Bluegate Fields (12 page)

“It is.” Pitt was soiled himself, by all his knowledge, in the face of this child who would probably never know a fraction of the weakness and misery Pitt had been forced to see. “It is,” he repeated. “I’d leave it well alone.”

“Yes, sir. But do you—do you think I could have saved Arthur if I’d known?”

Pitt hesitated. Titus did not deserve a lie.

“Perhaps—but quite possibly not. Maybe no one would have believed you anyway. Don’t forget, Arthur could have spoken himself—if he’d wished to!”

Titus’s face showed incomprehension.

“Why didn’t he, sir? Didn’t he understand? But that doesn’t make any sense!”

“No—it doesn’t, does it?” Pitt agreed. “I’d like to know the answer to that myself.”

“No doubt frightened.” Swynford spoke for the first time since Pitt had begun questioning Titus. “Poor boy probably felt guilty—too ashamed to tell his father. I daresay that wretched man threatened him. He would, don’t you think, Inspector? Just thank God it’s all over now. He can do no more harm.”

It was far from the truth, but this time Pitt did not argue. He could only guess what the trial would bring. There was no need to distress them now, no need to tell them the sad and ugly things that would be exposed. Titus, at least, need never know.

“Thank you.” Pitt stood up, and his coat fell in creases where he had been sitting on it. “Thank you, Titus. Thank you, Mr. Swynford. I don’t think we shall have to trouble you again until the trial.”

Swynford took a deep breath, but he knew better than to waste energy arguing now. He inclined his head in acknowledgment and pulled the bell for the footman to show Pitt out.

The door opened and a girl of about fourteen ran in, saw Pitt, and stopped with an instant of embarrassment. She then immediately composed herself, stood quite upright, and looked at him with level gray eyes—a little coolly, as if it were he who had committed the social gaffe, and not she.

“I beg your pardon, Papa,” she said, with a little hitch of her shoulders under her lace-edged pinafore. “I didn’t know you had a visitor.” She had sized up Pitt already and knew he was not “company.” Her father’s social equals did not wear mufflers; they wore silk scarves, and they left them with whoever opened the door, along with their hats and sticks.

“Hello, Fanny,” Swynford replied with a slight smile. “Have you come down to inspect the policeman?”

“Certainly not!” She lifted her chin and returned her gaze to Pitt, regarding him from head to toe. “I came to say that Uncle Esmond is here, and he promised me that when I am old enough to ‘come out’ he will give me a necklace with pearls in it for my seventeenth birthday, so I may wear it when I am presented at court. Do you suppose it will be to the Queen herself, or only the Princess of Wales? Do you imagine the Queen will still be alive then? She’s fearfully old already, you know!”

“I have no idea,” Swynford answered with raised eyebrows, meeting Pitt’s glance with amusement. “Perhaps you could begin with the Princess of Wales, and progress from there—if the Queen survives long enough for you, that is?”

“You’re laughing at me!” she said with a note of warning. “Uncle Esmond dined with the Prince of Wales last week—he just said so!”

“Then I’ve no doubt it’s true.”

“Of course it’s true!” Esmond Vanderley appeared in the doorway behind Fanny. “I would never dare lie to anyone as perceptive or as unversed in the social arts as Fanny. My dear child.” He put his arm on Fanny’s shoulder. “You really must learn to be less direct, or you will be a social disaster.
Never
let people know that you know they have lied! That is a cardinal rule. Well-bred people never lie—they occasionally misremember, and only the ill-mannered are gross enough to remark it. Isn’t that so, Mortimer?”

“My dear fellow, you are the expert in society—how could I dispute what you say? If you wish to succeed, Fanny, listen to your mother’s cousin Esmond.” His words were perhaps a little tart, but, looking at his face, Pitt could see only goodwill. He also noted the relationship with a lift of interest: so Swynford, Vanderley, and the Waybournes were cousins.

Vanderley looked over the girl’s head at Pitt.

“Inspector,” he said with a return to seriousness. “Still chasing up that wretched business about young Arthur?”

“Yes, sir, I’m afraid there is a lot more we need to know yet.”

“Oh?” Vanderley’s face showed slight surprise. “For example?”

Swynford made a slight movement with his arm. “You may leave us now, thank you, Titus, Fanny! If your Latin requires improvement, then you had best be about studying it.”

