, first of all to make sure they were alone. He did not expect violence from a protector, or the procurer himself, but it was always possible.
The room was ornate, with fringed covers and cushions in crimson and purple, and gas lamps with faceted pendants of glass. The bed was enormous, and there was a bronze male nude on the marble-topped side table. The plush curtains were closed, and the air smelled stale and sweet, as though perfume had been used to mask the smells of bodies and human exertion.
The feeling of nausea Pitt experienced lasted only for an instant; then it was overtaken by a suffocating pity.
Albie Frobisher himself was smaller than Arthur Waybourne had been—perhaps as tall, although it was hard to tell, since Pitt had never seen Arthur alive—but far lighter. Albie’s bones were as fragile as a girl’s, his skin white, face beardless. He had probably grown up on such scraps of food as he could beg or steal, until he had been old enough to be sold or to find his way into the care of a procurer. By then chronic malnutrition had doubtless already taken its toll. He would always be undersized. He might become soft in old age—although the chances of his living to reach it were negligible—but he would never be rounded, plump. And he was probably worth far more in his profession if he kept this frail, almost childlike look. There was an illusion of virginity about him—physically, at least—but his face, when Pitt regarded it more carefully, was as weary and as bleached of innocence as the face of any woman who had plied her trade in the streets for a lifetime. The world held no surprises for Albie, and no hope except of survival.
“Sit down,” Pitt said, closing the door behind him. He balanced himself unhappily on the red plush seat as if he were the host, yet it was Albie who made him nervous.
Albie obeyed without moving his eyes from Pitt’s face.
“What do you want?” he asked. His voice was curiously pleasing, softer, better educated than his surroundings suggested. Probably he had clients from a better class of person and had picked up their tricks of speech. It was an unpleasant thought, but it made sense. Men of Bluegate Fields had no money for this kind of indulgence. Had Jerome unintentionally schooled this child as well? If not Jerome, then others like him: men whose tastes could only be satisfied in the privacy of rooms like this, with people for whom they had no other feelings, shared no other side of their lives.
“What do you want?” Albie repeated, his old woman’s eyes tired in his beardless face. With a shiver of revulsion, Pitt realized what he was thinking. He straightened up in the chair and sat back as if he were at ease, although he felt furiously uncomfortable. He knew his face was hot, but perhaps the lights were too dim for Albie to see it.
“To ask you about one of your customers,” he answered. “You told Sergeant Gillivray yesterday. I want you to repeat it to the today. A man’s life might depend on it—we have to be sure.”
Albie’s face stiffened but there was too little color in the skin to see, in this yellow gaslight, if he paled even more.
“What about him?”
“You know the man I mean?”
“Yes. Jerome, the tutor.”
“That’s right. Describe him for me.” He would have to allow some leniency. Customers to places like these often did not wish to be seen closely. They preferred the lights dim, and came in heavily muffled even in summer. It would be cool enough down in these dark, riverside streets any night. It would not be remarked. “Well?”
“Fairly tall.” Albie did not seem hesitant or confused. “On the lean side, dark hair that was always short and neat, mustache. Sort of pinched face, sharp nose, pursed-up mouth as if he smelled something bad, brown eyes. I can’t describe his body because he always liked the lights off before that part, but he felt strong, and sort of bony—”
Pitt’s stomach lurched, his imagination was too vivid. This boy had been thirteen when it started!
“Thank you,” he stopped Albie. It was Jerome, exactly; he could not have phrased it better himself. He took half a dozen photographs out of his pocket, including one of Jerome, and passed them over one by one. “Any one of these?”
Albie looked at them each until he came to the right one. He hesitated only for a moment.
“That one,” he said with certainty. “That’s him. I’ve never seen any of the others.”
Pitt took it back. It was a picture taken in the police cells, stiff and unwilling, but it was a clear likeness.
“Thank you. Did he ever bring anyone else with him when he came?”
“No.” Albie smiled very slightly, a wan ghost of expression full of self-knowledge. “People don’t, when they come to places like this. With women they might—I don’t know many women. But they come here alone, especially the gentry, and they’re mostly the ones who can afford it. Others with that sort of taste exercise it with whoever they can find with the same inclination. Usually the higher they are, the quieter they come, the lower their hats and the tighter their collars to their chins. There’s more than one wears false whiskers till he gets inside, and always wants the lamps so low he’s fallen over the furniture before now.” His face was cold with scorn. In his opinion, a man should at least have the courage of his sins. “The more I accommodate them, the worse they hate me for it,” he went on harshly, suddenly finding anger because he was despised and knew it, for all their begging and added money. Sometimes, when he had had a good week and he did not need the funds, he turned someone away for the sheer luxury of humiliating him, of stripping naked his need and exposing it. Next time, and perhaps even for a month or two, the man remembered to say please and thank you, and did not drop the guineas quite so offhandedly on the table.
