Bluegate Fields (10 page)

“No, Mr. Jerome,” he replied. He must make the decision. “It is you I have the warrant for.” He took a breath and removed the piece of paper from his pocket. “Maurice Jerome, I arrest you for the assault and murder of Arthur William Waybourne on or about the night of September 11, 1886, and I warn you that anything you say will be recorded and may be given in evidence at your trial.”

Jerome did not seem to understand; his face was perfectly blank. Gillivray, watching, stood stiffly by the door, his fist loosely knotted as if ready for sudden violence.

Pitt wondered for a ridiculous moment if he should repeat it. He then realized that of course it was not the words themselves that were unclear; it was simply that they had not had time to deliver their meaning. The impact was too immense, too totally inconceivable to be grasped in an instant.

“W—What?” Jerome stammered at last, still too staggered to be aware of real fear. “What did you say?”

“I am arresting you for the murder of Arthur Waybourne,” Pitt repeated.

“That’s ridiculous!” Jerome was angry, contemptuous of Pitt’s stupidity. “You can’t possibly believe I killed him! Why on earth should I? It makes no sense.” Suddenly, his face was sour. “I imagined you to have more integrity, Inspector. I see I was mistaken. You are not stupid—at least not as stupid as this. Therefore, I must assume you to be a man of convenience, an opportunist—or simply a coward!”

Pitt was stung by Jerome’s accusations. They were unfair. He was arresting Jerome because there was too much evidence to leave him free. It was a necessary decision; it had nothing to do with self-interest. It would have been irresponsible to allow him to remain free.

“Godfrey Waybourne has said that you have interfered with him on several occasions, in a homosexual manner,” he said stiffly. “That is a charge we cannot ignore, or set aside.”

Jerome’s face was white, slack, as the horror dawned on him and he accepted its reality.

“That’s preposterous! It’s—it’s—” His hands moved up as if to cover his face, then fell away again weakly. “Oh, my God!” He looked around, and Gillivray stepped in front of the door.

Pitt felt the twinge of unease again; could not so superb an actor, so subtle and complete, have smoothed his way through life with a performance of charm? He could have won himself so much more than he now possessed; his influence could have been immense if he had wooed with friendship or a little humor, instead of the wall of pomposity he had consistently shown Pitt.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Jerome, but we must take you with us now,” Pitt said helplessly. “It would be far better for everyone if you would come without resistance. You’ll only make it worse for yourself if you don’t.”

Jerome’s eyebrows rose in amazement and anger.

“Are you threatening me with violence?”

“No, of course not!” Pitt said furiously. It was a ridiculous suggestion, and totally unjust. “I was thinking of your own embarrassment. Do you want to be hauled out struggling and yelling for the scullery maid and the bootboy to gawp at?”

Jerome’s face flamed but he found no words to answer. He was in a nightmare that moved too rapidly for him; he was left floundering, still trying to argue the original charge.

Pitt took a step closer.

“I didn’t touch him!” Jerome protested. “I never touched either of them! It’s a base slander! Let me speak to him—I’ll soon sort it out.”

“That’s not possible,” Pitt said firmly.

“But I—” Then he froze, his head jerking up sharply. “I’ll see you are reprimanded for this, Inspector. You can have no possible grounds for this charge, and if I were a man of private means, you would not dare do this to me! You are a coward—as I said! A coward of the most contemptible sort!”

Was there truth in that? Was the feeling Pitt had mistaken for compassion for Waybourne and his family really only relief at finding an easy answer?

Walking side by side, they took Jerome along the hallway, through the green baize door, the passage, and the kitchen, then up the areaway steps and into the waiting cab. If it was noticed that the police had come in by the front and left by the back, it might just have been attributed to the fact that they had asked first for Sir Anstey himself. And one had more control over the way by which people exited than entered. The cook nodded in approval. It was past time persons like the police were taught their place. And she had never cared for that tutor with his airs and criticisms, acting as if he was a gentleman just because he could read Latin—as if that was any use to a person!

They rode in silence to the police station, where the arrest was formally entered and Jerome was taken to the cells.

