Bluegate Fields

"Yes-I'm beginning to think so. I'd like to talk to the rest of your girls, especially this one that can read."

"You got no right! They ain't done nuffmk!"

"Don't you want to know if Abigail was stealing you blind, and they were helping her?"

"I can find art me own ways-I don't need yer 'elp!"

"Don't you? Seems like you didn't even know about it at all before."

Her face narrowed with suspicion. "Wot's it to you anyway? Why should you care if Abigail cheated me?"

"Nothing at all. But I do care how often those two came hens. And I'd like to know if any of your other girls recognize them." He fished in his pocket and brought out a picture of the suspected arsonist. "That him?"

"Dunno," she said, squinting at it. "So wot if it is?"

"Fetch me the girl who can read."

She obeyed, cursing all the way, and brought back a tousle-headed girl, half asleep, still looking like a housemaid in her long white nightshirt. Pitt handed her the picture.

"Is that the man who came to see Abigail, the one who brought the boy she told about in court?"

"You answer 'im, my girl," the old woman warned. "Or I'll 'ave Bert tan yer 'ide fer yer till it bleeds, you 'ear me?"

The girl took the picture and looked at it.

"Well?" Pitt asked.

The girl's face was pale, her fingers shook.

"I don't know-honest. I never saw them. Abbie just told me about it after.''

"How long after?"

"I dunno. She never said. After it all came out. I s'pose she wanted to keep the money."

"You never saw them?" Pitt was surprised. "Who did, then?"

"No one that I know of. Just Abbie. She kept them to herself." She stared at Pitt, her eyes hollow with fear, although he did not know whether it was him she was afraid of or the old woman and the unseen Bert.

"Thank you," he said quietly, giving her a sad little half smile, all he could afford of pity. To have looked at her closely,

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thought about her, would have been unbearable. She was only a miniscule part of something he could not change. "Thank you-that was what I wanted to know."

"Well, I'm damned if I can tell why!" the old woman said derisively. "No use-that is!"

"You're probably damned anyway," Pitt replied coldly. "And I'll have the local rozzers keep an eye on your place-so no beating the girls, or we'll shut you down. Understand?"

"I'll beat who the "ell I want to!" she said, and swore at him, but he knew she would be careful, at least for a while.

Outside in the street, he started back toward the main thoroughfare, and an omnibus that would take him to the station. He did not look for a hansom; he wanted time to think.

Brothels were not private places, and a procuress like the old woman did not allow men to pass in and out without her knowing; she could not afford to. The levy on their passage was her livelihood. If her girls started sneaking in customers and not paying her share of the takings, word would get around and in a month she would be out of business.

So how was it possible that Jerome and Arthur Waybourne had been there and no one had seen them? And would Abigail, with her future to think of, a roof over her head-would she have dared keep a customer secret? Many a girl had been scarred for life for retaining too much of her own earnings. And Abigail had been in the business long enough to know that; she would know of "examples" that had been made of the greedy and the overambitious. She was not stupid; neither was she clever enough to carry off such a fraud, or she would not have been working for that evil old woman.

Which left the question that had been burning at the back of his mind, inching its way forward till it came into sharp, clear focus. Had Jerome and Arthur Wayboume ever been there at all?

The only reason to suppose they had was Abigail's word. Jerome had denied it, Arthur was dead; and no one else had seen them.

But why should she lie? She had appeared out of nowhere; she had nothing to defend. If Jerome had not been there, then

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she had had to share with the old woman a good portion of money that she had never received.

Unless, of course, she had received it for something else. For what? And from whom?

For the lie, of course. For saying that Jerome and Arthur Way bourne had been there. But who had wanted her to say that?

The answer would be the name of Arthur's murderer. Which Pitt now clearly thought was not Maurice Jerome.

But all this conjecture was still not proof. For even a doubt reasonable enough to reopen the case, he must have the name of someone besides Jerome who might have paid Abigail. And of course he would also have to see Albie Frobisher and look a good deal more closely into his testimony.

In fact, he thought, that would be a good thing to do now.

He walked past the omnibus stop, turned the comer, and hurried down the long, drab street. He hailed a hansom and climbed in, shouting directions.

Albie's rooming house was familiar: the wet matting just past the door, then the bright red beyond, the dim stairs. He knocked on the door, aware that there might be a customer already there. But his sense of urgency would not let him wait to make a more convenient arrangement.

There was no answer.

He knocked again, harder, as if he meant to force it if he were not admitted.

Still there was no reply.

"Albie!" he said sharply. "I'll push this door in if you don't answer!''

Silence. He put his ear to the door and there was no sound of movement inside.

"Albie!" he shouted.

Nothing. Pitt turned and ran down the stairs, along the red-carpeted hallway to the back where the landlord had his quarters. This establishment was different from the brothel where Abigail worked. Here there was no procurer guarding the door. Albie paid a high rent for his room; customers came and went in privacy. But then it was a richer, different class of clientele, far more guarded with their secrets. To visit a woman prostitute

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was an understandable lapse, a little indiscretion that a man of the world turned a blind eye to. To pay for the services of a boy was not only a deviation too disgusting to be condoned, it was also a crime, opening one to all the nightmares of blackmail.

He knocked sharply on the door.

It opened a crack and a bilious eye looked out at him.

" 'Oo are yer? Wot d'yer want?"

"Where's Albie?"

"Why d'yer want ter know? If 'e owes yer, it's nuffin ter do wiv me!"

"I want to talk to him. Now where is he?"

"Wot's it worf?"

"It's worth not being run in for keeping a brothel and aiding and abetting in homosexual acts, which are illegal."

"Yer can't do vat! I rent aht rooms. Wot vey does in 'em ain't my fault!"

"Want to prove that to a jury?"

"You can't arrest me!"

"I can and I will. You might get off, but you'll have a rough time in jail till you do. People don't like procurers, especially ones who procure little boys! Now where's Albie?"

"I dunno! Honest to God, I dunno! 'E don't tell me where 'e comes an' goes!"

"When did you see him last? What time does he usually come back-and don't tell me you don't know."

"Abaht six-'e's always back at abaht six. But I ain't seen 'im for a couple o' days. 'E weren't 'ere last night, and I dunno where 'e went. As God's me judge! An' I carn't tell yer more'n vat if yer was to send me ter Horstralia fer it!''

"We don't send people to Australia anymore-haven't done for years," Pitt said absently. He believed the man. There would be no point in his lying, and he had everything to lose if Pitt chose to harass him.

"Well, Coldbath Fields then!" the man said angrily. "It's the truth. I dunno where 'e's gorn! Nor if n 'e'll be back. I bloody 'ope so-'e owes me this week's rent, 'e does!" Suddenly he was aggrieved.

"I expect he'll be back," Pitt said with a curious sense of misery. Probably Albie would come back. After all, why

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shouldn't he? As he had said himself, he had good rooms here and an established clientele. The only other possibility was if he had found some single customer who had developed into a lover, possessive, demanding-and wealthy enough to set him up somewhere for his own exclusive patronage. Such windfalls as that were pipe dreams for boys like Albie.

"So 'e'll be back!" the landlord said testily. "You plannin' to stand there in the passageway like a devil's 'ead till 'e does, then? You'll scare orf all me-visitors! It ain't good fera place to 'ave the likes o' you standin' there! Gives a place a bad name. Makes people fink vere's suffink wrong wiv us!"

Pitt sighed. "Of course not. But I'll be back. And if you've done anything to send Albie away, or any harm has come to him, I'll have you down to Coldbath Fields quicker than your rotten little feet'll touch the ground!"

"Fancy 'im, then, do yer?" The old man's face split in a dirty grin, and he seized the chance to kick Pitt's foot out of the doorway and slam the door shut.

There was nothing else to do but go back to the police station. Pitt was already late, and he had no business being here.

Gillivray was jubilant about the arsonist, and it was a quarter of an hour before he bothered to ask Pitt what had taken him so long.

Pitt did not want to reply directly with the truth.

"What else do you know about Albie Frobisher?" he asked instead.

"What?" Gillivray frowned as though momentarily the name made no sense to him.

"Albie Frobisher," Pitt repeated. "What else do you know about him?"

"Else than what?" Gillivray said irritably. "He's a male prostitute, that's all. What else is there? Why should we care? We can't arrest all the homosexuals in the city or we'd do nothing else. Anyway, you'd have to prove it, and how could you do that without dragging in their customers?"

"And what's wrong with dragging in their customers?" Pitt asked bluntly. "They are at least as guilty, maybe more so. They're not doing it to live."

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"Are you saying prostitution is all right, Mr. Pitt?" Gillivray was shocked.

Usually hypocrisy enraged Pitt. This time, because it was so totally unconscious, it overwhelmed him with hopelessness.

"Of course I'm not," he said wearily. "But I can understand how it has come about, at least for many people. Are you condoning those who use prostitutes, even boys?"

"No!" Gillivray was affronted; the idea was appalling. Then the natural corollary of his own previous statement occurred to him. "Well-I mean-"

"Yes?" Pitt asked patiently.

"It's impractical," Gillivray blushed as he said it. "The men

who use people like Albie Frobisher have money-they're

probably gentlemen. We can't go around arresting men of that

sort for something obscene like perversion! Think what would

happen." _;

There was no need for Pitt to comment; he knew the expression on his face spoke for him.

"Lots of men have all sorts of-of perverted tastes." Gilliv-ray's cheeks were scarlet now. "We can't go meddling into everyone's affairs. What's done privately, as long as no one is forced, is-" He took a breath and let it out heavily. "Well, it's best left alone! We should concern ourselves with crimes, with frauds, robberies, attacks, and things like that-where someone's been offended. What a gentleman chooses to do in his bedroom is his own business, and if it's against the law of God-like adultery-still best leave it to God to punish!"

Pitt smiled and looked at the window and the rain running down it, and at the gloomy street beyond.

"Unless, of course, it's Jerome!"

"Jerome wasn't prosecuted for unnatural practices," Gillivray said quickly. "He was charged with murder!"

"Are you saying that if he hadn't killed Arthur, you would have turned a blind eye to the other?" Pitt asked incredulously. Then suddenly, almost like an afterthought, he realized that Gillivray had said Jerome was charged with murder, not that he was guilty of it. Was that merely a clumsy choice of words, or an unintentional sign of some thread of doubt that ran through his mind?

214

"If he hadn't killed him, I don't suppose anyone would have known!" Gillivray had the perfect, reasoned answer ready.

Pitt gave no argument; that was almost certainly true. And of course if there had been no murder, Anstey Waybourne would certainly not have prosecuted. What man in his right mind exposes his son to such a scandal? He would simply have discharged Jerome without a character reference, and let that be vengeance enough. Hint, innuendo that Jerome's morals were unsatisfactory, without any specific charge, would have ruined his career, and Arthur's name would never have entered into it.

"Anyway," Gillivray continued, "it's all over now and you'll only cause a lot of unnecessary trouble if you keep on about it. I don't know anything else about Albie Frobisher, and I don't choose to. Neither will you, if you know what's good for you-with respect, sir!"

"Do you believe Jerome killed Arthur Way bourne?"' Pitt said suddenly, surprising even himself with such a naively blunt question.

Gillivray's blue eyes were hot, curiously glazed with some discomfort inside him.

"I'm not the jury, Mr. Pitt, and it's not my job to decide a man's guilt or his innocence. I don't know. All things considered, it seems like it. And, more important, the law of the land says so, and I accept that."

"I see." There was nothing else to say. He let the subject die, and turned back to the arson.

Twice more, Pitt managed to find himself in Bluegate Fields, in the neighborhood of Albie Frobisher's rooming house, but Albie had still not returned. When he called the third time, a boy even younger than Albie, with cynical, curious eyes, opened the door and invited him in. The room had been-re-let. Albie was already replaced as if he had never existed. After all, why allow perfectly good premises stand idle when they could be made to earn?

He made discreet inquiries at one or two other stations in similar areas-Seven Dials, Whitechapel, Mile End, St. Giles, the Devil's Acre-but no one had heard of Albie moving in.

215

That in itself did not mean a lot. There were thousands of beggars, prostitutes, petty thieves drifting from one area to another. Most of them died young, but in the sea of humanity they were no more missed than one wave in an ocean, and no more distinguishable. One knew occasional names or faces, because their owners gave information, provided steady leaks from the underworld that made most police detection possible, but the vast majority stayed brief and anonymous.

But Albie, like Abigail Winters, had disappeared.

The next day, with no plan in his head, Pitt went back to Newgate Prison to see Maurice Jerome. As soon as he stepped through the gates, he was met by the familiar smell; it was as if he had been gone only a few moments since last time. Only a few moments since the vast, dripping walls had enclosed him.

