Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [131]
Pitt folded up the letters and put the envelopes in his inside pocket. When he stood up his legs were so cramped the pain made him gasp. He nearly fell down the steep ladder to the upstairs landing.
In the hallway the maid was waiting for him, face weary and a little frightened. The police always frightened her—and it was certainly not respectable to have them in the house.
“Did you get what you need, sir?”
“Yes, thank you. Will you tell Mr. Forrester I shall take the letters, and give him my thanks.”
“Yes sir—thank you, sir.” And she let him out into the late afternoon sun with a gasp of relief.
Micah Drummond stared at Pitt, his face white.
“There’s nothing we can do! There was no crime—all right! God knows, this was sin—but who do we charge? And with what? Garnet Royce did what he thought best for his wife; he misjudged. She starved herself to death; she misjudged also. Then he did what he could to protect her reputation.”
“His own reputation!”
“His own as well, but if we charged every man in London who did that we’d have half Society in jail.”
“And half the middle classes aspiring to gentility as well,” Pitt said chokingly. “But dear heaven, their wives weren’t locked up to starve themselves to death so they shouldn’t go to an inappropriate church! And how can any man take it upon himself to decide another person is insane and shut them in Bedlam for the rest of their lives? Just shut them away in a living tomb!”
“We’ve got to keep lunatics somewhere, Pitt.”
Pitt slammed his fist on the desk, rattling the inkstand, unaware of the pain that shot through his hand; the outrage inside him was all he could feel.
“She wasn’t a lunatic! Not before she was sent there! Dear God, what woman wouldn’t lose her mind shut away in Bedlam for seventeen years? Have you ever been there? Can you even imagine it? Think what he has done to that woman. How can we let it happen? No wonder she tried to murder him—if she’d cut his throat it would have been an easy death compared with the slow torture he put her to.”
“I know!” Drummond’s voice cracked under the strain of his emotion. “I know that, Pitt! But Naomi Royce is dead, Elsie Draper is dead, and there is nothing we can charge anyone with. Garnet Royce only exercised the same rights and responsibilities any man does over his wife. A man and his wife are one in law: he votes for her, is financially and legally responsible for her, and he has always determined what her religion should be, and her social status as well. He didn’t murder her.”
Pitt sank down into his chair.
“And all we could charge Jasper with would be falsifying a death certificate for Naomi Royce. We couldn’t prove it after seventeen years, but even if we could, no jury would convict.”
“And committing Elsie Draper?”
Drummond looked at him with deep pain. “Pitt, you and I believe she was sane when she was committed, but it’s only our belief against the word of a respected doctor. And God knows, she was certainly mad when she died!”
“And Naomi Royce’s word!” He put his hand on the letters spread out on the desk between them. “We’ve got these!”
“The opinion of a woman who had embraced a strange religious sect and starved herself to death rather than obey her husband and come back to the orthodox faith? Who’s going to convict a dog on the basis of that?”
“No one,” Pitt said wearily. “No one.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. May I keep these?”
“If you want—but you know you can’t do anything with them. You can’t accuse Royce.”
“I know.” Pitt picked up the letters, carefully folding them and putting them back in their envelopes and into the inside pocket of his coat. “I know, but I want to keep them. I don’t