It was not necessary to put his thoughts into words for Pitt. Similar ideas had been running through Pitt’s imagination: the two bodies locked together in passionate intimacy, the physical need of the man and Albie’s need to survive—each despising the other, and in their hearts hating! Albie, because he was used like a public convenience in which you relieve yourself and then leave for the next man; the other, whatever dim figure it was, because Albie had seen his dependence—his naked soul— and he could not forgive that. Each was master and slave, and each knew it.
Pitt felt a sudden pity and anger—pity for the men, because they were imprisoned in themselves, but anger for Albie, because he had been made into what he was not by nature but by man, and for money. He had been taken as a child and set into this mold. He would almost certainly die in it, probably within a few years.
Why couldn’t Jerome have stayed with Albie, or someone like him? What was it Jerome felt for Arthur Waybourne that Albie had not been able to satisfy? He would probably never know.
“Is that all?” Albie asked patiently. His mind was already somewhere else.
“Yes, thank you.” Pitt stood up. “Don’t go away, or we’ll be obliged to look for you and keep you safe in jail so we have you for the trial.”
Albie looked uncomfortable. “I gave Sergeant Gillivray a statement. He wrote it all down.”
“I know. But we’ll need you all the same. Don’t make things harder for yourself—just be here.”
Albie sighed. “All right. Where have I got to go, anyway? I have clients here. I couldn’t afford to start all over again somewhere else.”
“Yes,” Pitt said. “If I thought you would go, I’d arrest you now.” He walked to the door and opened it.
“You don’t want to do that.” Albie smiled with wan humor. “I’ve too many other clients who wouldn’t like it if I was arrested. Who knows what I might say—if I was questioned too hard? You’re not free either, Mr. Pitt. All sorts of people need me—people far more important than you are.”
Pitt did not grudge him his brief moment of power.
“I know,” he said quietly. “But I wouldn’t remind them of it, Albie—not if you want to stay safe.” He went out and closed the door, leaving Albie sitting on the bed, his arms wrapped around his body as he stared at the prisms on the gaslight.
When Pitt got back to his office, Cutler, the police surgeon, was waiting for him, his face wrinkled in puzzlement. Taking his hat off and flinging it at the stand, Pitt closed the office door. The hat missed and fell on the floor. He pulled his muffler undone and threw it as well. It hung over the antler like a dead snake.
“What is it?” he asked, undoing his coat.
“This man of yours,” Cutler replied, scratching his cheek. “Jerome, the one who is supposed to have killed your body from the Bluegate Fields sewer—”
“What about him?”
“He infected the boy with syphilis?”
“Yes—why?”
“He didn’t, you know! He doesn’t have it. Clean as a whistle. Given him every test I know of—twice. Difficult disease, I know. Goes dormant—can stay like that for years. But whoever gave it to that boy was infectious within the last few months—even weeks—and this man is as clean as I am! I’d swear to that in court—and I’ll have to. Defense will ask me—and if they don’t, I’ll damn well tell them!”
Pitt sat down and shook off his coat, leaving it sprawled over the back of his chair.
“No possibility of a mistake?”
“I told you—I did it twice, and had my assistant check me. The man has not got syphilis or any other venereal disease. Done all the tests on him there are.”
Pitt looked at him. He had a strong face but it was not overbearing. There were lines of humor around the mouth and eyes. Pitt found himself wishing he had time to know him better.
“Have you told Athelstan?”
“No.” This time there was a smile. “I will if you like. I thought you might prefer to do that yourself.”
Pitt stood up and reached out his hand for the written report. His coat slid to the floor in a heap but he did not notice it.
“Yes,” he said, without knowing why. “Yes, I would. Thank you.” He went to the door, and the doctor left to go back up to his work.
Upstairs in his polished and gleaming room, Athelstan was leaning back in his chair contemplating the ceiling when he gave Pitt permission to come in.
“Well?” he said with satisfaction. “Good job young Gillivray did turning up the prostitute, eh? Watch him—he’ll go a long way. Wouldn’t be surprised if I have to promote him in a year or two. Treading on your tail, Pitt!”
“Possibly,” Pitt said without pleasure. “The police surgeon has just given the his report on Jerome.”