“Your clothes and toiletries will be sent for,” Pitt said quietly.

“How very civilized—you make it sound almost reasonable!” Jerome snapped. “Where am I supposed to have committed this murder? In whose bath, pray, did I drown the wretched boy? Hardly his own—even you could not imagine that! I do not care to ask you why. Your mind will have conjured up enough obscene alternatives to make me sick. But I should like to know where? I should like to know that!”

“So should we, Mr. Jerome,” Pitt replied. “The reasons are obvious, as you say. If you would care to talk about it, it might help.”

“I should not!”

“Some people do—”

“Some people are no doubt guilty! I find the whole subject disgusting. You will very soon find out your mistake, and then I shall expect reparation. I am not responsible for Arthur Waybourne’s death, or anything else that happened to him. I suggest you look among his own class for that sort of perversion! Or do I expect too much courage of you?”

“I have looked!” Pitt bit back at last, stung beyond control. “And all I have found so far is an allegation from Godfrey Waybourne that you interfered with him! It would seem you have the weakness which would provide the motive, and the opportunity. The means was simply water—anyone has that.”

There was fear in Jerome’s eyes this time—quick, before reason overrode it, but real enough. The taste of it was unique, unmistakable.

“Nonsense! I was at a musical recital.”

“But no one saw you there.”

“I go to musical recitals to listen to the music, Inspector, not to make idiotic conversation with people I barely know, and interrupt their pleasure by requiring them to mouth equal inanities back to me!” Jerome surveyed Pitt with contempt as one who listened to nothing better than public-house songs.

“Are there no intervals in your recitals?” Pitt asked with exactly the same chill. He had to look a little downward at Jerome from his superior height. “That’s uncommon, surely?”

“Are you fond of classical music, Inspector?” Jerome’s voice was sharp with sarcastic disbelief. Perhaps it was a form of self-defense. He was attacking Pitt, his intelligence, his competence, his judgment. It was not hard to understand; part of Pitt, detached, could even sympathize. A greater part of him was stung raw by the patronage.

“I am fond of the pianoforte when it is well played,” he replied with open-eyed candor. “And I like a violin, on occasions.”

For an instant there was communication between them, a little surprise; then Jerome turned away.

“So you spoke to no one?” Pitt returned to the pursuit, the ugliness of the present.

“No one,” Jerome answered.

“Not even to comment on the performance?” He could believe it. Who would, after listening to beautiful music, want to turn to a man like Jerome? He would sour the magic, the pleasure. His was a mind without softness or laughter, without the patina of romance. Why did he like music at all? Was it purely a pleasure of the senses, the sound and the symmetry answered in the brain?

Pitt went out, and the cell door clanged behind him; the bolt shot home and the jailer pulled out the key.

A constable was dispatched to collect Jerome’s necessary belongings. Gillivray and Pitt spent the rest of the day seeking additional evidence.

“I’ve already spoken to Mrs. Jerome,” Gillivray said with a cheerfulness Pitt could have kicked him for. “She doesn’t know what time he came in. She had a headache and doesn’t like classical music very much, especially chamber music, which apparently was what this was. There was a program published beforehand, and Jerome had one. She decided to stay at home. She fell asleep and didn’t waken until morning.”

“So Mr. Athelstan told me,” Pitt said acidly. “Perhaps next time you have such a piece of information you will do me the courtesy of sharing it with me as well?” Immediately he regretted allowing his anger to become so obvious. He should not have let Gillivray see it. He could at least have kept himself that dignity.

Gillivray smiled, and his apology was no more than the minimum of good manners.

They spent six hours and achieved nothing, neither proof nor disproof.

Pitt went home late, tired and cold. It was beginning to rain and scurries of wind sent an old newspaper rattling along the gutter. It was a day he was glad to leave behind, to close out with the door, leaving the space of the evening to talk of something else. He hoped Charlotte would not even mention the case.

He stepped into the hall, took his coat off, and hung it up, then noticed the parlor door open and the lamps lit. Surely Emily was not here at this time in the evening? He did not want to have to be polite, still less to satisfy Emily’s inveterate curiosity. He was tempted to keep on walking to the kitchen. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he could get away with it, when Charlotte pulled the door wide open and it was too late.