“Yes, sir.” Titus excused himself to Vanderley, then a little self-consciously to Pitt, aware it was a socially unmapped area. Did he behave as if Pitt were a tradesman, and take his departure as a gentleman would? He decided on the latter, and collecting his sister’s hand, much to her annoyance because her curiosity was overwhelming, he escorted her out.

When the door was closed, Vanderley repeated his question.

“Well, we have no idea where the crime took place,” Pitt began, hoping that with their knowledge of the family they might have some idea. A new thought occurred to him. “Did the Waybournes ever possess any other property that might have been used? A country house? Or did Sir Anstey and Lady Waybourne ever travel and leave the boys behind with Jerome?”

Vanderley considered for a moment, his face solemn, brows drawn down.

“I seem to remember them all going to the country in the spring.... They do have a place, of course. And Anstey and Benita came back to town for a while and left the boys up there. Jerome must have been there—he does go with them, naturally. Can’t ignore the boys’ education. Poor Arthur was quite bright, you know. Even considered going up to Oxford. Can’t think what for—no need to work. Rather enjoyed the classics. Think he was meaning to read Greek as well. Jerome was a good scholar, you know. Damn shame the fellow was a homosexual—damn shame.” He said it with a sigh, and his eyes looked into some distance Pitt could not see. His face was sad, but without anger or the harsh contempt Pitt would have expected.

“Worse than that.” Swynford shook his head, his wide mouth somewhat curled, as if the sourness of it were in the room with them. “More than a damn shame. Anstey said he was riddled with disease. Gave it to Arthur—poor beggar!”

“Disease?” Vanderley’s face paled a little. “Oh, God! That’s awful. I suppose you are sure?”

“Syphilis,” Swynford clarified.

Vanderley stepped backward and sat down in one of the big chairs, putting the heels of his hands over his eyes as if to hide both his distress and the vision that leaped to his mind.

“How bloody wretched! What—what a ghastly mess.” He sat silent for a few more moments, then jerked up and stared at Pitt, his eyes as gray as Fanny’s. “What are you doing about it?” He hesitated, fished frantically for words. “God in heaven, man—if all this is true, it could have gone anywhere—to anyone!”

“We are trying to find out everything about the man that we can,” Pitt answered, knowing it was not enough, not nearly enough. “We know he was overfamiliar with other children, other boys, but we can’t find out yet where he conducted the intimacies of this relationship with Arthur—or where Arthur was killed.”

“What the hell does that matter?” Vanderley exploded. He shot to his feet, his clean, chisel-boned face flushed, his muscles tight. “You know he did it, don’t you? For pity’s sake, man, if he was that far demented in his obsession he could have hired rooms anywhere! You can’t be naïve enough not to know that—in your business!”

“I do know it, sir.” Pitt tried to keep his own voice from rising, from betraying his revulsion or his growing sense of helplessness. “But I’d still feel we had a better case if we could find it—and someone who has seen Jerome there—perhaps the landlord, someone who took money—anything more definite. You see, so far all we can prove is that Jerome interfered with Godfrey Waybourne and with Titus.”

“What do you want?” Swynford demanded. “He’s hardly likely to have seduced the boy with witnesses! He’s perverted, criminal, and spreading that filthy disease God knows where! But he’s not foolish—he’s never lost sight of the smaller sanities, like tidying up after himself!”

Vanderley ran his fingers through his hair. Suddenly he was calm again, in control.

“No—he’s right, Mortimer. He needs to know more than that. There are tens of thousands of rooms around London. He’ll never find it, unless he’s lucky. But there may be something he can find, somebody—somebody who knew Jerome. I don’t suppose poor Arthur was the only one.” He looked down and his face was heavy, his voice suddenly even quieter. “I mean—the man was in bondage to a weakness.”

“Yes, of course,” Swynford said. “But that’s the police’s job, thank God; not ours. We don’t need to concern ourselves with whatever else he needs—or why.” He turned to Pitt. “You’ve talked to my son—I would have thought that was enough, but if it isn’t, then you must pursue whatever else you want—in the streets, or wherever. I don’t know what else you think there is.”