Jerome was sitting on the straw mattress in exactly the same position he'd been in when Pitt had left him. He was still shaven, but his face was grayer, his bones more visible through the skin, his nose more pinched. His shirt collar was still stiff and clean. That would be Eugenie!

Suddenly, Pitt found his stomach heave at the whole slow, obscene affair. He had to swallow and breathe deeply to prevent himself from being sick.

The turnkey slammed the door behind him. Jerome turned to look. Pitt was jarred by the intelligence in the man's eyes; he had lately been thinking of him merely as an object, a victim. Jerome was as intelligent as Pitt himself, and immeasurably more so than his jailers. He knew what was going to happen; he was not some trapped animal, but a man with imagination and reason. He would probably die a hundred times before that final dawn. He would feel the rope, experience the pain in some form or other, every moment he could not concentrate enough to drive it out of his mind.

Was there hope in his face?

How incredibly stupid of Pitt to have come! How sadistic! Their eyes met and the hope vanished.

"What do you want?" Jerome said coldly.

Pitt did not know what he wanted. He had come only because time was short, and if he did not come soon, he could not come

216

at all. Perhaps there was still a thought somewhere in his mind that Jerome would even now say something that would give him a new line to follow. To say so, to imply that there was any chance at all, would be a refinement of torture that was unforgivable.

"What do you want?" Jerome repeated. "If you are hoping for a confession to ease your sleep, you are wasting your time. I did not kill Arthur Waybourne, nor did I have, or desire"-his nostrils widened with disgust-"any physical relationship with him, or either of the other boys."

Pitt sat down on the straw.

"I don't suppose you went to Abigail Winters either, or Albie Frobisher?" he asked.

Jerome looked at him suspiciously, expecting sarcasm. It was not there.

"No."

"Do you know why they lied?"

"No." His face twisted. "You believe me? Hardly makes any difference now, does it." It was a statement, not a question. There was no lift in him, no lightness. Life had conspired against him, and he did not expect it to change now.

His self-pity provoked Pitt.

"No," he said shortly. "It makes no difference. And I don't know that I do believe you. But I went back to talk to the girl again. She's disappeared. Then I went to look for Albie, and he's disappeared too."

"Doesn't make any difference," Jerome replied, staring at the wet stones on the far side of the cell. "As long as those two boys keep up the lie that I tried to interfere with them."

"Why are they doing it?" Pitt asked frankly. "Why should they lie?"

"Spite-what else?" Jerome's voice was heavy with scom; scorn for the boys because they had stooped to dishonesty from personal emotion, and for Pitt for his stupidity.

"Why?" Pitt persisted. "Why did they hate you enough to say something like that if it's not true? What did you do to them to cause such hatred?"

"I tried to make them learn! I tried to teach them self-discipline, standards!"

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I "What's hateful about that? Wouldn't their fathers do the

^ same thing? Their entire world is governed by standards," Pitt

reasoned. "Self-discipline so rigid they'd endure physical pain

p rather than be seen to lose face. When I was a boy, I watched

,' men of that class hide agony rather than admit they were hurt

and be seen to drop out of a hunt. I remember a man who was

,1 terrified of horses, but would mount with a smile and ride all

$ day, then come home and be sick all night with sheer relief that

_t he was still alive. And he did it every year, rather than admit he

hated it and let down his standards of what a gentleman should

i? be."

" Jerome sat in silence. It was the sort of idiotic courage he ad-

mired, and it galled him to see it in the class that had excluded him. His only defense against rejection was hatred.

The question remained unanswered. He did not know why

the boys should lie, and neither did Pitt. The trouble was Pitt

¹ did not believe they were lying, and yet when he was with Je-

rome he honestly did not believe Jerome was lying either. The thing was ridiculous!

Pitt sat for another ten minutes in near silence, then shouted

*, for the turnkey and took his leave. There was nothing else to

say; pleasantries were an insult. There was no future, and it

would be cruel to pretend there was. Whatever the truth, Pitt

owed Jerome at least that decency.

Athelstan was waiting for him at the police station the following morning. There was a constable standing by Pitt's desk with orders that he report upstairs instantly.

"Yes, sir?" Pitt inquired as soon as Athelstan's voice shouted at him to come in.

Athelstan was sitting behind his desk. He had not even lit a cigar and his face was mottled with the rage he had been obliged to suppress until Pitt arrived.

' 'Who the hell told you you could go on visiting Jerome?'' he demanded, rising from his chair to half straighten his legs and give himself more height.

Pitt felt his back stiffen and the muscles grow tight across his scalp.

218 '

"Didn't know I needed permission," he said coldly. "Never have done before."

"Don't be impertinent with me, Pitt!" Athelstan stood straight up and leaned across the desk. "The case is closed! I told you that ten days ago, when the jury had brought in their verdict. It's none of your business, and I ordered you to leave it alone then! Now I hear you've been poking around behind my back-trying to see witnesses! What in hell do you think you're doing?"

"I haven't spoken to any witnesses," Pitt said truthfully, although it was not for the want of trying. "I can't-they've disappeared!"

"Disappeared? What do you mean 'disappeared'? People of that sort are always coming and going-jetsam, scum of society, always drifting from one place to another. Lucky we caught them when we did, or maybe we wouldn't have got their testimony. Don't talk rubbish, man. They haven't disappeared like a decent citizen might. They've just gone from one whore^ house to another. Means nothing-nothing at all. Do you hear me?"

Since he was snouting at the top of his voice, the question was redundant.

"Of course I can hear you, sir," Pitt answered, stonefaced.

Athelstan flushed crimson with anger.

"Stand still when I'm talking to you! Now I hear you've been to see Jerome-not only once, but twice! What for, that's what I should like to know-what for? We don't need a confession now. The man's been proved guilty. Jury of his peers- that's the law of the land." He swung his arms around, crossing them in frontof him in a scissor-like motion. "The thing is finished. The Metropolitan Police Force pays you to catch criminals, Pitt, arid, if you can, to prevent crime in the first place. It does not pay you to defend them, or to try and discredit the law courts and their verdicts! Now if you can't do that job properly, as you're told, then you'd better leave the force and find something you can do. Do you understand me?"

"No, sir, I don't!" Pitt stood stiff as a ramrod. "Are you telling me that I'm to do only exactly what I'm told, without

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following my own intelligence or my own suspicions-or else I'll be dismissed?"

"Don't be so damn stupid!" Athelstan slammed the desk with his hand. "Of course I'm not! You're a detective-but not on any damn case you like! I am telling you, Pitt, that if you don't leave the Jerome business alone, I'll put you back to walking the beat as a constable-and I can do it, I promise you."

"Why?" Pitt faced him, demanding an explanation, trying to back him into saying something indefensible. "I haven't seen any witnesses. I haven't been near the Waybournes or the Swynfords. But why shouldn't I talk to Abigail Winters or Albie Frobisher, or visit Jerome? What do you think anyone is going to say that can matter now? What can they change? Who's going to say something different?"

"Nobody! Nobody at all! But you're stirring up a lot of ill-feeling. You're making people doubt, making them think there's something being hidden, something nasty and dirty, still secret. And that amounts to slander!"

"Like what, for instance-what is there still to find out?"

"I don't know! Dear God-how should I know what's in your twisted mind? You're obsessed! But I'm telling you, Pitt, I'll break you if you take one more step in this case. It's closed. We've got the man who is guilty. The courts have tried him and sentenced him. You have no right to question their decision or cast doubts on it! You are undermining the law, and I won't have it!"

"I'm not undermining the law!" Pitt said derisively. "I'm trying to make sure we've got all the evidence, to make sure we don't make mistakes-"

"We haven't made any mistakes!" Athelstan's face was purple and there was a muscle jumping in his jowl. "We found the evidence, the courts decide, and it's not part of your job to sit in judgment. Now get out and find this arsonist, and take care of whatever else there is on your desk. If I have to call you back up here over Maurice Jerome, or anything to do with that case, anything whatsoever, I'll see you back as a constable. Right now, Pitt!" He flung out his arm and pointed at the door. "Out!"

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There was no point in arguing. "Yes, sir," Pitt said wSarily. "I'm going."

Before the end of the week, Pitt knew why he had not been able to find Albie. The news came as a courtesy from the Deptford police station. It was just a simple message that a body that had been pulled out of the river might be Albie, and if it was of any interest to Pitt, he was welcome to come and look at it.

He went. After all, Albie Frobisher was involved in one of his cases, or had been. That he had been pulled out of the water at Deptford did not mean that that was where he had gone in-far more likely Bluegate Fields, where Pitt had last seen him.

He did not tell anyone where he was going. He said simply that the Deptford station had sent a message for him, a possible identification of a corpse. That was reasonable enough, and happened all the time, men from one station assisting another.

It was one of those hard, glittering days when the east wind comes off the Channel like a whip, lashing the skin, stinging the eyes. Pitt pulled his collar higher, his muffler tighter around his throat, then jammed his hat down so the wind did not catch it under the brim and snatch it off.

The cab ran smartly along the streets, horses's hooves ringing on the ice-cold stones, the cabby bundled so high in clothes he could hardly see. When they stopped at the Deptford police station, Pitt got out, already stiff with cold from sitting still. He paid the cabbie and dismissed him. He might be a long time; he wanted to know far more than the identity-if this was indeed Albie.

Inside there was a potbellied stove burning, with a kettle on it, and a uniformed constable sat near the stove with a mug of tea in his hand. He recognized Pitt and stood up.

"Morning, Mr. Pitt, sir. You come to look at that corpse we got? Like a cup o' tea first? Not a nice sight, and a wicked cold day, sir."

"No, thanks-see it first, then I'd like one. Talk about it a bit-if it's the bloke I know."

"Poor little beggar." The constable shook his head. "Still, maybe 'e's best out of it. Lived longer than some of 'em.

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We've still got 'im 'ere, out the back. No hurry for the morgue on a day like this." He shivered. "Reckon as we could keep 'em froze right 'ere for a week!"

Pitt was inclined to agree. He nodded at the constable and shuddered in sympathy.

"Fancy keeping a morgue, do you?"

"Well, they'd 'ave to be less trouble 'n the live ones." The constable was a philosopher. "And don't need no feedin'!" He led the way through a narrow corridor whistling with drafts, down some stone steps, and up into a bare room where a sheet covered a lumpy outline on a wooden table.

"There you are, sir. 'E the one wot you knows?"

Pitt pulled the sheet off the head and looked down. The river had made its mark. There was mud and a little slimy weed on the hair, the skin was smudged, but it was Albie Frobisher.

He looked farther down, at the neck. There was no need to ask how he had died; there were finger marks, bruised and dark, on the flesh. He had probably been dead before he hit the water. Pitt moved the sheet off the rest of him, automatically. He would be careless to overlook anything else, if there was anything.

The body was even thinner than he had expected, younger than it had seemed with clothes on. The bones were so slight and the skin still had the blemishless, translucent quality of childhood. Perhaps that had been part of his stock in trade, his success.

"Is that Mm?" the constable said from just behind him.

"Yes." Pitt put the sheet back over him. "Yes, that's Albie Frobisher. Do you know anything about it?"

"Not much to know," the constable said grimly. "We get 'em out of the river every week, sometimes every day in the winter, some of 'em we recognize, a lot we never know. You finished "ere?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Then come back and 'ave that cup o' tea. He led the way back to the potbellied stove and the kettle. They both sat down with steaming mugs.

"He was strangled," Pitt said unnecessarily. "You'll be treating it as murder?"

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"Oh, yes." The constable pulled a face. "Not that I suppose it'll make much difference. " 'Oo knows 'oo killed the poor little beggar? Could, 'ave bin anyone, couldn't it? 'Oo was 'e anyway?"

"Albert Frobisher," Pitt replied, aware of the irony of such a name. "At least that's how we knew him. He was a male prostitute."

"Oh-the one wot gave evidence in the Waybourne case- poor little swine. Didn't last long, did 'e? Killed to do with that, was 'e?"

"I don't know."

"Well-" The constable finished the last of his tea and set the mug down. "Could 'ave bin, couldn't it? Then again, in that sort o' trade you can get killed for lots o' different reasons. All comes to the same in the end, don't it? Want 'im, I suppose? Shall I send 'im up to your station?"

"Yes, please.'' Pitt stood up. ' 'We'd better tidy it up. It may have nothing to do with the Waybourne case, but he comes from Bluegate Fields anyway. Thanks for the tea." He handed the mug back.

"Welcome, sir, I'm sure. I'll send 'im along as soon as my sergeant gives the word. It'll be this afternoon, though. No point in 'anging around."

"Thank you. Good day, Constable."

" 'Day, sir."

