Bluegate Fields (25 page)

“Oh, dear!” Emily looked as though her tea had suddenly turned sour in her mouth. “How sordid. Do you want the toast? The apricot preserve is very good. How very nasty indeed. I really don’t understand that sort of thing. In fact, I didn’t even know much about it until I overheard one of George’s friends say something quite horrible.” She pushed the butter across. “So what is the mystery? You said something rather extreme to Gwenneth about great injustice. The scandal is obvious, but unless this wretched than is going to get away with it, where is the injustice? He has been tried and he will be hanged. And so he should be.”

Charlotte avoided the argument of whether anyone should be hanged or not. That would have to wait for another time. She took the butter.

“But it hasn’t really been proved that he was guilty!” she said urgently. “There are all sorts of other possibilities that haven’t been proved or disproved yet!”

Emily squinted at her suspiciously.

“Such as what? It all seems very plain to me!”

Charlotte reached for the apricot preserve.

“Of course it’s plain!” she snapped. “That doesn’t mean it’s true! Arthur Waybourne may not have been as innocent as everyone is supposing. Perhaps he had a relationship with the other two boys, and they were frightened, or revolted, and they killed him.”

“Is there any reason whatsoever to suppose that?” Emily was entirely unconvinced, and Charlotte had the feeling she was rapidly losing her attention.

“I haven’t told you everything,” she said, trying a different angle.

“You haven’t told me anything!” Emily said waspishly. “Not anything worth thinking about.”

“I went to the trial,” Charlotte continued. “I heard all the evidence and saw the people.”

“You didn’t say that!” Emily exclaimed, her cheeks coloring with frustration. She sat very upright in the Chippendale chair. “I’ve never been to a trial!”

“Of course you haven’t,” Charlotte agreed with a faint flicker of spite. “Ladies of quality don’t!”

Emily’s eyes narrowed in a look of warning. This was suddenly far too exciting a subject to give way to sisterly envy.

Charlotte accepted the hint. After all, she wanted Emily’s cooperation; indeed, it was what she had come for. Rapidly she told her everything she could remember, describing the courtroom, the sewerman who had found the body, Anstey Waybourne, the two boys, Esmond Vanderley and the other than who gave evidence on Jerome’s previous character, Albie Frobisher, and Abigail Winters. She did her best to recount accurately what they had said. She also tried as clearly as she could to explain her own mixture of feelings about Jerome himself, and about Eugenie. She ended by expounding her theories regarding Godfrey, Titus, and Arthur Waybourne.

Emily stared at her for a long time before replying. Her tea was cold; she ignored it.

“I see,” she said at last. “At least I see that we don’t see—not nearly enough to be sure. I didn’t know there were boys who made their living like that. It’s appalling—poor creatures. Although I have discovered that there are a great many more revolting things in high society than I ever used to imagine living at home in Cater Street. We were incredibly innocent men. I find some of George’s friends quite repellent. In fact, I have asked him why on earth he puts up with them! He simply says he has known them all his life, and when you have grown used to a person, you tend to overlook the unpleasant things they do. They sort of creep into your knowledge one by one, and you don’t ever realize just how horrible they are, because you half see the person the way you remember them and don’t bother to look at them properly anymore—not as you would someone you have just met. Maybe that’s what happened with Jerome. His wife never noticed how big the change was in him.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at the table, reached for the bell, then changed her mind.

“That could just as easily be true of Arthur Waybourne,” Charlotte reasoned.

“I suppose nobody was allowed to inquire.” Emily screwed up her face thoughtfully. “They couldn’t. I mean I can imagine the family’s reaction to having the police in the house at all! Death is bad enough.”

“Exactly! Thomas can’t get any further. The case is closed.”

“Naturally. And they will hang the tutor in three weeks.”

“Unless we do something.”

Emily considered, frowning. “What, for instance?”

“Well, there must be more to know about Arthur, for a start. And I would like to see those two boys without their fathers present. I should dearly like to know what they would say if they were questioned properly.”

“Highly unlikely you’ll ever know.” Emily was a realist. “The more there is to hush up, the more their families will make sure they are not pressed too hard. They will have learned their answers by heart now and they won’t dare go back on it. They’ll say exactly the same thing whoever asks them.”