“Police surgeon?” Athelstan frowned. “What for? Fellow’s not ill, is he?”
“No, sir, he’s in excellent health—not a blemish, apart from a little dyspepsia.” Pitt felt satisfaction welling up inside him. He looked straight at Athelstan, meeting his eyes. “Perfect health,” he repeated.
“God dammit, man!” Athelstan sat upright sharply. “Who cares if he has indigestion or not! The man perverted, contaminated, and then murdered a decent boy, a good boy! I don’t give a fig if he’s doubled up in agony!”
“No, sir, he’s in excellent health,” Pitt repeated. “The doctor gave him every test he knows of, and then did it again to make sure.”
“Pitt, you’re wasting my time! As long as he’s kept alive and fit for trial, and then hanging, his health is of no interest to me whatsoever. Get on with your job!”
Pitt leaned forward a little, keeping the smile from his face with an effort.
“Sir,” he said carefully. “He doesn’t have syphilis—not a trace!”
Athelstan stared at him; it was a second or two before the meaning of the statement dawned on him.
“Not got syphilis?” he repeated, blinking.
“That’s right. He’s clean as a whistle. Hasn’t got it now— never has had.”
“What are you talking about? He must have it! He gave it to Arthur Waybourne!”
“No, sir, he can’t have. He doesn’t have it,” Pitt repeated.
“That’s absurd!” Athelstan exclaimed. “If he didn’t give it to Arthur Waybourne, then who did?”
“I don’t know, sir. That’s a very interesting question.”
Athelstan swore viciously, then colored with anger because Pitt had seen him lose control of himself and sink to obscenity.
“Well, get out and do something!” he shouted. “Don’t leave everything to young Gillivray! Find out who did give it to that wretched boy! Someone did—find him! Don’t stand there like a fool!”
Pitt smiled sourly, his pleasure sharply diluted with the knowledge of what lay ahead.
“Yes, sir. I’ll do what I can.”
“Good! Get on with it then! And close the door behind you— it’s damn cold out there in the passage!”
The end of the day brought the worst experience of all. He arrived home late, to find Eugenie Jerome waiting in the parlor again. She was sitting on the edge of the sofa with Charlotte, who was pale-faced and, for once, obviously uncertain what to do or say. She stood up the moment she heard Pitt at the door, and rushed to greet him—or perhaps to warn him.
As Pitt entered the room, Eugenie stood up, her body tense, her face composed with an effort that was painful.
“Oh, Mr. Pitt, it is so kind of you to see me!”
He had no choice; he would like to have avoided her. That knowledge made him feel guilty. He could see nothing in his mind’s eye but Albie Frobisher—what a ridiculous name that was for a prostitute!—sitting in the gaslight in his disgusting room. He felt obscurely guilty for that, too, although it was nothing to do with him. Perhaps the guilt was because he knew about it, and had done nothing to fight it, to wipe it out forever.
“Good evening, Mrs. Jerome,” he said gently. “What can I do for you?”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she had to struggle for several seconds to master herself before she could speak distinctly.
“Mr. Pitt, there is no way that I can prove that my husband was at home with me all the night that poor child was killed, because I was asleep and I cannot truly say I know where he was—except that I have never known Maurice to lie about anything, and I believe him.” She pulled a little face as she recognized her own naïveté. “Not that I suppose people would expect the to say anything else—”
“That’s not so, Mrs. Jerome,” Charlotte interrupted. “If you believe he was guilty, you might feel betrayed and wish to see him punished. Many women would!”
Eugenie turned around, her face aghast.
“What a dreadful thought! Oh, how terrible! I do not for even an instant believe it to be true. Certainly Maurice is not an easy man, and there are those who dislike him, I know. He holds very definite opinions, and they are not shared by everyone. But he is not evil. He has no—no appetites of the vile nature they are accusing him of. Of that I am perfectly sure. It is just not the sort of person he is.”
Pitt hid his feelings. She was remarkably innocent for a woman married eleven years. Did she really imagine that Jerome would have permitted her to learn of it if he had?
And yet it surprised him also. Jerome seemed too—too ambitious, too rational to fill the picture that was emerging of him as an emotional, sensual man. Which proved what? Only that people were far more complex, more surprising than it was so easy to suppose.
There was no point in hurting her the more by arguing. If it was better for her to go on believing in his innocence, cherishing the good in what she had had, then why insist on trying to shatter it?
“I can only uncover evidence, Mrs. Jerome,” he said weakly. “It is not in my power to interpret it, or to hide it again.”