Pitt walked toward the shining stretch of the river. It was slack tide, and the black slime of the embankment smelled acrid. The wind rippled the surface and caught tiny white shreds of spray up against slow-moving barges. They were going up the river to the Pool of London and the docks. Pitt wondered where they had come from, those shrouded cargoes. Could be anywhere on earth: the deserts of Africa, the wastes north of Hudson Bay where it was winter six months long, the jungles of India, or the reefs of the Caribbean. And that was without even going outside the Empire. He remembered seeing the map of the world, with British possessions all in red-seemed to be every second country. They said the sun never set on the Empire.

And this city was the heart of it all. London was where your 223

Queen lived, whether you were in the Sudan or the Cape of Good Hope, Tasmania, Barbados, the Yukon, or Katmandu.

Did a boy like Albie ever know that he lived in the heart of such a world? Did the inhabitants of those teeming, rotten slums behind the proud streets ever conceive in their wildest drunken or opium-scented dreams of the wealth they were part of? All that immense might-and they wouldn't, or couldn't, even begin on the disease at home.

The barges were gone, the water shining silver in their wake, the flat light brilliant as the sun moved slowly westward. Some hours hence, the sky would redden, giving the pall-like clouds of the factories and docks the illusion of beauty before sunset.

Pitt straightened up and started to walk. He must find a cab and get back to the station. Athelstan would have to allow him to investigate now. This was a new murder. It might have nothing to do with Jerome or Arthur Way bourne, but it was still a murder. And murder must be solved, if it can be.

"No!" Athelstan shouted, rising to his feet. "Good God, Pitt! The boy was a prostitute! He catered to perverts! He was bound to end up either dead of some disease or murdered by a customer or a pimp or something. If we spent time on every dead prostitute, we'd need a force twice the size, and we'd still do nothing else. Do you know how many deaths there are in London every day?"

"No, sir. Do they stop mattering once they get past a certain number?"

Athelstan slammed his hand on the desk, sending papers flying.

"God dammit, Pitt, I'll have your rank for insubordination! Of course it matters! If there was any chance, or any reason, I'd investigate it right to the end. But murder of a prostitute is not uncommon. If you take up a trade like that, then you expect violence-and disease-and sooner or later you'll get it!

"I'm not sending my men out to comb the streets uselessly. We'll never find out who killed Albie Frobisher. It could have been any one of a thousand people-ten thousand! Who knows who went into that house? Anyone! Anyone at all. Nobody sees

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them-that's the nature of the place-and you bloody well know that as well as I do. I'm not wasting an inspector's time, yours or anyone else's, chasing after a hopeless case.

"Now get out of here and find that arsonist! You know who he is-so arrest him before we have another fire! And if I hear you mention Maurice Jerome, the Way bournes, or anything else to do with it again, I'll put you back on the beat-and that I swear-so help me, God!"

Pitt said nothing more. He turned on his heel and walked out, leaving Athelstan still standing, his face crimson, his fists clenched on the desk.

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C-harlotte was stunned when Pitt told her that Albie was dead; it was something she had not even considered, in spite of the terrifying number of deaths she had heard of among such people. Somehow it had not occurred to her that Albie, whose face and even something of his feelings she knew, would die within the space of her brief acquaintance with his life.

"How?" she demanded furiously, caught by surprise as well as pain. "What happened to him?"

Pitt looked tired; there were fine lines of strain on his face that she knew were not usually pronounced enough to see. He sat down heavily, close to the kitchen fire as though he had no warmth within.

She controlled the words that flew to her lips, and forced herself to wait. There was a wound inside him. She knew it as she did when Jemima cried, wordlessly clinging to her, trusting her to understand what was beyond explaining.

"He was murdered," he said at last. "Strangled, and then put in the river." His face twisted. "Irony in that, of a sort. All that water, dirty river water, not like Arthur Waybourne's nice clean bath. They pulled him out at Deptford."

There was no point in making it worse. She pulled herself together and concentrated on the practical. After all, she consciously reminded herself, people like Albie died all over London all the time. The only difference with Albie was that they had perceived him as an individual; they knew he understood what he was as clearly as they did-surely even more so-and shared some of their disgust.

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"Are they going to let you investigate?" she asked. She was pleased with herself; her voice showed none of the struggle inside her, of her image of the wet body. "Or do the Deptford police want it? There is a station at Deptford, isn't there?"

Tired enough to sleep even crumpled where he sat, he looked up at her. But if she dropped the spoon she held, turned, and took him in her arms, she knew it would only make it worse. She would be treating it like a tragedy, and him like a child, instead of a man. She continued stirring the soup she was making.

"Yes, there is," he replied, unaware of her crowding thoughts. "And no, they don't want it-they'll send it to us. He lived in Bluegate Fields, and he was part of one of our cases. And no, we're not going to investigate it. Athelstan says that if you are a prostitute, then murder is to be expected, and hardly to be remarked on. Certainly it is not worth police time to look into. It would be wasted. Customers kill people like that, or procurers do, or they die of disease. It happens every day. And God help us, he's right."

She absorbed the news in silence. Abigail Winters had gone, and now Albie was murdered. Very soon, if they did not manage to find something new and radical enough to justify an appeal, Jerome would hang.

And Athelstan had closed the murder of Albie as insoluble- and irrelevant.

"Do you want some soup?" she asked without looking at him.

"What?"

"Do you want some soup? It's hot."

He glanced down at his hands. He had not even realized how cold he was. She noticed the gesture and turned back to the stove to ladle out a bowlful without waiting. She handed it to him and he took it in silence.

"What are you going to do?" she asked, dishing out her own soup and sitting down opposite him. She was afraid-afraid he would defy Athelstan and go ahead with an inquiry on his own, and perhaps be demoted, or even dismissed. They would have no money coming in. She had never been poor in her life, not really poor. After Cater Street and her parents' home, this was almost poverty-or so it had seemed the first year. Now she

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was used to it, and only thought about it as different when she visited Emily, and had to borrow clothes to go calling in. She had no idea what they would do if Pitt were to lose his job.

But she was equally afraid that he would not fight Athelstan, that he would accept Albie's death and disregard his own conscience because of her and the children, knowing their security depended on him. And Jerome would hang, and Eugenie would be alone. They would never know whether he had killed Arthur Waybourne, or if he had been telling the truth all the time and the murderer was someone else, someone still alive and still abusing young boys.

And that too would He between them like a cold ghost, a deceit, because they had been afraid to risk the price of uncovering the truth. Would he hold back from doing what he believed right because he would not ask her to pay the price- and ever afterward feel in his heart that she had robbed him of integrity?

She kept her head down as she ate the soup so he could not read her thoughts in her eyes and base any judgment on them. She would be no part of this; he must do it alone.

The soup was too hot; she put it aside and went back to the stove. Absentmindedly she stirred the potatoes and salted them for the third time.

"Damn!" she said under her breath, and poured the water off quickly down the sink, filled up the pan again, and replaced it on the stove. Fortunately, she thought he was too preoccupied to ask her what on earth she was doing.

"I'll tell Deptford they can keep him," he said at last. "I'll say we don't need him after all. But I'll also tell them all I know about him, and hope they treat it as murder. After all, he lived in Bluegate Fields, but there's nothing to say he was killed there. He could still have been in Deptford. What on earth are you doing with the potatoes, Charlotte?"

"I'm boiling them!" she said tartly, keeping her back to him to hide the rush of warmth inside her, the pride-probably stupid. He was not going to let it go, and thank heaven, he was not going to defy Athelstan, at least not openly. "What did you think I was doing?"

"Well, what did you pour all the water off for?" he asked. 228

She swung around and held out the oven cloth and the pan lid.

"Do you want to do it, then?" she demanded.

He smiled slowly and slid farther down in the chair.

"No, thank you-I couldn't-I've no idea what you're making!"

She threw the cloth at him.

But she was a good deal less light about it when she faced Emily across the porcelain-spread breakfast table the following morning.

"Murdered!" she said sharply, taking the strawberry preserve from Emily's hand. "Strangled and then put in the river. He could have gone all the way out to sea and nobody would ever have found him."

Emily took the preserve back.

"You won't like that-it's too sweet for you. Have some marmalade. What are you going to do about it?"

"You haven't been listening!" Charlotte exploded, snatching the marmalade. "There isn't anything we can do! Athelstan says prostitutes are murdered all the time, and it just has to be accepted! He says it as if it were a cold in the head or something."

Emily looked at her closely, her face sharp with interest.

"You're really angry about it, aren't you?" she observed.

Charlotte was ready to hit her; all the frustration and pity and hopelessness boiled up inside her. But the table was too wide to reach her, and she had the marmalade in her hand. She had to be content with a blistering look.

Emily was quite unscathed. She bit into her toast and spoke with her mouth full.

"We shall have to find out as much about it as we can," she said in a businesslike manner.

"I beg your pardon?'' Charlotte was icy. She wanted to sting Emily into hurting as much as she did herself. "If you would care to swallow your food before attempting to speak, I might know what it is you are saying."

Emily looked at her impatiently. 229

"The facts!" she enunciated clearly. "We must find out all the facts-then we can present them to the right people."

"What right people? The police don't care who killed Albie! He is only one prostitute more or less, and what does that matter? And anyway we can't get the facts. Even Thomas can't get them. Use your head, Emily. Bluegate Fields is a slum, there are hundreds of thousands of slum people, and none of them will tell the police the truth about anything unless they have to."

"Not who killed Albie, stupid!" Emily was beginning to lose patience. "But how he died. That's what matters! How old he was, what happened to him. He was strangled, you said, and dropped into the river like rubbish, then washed up at Dept-ford? And the police aren't the people who matter, you told me that yourself." She leaned forward eagerly, toast in the air. "But how about Callantha Swynford? How about Lady Way-bourne? Don't you see? If we can make them envision all that in their minds' eye, all the obscenity and pathos, then we may draw them into our battle. Albie dead may be no use to Thomas, but he's excellently useful to us. If you want to appeal to people's emotions, the story of one person is far more effective than a catalogue of numbers. A thousand people suffering is much too hard to think of, but one is very easy."

At last Charlotte understood. Of course Emily was right; she had been stupid, allowing herself to wallow in emotion. She should have thought of it herself. She had allowed her feelings to blot out sense, and that was the ultimate uselessness. She must not let it happen again!

"I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "You are quite right. That is definitely the right thing to do. I shall have to find out the details from Thomas. He didn't really tell me a lot yesterday. I suppose he thought it would upset me."

Emily looked at her through her eyelashes. ''I can't imagine why," she said sarcastically.

Charlotte ignored the remark, and stood up. "Well, what are we going to do today? What is Aunt Vespasia planning to do?" she said, tweaking her skirt to make it fall properly.

Emily stood up, too, patted her lips with her napkin, and re-230

placed it on the plate. She reached for the bell to summon the maid.

"We are going to visit Mr. Carlisle, whom I find I like-you didn't tell me how nice he was! From him I hope we shall learn some more facts-about rates of pay in sweatshops and things-so we know why young women cannot live on them and so take to the streets. Did you know that people who make matches get a disease that rots away their bones till half their faces are destroyed?"

"Yes, I did. Thomas told me about it a long time ago. What about Aunt Vespasia?"

"She is taking luncheon with an old friend, the Duchess of somewhere or other, but someone everybody listens to-I don't think they dare ignore her! Apparently, she knows absolutely everyone, even the Queen, and hardly anybody knows the Queen these days, since Prince Albert died."

The maid came in, and Emily told her to order the carriage to be ready in half an hour; then she was to clear the table. No one would be home until late afternoon.

"We shall take luncheon at Deptford," Emily said, answering Charlotte's look of surprise. ' 'Or else we shall go without." She surveyed Charlotte's figure with a mixture of envy and distaste. "A little self-denial will not harm us in the least. And we shall inquire of the Deptford policemen as to the state of the body of Albie Frobisher. Perhaps we may even be permitted to see it."

"Emily! You can't! Whatever reason could we give for such a biza'rre thing? Ladies do not go to view the corpses of prostitutes pulled out of the river! They wouldn't allow us."

"You will tell them who you are," Emily replied, crossing the hall and beginning up the stairs so they could prepare their appearance for the day. "And I shall tell them who I am, and what my purpose is. I am collecting information on social conditions because it is desired that there should be reform."

"Is it?" Charlotte was not put off; it was merely a remark. "I thought it wasn't. That is why we must excite people's sympathy-and anger."

"It is desired by me," Emily replied with literal truth. "That is sufficient for a policeman in Deptford!"