“Oh, Thomas, you’re home,” she said unnecessarily, perhaps for the benefit of Emily, or whoever it was. “You have a visitor.”

He was startled. “I have?”

“Yes.” She stepped back a little. “Mrs. Jerome.”

The cold spread right through him. The familiarity of his home was invaded by futile and predictable tragedy. It was too late to avoid it. The sooner he faced her, explained the evidence as decently as he could to a woman, and made her understand he could do nothing, then the sooner he could forget it and sink into his own evening, into the safe, permanent things that mattered to him: Charlotte, the details of her day, the children.

He stepped into the room.

She was small, slender, and dressed in plain browns. Her fair hair was soft about her face and her eyes were wide, making her skin look even paler, almost translucent, as though he could see the blood beneath. She had obviously been weeping.

This was one of the worst parts of crime: the victims for whom the horror was only beginning. For Eugenie Jerome, there would be the journey back to her parents’ house to live—if she was fortunate. If not, she would have to take whatever job she could find, as a seamstress, a worker in a sweatshop, a ragpicker; she might even end up at the workhouse or, out of desperation, in the streets. But all of that she would not yet even have imagined. She was probably still grappling with the guilt itself, still hanging on to the belief that things were the same, that it was all a mistake—a reversible mistake.

“Mr. Pitt?” She stepped forward, her voice shaky. He was the police—for her, the ultimate power.

He wished there was something he could say that would ease the truth. All he wanted was to get rid of her and forget the case—at least until he was forced to go back to it tomorrow.

“Mrs. Jerome.” He began with the only thing he could think of: “We had to arrest him, but he is perfectly well and not hurt in any way. You will be permitted to visit him—if you wish.”

“He didn’t kill that boy.” The tears shone in her eyes and she blinked without moving her gaze from his. “I know—I know he is not always very easy”—she took a deep breath, steeling herself for the betrayal—“not very easy to like, but he is not an evil man. He would never abuse a trust. He has far too much pride for that!”

Pitt could believe it. The man he thought he had seen beneath that mannered exterior would take a perverse satisfaction in his moral superiority in honoring a trust of those he despised, those who, for entirely different reasons, despised him equally—if they gave him any thought at all.

“Mrs. Jerome—” How could he explain the extraordinary passions that can suddenly arise and swamp all reason, all the carefully made plans for behavior? How could he explain the feelings that could drive an otherwise sane man to compulsive, wide-eyed self-destruction? She would be confused, and unbearably hurt. Surely the woman had more than enough to bear already? “Mrs. Jerome,” he tried again, “a charge has been made against your husband. We must hold him under arrest until it has been investigated. Sometimes people do things in the heat of the moment that are quite outside their usual character.”

She moved closer to him and he caught a waft of lavender, faint and a little sweet. She had an old-fashioned brooch in the lace at her neck. She was very young, very gentle. God damn Jerome for his cold-blooded, bitter loneliness, for his perversion, for ever having married this woman in the first place, only to tear her life apart!

“Mrs. Jerome—”

“Mr. Pitt, my husband is not an impulsive man. I have been married to him for eleven years and I have never known him to act without giving the matter consideration, weighing whether it would be fortunate or unfortunate.”

That also Pitt found only too easy to accept. Jerome was not a man to laugh aloud, dance on the pavement, or sing a snatch of song. His was a careful face; the only spontaneity in it was of the mind. He possessed a sour appreciation for humor, but never impulse. He did not even speak without judging first what effect it would have, how it would profit or harm him. What extraordinary passions must this boy have tapped to break the dam of years in a torrent that ended in murder?

If Jerome
were
guilty ...

How could so careful, so self-preserving a man have risked a clumsy fondling of young Godfrey for the few instants of slight gratification it might have afforded him? Was it a façade beginning to crack—a first breach of the wall that was soon going to explode in passion and murder?

He looked at Mrs. Jerome. She was close to Charlotte’s age, and yet she looked so much younger, so much more vulnerable, with her slender body and delicate face. She needed someone to protect her.