Bluegate Fields (36 page)

“Didn’t Godfrey understand what the questions meant either?”

“No, not really. Papa just asked us if Mr. Jerome had ever touched us.” He took a deep breath. He might be clinging to her like a child, but she was still a woman, and decencies must be kept; he did not even know how to break them anyway. “On certain parts of the body.” He found the words inadequate, but all he could say. “Well, he did. I didn’t think there was anything wrong in it at the time. It sort of happened quickly, like an accident. Papa told me it was terribly wrong, and something else was meant by it—but I didn’t really know what—and he didn’t say! I didn’t understand about anything like—like that! It sounds horrible—and pretty silly.” He sniffed hard and pulled away.

She let him go immediately.

He sniffed again and blinked; suddenly his dignity had returned.

“If I’ve told lies in court, will I go to prison, Mrs. Pitt?” He stood very straight, as though he expected the constables with manacles to come through the door any moment.

“You haven’t told lies,” she answered soberly. “You said what you believed to be the truth, and it was misunderstood because people already had an idea in their minds and they made what you said fit into that idea, even though it was not what you meant.”

“Shall I have to tell them?” His lip quivered very slightly and he bit it to control himself.

She allowed him the time.

“But Mr. Jerome has already been sentenced and they will hang him soon. Shall I go to hell?”

“Did you mean him to hang for something he did not do?”

“No, of course not!” He was horrified.

“Then you will not go to hell.”

He shut his eyes. “I think I would rather tell them anyway.” He refused to look at her.

“I think that is very brave of you,” she said with absolute sincerity. “I think that is a very manly thing to do.”

He opened his eyes and gazed at her. “Do you honestly?”

“Yes, I do.”

“They’ll be very angry, won’t they?”

“Probably.”

He lifted his chin a little higher and squared his shoulders. He could have been a French aristocrat about to step into a tumbril.

“Will you accompany me?” he asked formally, making it sound like an invitation to the dinner table.

“Of course.” She left the pen and papers lying on the desk and together they walked back to the withdrawing room.

Mortimer Swynford was standing with his back to the hearth, warming his legs and blocking a good deal of the fire. Emily was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, there you are, Charlotte,” Callantha said quickly. “Titus—come in. I do hope he has not been disturbing you.” She turned to Swynford by the fire. “This is Mrs. Pitt, Lady Ashworth’s sister. Charlotte, my dear, I believe you have not met my husband.”

“How do you do, Mr. Swynford,” Charlotte said coolly. She could not bring herself to like this man. Perhaps it was quite unfair of her, but she associated him with the trial and its misery and now, it seemed, its unjustice.

“How do you do, Mrs. Pitt.” He inclined his head very slightly, but did not move from the fireplace. “Your sister has been called away. She went with a Lady Cumming-Gould, but she left her carriage for you. What are you doing, Titus? Should you not be at your studies?”

“I shall return shortly, Papa.” He took a very deep breath, caught Charlotte’s eye, then breathed out again and faced his father. “Papa, I have something to confess to.”

“Indeed? I hardly think this is the time, Titus. I am sure Mrs. Pitt does not wish to be embarrassed by our family misdeeds.”

“She already knows. I have told a lie. At least I did not exactly realize it was a lie, because I did not understand about—about what it really is. But because of what I said, which was not true, maybe someone who was innocent will be hanged.”

Swynford’s face darkened and his body grew tight and solid.

“Nobody innocent will be hanged, Titus. I don’t know what you are talking about, and I think it is best you forget it!”

“I can’t, Papa. I said it in court, and Mr. Jerome will be hanged partly because of what I said. I thought that—”

Swynford swung around to face Charlotte, his eyes blazing, his thick neck red.

“Pitt! I should have known! You’re no more Lady Ashworth’s sister than I am! You’re married to that damned policeman—aren’t you? You’ve come insinuating your way into my house, lying to my wife, using false pretenses because you want to rake up a little scandal! You won’t be content until you’ve found something to ruin us all! Now you’ve convinced my son he’s done something wicked, when all the child has testified to is exactly what happened to him! God damn it, woman, isn’t that enough? We’ve already had death and disease in the family, scandal and heartbreak! Why? What do hyenas like you want that you go picking over other people’s griefs? Do you just envy your betters and want to shovel dirt over them? Or was Jerome something to you—your lover, eh?”