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* * *

Somerset Carlisle received them without surprise. Apparently, Emily had had the forethought to warn him of their coming, and he was at home with the fire piled high and hot chocolate pre-pared. The study was littered with papers, and in the best chair a long, lean black cat with topaz eyes lay stretched, blinking unconcernedly. It seemed to have no intention of moving even when Emily nearly sat on it. It simply allowed her to push it to one side, then rearranged itself across her knee. Carlisle was so accustomed to the creature he did not even notice.

Charlotte sat in the chair near the fire, determined that Emily should not dictate this conversation.

"Albie Frobisher has been murdered," she said before Emily had time to approach the subject with any delicacy.' 'He was stran-gled and put in the river. Now we shall never be able to question him again to see if he changes his testimony at all. But Emily has pointed out"-she must be fair, or she would make a fool of herself-"that his death will be an excellent tool to engage the sympathy of the people whose influence we wish for."

Carlisle's face showed his disgust at the event, and an unusu-ally personal anger.

"Not much use to Jerome!" he said harshly. "Unfortunately, people like Albie are murdered for too many reasons, and most of them perfectly obvious, to assume it related to any particular incident."

"The girl prostitute has gone, too," Charlotte continued. "Abigail Winters. She's disappeared, so we can't ask her either. But Thomas did say that he thinks neither Jerome nor Arthur Wayboume ever went there, to her rooms, because there is an old woman at the door who watches everyone like a rat, and she makes them all pay her to pass. She never saw them, and neither did any of the other girls."

Emily's mouth curled in revulsion as her imagination con-jured up the place for her. She put out her hand and stroked the black cat.

"There would be a procuress," Carlisle said, "and no doubt a few strong men around to deal with anyone who caused trouble. It's all part of the mutual arrangement. It would be a very

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sly girl indeed who managed to smuggle in private customers- and a brave one. Or else a fool!"

"We need more facts." Emily would not allow herself to be excluded from the conversation any longer. "Can you tell us how a girl who begins as respectable ends up on the streets in places like these? If we are to move people, we must tell them about the ones they can feel sorry for, not just the ones born in Bluegate Fields and St. Giles, whom they imagine never desire anything else."

"Of course." He turned to his desk and shuffled through piles of papers and loose sheets, coming up at last with the ones he wanted.' 'These are rates of pay in match factories and furniture shops, and pictures of necrosis of the jaw caused by handling phosphorus. Here are the piecework rates for stitching shirts and ragpicking. These are conditions for entry into a workhouse, and what they are like inside. And this is the poor law with regard to children. Don't forget a lot of women who are on the streets are there because they have children to support, and not necessarily illegitimate by any means. Some are widows, and the husbands of some have just left, either for another woman or simply because they couldn't stand the responsibility."

Emily took the papers and Charlotte moved beside her to read over her shoulder. The black cat stretched luxuriously, kneading its claws in the arm of the chair, pulling the threads, then curled up in a ball again and went back to sleep with a small sigh.

"May we keep these?" Emily asked. "I want to learn them by heart.

"Of course," he said. He poured the chocolate and passed it to them, his wry face showing he was not unaware of the irony of the situation: sitting by the blazing fire in this infinitely comfortable room, with its superb Dutch scene on the wall and hot chocolate in their hands, while they talked about horrendous squalor.

As if reading Charlotte's thoughts, Carlisle turned to her.

"You must use your chance to convince as many other people as possible. The only way we'll change anything is to alter the social climate till child prostitution becomes so abhorred that it withers of itself. Of course we'll never get rid of it alto-

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gether, any more than any other vice, but we might reduce it massively."

"We will!" Emily said with a deeper anger than Charlotte had heard in her before. "I'll see that every society woman in London is so sickened by it she'll make it impossible for any man with ambition to practice it. We may not have a vote or pass any laws in Parliament, but we can certainly make the laws of society and freeze to death anyone who wants to flout them for long, I promise you!"

Carlisle smiled. "I'm sure," he said. "I never underestimated the power of public disapproval, informed or uninformed."

Emily stood up, carefully depositing the cat in the round hollow she had left. It barely stirred to rearrange itself.

"I intend to inform the public." She folded the papers and slipped them into her embroidered reticule. "Now we shall go to Deptford and look at this corpse. Are you ready, Charlotte? Thank you so much, Mr. Carlisle."

The Deptford police station was not easy to find. Quite naturally, neither Emily's footman nor her coachman was acquainted with the area, and it took several wrong turnings on seemingly identical corners before they drew up in front of the entrance.

Inside was the potbellied stove, and the same constable sat at the desk writing up a report, an enamel mug of tea steaming at his elbow. He looked startled when he saw Emily in her green mom-ing dress and feathered hat, and although he knew Pitt, he did not know Charlotte. For a moment he was at a loss for words.

"Good morning, Constable," Emily said cheerfully.

He snapped to attention, slid off his seat, and stood up. That at least had to be correct; one did not sit on one's behind to speak with ladies of quality.

"Good morning, ma'am." His eye took in Charlotte. "Ma'am. Are you lost, ladies? Can I 'elp you?"

"No, thank you, we are not lost," Emily replied briskly, with a smile so dazzling the constable was completely disconcerted again. "I am Lady Ashworth, and this is my sister Mrs. Pitt. I believe you know Inspector Pitt? Good, of course you do. Perhaps you did not know there is a great desire for reform

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at the moment, especially with regard to the abuse of children in the trade of prostitution."

The constable blanched at a lady using so vulgar a term, and was embarrassed by it, although he frequently heard far coarser expressions used by others.

But she did not give him time to protest, or even to cogitate upon it.

"A great desire," she continued. "And for this, of course, a certain amount of correct information is required. I know that a young boy prostitute was pulled out of the river here yesterday. I should like to see him."

Every vestige of color drained out of his face.

"You can't, ma'am! 'E's dead!"

"I know he's dead, Constable," Emily said patiently. "He would be, having been strangled and dropped into the river. It is the corpse that I wish to see."

"The corpse?" he repeated, stupefied.

"Exactly," she said. "If you will be so kind?"

"I can't! It's 'orrible, ma'am-quite 'orrible. You can't 'ave any idea, or you wouldn't ask. It's not for any lady at all to see, let alone the likes o' you!"

Emily opened her mouth to argue, but Charlotte could see that the whole initiative was going to slip away if she did not intervene.

"Of course it is," she agreed, adding her own smile to Emily's. "And we appreciate your sensitivity to our feelings. But we have both seen death before, Constable. And if we are to fight for reform, we must make people aware that it is not pleasant-indeed as long as they are permitted to deceive themselves that it is unimportant, so long will they fail to do anything about it. Do you not agree?"

"Well-well put like that, ma'am-but I can't let you go and look at something like that! 'E's dead, ma'am-very dead indeed!"

"Nonsense!" Emily said sharply. "It's freezing cold! We have seen bodies before that were far worse than this one can possibly be. Mrs. Pitt once found one over a month old, half burned and full of maggots."

That left the constable speechless. He stared at Charlotte as if 235

she had produced the article right there iff front of him by some abominable sleight of hand.

"So will you be good enough to take us to see poor Albie?" Emily said briskly. "You did not send him back to Bluegate Fields, did you?"

"Oh, no, ma'am. We got a message as they didn't want 'im after all. Said as 'e'd bin took out o' the river 'ere, we 'ad as much right to 'im as anyone else."

' 'Then let us go.'' Emily began to walk toward the only other door, and Charlotte followed her, hoping the constable would not block them.

"I ought to ask my sergeant!" the constable said helplessly. " 'E's upstairs. Let me go an' ask 'im if n you can!" This was his chance to put the whole ridiculous thing into someone else's hands. He had been used to all manner of weird affairs coming in through the door, from drunks to terrified girls or practical jokers, but this was the worst of all. He knew they really were ladies; he may work in Deptford, but he knew quality when he saw it!

"I wouldn't dream of putting you to the trouble," Emily said. "Or your sergeant either. We shall only be a moment. Will you be kind enough to show us the way? We should dislike to find the wrong corpse."

"Lord! We only got the one!" He dived through the doorway after her and trotted behind them exactly where Pitt had gone the day before, into the small, cold room with its sheet-covered table.

Emily strode in and whipped off the cover. She looked down at the stiff, bleached, puffed corpse, and fora moment she went as white as it was; then, with a supreme effort, she controlled herself long enough to allow Charlotte to look also, but she was unable to speak.

Charlotte saw an almost unrecognizable head and shoulders. Death and the water had robbed Albie of all the anger that had made him individual. Staring at him now, the emptiness lying on the table, she realized how much the will to fight had been part of him. What was left was like a house without furniture, after the inhabitants have taken away the things that marked their presence.

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"Put it back," she said to Emily quietly. They walked out past the constable, close to each other, arm in arm, avoiding his eyes so he would not see how much it had shocked them and taken all their confidence.

He was a tactful man, and whatever he saw or guessed he made no mention of.

"Thank you," Emily said at the street door. "You have been most courteous."

"Yes, thank you," Charlotte added, ding her best to smile at him; she did not succeed, but he took the intention for the deed.

"You're welcome, ma'am," he replied. "You're welcome, I'm sure," he added, because he did not know what else to say.

Outside in the carriage, Emily accepted the rug from the footman and allowed him to wrap it around her feet and Charlotte's.

"Where to, milady?" he asked without expression. Afterthe Deptford police station, nothing else she could say would surprise him.

"What time is it?" she inquired.

"A little after noon, milady."

"Then it is too early to go calling upon Callantha Swynford. We must find something to do in the meanwhile."

"Would you care for luncheon, milady?" The footman tried not to make it too obvious that he cared for it himself. Of course, he had not just viewed a drowned corpse.

Emily lifted her chin and swallowed.

"What an excellent idea. You had better find us somewhere pleasant, John, if you please. I do not know where such a place may be, but no doubt there is a hostelry of some sort that serves ladies."

"Yes, milady, I'm sure there is." He closed the door and went back to tell the coachman that he had succeeded in obtaining luncheon, and implied by his expression what he thought of it all.

"Oh, my God!" Emily sat back into the upholstery as soon as the door was closed. "How does Thomas bear it? Why do birth and death have to be so awfully-physical? They seem to reduce us to such a level of extremity there is no room to think of the spiritual!" She gulped again, hard. "Poor little creature. I

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IMf

have to believe in God, of some sort. It would be intolerable to think that was all there was-just to be born and live and die like that, and nothing before or after. It's too trivial and disgusting. It's like a joke in the worst possible taste."

"It's not very funny," Charlotte said somberly.

"Jokes in bad taste aren't!" Emily snapped. "I couldn't face eating, but I certainly don't intend to allow John to know that! We'll have to order something, and of course we shall eat separately. Please do not be clumsy enough to allow him to learn of it! He is my footman and I shall have to live with him in the house-not to mention whatever he might say to the rest of the servants."

"I have no intention of doing so," Charlotte replied. "And not eating will not help Albie.'' She had seen and heard of more violence and more pain than Emily, cushioned by Paragon Walk and the Ashworth world. "And of course there's a God, and probably heaven, too. And I most sincerely hope there is hell also. I have a great desire to see several people in it!"

"Hell for the wicked?" Emily said tartly, stung by Charlotte's apparent composure. "How very puritan of you."

"No-hell for the indifferent," Charlotte corrected. "God can do as He pleases with the wicked. It is the ones who don't damn well care that I want to see burn!"

Emily pulled the rug a little tighter.

"I'll help," she offered.

Callantha Swynford was not in the least surprised to see them; in fact, the usual etiquette of afternoon calling was not observed at all. There was no exchange of polite observations and trivia. Instead, they were conducted immediately into the withdrawing room set for tea and conversation.

Without preamble Emily launched into a frank description of conditions in workhouses and sweatshops, the details of which she and Charlotte had learned from Somerset Carlisle. They were gratified to see Callantha's distress as there opened up before her a whole world of misery that she had never conceived of before.

Presently they were joined by other ladies, and the wretched facts were repeated, this time by Callantha herself while Emily

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and Charlotte merely added assurance that what Callantha said was indeed true. By the time they left, late in the afternoon, they were both satisfied that there were now a number of women of wealth and influence who were sincerely concerned in the matter, and that Callantha herself would not forget, or dismiss easily from her thoughts, the abuse of children such as Albie, however much it distressed her.

While Charlotte was occupied with her crusade against child prostitution in general, trying to inform and horrify those who could change the climate of social opinion, Pitt was still concerned with the murder of Albie.

Athelstan kept him occupied with a case of embezzlement that involved thousands of pounds abstracted from a large company over a period of years. The incessant checking of double entries, receipts, and payments, and the questioning of innumerable frightened and devious clerks, was a kind of punishment to him for having caused so much embarrassment over the Jerome affair.