“But there must be evidence to prove him innocent!” she protested. “I know he is! Somewhere there must be a way to show that! After all, someone did kill that boy, didn’t they?”
“Oh, yes, he was murdered.”
“Then find who really did it! Please, Mr. Pitt! If not for the sake of my husband, then for the sake of your own conscience—for justice. I know it was not Maurice, so it must be somebody else.” She stopped for a moment, and a more forceful argument came to her mind. “After all if he is left to go free, he may abuse some other child in the same manner, may he not?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But what can I look for, Mrs. Jerome? What other evidence do you think there could be?”
“I don’t know. But you are far cleverer at that sort of thing. It is your job. Mrs. Pitt has told the about some of the marvelous cases you have solved in the past, when it seemed quite hopeless. I’m sure if anyone in London can find the truth, it is you.”
It was monstrous, but there was nothing he could say. After she had gone, he turned on Charlotte furiously.
“What in God’s name have you been telling her?” he demanded, his voice rising to a shout. “I can’t do anything about it! The man’s guilty! You have no right to encourage her to believe—it’s grossly irresponsible—and cruel. Do you know who I saw today?” He had not planned to tell her anything about it. Now he was smarting raw, and he did not want to be alone in his pain. He lashed out with all the clarity of new memory. “I saw a prostitute, a boy who was probably sold into homosexual brothels when he was thirteen years old. He sat there on a bed in a room that looked like a cheap copy of a West End whorehouse—all red plush and gilt-backed chairs, and gas lamps dim in the middle of the day. He was seventeen, but his eyes looked as old as Sodom. He’ll probably be dead before he’s thirty.”
Charlotte stood silent for so long that Pitt began to regret having said what he had. It was unfair; she could not have known what had happened. She was sorry for Eugenie Jerome, and he could hardly blame her for that. So was he—painfully so.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Why?” she demanded, moving suddenly. “Isn’t it true?” Her eyes were wide and angry, her face white.
“Yes, of course it’s true, but I shouldn’t have told you.”
Now her anger, fierce and scalding, was directed at him.
“Why not? Do you think I need to be protected, politely deceived like some child? You used not to treat me so condescendingly! I remember when I lived in Cater Street, you forced me to learn something of the rookeries, whether I would or not—”
“That was different! That was starvation. It was poverty you knew nothing of. This is perversion.”
“And I ought to know about people starving to death in the alleys, but not about children being bought to be used by the perverted and the sick? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Charlotte—you can’t do anything about it.”
“I can try!”
“You can’t possibly make any difference!” He was exasperated. The day had been long and wretched, and he was in no mood for high-flown moral rhetoric. There were thousands of children involved, maybe tens of thousands; there was nothing any one person could do. She was indulging in a flight of imagination to salve conscience, and nothing more. “You’ve simply no idea of the enormity of it.” He waved his hands.
“Don’t you dare talk down at the like that!” She caught up the cushion from the sofa and flung it at him as hard as she could. It missed, flew past him, and knocked a vase of flowers from the sideboard onto the floor, spilling water on the carpet but fortunately not breaking the vase.
“Damnation!” she said loudly. “You clumsy creature! You could have at least have caught it! Now look what you’ve done! I’ll have to clean all that up!”
It was grossly unjust of her, but it was not worth arguing about. She picked up her skirts and swept out to the kitchen, then returned with the dustpan and brush, a cloth, and a jug of fresh water. She silently tidied up, refilled the vase with water from the jug, set the flowers back in, and replaced them on the sideboard.
“Thomas!”
“Yes?” He was deliberately cool, but ready to accept an apology with dignity, even magnanimity.
“I think you may be wrong. That man may not be guilty.”
He was stunned. “You what?”
“I think he might not be guilty of killing Arthur Waybourne,” she repeated. “Oh, I know Eugenie looks as if she couldn’t count up to ten without some man helping her, and she goes dewy-eyed at the sound of a masculine voice, but she puts it all on—it’s an act. She’s as sharp underneath as I am. She knows he’s humorless and full of resentment, and that hardly anybody likes him. I’m not even sure if she likes him very much herself. But she does know him! He has no passion, he’s as cold as a cod, and he didn’t particularly like Arthur Waybourne. But he knew that working in the Waybourne house was a good position. Actually, the one he preferred was Godfrey. He said Arthur was a nasty boy, sly and conceited.”
“How do you know that?” he asked. His curiosity was roused, even though he thought she was being unfair to Eugenie. Funny how even the nicest women, the most levelheaded, could give way to feminine spite.