“I don’t know,” Charlotte countered. “They might say it differently if they are not on their guard. We might see something, sense something.”

“In fact, what you came for was to get me to find you a way into the Waybournes’ house,” Emily said with a little laugh. “I will—on one condition!”

Charlotte knew before she spoke. “That you come, too.” She smiled wryly. “Of course. Do you know the Waybournes?”

Emily sighed. “No.”

Charlotte felt her heart sink.

“But I’m sure Aunt Vespasia does, or knows someone else who does. Society is really very small, you know.”

Charlotte remembered George’s Great-Aunt Vespasia with a tingle of pleasure. She stood up from the table.

“Then we’d better go and see her,” she said enthusiastically. She’ll be bound to help us when she knows why.”

Emily also stood up. “Are you going to tell her this tutor is innocent?” she asked doubtfully.

Charlotte hesitated. She needed the help desperately, and Aunt Vespasia might be disinclined to intrude herself into a grieving family, bringing two inquisitive sisters to uncover ugly secrets, unless she believed gross injustice was about to be done. On the other hand, when Charlotte recalled Aunt Vespasia, she realized that lying to her would be impossible, and worse than pointless.

“No.” She shook her head. “No, I’ll tell her there may be a gross injustice done, that’s all. She’ll mind about that.”

“I wouldn’t guarantee her loving truth for its own sake,” Emily replied. “She’ll be able to see all its disadvantages too. She’s extremely practical, you know.” She smiled and rang the bell at last, to permit Gwenneth to clear the table. “But then, of course, she would hardly have survived in society for seventy years if she were not. Do you want to borrow a decent dress? I suppose we’ll go calling immediately, if it can be arranged. There’s hardly time to lose. And, by the way, you’d better let me explain all this to Aunt Vespasia. You’ll let all sorts of things slip and shock her out of her senses. People like her don’t know about your disgusting rookeries and your boy prostitutes with their diseases and perversions. You were never any good at saying anything without saying everything else at the same time.” She led the way to the door and out into the hall, practically falling over Gwenneth, who was balanced against the door with a tray in her hand. Emily ignored her and swept across to the stairs.

“I’ve got a dark red dress that would probably look better on you than it does on me anyway. The color is too hard for me—makes me look sallow.”

Charlotte did not bother to argue, either over the dress or the insult to her tact; she could not afford to, and Emily was probably right.

The red dress was extremely flattering, rather too much so for someone proposing to call on the recently bereaved. Emily looked her up and down with her mouth pursed, but Charlotte was too pleased with her reflection in the glass to consider changing it; she had not looked so dashing since she had spent that unspeakable evening in the music hall—an incident she profoundly hoped Emily had forgotten.

“No,” she said firmly before Emily spoke. “They are in mourning, but I am not. Anyway, if we let them know that we know they are, then we can hardly go at all! I can wear a black hat and gloves—that will be enough to tone it down. Now you had better get dressed, or we shall have wasted half the morning. We don’t want to find Aunt Vespasia already gone out when we get there!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Emily snapped. “She’s seventy-four! She doesn’t go calling on people at this hour! Have you forgotten all your breeding?”

But when they arrived at Great-Aunt Vespasia’s house they were informed that Lady Cumming-Gould had been up for some considerable time, and had already received a caller that morning; the maid would have to see whether she was available to receive Lady Ashworth and her sister. They were invited to wait in a morning room fragrant with the earthy smell of a bowl of chrysanthemums, reflected in gold-edged French cheval glasses and echoed in a most unusual Chinese silk embroidery on the wall. They were both drawn to admire the embroidery in the minutes left them.

Vespasia Cumming-Gould threw open the doors and came in. She was exactly as Charlotte had remembered her: tall, straight as a lance, and as thin. Her aquiline face, which had been among the most beautiful of her generation, was now tilted in surprise, with eyebrows arched. Her hair was exquisitely piled in silver coils, and she had on a dress with delicate Chantilly lace over the shoulders and down to the waist. It must have cost as much as Charlotte would have spent on clothes in a year; yet, looking at it, she felt nothing but delight at seeing Aunt Vespasia, and a surging of spirit inside herself.

