Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [108]
“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.
“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 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 lie 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