“Mortimer!” Callantha was white to the very roots of her hair. “Please!”

“Silence!” he shouted. “You have already been deceived once—and allowed your son to be subjected to this woman’s disgusting curiosity! If you were less foolish, I should blame you for it, but no doubt you were entirely taken in!”

“Mortimer!”

“I have told you to be silent! If you cannot do so, then you had better retire to your room!”

There was no decision to be made; for Titus’s sake and Callantha’s, as well as for her own, Charlotte had to answer him.

“Lady Ashworth is indeed my sister,” she said with icy calm. “If you care to inquire of any of her acquaintances, you will quite easily ascertain it. You might ask Lady Cumming-Gould. She is also a friend of mine. In fact, she is my sister’s aunt by marriage.” She stared at him with freezing anger. “And I came to your house quite openly, because Mrs. Swynford is concerned, as are the rest of us, to try to put some curb on the prostitution of children in the city of London. I am sorry it is a project which does not meet with your approval—but I could not have foreseen that you would be against it any more than Mrs. Swynford could have. No other lady involved has met with opposition from her husband. I do not care to imagine what your reasons might be—and no doubt if I did you could accuse me of slander as well.”

Blood vessels stood out in Swynford’s neck.

“Do you leave my house of your own will?” he shouted furiously. “Or must I call a footman to have you escorted? Mrs. Swynford is forbidden to see you again—and if you call here you will not be admitted.”

“Mortimer!” Callantha whispered. She reached out to him, then dropped her hands helplessly. She was transfixed with embarrassment.

Swynford ignored her. “Do you leave, Mrs. Pitt, or shall I be obliged to ring for a servant?”

Charlotte turned to Titus, standing rigid and white-faced.

“You are in no way to blame,” she said clearly. “Don’t worry about what you have said. I shall see for you that it reaches the right people. You have discharged your conscience. You have nothing now to be ashamed of.”

“He had nothing at any time!” Swynford roared, and reached for the bell.

Charlotte turned and walked to the door, stopping a moment when she had opened it.

“Goodbye, Callantha, it has been most pleasant knowing you. Please believe I do not bear you any grudge, or hold you responsible for this.” And before Swynford could reply she closed the door and collected her cloak from the footman, then went outside to Emily’s carriage, stepped in, and gave the coachman directions to take her home.

She debated whether or not to tell Pitt about it. But when he came in she found that, as always, she was incapable of keeping it to herself. It all came out, every word and feeling she could remember, until her dinner was cold in front of her and Pitt had completely eaten his.

Of course there was nothing he could do. The evidence against Maurice Jerome had evaporated until there was none left that would have been sufficient to convict him. On the other hand, there was no other person to put in his place. The proof had disappeared, but it had not proved his innocence, nor had it given the least indication toward anyone else. Gillivray had connived at Abigail’s lies because he was ambitious and wished to please Athelstan—and possibly he had genuinely believed Jerome to be guilty. Titus and Godfrey had not lied in any intentional sense; they were merely too naive, as any young boys might be, to realize what their suggestions meant. They had agreed because they did not understand. They were guilty only of innocence and a desire to do what was expected of them.

And Anstey Waybourne? He had wanted to find the least painful way out: He was outraged. One of his sons had been seduced; why should he not believe the other had been also? It was most probable he had no idea that, by his own outrage and his leap to conclusions, he had led his son into the statement that damned Jerome. He had expected a certain answer, conceiving it in his wounded imagination first, and made the boy believe there had been an offense that he was simply too young to understand.

Swynford? He had done the same—or had he? Perhaps he now guessed that it had all been a monumental catastrophe of lies; but who would dare admit such a thing? It could not be undone. Jerome was convicted. Swynford’s fury was gross and offensive, but there was no reason to believe it was guilt of anything but connivance at a lie to protect his own. Accessory perhaps to the death of Jerome? But not the murder of Arthur.

So who—and why?