“Good morning, Emily.” Aunt Vespasia walked in and allowed the footman to close the doors behind her. “My dear Charlotte, you appear extremely well. That can only mean that either you are with child again or you have another murder to meddle with.”

Emily let out her breath in a gasp of frustration.

Charlotte felt all her good intentions vanish like water through a sieve.

“Yes, Aunt Vespasia,” she agreed instantly. “A murder.”

“That’s what comes of marrying beneath you,” Aunt Vespasia said without a flicker of expression, patting Emily on the arm. “I always thought it would be rather more fun—if, of course, one could find a man of any natural wit—and grace. I cannot bear a man who allows himself to be put upon. It is really very frustrating. I require people to know their places, and yet I despise them when they do! I think that is what I like about your policeman, my dear Charlotte. He never knows his place, and yet he leaves it with such panache one is not offended. How is he?”

Charlotte was taken aback. She had never heard Pitt described that way before. And yet perhaps she understood what Aunt Vespasia meant; it was nothing physical, rather a way of meeting the eyes, of not permitting himself to feel insulted, whatever the intent of others. Maybe it had something to do with the innate dignity of believing.

Aunt Vespasia was staring at her, waiting.

“In excellent health, thank you,” she replied. “But very worried about an injustice that may be about to take place—an unpardonable one!”

“Indeed?” Aunt Vespasia sat down, arranging her dress on the sofa with a single, expert movement. “And I suppose you intend to do something about this injustice, which is why you have come. Who has been murdered? Not that disgusting business with the Waybourne boy?”

“Yes!” Emily said quickly, wrestling the initiative before Charlotte could provoke some social disaster. “Yes, it is not necessarily what it seems.”

“My dear girl.” Aunt Vespasia’s eyebrows rose in amazement. “Very little ever is—or life would be insufferably boring. I sometimes think that is the whole purpose of society. The basic difference between us and the working classes is that we have the time and the wit to see that very little appears to be what it is. It is the very essence of style.

“What in particular is more than usually deceptive about this wretched business? It certainly appears plain enough!” She turned to Charlotte as she said this. “Speak, girl! I am aware that young Arthur was found in the most sordid of circumstances, and that some servant or other has been tried for the crime and, as far as I know, found to be guilty. What else is there to know?”

Emily shot Charlotte a warning glance, then abandoned hope and sat back in the Louis Quinze chair to await the worst.

Charlotte cleared her throat. “The evidence upon which the tutor was convicted was entirely the testimony of other people, nothing material at all.”

“Indeed,” Aunt Vespasia said with a little nod. “What could there be? Drowning someone will hardly leave tangible marks upon a bath. And presumably there was no struggle of any worth. What was this testimony, and from whom?”

“The two other boys who say Jerome tried to interfere with them also—that is Godfrey, Arthur’s young brother, and Titus Swynford.”

“Oh.” Aunt Vespasia gave a little grunt. “Knew Callantha Vanderley’s mother. She was married to Benita Waybourne’s uncle—Benita Vanderley, as she was then, of course. Callantha married Mortimer Swynford. Could never understand why she did that. Still, I suppose she found him agreeable enough. Never cared much for him myself—made too much of a noise about his good sense. A trifle vulgar. Good sense should never be discussed—it’s like good digestion, better assumed than spoken of.” She sighed. “Still, I suppose young men are bound to be pleased with themselves for some reason or other, and good sense is a better one in the long run than a straight nose, or a long pedigree.”

Emily smiled. “Well, if you know Mrs. Swynford,” she said hopefully, “perhaps we can call on her? We may learn something.”

“That would be a distinct advantage!” Aunt Vespasia answered sharply. “I have learned precious little so far! For goodness’ sake, continue, Charlotte! And come to some point or other!”

Charlotte forbore from mentioning that it was Vespasia who had interrupted her.

“Apart from the two boys,” she resumed, “no one else in either family had anything ill to say about Jerome, except that they did not like him much—which nobody else does either.” She took a breath and hurried on before Aunt Vespasia could break in again. “The other main evidence came from a woman”—she hesitated for an acceptable term that was not open to complete misunderstanding—“of loose behavior.”