“There must be something more.” Pitt felt confused, almost foolish. He knew so much—and so little: explanations that fitted—a growing desperation he could understand, a loneliness, a sense of having been cheated. Would it be enough to hang a man, to hang Maurice Jerome for the murder of Arthur Waybourne? “Yes, sir,” he said aloud. “Yes—we’ll go and look, everywhere we can.”

“Good.” Swynford nodded. “Good. Well, get on with it! Good day, Inspector.”

“Good day, sir.” Pitt walked to the door and opened it silently. He went out into the hall to collect his hat and coat from the footman.

Charlotte had sent an urgent letter to Dominic to ask him to hasten his efforts for a meeting with Esmond Vanderley. She had little idea what she expected to learn, but it was more important than ever that she try.

Today, at last, she had received a reply that there was an afternoon party of sorts to which, if she wished, Dominic would escort her, although he doubted she would find any enjoyment in it whatsoever; and did she possess anything she cared to wear for the occasion, because it was fashionable and a little risqué? He would call by in his carriage at four o’clock, in case she chose to go.

Her mind whirled. Of course she chose to go! But what gown had she that would not disgrace him? Fashionable and risqué! Emily was still out of town, and so could not be borrowed from, even had there been time. She raced upstairs and pulled open her wardrobe to see what it presented. At first it was hopeless. Her own clothes were all, at best, last year’s styles, or the year before. At worst, they were plain sensible—and one could hardly say less for a gown than that! Whoever wished to seem sensible, of all things?

There was the lavender of Great-Aunt Vespasia’s that she had been given for a funeral. With black shawl and hat it had been half mourning, and suitable. She pulled it out and looked at it. It was definitely magnificent and very formal—a duchess’s gown, and an elderly duchess at that! But if she were to cut off the high neck and make it daringly low, take out the sleeves below the shoulder drape, it would look far more modem—in fact a little avant-garde!

Brilliant! Emily would be proud of her! She seized the nail scissors from the dresser and began before she could reconsider. If she were to stop and think what she was doing, she would lose her nerve.

It was completed in time. She coiled her hair high (if only Gracie were a lady’s maid!), bit her lips and pinched her cheeks to give herself a little more color, and splashed on some lavender water. When Dominic arrived, she sailed out, head high, teeth clenched, looking neither to right nor left, and certainly not at Dominic to see what he thought of her.

In the carriage, he opened his mouth to comment, then smiled faintly, a little confused, and closed it again.

Charlotte prayed that she was not making a complete fool of herself.

The party was like nothing she had ever attended before. It was not in one room but in a series of rooms, all lavishly decorated in styles she considered a trifle obtrusive, with vague suggestions of the last courts of France in one and of the sultans of the Turkish Empire in another; a third seemed Oriental, with red lacquer and silk-embroidered screens. It was rather overwhelming and a little vulgar; she began to have serious misgivings about the wisdom of having come.

But if she had been concerned about her dress, that at least was needless; some of the fashions were so outrageous that she felt quite mildly dressed by comparison. Indeed, her gown was low over the bosom and a little brief around the shoulders, but it did not look in any danger of sliding off altogether and producing a catastrophe. And, glancing around, that was more than she could say for some! Grandmama would have had apoplexy if she could have seen these ladies’ attire! As Charlotte stood watching them, keeping one hand on Dominic’s arm lest he leave her alone, their behavior was so brazen it would not have passed in the circles she was accustomed to before her marriage.

But Emily had always said high society made its own rules.

“Do you want to leave?” Dominic whispered hopefully.

“Certainly not!” she replied without giving herself time to consider, in case she accepted. “I wish to meet Esmond Vanderley.”

“Why?”

“I told you—there has been a crime.”

“I know that!” he said sharply. “And they have arrested the tutor. What on earth do you hope to achieve by talking to Vanderley?”

It was a very reasonable question and he did have a certain right to ask.

“Thomas is not really satisfied that he is guilty,” she whispered back. “There is a great deal we do not know.”

“Then why did he arrest him?”

“He was commanded to!”

“Charlotte—”

At this point, deciding that valor was the better part of discretion, she let go of his arm and swept forward to join in the party.

She discovered immediately that the conversation was glittering and wildly brittle, full of bons mots and bright laughter, glances with intimate meaning. At another time, she might have felt excluded, but today she was here just to observe. The few people who spoke to her she answered without effort to be entertaining, half her mind absorbed with watching everyone else.