The body of Albie had not been moved from Deptford, so Pitt had nothing to act on. Deptford still had charge of the case-if there was to be a case. In order to learn even that much, he would have to go to Deptford on his own time, after his duties on the embezzlement were over for the day. and his inquiries would have to be sufficiently discreet that Athelstan would not learn of them.

It was a black evening after one of those flat, lightless days when fires do not draw because the air is too heavy, and every moment one expects the sky to fling a barrage from clouds so leaden they hang low across the city roofs and drown the horizon. Gas lamps flickered uneasily without dispelling the intensity of the darkness, and the drift of air from the river smelled of the incoming tide. There was a rime of ice on the stones of the street; the cab Pitt rode in moved briskly along while the cabbie kept up a steady hacking cough.

He stopped the cab at the Deptford police station, and Pitt had not the heart to ask him to wait, even though he knew he might not be long. No man or beast should be required to stand idle in that bitter street. After the heat of movement it could kill

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the horse; the cabbie, whose livelihood depended on the animal, would have to walk it around and around at no profit merely to keep the sweat from freezing and chilling the animal to death.

"Night, sir." The cabbie touched his hat and moved off into the gloom, disappearing before he had passed the third gas lamp.

"Good night." Pitt turned and walked into the shelter of the station and the frail warmth of the potbellied stove. It was a different constable on duty this time, but the usual steaming mug of tea was by his elbow. Perhaps it was the only way to keep warm in the enforced stillness of desk duty. Pitt introduced himself and mentioned his earlier visit to identify Albie's body.

"Well, Mr. Pitt, sir," the constable said cheerfully. "Wot can we do for yer tonight? No more corpses as'd interest you, I reckon."

"I don't want any, thank you," Pitt replied. "I didn't even get that one. Just wondered how you were doing with it. I might be able to help a little, since I knew him."

"Then you'd better talk to Sergeant Wittle, sir. 'E's 'andlin' the case, such as it is. Although, to be honest, I don't reckon we've much chance of ever knowing who done it. You know yerself, Mr. Pitt, poor little beggars like that get done in every day, fer one reason or another."

' 'Get a lot of them, do you?" Pitt asked conversationally. He leaned a little on the desk, as though he were in no hurry to pursue a more senior officer.

The constable warmed to the attention. Most people preferred to ask the opinion of a sergeant at least, and it was very pleasant to be consulted by an inspector.

"Oh, yes, sir, from time to time. River police brings 'em in 'ere quite a lot-'ere an' Greenwich. And o'course Wapping Stairs-sort o' natural place, that is."

"Murdered?" Pitt asked.

"Some o' them. Although it's 'ard to tell. A lot o' them is drowned, and who knows whether they were pushed, or fell, or jumped?"

"Marks?" Pitt raised his eyebrows.

"Gawd 'elp us, most of 'em is pretty marked anyway, long before they gets as far as the water. There's some people as

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seems to get their pleasure out o' beating other people, instead o' what any natural man would. You should see some o' the women we get, and no more'n bits o' kids, lot o' them- younger than my wife was when I married 'er, and she was seventeen. Then, o' course, some o' them girls gets beat by their own pimps, if they've bin 'olding back on the money. AH that, and wot with the tides and knockin' around the bridges, some o' them yer'd 'ardly recerni/e as they was 'uman bein's. I tell yer, it'd fair make yer weep sometimes. Turns me stomach, it does, and it takes a deal ter do that."

"A lot of brothels in the docks," Pitt said quietly after a moment's silence while they pursued their private memories of horror. It was more an observation than a question.

" 'Course," the constable agreed. "Biggest port in the world, London." He said.it with some pride. "What else d'y'expect? Sailors away from 'ome, after a long spell at sea, and the like. An I s'pose when yer gets the supply o' women, and boys, fer them that's that way inclined"-he grimaced- "then it's natural yer gets others come in from outside the harea, knowin' as they'll find whatever they wants 'ere. There's a few times yer'll see some smart gents get down from a cab outside some very funny 'ouses. But then I reckon yer knows that fer yerself, bein' near that kind o' harea, too!"

"Yes," Pitt said. "Yes." Although since his promotion to inspector he had had to do with more serious cases, and the ordinary, rather pedestrian duties of keeping a modicum of control over vice had not fallen his way.

The constable nodded. "It's when I sees children involved that I gets the sickest about it. I reckon most adult people can do as they wants, although I 'ates ter see a woman lower 'erself- always make me think o' me muvver-but kids is diff rent. Funny, yet know, they was two ladies-and I mean ladies, all dressed and spoke like real quality they was, and 'andsome as duchesses. They came in 'ere just yesterday, a-sayin' as they wanted ter do somethin' about child prostitution. Wanted ter make people sit up and take notice. Don't reckon as they've much chance." He smiled wanly. "It's a lot the quality as pays the money that makes it worth the procurer's while-up the better end, any'ow. No good pretending the gents wot matters

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••..4:

don't already know about it! Still, yer can't tell ladies as their own kind does that kind o' thing, can yer? I never saw them meself, but Constable Andrews, as was on duty at the time, 'e said they wanted ter look at the corpse what was brought out o' the river-the one as yer come about. White as sheets, they went, but never lorst their nerve, nor fainted. Yer've gotta admire them. Just looked and thanked 'im, polite as yer like, and went out again. Yer've got to 'and it to 'em, they got spirit!"

"Indeed!" Pitt was startled. Half of him was furious, the other half idiotically proud. He did not even bother to ask if the ladies had left any names, or indeed what they had looked like. He would reserve his comments on the matter until he got home.

"Reckon as yer'd like ter see Sergeant Wittle?" the constable said matter-of-factly, unaware of Pitt's thoughts, or even that they had left the immediate subject. " 'E's just up them Stairs, first door you comes to, sir. Can't miss it."

"Thank you," Pitt said. He smiled and left the constable, who picked up the mug of tea again, before it lost the last of its warmth.

Sergeant Wittle was a sad man, with a dark face and remnants of black hair draped thinly across the top of his head.

"Ah," he sighed when Pitt explained his call. "Ah-well, I don't think we'll get much there. 'Appens all the time, poor sods! Can't tell you 'ow many I've seen, over the years. O' course, most aren't murdered, leastways not directly-just sort o' sideways, like, by life. Sit down, Mr. Pitt. Not that it'll do you any use."

"It's not official," Pitt said hastily, pushing the chair closer to the stove and settling in it. "The case is yours. Just wondered if I could help-off the books?"

"You know suffin', then?" While's eyebrows rose. "We know where "e lived, but that don't tell us anything at all. Anonymous sort o' place. Anyone could come or go-part o' the whole thing! Nobody wants ter be seen. Who would- frequenting a place like that? An' all the other residents pretty much mind their own business. Anyway, they're inside plyin' their own trade, which by its nature 'as ter be private. Like bitin' the 'and that feeds you, letting anyone know who goes in and out o' that place."

"Do you have anything at all?" Pitt asked, trying not to hope. 242

Wittle sighed again. "Not much. Treating it as murder, o' course at least for a while. It'll probably get filed with all the other unsolveds, but we'll give it a week or two. Seems like 'e was a plucky little bastard-spoke out more'n most. 'E was known. Kept some 'igh-class company, according to some, if they're tellin' the truth."

"Who?" Pitt leaned forward urgently, his throat tight. "Who was this high-class company?"

Wittle smiled sadly. "Nobody as you'd know, Mr. Pitt. I read the newspapers. If it 'ad bin anyone in your case, I'd 'a' sent and told you-just a matter o' politeness, like. Not that I can see as it'd do you any good. Already got yer man. Why d'ya still care?" He screwed up his eyes. "Reckon as there's more?" He shook his head. "Always is, on these things, but you'll never find it. Very close, the quality, when it comes to 'iding their family problems. Reckon young Wayboume was doin' a spot o' slummin' of 'is own, do you? Well-what does it matter now? Poor little sod's dead, an' provin' there was a few lies told 'ere an' there won't 'elp no one now."

"No," Pitt said with as much grace as he could muster. "But if you find proof he kept company with anyone in our area that you want to know about, there may be something useful I could tell you that is only suspicion-and not on record."

Wittle smiled, for the first time showing genuine amusement.

"Ever tried proving a gentleman 'ad even a passin' acquaintance with somebody like Albie Frobisher, Mr. Pitt?"

There was no need for an answer. They both knew that such a piece of professional crassness would be without point; indeed, the officer who made the charges would probably suffer for his foolishness more than the gentleman he made it against. Although of course there would be embarrassment all around, not least to his superiors in the force for having employed so clumsy a man, an oaf so unaware of what may be said, and what may only be supposed, that he would voice such a thought.

"Even if it's proof you can't use," Pitt said at last, "I'd like to know."

"Just fer interest, like?" Wittle's smile widened. "Or do you know suffin' as I don't?"

"No." Pitt shook his head. "No, I know frighteningly little. 243

II'

I'

The more I learn, the less I think I really know. But thank you anyway."

It took him ten minutes' walking in the cold before he found another cab; he directed it and climbed in, then realized, his mind had translated into words the thought that had barely played itself into his consciousness. He was going back to Abigail Winters's moms to see if any of the girls knew exactly when; she had gone. He was afraid for her, afraid she too was lying dead and bloated in some dark backwater of the river, or perhaps already washed out with the tide into the estuary and the sea.

Three days later, he received word from a police station in a little town in Devon that Abigail Winters had gone there to stay with a cousin, and was alive and in every appearance of health. The one girl at the brothel who could write had told him where she was, but he had not accepted her unsubstantiated word. He had telegraphed six police districts himself, and the second reply gave him the answer he wanted. According to the constable whose careful, unaccustomed wording he read, Abigail had retired to the country for her lungs, which suffered from the London fog. She thought the air in Devon would suit her better, being milder and free from the smoke of industry.

Pitt stared at the paper. It was ridiculous. It came from a small country town; there would be little market there for her trade, and she knew no one but a distant relative-a female at that. Doubtless she would be back in London within a year, as soon as the Way bourne case was forgotten.

Why had she gone? What was she afraid of? That she had lied, and if she stayed in London someone would press her until it was discovered? Pitt felt he knew already; the only thing he did not know was how it had come about. Had someone paid her to lie-or had it been a slow process through questioning by Gillivray? Had she realized-by implication, gesture, guess- what he wanted, and, in trade for some future leniency, given it to him? He was young, keen, more than personable. He needed a prostitute who had venereal disease. How hard had he looked, and how easy had he been to satisfy once he had found someone, anyone-who filled that need?

It was a shocking thought, but Gillivray would not have been 244

the first man to seize a chance for evidence to convict someone he sincerely believed to be guilty of an appalling crime, a crime likely to occur again and again if the offender was not imprisoned. There was a deep, natural desire to prevent hideous crime, especially when one has only recently seen the victims. It was easy to understand. Yet it was also inexcusable.

He called Gillivray into the office and told him to sit down.

"I've found Abigail Winters," he announced, watching Gillivray's face.

Gillivray's eyes were suddenly bright and blurry. There was a heat inside him that robbed him of words. It was the guilt Pitt might not have found in an hour of interrogation, no matter how many of his suspicions he pressed or how many verbal traps he laid. Surprise and fear were so much more effective, putting the onus of reply on Gillivray before he had time to conceal the guilt in his eyes, to grasp what it was Pitt was saying.

"I see," Pitt said quietly. "I would rather not believe you openly bribed her. But you did, tacitly, lead her into perjury, didn't you? You invited her, and she accepted."

"Mr. Pitt!" Gillivray's face was scarlet.

Pitt knew what was coming, the rationalizations. He did not want to hear them because he knew them all, and he did not want Gillivray to make them. He had thought he disliked him, but now that it came to the moment, he wanted to save him from self-degradation.

"Don't," he said quietly. "I know all the reasons."

"But, Mr. Pitt-"

Pitt held up a piece of paper. "There's been a robbery, a lot of good silver taken. This is the address. Go and see them."

Silently, Gillivray took it, hesitated a moment as though he would argue again, then turned on his heel and left, closing the door hard behind him.

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11

Pitt stood under the new electric lights along the Thames Embankment and stared at the dark water brilliantly dancing in the reflections, then sliding away into obscurity. The round globes along the balustrade were like so many moons hung just above the heads of the elegant and fashionable as they paraded in the wintry night, muffled in furs, their boots making little high, chiplike sounds on the ice-cold footpath.

If Jerome were hanged, whatever Pitt found out about the murder would be academic. And yet there would still be Albie. Whoever had killed him, it was not Jerome; he had been safely entombed in the heart of Newgate when that had happened.

Were the two murders connected? Or was it just gross and irrelevant mischance?

A woman laughed as she passed behind Pitt, so close her skirts brushed the bottom of his trousers. The man beside her, his top hat rakishly sideways on his head, leaned and whispered something. She laughed again, and instinctively Pitt knew what he had said.

