Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [109]
“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.
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.
“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 Deptford? 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 Waybourne? 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