Bluegate Fields (16 page)

“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!”

T
HE TRIAL OF
Maurice Jerome began on the second Monday in November. Charlotte had never before been in a courtroom. Her interest in Pitt’s cases had been intense in the past; indeed, on several occasions she had actively and often dangerously engaged herself in discovering the criminal. But it had always come to an end for her with the arrest; once there was no mystery left, she had considered the matter finished. To know the outcome had been sufficient—she did not wish to see it.

This time, however, she felt a strong need to attend as a gesture of support to Eugenie in what was surely one of the worst ordeals a woman could face—whatever the verdict. Even now, she was not sure what she expected the verdict to be. Usually she had entire confidence in Pitt, but in this case she had sensed an unhappiness in him that was deeper than his usual distress for the tragedy of crime. There was a sense of dissatisfaction, an air of something unfinished—answers he needed to have, and did not.

And yet if it was not Jerome, then who? There was no one else even implicated. All the evidence pointed to Jerome; why should everyone lie? It made no sense, but still the doubts were there.

She had, in her mind, formed something of a picture of Jerome, a little blurred, a little fuzzy in the details. She had to remind herself it was built on what Eugenie had told her, and Eugenie was prejudiced, to say the least. And, of course, on what Pitt had said; perhaps that was prejudiced too? Pitt had been touched by Eugenie as soon as he had seen her. She was so vulnerable; his pity was reflected in his face, his desire to protect her from the truths he knew. Charlotte had watched it in him, and felt angry with Eugenie for being so childlike, so innocent, and so very, very feminine.

But that was not important now. What was Maurice Jerome like? She had gathered that he was a man of little emotion. He displayed neither superficial emotions nor the emotions that smolder beneath an ordinary face, surfacing only in privacy in moments of unbearable passion. Jerome was cold; his appetites were less sensual than intellectual. He possessed a desire for knowledge and the status and power it afforded, for the social distinctions of manner, speech, and dress. He felt proud of his diligence and of possessing skills that others did not. He was proud, too, in an obscure way, of the satisfying totality of such branches of mental discipline as Latin grammar and mathematics.

Was that all merely a superb mask for ungovernable physical hungers beneath? Or was he precisely what he seemed: a chilly, rather incomplete man, too innately self-absorbed for passion of any sort?

Whatever the truth, Eugenie could only suffer from it. The least Charlotte could do was to be there, so that the crowd of inquisitive, accusing faces would contain at least one that was neither, that was a friend whose glance she could meet and know she was not alone.

Charlotte had put out a clean shirt for Pitt, and a fresh cravat, and she sponged and pressed his best coat. She did not tell him that she intended to go as well. She kissed him goodbye at quarter past eight, straightening his collar one last time. Then, as soon as the door closed, she whirled around and ran back to the kitchen to instruct Gracie in meticulous detail on the duties of caring for the house and the children for every day that the trial should last. Gracie assured Charlotte that she would perform every task to the letter, and be equal to any occasion that could arise.

Charlotte accepted this and thanked her gravely, then went to her room, changed into the only black dress she possessed, and put on a very beautiful, extravagant black hat that was a cast-off from Emily. Emily had worn it at some duchess’s funeral, and then, on hearing of the woman’s excessive parsimony, had taken such a dislike to her that she got rid of the hat immediately and bought another, even more expensive and stylish.

This one had a broad, rakish brim, plenty of veiling, and quite marvelous feathers. It was wildly flattering, accenting the bones of Charlotte’s face and her wide gray eyes, and was as glamorous as only a touch of mystery could be.

She did not know if one was supposed to wear black to a trial. Decent society did not attend trials! But after all it was for murder, and that necessarily had to do with death. Anyway, there was no one she could ask, at this late date. They’d probably say she should not attend at all, and make it difficult for her by pointing out to Pitt all the excellent reasons why she should not. Or they’d say that only women of scandalous character, like the old women who knitted at the foot of the guillotine in the French Revolution, attended such things.

It was cold, and she was glad she had saved enough from the housekeeping money to pay for fare in a hansom cab both ways, every day of the week, should it be necessary.

She was very early; hardly anyone else was there—only court officials dressed in black, looking a little dusty like summer crows, and two women with brooms and dusters. It was bleaker than she had imagined. Her footsteps echoed on the wide floors as she followed directions to the appropriate room and took her seat on the bare wooden rows.

She stared around, trying to people the room in her mind. The rails around the witness box and the dock were dark now, worn by the hands of generations of prisoners, of men and women who had come here to give evidence, nervous, trying to hide private and ugly truths, telling tales about others, evading with lies and half lies. Every human sin and intimacy had been exposed here; lives had been shattered, deaths pronounced. But no one had ever done the simple things here—eaten or slept, or laughed with a friend. She saw only the anonymous look of a public place.

Already there were others coming in, with bright, sneering faces. Hearing snatches of conversation, she instantly hated them. They had come to leer, to pry, to indulge their imaginations with what they could not possibly know. They would come to their own verdicts, regardless of the evidence. She wanted Eugenie to know there was at least one person who would keep pure friendship, whatever was said.