Bluegate Fields (14 page)

“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.”