He kept his back to them and stared out into the nothingness of the river. He wanted to know who had killed Albie. And he still felt that there were other lies concerning Arthur Way-bourne, lies that mattered, although his brain could not tell him how, or what the answer was.

He had been back to Deptford tonight, but hadn't learned anything that really mattered, just a lot of detail that he might as easily have guessed. Albie had some wealthy customers, men who might go to a considerable length to keep their tastes from

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becoming known. Had Albie had been foolish enough to try enhancing his standard of living by a little selective blackmail, an insurance against the time when he could no longer command a price?

But still, as Wittle had pointed out, far more likely he had had some sort of lovers' quarrel and been strangled in the heat of jealousy or unsatisfied lust. Or perhaps it was as commonplace as a fight over money. Maybe he had simply been greedy. . Yet Pitt wanted to know; the untidy ends trailed across his mind, irritating his thoughts like a constant nagging pain.

He straightened up and began to walk along the row of lights. He walked faster than the strollers, muffled against the bitter air, carriages beside them to pick them up when they were tired of their diversion. It was not long before he hailed a hansom and made his way home.

The following day at noon, a constable anxiously knocked on Pitt's door and told him that Mr. Athelstan required him to report upstairs immediately. Pitt went unsuspectingly, his mind currently engaged on a matter of recovering stolen goods. He thought Athelstan would be inquiring into the likelihood of a conviction in the case.

"Pitt!" Athelstan roared as soon as Pitt was inside the door. He was already standing and a cigar lay squashed in the big polished stone ashtray, tobacco bursting out of its sides. "Pitt, by God I'll break you for this!" His voice rose even higher. "Stand to attention when I talk to you!"

Pitt obediently drew his feet together, startled by Athelstan's scarlet face and shaking hands. He was obviously on the edge of completely losing control of himself.

"Don't just stand there!" Athelstan came around the side of the desk to face him. "I won't have dumb insolence! Think you can get away with anything, don't you? Just because some jumped-up country squire had the ill-judgment to have you educated with his son, and you think you speak like a gentleman! Well, let me disabuse you, Pitt-you are an inspector of police, and you are subject to the same discipline as any other policeman. I can promote you if I think you are fit, and I can just as easily put you down to sergeant-or to constable, if I see a rea-

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son. In fact, I can have you dismissed altogether! I can have you thrown out onto the street! How would you like that, Pitt? No job, no money. How would you keep your lady wife then, with her highborn ideas, eh?"

Pitt almost laughed; this was ridiculous! Athelstan looked as if he might have a fit if he wasn't careful. But Pitt was also afraid. Athelstan might look ludicrous standing in the middle of the floor with crimson face, bulging eyes, neck like a turkey's over his strangle-stiff white collar, but he was just close enough to the borders of his control that he might very well dismiss him. Pitt loved his job; untangling the threads of mystery and discovering truth-sometimes an ugly truth-held a certain value. It gave him his sense of worth; when he woke every morning, he knew why he got-up, where he was going, and that he had a purpose. If anyone stopped him and asked "Who are you?" he could give them an answer that summed up what he was, and why-not merely the vocational label, but the essence. To lose his job would rob him of far more than Athelstan could comprehend.

But, looking at Athelstan's purpled face, he knew that some measure of its importance to him was very well understood. Athelstan meant to frighten him, meant to cow him into obeying.

It had to be Albie again, and Arthur Waybourne. There was nothing else important enough.

Athelstan suddenly reached out his hand and slapped the flat of his palm across Pitt's cheek. It stung sharply; but Pitt felt foolish to have been surprised. He stood perfectly still, hands' by his sides.

"Yes, sir?" he said steadily. "What is it that has happened?"

Athelstan seemed to realize he had lost every shred of dignity, that he had allowed himself to indulge in uncontrolled emotion in front of a subordinate. His skin was still suffused with blood, but he drew in his breath slowly and stopped shaking-

"You have been back to the Deptford police station," he said in a much lower voice. "You have been interfering in their

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inquiries, and asking for information about the death of the boy prostitute Frobisher."

"I went in my own time, sir," Pitt replied, "to see if I could offer them any help, since we already know a good deal about him and they do not. He lived nearer our area, if you remember?"

"Don't be insolent! Of course I remember! He was the perverted whore that that man Jerome patronized in his filthy habits! He deserved to die. He brought it on himself! The more vermin like that that kill each other off, the better for the decent people of this city. And it is the decent people we are paid to protect, Pitt! And don't you forget it!"

Pitt spoke before he thought. "The decent ones being those who sleep only with their wives, sir?" He allowed the sarcasm to creep into his voice, although he had intended it to sound naive. "And how shall I know which ones those are, sir?"

Athelstan stared at him, the blood ebbing and flowing in his face.

"You are dismissed, Pitt," he said at last. "You are no longer in the force!"

Pitt felt the ice drench over him as if he had toppled and fallen into the river. His voice replied like a stranger's, involuntarily, full of bravado he did not feel.

"Perhaps that's just as well, sir. I could never have made the suitable judgments as to whom we should protect and whom we should allow to be killed. I was under the misapprehension that we were to prevent crime or to arrest criminals whenever possible, and that the social standing or the moral habits of the victim and the offender were quite irrelevant-that we should seek to enforce the law-something about 'without malice, fear, or favor.' "

A hot tide, rose again in Athelstan's face.

"Are you accusing me of favor, Pitt? Are you saying that I am corrupt?"

"No, sir. You said it," Pitt replied. He had nothing to lose now. Everything that Athelstan could give or take had already gone. He had used all his power.

Athelstan swallowed. "You misunderstood!" he said with tight fury, but softly, suddenly startled into control again.

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"Sometimes I think you are deliberately stupid! I said nothing of the sort. All I meant was that people like Albie Frobisher are bound to come to a bad end, and there is nothing we can do about it, that's all."

"I'm sony, sir. I thought you said that there was nothing we ought to do."

"Nonsense!" Athelstan waved his hands as if to obliterate the idea. "I never said anything of the kind. Of course we must try! It is just that it is hopeless. We cannot waste good police time on something that has no chance of success! That is only common sense. You will never make a good administrator, Pitt, if you do not understand how best to use the limited forces at your disposal! Let it be a lesson to you."

"I am hardly likely to make an administrator of any sort, since I have no job," Pitt pointed out. Now the coldness of reality was setting in. Through the shock he began to glimpse the wasteland of unhappiness beyond. Ridiculously, childishly, there was a constricting ache in his throat. In that moment he hated Athelstan so much he wanted to hit him, to beat him until he bled. Then he would go out of the station where everyone knew him, and walk in the gray, hiding rain until he could control the desire to weep. Except that, of course, it would all come back again when he saw Charlotte, and he would make a weak, undignified fool of himself.

"Well!" Athelstan sniffed irritably. "Well-I'm not a vindictive man-I'm prepared to overlook this breach if you'll behave yourself more circumspectly in the future. You may consider yourself still employed in the police force." He glanced at Pitt's face, then held up his hand. "No! I insist, don't argue with me! I am aware that you are overimpulsive, but I am prepared to allow you a certain latitude. You have put in some excellent work in the past, and you have earned a little leniency for the occasional mistake. Now get out of my sight before I change my mind. And do not mention Arthur Way-bourne or anything whatsoever connected with that case-however tenuously!" He waved his hand again. "Do you hear me?"

Pitt blinked. He had an odd feeling that Athelstan was as re-250

lieved as he was. His face was still scarlet and his eyes peered back anxiously.

"Do you hear me?" he repeated, his voice louder.

"Yes, sir." Pitt answered, straightening up again to some semblance of attention. "Yes, sir."

"Good! Now go away and get on with whatever you are doing! Get out!"

Pitt obeyed, then stood outside on the matting on the landing feeling suddenly sick.

Meanwhile, Charlotte and Emily were pursuing their crusade with enthusiasm. The more they learned, from Carlisle and other sources, the more serious their cause became-and the deeper and more troubled their anger. They developed a certain sense of responsibility because fate-or God-had spared them from such suffering themselves.

In the course of their work, Charlotte and Emily visited Cal-lantha Swynford a third time, and it was then that Charlotte at last found herself alone with Titus. Emily was in the withdrawing room discussing some new area of knowledge with Callantha, while Charlotte had retired to the morning room to make copies of a list to be conveyed to other ladies who had become involved in their cause. She was sitting at the small rolltop desk, writing as neatly as she could, when she looked up and saw a rather pleasant-faced youth with golden freckles like Callantha's.

"Gqod afternoon," she said conversationally. "You must be Titus." For a moment she had not recognized him; he .looked more composed here in his own house than he had in the witness box. His body had lost the graveness and reluctance it had expressed then.

"Yes, ma'am," he replied formally. "Are you one of Mama's friends?"

"Yes, I am. My name is Charlotte Pitt. We are working together to try to stop some very evil things that are going on. I expect you know about it." It was partly intended to compliment him, make him feel adult and not excluded from knowledge, but also she recalled how she and Emily had frequently listened at the door to her mother's tea parties and afternoon

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callers. Sarah had considered herself too dignified for such a pursuit. Not that they had often heard anything nearly as startling or titillating to the adolescent imagination as the fight against child prostitution.

Titus was looking at her with frankness tinged with a degree of uncertainty. He did not want to admit ignorance; after all, she was a woman, and he was quite old enough to begin feeling like a man. Childhood with its nursery humiliations was rapidly being discarded.

"Oh, yes," he said with a lift of his chin. Then curiosity gained the upper hand. This was a chance too good to waste. ' 'At least I know part of it. Of course, I have had my own studies to attend to as well, you know."

"Of course," she agreed, laying down her pen. Hope surged up inside her. It was still not too late-if Titus were to alter his evidence. She must not let him see her excitement.

She swallowed, and spoke quite casually. "One has only so much time, and one must spend it wisely."

Titus pulled up a small padded chair and sat down.

"What are you writing?" He had been well brought up and his manners were excellent. He made it sound like friendly interest, even very faintly patronizing, rather than anything as vulgar as curiosity.

She had had every intention of telling him anyway-his curiosity was a pale and infant thing compared with hers. She glanced down at the paper as if she had almost forgotten it.

"Oh, this? A list of wages that people get paid for picking apart old clothes so that other people can stitch them up again , into new ones."

"Whatever for? Who wants clothes made up out of other people's old ones?"

"People who are too poor to buy proper new ones," she answered, offering him the list she was copying from.

He took it and looked at it.

"That's not very much money." He eyed the columns of pence. "It doesn't seem like a very good job."

"It isn't," she agreed. "People can't live on it and they often do other things as well."

"I'd do something else all the time, if, I were poor." He 252

handed it back to her. By poor, he meant someone who had to work at all, and she understood that. To him, money was there-one did not have to acquire it.

"Oh, some people do," she said quite casually. "That is what we are trying to stop."

She had to wait several moments of silence before he asked the question she had hoped for.

"Why are you trying to do that, Mrs. Pitt? It doesn't seem fair to me. Why should people have to unpick old clothes for pennies if they could earn more money doing something else?"

"I don't want them to pick rags." She used the term quite familiarly now. "At least not for that sort of money. But I don't want them to be prostitutes either, most particularly not if they are still children." She hesitated, then plunged on. "Especially boys."

The pride of man in him did not want to admit ignorance. He was in the company of a woman, and one whom he considered very handsome. It was important to him that he impress her.

She sensed his dilemma and pushed him into an emotional comer.

"lexpect when it is put like that, you would agree?" she asked, meeting his very candid eyes. What fine, dark lashes he had!

"I'm not sure," he hedged, a faint blush coloring his cheeks. "Why especially boys? Perhaps you would give me your reasons?"

She admired his evasion. He had managed to ask her without sounding as if he did not know, which she now was almost sure was so. She must be careful not to lead him, to put words into his mouth. It took her longer than she had expected to frame just the right answer.

"Well, I think you would agree that all prostitution is unpleasant?" she began carefully, watching him.

"Yes." He followed her lead; the reply she expected was plain enough.

"But an adult has more experience of the world in general, and therefore has more understanding of what such a course will involve," she continued.

Again the answer suggested itself. 253

"Yes." He nodded very slightly.

"Children can much more easily be forced into doing things they either do not wish or else of which they cannot foresee the full consequences." She smiled very faintly so she would not sound quite so pompous.

' 'Of course.'' He was still young enough to feel echoes of the bitterness of authority, governesses who gave orders and expected early bedtimes, all vegetables eaten-and rice pudding-no matter how much one disliked them.

She wanted to be gentle with him, to let him keep his new, adult dignity, but she could not afford it. She hated having to shred it from him like precious clothes, leaving him naked.