“Because Eugenie said so, of course!” she said impatiently. “And she might be able to play you like a threepenny violin, but she doesn’t pull the wool over my eyes for a moment—she has too much wit to try! And don’t look at me like that!” She glared at him. “Just because I don’t melt into tears in front of you and tell you you’re the only man in London who is clever enough to solve a case! That doesn’t mean I don’t care. I care very much indeed. And I think it’s all frighteningly convenient for everyone else that it’s Jerome. So much tidier—don’t you think? Now you can leave all the important people alone to get on with their lives without having to answer a lot of very personal and embarrassing questions, or have the police in their houses for the neighbors to gawp at and speculate about.”
“Charlotte!” Indignation welled up inside him. She was being wildly unfair. Jerome was guilty; everything pointed to it, and nothing whatsoever pointed to anyone else. She was sorry for Eugenie and she was upset over the boy prostitute; she was letting her emotions run all over the place. It was his fault; he should not have told her about Albie. It was stupid and self-indulgent of him. Worse than that, he had known it was stupid all the time, even as he heard his own voice saying the words.
Charlotte stood still, waiting, staring at him.
He took a deep breath. “Charlotte, you do not know all the evidence. If you did, then you would know that there is enough to convict Maurice Jerome, and there is none at all—do you hear me?—none at all to indicate anyone else knew anything, or had any guilt or complicity in any part of it. I cannot help Mrs. Jerome. I cannot alter or hide the facts. I cannot suppress witnesses. I cannot and will not try to get them to alter their evidence. That is the end of the matter! I do not wish to discuss the subject any further. Where is my dinner, please? I am tired and cold, and I have had a long and extremely unpleasant day. I wish to be served my dinner, and to eat it in peace!”
Unblinking, she stared at him while she absorbed what he had said. He stared straight back at her. She took a deep breath and let it out.
“Yes, Thomas,” she answered. “It is in the kitchen.” She swished her skirts sharply and turned and led the way out and down the hallway.
He followed with a very slight smile that he did not intend her to see. A little Eugenie Jerome would not hurt her at all!
Just short of a week later, Gillivray came up with his second stroke of brilliance. Admittedly—and he was obliged to concede it—he made the discovery following an idea Pitt had given him and insisted he pursue. All the same, he contrived to tell Athelstan before he reported to Pitt himself. This was achieved by the simple stratagem of delaying his return to the police station with the news until he knew Pitt would be out on another errand.
Pitt came back, wet to the knees from the rain, and with water dripping off the edge of his hat and soaking his collar and scarf. He took off his hat and scarf with numb fingers and flung them in a heap over the hatstand.
“Well?” he demanded as Gillivray stood up from the chair opposite. “What have you got?” He knew from Gillivray’s smug face that he had something, and he was too tired to spin it out.
“The source of the disease,” Gillivray replied. He disliked using the name of it and avoided it whenever he could; the word seemed to embarrass him.
“Syphilis?” Pitt asked deliberately.
Gillivray’s nose wrinkled in distaste, and he colored faintly up his well-shaven cheeks.
“Yes. It’s a prostitute—a woman called Abigail Winters.”
“Not such an innocent after all, our young Arthur,” Pitt observed with a satisfaction he would not have cared to explain. “And what makes you think she is the source?”
“I showed her a picture of Arthur—the photograph we obtained from his father. She recognized it, and confessed she knew him.”
“Did she indeed? And why do you say ‘confessed’? Did she seduce him, deceive him in some way?”
“No, sir.” Gillivray flushed with annoyance. “She’s a whore. She couldn’t ever find herself in his society.”
“So he took himself to hers?”
“No! Jerome took him. I proved that!”
“Jerome took him?” Pitt was startled. “Whatever for? Surely the last thing he would want would be for Arthur to develop a taste for women? That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Well, whether it makes sense or not—he did!” Gillivray snapped back with satisfaction. “Seems he was a voyeur as well. He liked to sit there and watch. You know, I wish I could hang that man myself! I don’t usually go to watch a hanging, but this is one I won’t miss!”
There was nothing for Pitt to say. Of course he would have to check the statement, see the woman himself; but there was too much now to argue against. It was surely proved beyond any but the most illusory and unrealistic of doubts.
He reached out and took the name and address from Gillivray’s hand. It was the last piece necessary before trial.
“If it amuses you,” he said harshly. “Can’t say I ever enjoyed seeing a man hanged, myself. Any man. But you do whatever gives you pleasure!”