Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [20]
3
THE WAYBOURNE FAMILY doctor had asked to see the body and make an examination; he came away silent, shaking his head, his face drawn. Pitt did not know what he said to Waybourne, but there was never any further suggestion of incompetence by the police surgeon, and no other explanation for the symptoms was put forward. In fact, they were not mentioned.
Pitt and Gillivray returned at ten o’clock in the morning; they interviewed the grooms and the footmen, which proved fruitless. Arthur’s tastes had been more sophisticated than anything the stables or the mews had to offer. He had liked to be well driven, and admired a handsome rig, but he had never shown the least desire to take the reins himself. Even good bloodstock moved him to no more than a passing appreciation, like good boots or a well-tailored coat.
“This is all a waste of time,” Gillivray said, poking his hands in his pockets and stepping up into the areaway. “He probably fell into bad company with some older boy—a single experience—and then he reverted to quite natural relationships. After all, he was sixteen! I daresay he contracted the disease from a street woman or some other miserable initiation. Perhaps someone gave him a little too much to drink—you know how these things can end up. I don’t suppose he had the least idea, poor little devil. And we certainly won’t do any good pursuing it.” He raised his eyebrows and gave Pitt a warning glance. “None of those men,” he said, jerking his head back toward the stables, “would dare touch the son of the house! And I don’t imagine they’d want to. They’d stick to their own class—more fun and less dangerous. We could probably find out about that from the maids, if it matters. A groom would have to be insane to risk his livelihood. He’d probably never get another place with a decent family anywhere in the country if he was caught! No man in his right mind is going to risk that for a bit of foolery.”
Pitt had no argument; he had already thought the same things himself. Added to which, by all accounts so far, neither Arthur nor his brother had been in the habit of visiting the stables. Carriages were brought to the front door and there was no occasion for them to go to the mews except from personal interest. And that, apparently, had not existed.
“No,” Pitt agreed tersely, cleaning his feet against the iron boot-scraper at the back door. “Now we’d better try the rest of the staff to see what they can tell us.”
“Oh, come on!” Gillivray protested. “Boys like that don’t spend their spare time—or their affection—in the servants’ hall!”
“Clean your boots,” Pitt ordered. “Anyway, it was you who wanted to check on the grooms,” he added spitefully. “Just ask them. The butler or the valet may know where the boys went visiting, other houses they stayed at. Families go away for weekends or longer, you know. Strange things happen at country houses on occasion.”
Gillivray scraped his boots obediently, taking off some straw and, to his surprise, manure. He wrinkled his nose.
“Spent many weekends in the country, have you, Inspector?” he asked, permitting a faint touch of sarcasm into his voice.
“More than I can count,” Pitt replied with a very small smile. “I grew up on a country estate. The gentlemen’s gentlemen could tell a few tales, if they were plied with a little of the butler’s best port.”
Gillivray was caught between distaste and curiosity. It was a world he had never entered, but had watched avidly from the first time he glimpsed its color and ease, and the grace with which it hid its frailties.
“I hardly think the butler will give me the keys to his cellar for that purpose,” he said with a touch of envy. It smarted that Pitt, of all people, should have seen inside such a society, even if only from the vantage of an outdoor servant’s son. The mere knowledge was something Gillivray did not have.
“We won’t do any good raking it all over,” Gillivray repeated.
Pitt did not bother to argue anymore.