"Perhaps you do not argue that it is worse for boys than for girls?" she inquired.

He flushed, his eyes puzzled. "What? What is worse? Igno-ranee? Girls are weaker, of course-"

"No-prostitution-selling their bodies to men for the most familiar acts."

He looked confused. "But girls are . . ." The color deepened painfully as he realized how acutely personal a subject they were touching.

She said nothing, but picked up the pen and paper again so he could have an excuse to avoid her eyes.

"I mean girls-" He tried again: "Nobody does that sort of thing with boys. You're making fun of me, Mrs. Pitt!" His face was scarlet now. "If you are talking about the sort of thing that men and women do, then it's just stupid to talk about men and other men-I mean boys! That's impossible!" He stood up rather abruptly. "You are laughing at me and treating me as if I'm a baby-and I think that is very unfair of you-and most impolite!"

She stood iip, too, bitterly sorry to have humiliated him, but there had been no other way.

"No, I'm not, Titus-believe me," she said urgently. "I swear I am not. There are some men who are strange and different from most. They have those sorts of feelings towards boys, instead of women."

"I don't believe you!"

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"I swear it's true! There is even a law against it! That is what Mr. Jerome was accused of-did you not know that?"

He stood still, eyes wide, uncertain.

"He was accused of murdering Arthur," he said, blinking. "He's going to be hanged-I know."

"Yes, I know, too. But that is why he is supposed to have murdered him, because he had that kind of relationship with him. Did you not know that?"

Slowly he shook his head.

"But I thought he attempted to do the same thing with you." She tried to look just as confused, even though the knowledge was hardening in her mind every moment. "And your cousin Godfrey."

He stared at her, thoughts racing through his mind so visibly she could almost have read them aloud: confusion, doubt, a spark of comprehension.

"You mean that was what Papa meant-when he asked me-" The color rushed back to his face again, then drained away, leaving him so white the freckles stood out like dark stains. "Mrs. Pitt-is-is that why they are going to hang Mr. Jerome?"

Suddenly he was totally a child again, appalled and overwhelmed. She disregarded his dignity entirely and put both arms around him, holding him tightly. He was smaller than he looked in his smart jacket, his body thinner.

He stood perfectly still for several moments, stiff. Then slowly his arms came up and held on to her, and he relaxed.

She could not lie to him and tell him it was not.

"Partly," she replied gently. "And partly what other people said as well."

"What Godfrey said?" His voice was very quiet.

"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 any-

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thing 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.

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"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, wanning 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 Ash-worth'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

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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 folish, 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' sake and Cal-lantha'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 widi freezing anger. "And I came to your house quite openly, because Mrs. Swyn-ford 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."

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"Mortimer!" CaJlantha 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 nai've, as any young boys might be, to realize what their suggestions meant. They had agreed because they did not understand. They were guilty

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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 reasorfto 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!"

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"Thank you, Grade," 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 towards 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 unplesantness she had previously allowed herself to ignore.

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

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"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, Je- , rome 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.

"So I began to wonder, if it was not Jerome, then with whom did Arthur have this dreadful relationship? As I told you, I asked Titus many questions. And I also asked Benita. The further we progressed in our discoveries, the more did we find that \ one single fear became clearer in our minds. It was Benita who spoke it at last. It will do you no good"-she turned to look at

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Charlotte-"because I do not think there is any way you will ever be able to prove it, but I believe it was my cousin Esmond Vanderley who was Arthur's seducer. Esmond has never married, and so of course he has no children of his own. We have always considered it most natural that he should be extremely fond of his nephews, and spend some time with them, the more with Arthur because he was the eldest. Neither Benita nor I saw anything amiss-thoughts of a physical relationship of that nature between a man and a boy did not enter our minds. But now, with knowledge, I look back and I understand a great deal that passed by me then. I can even recall Esmond having a course of medical treatment recently, medicine he was obliged to take which he did not discuss and which Mortimer would not tell me of. Both Benita and I were concerned, because Esmond appeared so worried and short in temper. He said it was a complaint of the circulation, but when I asked Mortimer, he said it was of the stomach. When Benita asked the family doctor, he said Esmond had not consulted him at all.

"Of course, you will never be able to prove that either, because even if you were to find the doctor concerned-and I have no idea who he might be-doctors do not allow anyone else to know what is in their records, which is perfectly proper.

"I'm sorry." She stopped quite suddenly.

Charlotte was stunned. It was an answer-it was probably even the truth-and it was no use at all. Even if they could prove that Vanderley had spent a lot of time with Arthur, that was perfectly natural. No one could be found who had seen Arthur the night he was killed; they had already looked, long and pointlessly. And they did not know which doctor had seen Vanderley when the symptoms of his disease had first appeared, only that it was not the family doctor, and either Swynford did not know wh'at it was or he knew and had lied-probably the former. It was a disease that aped many others, and its symptoms, after the initial eruptions, frequently lay dormant for years, even decades. There was amelioration, but no cure.

The only thing they might possibly do would be to find proof of some other relationship he had had, and thus show that he was homosexual. But since Jerome had been found guilty and

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condemned by the court, Pitt could not investigate Vanderley's private life. He had no reason.

Callantha was right; there was nothing they could do. It was not even worth telling Eugenie Jerome that her husband was^in-nocent, because she had never believed him to be anything else.

"Thank you," Charlotte said quietly, standing up. "That must have been extremely difficult for you, and for Lady Way-bourne. I am grateful for your honesty. It is something to know the truth."

"Even when it is too late? Jerome will still be hanged."

"I know." There was nothing more to say. Neither of them wished to sit together and discuss it anymore, and it would have been ridiculous, even obscene, to try to talk of anything else. Callantha took her leave on the doorstep.

"You have shown me much that I did not wish to see, and yet now that I have, I know it is impossible to go back. I could not be the person that I was." She touched Charlotte on the arm, a quick gesture of closeness, then walked across the pavement and accepted her footman's hand into her carriage.

The following day Pitt walked into Athelstan's office and closed the door behind him.

"Maurice Jerome did not kill Arthur Waybourne," he said bluntly. When Charlotte had told him the previous evening, he had made up his mind then, and had forced it from his thoughts ever since, lest fear should make him draw back. He dared not even think of what he might lose; the price might rob him of the courage to do what his first instinct told him he must, however, uselessly.

"Yesterday, Callantha Swynford came to my house and told my wife that she and her cousin Lady Waybourne knew that it was Esmond Vanderley, the boy's uncle, who had killed Ar-^ thur Waybourne but they could not prove it. Titus Swynford admitted he did not know what he was talking about in the witness box. He merely agreed to what his father had suggested to him, because he believed his father might be right-Godfrey the same." He allowed Athelstan no chance to interrupt him. "J went to the brothel where Abigail Winters worked. No one else ever saw either Jerome or Arthur Waybourne in the place, not-

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even the old woman who keeps the door and watches it like a hawk. And Abigail has suddenly vanished to the country, for her health. And Gillivray admits he put the words into her mouth. And Albie Frobisher has been murdered. Arthur Way-bourne had venereal disease and Jerome has not. There is no longer any evidence against Jerome at all-nothing! We can probably never prove Vanderley killed Arthur Waybourne-it appears to have been an almost perfect crime-except that for some reason or other he had to kill Albie! And by God I intend to do everything I can to get him for that!

"And if you don't ask Deptford for the case back, I shall tell some very interesting people I know that Jerome is innocent, and we shall execute the wrong man because we accepted the words of prostitutes and ignorant boys without looking at them hard enough-because it suited us to have Jerome guilty. It was convenient. It meant we did not have to tread on important toes, ask ugly questions, risk our own careers by embarrassing the wrong people." He stopped, his legs shaking and his chest tight.

Athelstan stared at him. His face had been red, but now the color drained and left him pasty, beads of sweat standing out on his brow. He looked at Pitt as if he were a snake that had crawled out of a desk drawer to menace him.

"We did everything we could!" He licked his lips.

"We did not!" Pitt exploded, guilt running like fire through his anger. He was even more guilty than Athelstan, because part of him had never entirely believed Jerome had killed Arthur, and he had suppressed that voice with the smooth arguments of reason. "But God help me, we shall now!"

"You'll-you'll never prove it, Pitt! You'll only make a lot of trouble, hurt a lot of people! You don't know why that woman came to you. Maybe she's a hysteric." His voice grew a little stronger as hope mounted. "Maybe she has been scorned by him at some time, and she is-"

"His sister?" Pitt's voice was thick with contempt.

Athelstan had forgotten Benita Vanderley.

"All right! Maybe she believes it-but we'll never prove it!" he repeated helplessly. "Pitt!" His voice sank to a moan.

"We might be able to prove he killed Albie-that'll do!" 265

"How? For God's sake, man, how?"

"There must have been a connection. Somebody may have seen them together. There may be a letter, money, something. Albie lied for him. Vanderley must have thought he was dangerous. Perhaps Albie tried a little blackmail, went back for more money. If there is anybody or anything at all, I'm going to find it-and I'm going to hang him for Albie's murder!" He glared at Athelstan, daring him to prevent him, daring him to protect Vanderley, the Wayboumes, or anyone else any longer.

This was not the time; Athelstan was too shaken. In a few hours, perhaps by tomorrow, he would have had a chance to think about it, to balance one risk against another and find cour-age. But now he had not the resolve to fight Pitt.

"Yes," he said reluctantly. "Well, I suppose we must. Ugly-it's all very ugly, Pitt. Remember the morale of the police force, so-so be careful what you say!"

Pitt knew the danger of argument now. Even a hint of indecision, of vacillation, would allow Athelstan the chance to gather his thoughts. He gave him a cold, withering look.

"Of course," he said sharply, then turned and went to the door. "I'm going to Deptford now. I'll tell you when I learn something."

Wittle was surprised to see him. "Morning, Mr. Pitt! You're not still on about that boy as we got out o' the river, are you? Can't tell you anythin' more. Coin's to close the case, poor little sod. Can't waste the time."

"I'm taking the case back." Pitt did not bother to sit down; , there was too much emotion and energy boiling inside him to permit it. "We discovered Maurice Jerome did not kill the Waybourne boy, and we know who did, but we can't prove it. But we may be able to prove he killed Albie."

Wittle pulled a sad, sour face. "Bad business," he said softly. "Don't like that. Bad for everybody, that is. 'Anging's kind o' permanent. Can't say you're sorry to a bloke as you've already 'anged. Wot can I do to "elp?"

Pitt warmed to him. He seized a chair and swung it around to\ face the desk, then sat down close, leaning his elbows on the littered surface. He told Wittle all he knew and Wittle listened

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without interruption, his dark face growing more and more somber.

"Nasty," he said at the end. -'Sorry for the wife, poor little thing. But wot I don't undersand-why did Vanderley kill the Wayboume boy at all? No need, as I see it. Boy wouldn't a' blackmailed 'im-was just as guilty 'isself. Who's to say 'e didn't like it anyway?"

"I expect he did," Pitt said. "Until he discovered he had contracted syphilis." He recalled the lesions the police surgeon had found on the body, enough to frighten any youth with the faintest clue of their meaning.

Wittle nodded. " 'O course. That would change it from bein fun to suffin' quite different. I s'pose 'e panicked and wanted a doctor-an' that panicked Vanderley. Would do! After all, you can't 'ave yer nephew runnin' around sayin' as 'e picked up syphilis from 'avin' unnatural relations wiv yer! That'd be enough to provoke most men into doin' suffink permanent. Reckon 'e just grabbed 'is feet and, woops-a-daisy, 'is 'ead goes under an' in a few minutes 'e's dead."

"Something like that," Pitt said. The scene was easy to imagine; the bathroom with big cast-iron tub, perhaps even one of those newfangled gas burners underneath to keep it hot, towels, fragrant oil, the two men-Arthur suddenly frightened by the sores on his body, something said that brought the realization of what they were-the quick violence-and then the corpse to be disposed of.

It had probably all happened in Vanderley's own house-a servants' night off. He would be alone. He would wrap the corpse in a blanket or something similar, carry it to the street in the dark, find the nearest manhole that was out of sight of passersby, and get rid of the body, hoping it would never be found. And, but for chance, it never would have been.

It was disgusting, and so easy to see, now that he knew. How could he ever haVe believed it was Jerome? This was so much more probable.

"Want any 'elp?" Wittle asked. "We still got a few of Albie's things from the rooms 'e 'ad. We didn't find any use in them, but you might, since you might know what you was looking for. Weren't any letters or anythin' like that."

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"I'll look anyway," Pitt said. "And I'll go back to the rooms and search them again-might be something hidden. You found he knew quite a few high-class customers, you said. Can you give me their names?"