The murderer was still unknown. It could be anyone at all, someone they had never even heard of—some anonymous pimp or furtive customer.

It was some days before Charlotte learned the truth, which was waiting for her when she returned home from a visit to Emily. They had been working on their crusade, which had by no means been abandoned. There was a carriage pulled up in the street outside her door, and a footman and a driver were huddled in it as if they had been there long enough to grow cold. Of course, it was not Emily’s, since she had just left Emily, nor was it her mother’s or Aunt Vespasia’s.

She hurried inside and found Callantha Swynford sitting by the fire in the parlor, a tray of tea in front of her and Gracie hovering anxiously, twisting her fingers in her apron.

Callantha, her face pale, stood up as soon as Charlotte came in.

“Charlotte, I do hope you will forgive my calling upon you, after—after that distressing scene. I—I am most deeply ashamed!”

“Thank you, Gracie,” Charlotte said quickly. “Please bring me another cup, and then you may leave to attend to Miss Jemima.” As soon as she had gone, Charlotte turned back to Callantha. “There is no need to be. I know very well you had no desire for such a thing. If you have called because of that, please put it out of your mind. I bear no resentment at all.”

“I am grateful.” Callantha was still standing. “But that is not my principal reason for coming. The day you spoke with Titus, he told me what you had said to each other, and ever since then I have been thinking. I have learned a great deal from you and Emily.”

Gracie came in with the cup and left in silence.

“Please, would you not care to sit down?” Charlotte invited. “And perhaps take more tea? It is still quite hot.”

“No, thank you. This is easier to say if I am standing.” She remained with her back half toward Charlotte as she looked out the French windows into the garden and the bare trees in the rain. “I would be grateful if you would suffer me to complete what I have to say without interrupting me, in case I lose my courage.”

“Of course, if you wish.” Charlotte poured her own tea.

“I do. As I said, I have learned a great deal since you and Emily first came to my house—nearly all of it extremely unpleasant. I had no idea that human beings indulged themselves in such practices, or that so many people lived in poverty so very painful. I suppose it was all there for me to see, had I chosen to, but I belong to a family and a class that does not choose to.

“But since I have been obliged to see a little, through the things you have told me and shown me, I have begun to think for myself and to notice things. Words and expressions that I had previously ignored have now come to have meaning—even things within my own family. I have told my cousin Benita Waybourne about our efforts to make child prostitution intolerable, and I have enlisted her support. She, too, has opened her eyes to unpleasantness she had previously allowed herself to ignore.

“All this must seem very pointless to you, but please bear with me—it is not.

“I realized the day you spoke to Titus that both he and Godfrey had been beguiled into giving evidence against Mr. Jerome which was not entirely true, and certainly not true in its implication. He was deeply distressed about it, and I think a great deal of his guilt has come to rest upon me also. I began to consider what I knew of the affair. Up until then, my husband had never discussed it with me—indeed, Benita was in the same circumstance—but I realized it was time I stopped hiding behind the convention that women are the weaker sex, and should not be asked even to know of such things, far less inquire into them. That is the most arrant nonsense! If we are fit to conceive children, to bear and to raise them, to nurse the sick and prepare the dead, we can certainly endure the truth about our sons and daughters, or about our husbands.”

She hesitated, but Charlotte kept her word and did not interrupt. There was no sound but the fire in the grate and the soft patter of rain on the window.

“Maurice Jerome did not kill Arthur,” Callantha went on. “Therefore someone else must have—and since Arthur had had a relationship of that nature, that also must have been with someone else. I spoke to Titus and to Fanny, quite closely, and I forbade them to lie. It is time for the truth, however unpleasant it may be. Lies will all be found out in the end, and the truth will be the worse for having been festering in our consciences and begetting more lies and more fears until then. I have seen what it has done to Titus already. The poor child cannot carry the weight alone any longer. He will grow to feel he is guilty of some complicity in Mr. Jerome’s death. Heaven knows, Jerome is not a very pleasant man, but he does not deserve to be hanged. Titus awoke the other night, having dreamed of hanging. I heard his cry and went to him. I cannot let him suffer like that, with his sleep haunted by visions of guilt and death.” Her face was very white, but she did not hesitate.