Wittle pulled a face. "Like to make yerself unpopular, do yer? There'll be a rare lot o' squealin' and complainin' goin' on if you go and talk to these gentlemen."

"I dareseay," Pitt agreed wryly. "But I'm not going to give up on this as long as there's anything at all that I can still do. I don't care who screams!"

Wittle fished among the papers on the desk and came up with half a dozen.

"There's the people as Albie knew that we know of." He grimaced. "O* course there's dozens more we'll never know. That's just about all we done to date. An' 'is things that we got are in the other room. Not much, poor little swine. Still, I suppose 'e ate reg'lar, and that's suffink. An' 'is rooms was comfortable enough, and warm. That'd be part of 'is rent-can't 'ave gentlemen comin' in ter bare their delicate bodies to the naked an' the room all freezin' chill, now, can we?"

Pitt did not bother to reply. He knew they had an understanding about it. He thanked Wittle, went to the room where Albie's few possessions were, looked through them carefully, then left and caught an omnibus back to Bluegate Fields.

The weather was bitter; shrill winds howled around the angles of walls and moaned in streets slippery with rain and sleet. Pitt found more and more pieces of Albie's life. Sometimes they meant something: an assignation that took him closer to Esmond Vanderley, a small note with initials on it found stuffed in a pillow, an acquaintance in the trade who recalled something or had seen something. But it was never quite enough. Pitt could have drawn a vivid picture of Albie's life, even of his* feelings: the squalid, jealous, greedy world of buying and selling punctuated by possessive relationships that ended in fights and rejections, the underlying loneliness, the ever-present knowledge that as soon as his youth was worn out his income , would vanish.

He told Charlotte a lot of it. The sadness, pointlessness lay 268

heavy on his mind, and she wanted to know, for her own crusade. He had underestimated her strength. He found he was talking to her as he might have someone who was purely a friend; it was a.good feeling, an extra dimension of warmth.

Time was growing desperately short when he found a young fop who swore, under some pressure, that he had attended a party where both Albie and Esmond Vanderley had been present. He thought they had spent some time together. ¹ Then a call came to the police station, and shortly afterward Athelstan strode into Pitt's office where he was sitting with a pile of statements trying to think whom else he could interview. Athelstan's face was pale, and he closed the door with a quiet snap.

"You can stop all that," he said with a shaking voice. "It doesn't matter now."

Pitt looked up, anger rising inside him, ready to fight-until he saw Athelstan's face.

"Why?"

"Vanderley's been shot. Accident. Happened at Swynford's house. Swynford keeps sporting guns or something. Vanderley was playing about with one, and the thing went off. You'd better go around there and see them."

"Sporting guns?" Pitt said incredulously, rising to his feet. "In the middle of London! What does he shoot-sparrows?"

"God dammit, man, how do I know?" Athelstan was exasperated and confused. "Antiques, or something! Antique guns-they're collectors' things. What does it matter? Get out there and see what's happened! Tidy it up!"

Pitt walked to the hatstand, picked off his muffler, and wound it around his neck, then put on his coat and jammed his hat on hard.

"Yes, sir. I'll go and see."

"Pitt!" Athelstan shouted after him. But Pitt ignored him and went down the steps to the street, calling for a hansom, then running along the-pavement:

When he arrived at the Swynford house, he was let in immediately. A footman had been waiting behind the door to conduct him to the withdrawing room, where Mortimer Swynford was sitting with his head in his hands. Callantha, Fanny, and Titus

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stood close together by the fire. Fanny clung to her mother without any pretense at being adult. Titus stood very stiff, but under the disguise of supporting his mother, he was holding her just as tightly.

Swynford looked up as he heard Pitt come in. His face was ashen.

"Good afternoon, Inspector," he said unsteadily. He climbed to his feet. "I am afraid there has been an-an appalling accident. My wife's cousin Esmond Vanderley was alone in my study, where I keep some antique guns. He must have found the case of dueling pistols, and God knows what made him do it, but he took one out and loaded it-" He stopped, apparently unable to keep his composure.

"Is he dead?" Pitt inquired, although he knew already that he was. A strange sense of unreality was creeping over him, over the whole room, as if it were all merely a rehearsal for something else and in some bizarre way they all knew what each person would say.

"Yes." Swynford blinked. "Yes, he's dead. That is why I sent for you. We have one of these new telephones. God knows I never thought I would use it for this!"

"Perhaps I had better go and look at him." Pitt went to the door.

"Of course." Swynford followed him. "I'll show you. Cal-lantha, you will remain here. I shall see that it is all taken care of. If you would prefer to go upstairs, I am sure the Inspector will not mind." It was not a question; he was assuming Pitt would feel unable to argue.

Pitt turned in the doorway; he wanted Callantha there. He was not sure why, but the feeling was strong.

"No, thank you." She spoke before Pitt had time to speak. "I prefer to stay. Esmond was my cousin. I wish to know th& truth."

Swynford opened his mouth to argue, but something in her had changed and he saw it. Perhaps he would reassert his authority as soon as Pitt had gone, but not now-not here in front of him. This was not the time for a battle of wills he might rn^t win immediately.

"Very well," he said quickly. "If that is what you prefer." 270

He led Pitt out and across the hallway toward the rear of the house. There was another footman outside the study door. He stood aside and they went in.

Esmond Vanderley was lying on his back on the red carpet in front of the fire. He had been shot in the head and the gun was still in his hand. There were powder burns on his skin, and blood. The gun lay on the floor beside him, his fingers crooked loosely around the butt.

Pitt bent down and looked, without touching anything. His mind raced. An accident-to Vanderley-now, of all times, when he was at last finding the first shreds of evidence to connect him with Albie?

But he was not close enough yet-not nearly close enough for Vanderley to panic! In fact, the more he knew of the garish half-world that Albie had lived in, the more he doubted he would ever have proof he could bring to court that Vanderley had killed Albie. Surely Vanderley knew that too? He had stayed calm through all the investigation. Now, with Jerome about to be hanged, suicide was senseless.

In the original case, it was Arthur who had panicked, at his understanding of those lesions-not Vanderley. Vanderley had acted quickly, even adroitly, in an obscene way. He played any game to the last card. Why suicide now? He was far from being cornered.

But he would have known that Pitt was after him. Word would have spread-that was inevitable. There had never been any chance of stalking him, surprising him.

But it had been too soon for panic-and infinitely too soon for suicide. And an accident was idiotic!

He stood up and turned to face Swynford. An idea was gathering in his mind, still shapeless as yet, but becoming stronger.

"Shall we go back to the other room, sir?" he suggested. "It is not necessary to discuss it in here."

"Well-" Swynford hesitated.

Pitt affected a look of piety. "Let us leave the dead in peace." It was imperative that he say what he intended in front of Callantha, and even in front of Titus and Fanny, cruel though it was. Without them it was all academic-if he was right.

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Swynford could not argue. He led the way back to the withdrawing room.

"You surely do not require my wife and children to remain, Inspector?" he said, leaving the door open for them to leave, although they showed no sign of wishing to.

"I am afraid I shall have to ask them some questions." Pitt closed the door firmly and stood in front of it, blocking the way. "They were in the house when it happened. It is a very serious matter, sir.''

"Dammit, it was an accident!" Swynford said loudly. "The poor man is dead!''

"An accident," Pitt repeated. "You were not with him when the gun went off?"

"No, I wasn't! What are you accusing me of?" He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I am extremely distressed. I was fond of the man. He was part of my family."

"Of course, sir," Pitt said with less sympathy than he had intended. "It is a most distressing business. Where were you, sir?"

"Where was I?" Swynford looked momentarily confused.

"A shot like that must have been heard all over the house. Where were you when it went off?" Pitt repeated.

"I-ah." Swynford thought for a moment. "I was on the stairs, I think."

"Going up or coming down, sir?"

"What in God's name does it matter!" Swynford exploded. "The man is dead! Are you totally insensitive to tragedy? A moron who comes in here in the midst of grief and starts asking questions-idiotic questions as to whether I was going upstairs or downstairs at the instant?"

Pitt's idea was growing stronger, clearer.

' 'You had been with him in the study, and had left to go upstairs for some purpose-perhaps to the bathroom?" Pitt ignored the insult.

"Probably. Why?"

- "So Mr. Vanderley was alone with a loaded gun, in t(ie study?"

"He was alone with several guns. I keep my collection in 272

there. None of them was loaded! Do you think I keep loaded guns around the house? I am not a fool!"

"Then he must have loaded the gun the moment you left the room?"

"I suppose he must! What of it?" Swynford's face was flushed now. "Can you not let my family leave? The discussion is painful-and, as far as I can see, totally pointless."

Pitt turned to Callantha, still standing close to her children.

"Did you hear the shot, ma'am?"

"Yes, Inspector," she said levelly. She was ashen white, but there was a curious composure about her, as if a crisis had come and she had met it and found herself equal to it.

"I'm sorry." He was apologizing not for the question about the shot but for what he was about to do. Word had come back that Pitt was coming closer in his pursuit; that he knew. But it was not Esmond Vanderley who had panicked-it was Mortimer Swynford. It was Swynford who had been the architect of Jerome's conviction-and he and Wayboume were all too willing to believe in it, until the appalling truth was uncovered. If the conviction was overturned, even questioned by society, and the truth came out about Vanderley and his nature, not only Vanderley would be ruined but all his family as well. The business would disappear; there would be no more parties, no more easy friendships, dining in fashionable clubs-everything Swynford valued would fray away like rotten fabric and leave nothing behind. In the quiet study, Swynford had taken the only way out. He had shot his cousin.

And again Pitt could certainly never prove it.

He turned to Swynford and spoke very slowly, very clearly, so that not only he would understand, but Callantha and his children also.

"I know what happened, Mr. Swynford. I know exactly what happened, although I cannot prove it now, and perhaps I never could. The boy prostitute Albie Frobisher, who gave evidence at Jerome's trial, has also been murdered-you knew that, of course. You threw my wife out of your house for discussing it! I have been investigating that crime also, and have discovered a great deal. Your cousin Esmond Vanderley was homosexual, and he had syphilis. I could not prove to a court

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that it was he and not Jerome who seduced and murdered Arthur Waybourne." He watched Swynford's face with a satisfaction as hard and bitter as gall; it was bloodlessly white.

"You killed him for nothing," Pitt went on. "I was close behind Vanderley, but there was no witness I could bring to court, no evidence I would have dared to call, and Vanderley knew that! He was safe from the law."

Suddenly the color came back into Swynford's skin, deep red. He sat up a little straighter, avoiding his wife's eyes.

"Then there is nothing you can do!" he said with a flood of relief, almost confidence. "It was an accident! A tragic accident. Esmond is dead, and that is the end of it."

Pitt stared back at him. "Oh, no," he said, his voice grating with sarcasm. "No, Mr. Swynford. This was not an accidental death. That gun went off almost the moment you had left the room. He must have loaded it as soon as your back was turned-"

"But it was turned!" Swynford stood up, smiling now. "You cannot prove it was murder!"

"No, I cannot," Pitt said. He smiled back, an icy, ruthless grimace. "Suicide. Esmond Vanderley committed suicide. That is how I shall report it-and let people make of it what they please!"

Swynford scrabbled after Pitt's sleeve, his face sweating.

"But good God, man! They'll say he killed Arthur, that it was remorse. They'll realize-they'll say that-"

"Yes-won't they!" Pitt still smiled. He put Swynford's hand off his arm as if it were a dirty thing, soiling him. He^ turned to Callantha. "I'm sorry, ma'am," he said sincerely.

She ignored her husband as if he had not been there, but kept her hands tightly on her children.

"We cannot make amends," she said quietly. "But we shaft cease to protect ourselves with lies. If society chooses no longer to know us and all doors are closed, who can blame them? I shall not, nor shall I seek to excuse us. I hope you can accept that."

Pitt bowed very slightly. "Yes, ma'am, of course I can ao,-cept it. When it is too late for reparation, some part of the truth is all that is left us. I shall send for a police doctor and a mortu-

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ary wagon. Is there anything I can do to be of service to you?" He admired her profoundly, and he wished her to know it.

"No, thank you, Inspector," she said quietly. "I shall manage everything that needs to be done."

He believed her. He did not speak again to Swynford, but walked past him out into the hall to instruct the butler to make the, necessary arrangements. It was all over. Swynford would not be tried by law, but by society-and that would be infinitely worse.

And Jerome would at last be acquitted by that same society. He would walk out of Newgate Prison to Eugenie, her loyalty- perhaps even her love. Through the long searching for a new position, perhaps he would learn to value his life.

And Pitt would go home to Charlotte and the warm, safe kitchen. He would tell her-and see her smile, hold her tight and hard.

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