Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [24]
“And he may be worthy of them,” Pitt said a little sharply. “Do you know something to his discredit you have not told me?”
Waybourne remained perfectly still for so long that Pitt was about to prompt him, when at last he replied.
“I don’t know anything—at least not on the surface of my mind. Such an idea never occurred to me—why should it? What decent man entertains suspicions like that? But knowing what I do now”—he took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh—“I may remember things and understand them differently. You must allow me a little time. All this has been a very profound shock.” There was finality in his voice. Pitt was dismissed; it was only a matter of whether he was delicate enough not to require that it be put into words.
There was nothing left to insist on. There was justice in Waybourne’s request for time to consider, to weigh memories in the light of understanding. Shock drove out clarity of thought, blurred the edges, distorted recall. He was not unusual; he needed time, and sleep, before he committed himself.
“Thank you,” Pitt answered formally. “If you should think of anything relevant, I’m sure you will let us know. Good day, sir.”
Waybourne, lost in his dark reflections, did not bother to reply, but continued to frown, staring at a spot on the carpet by Pitt’s feet.
Pitt went home at the end of the day with a feeling not of satisfaction but of conclusion. The end was in sight; there would be no surprises, nothing more to discover but the pain-ridden details to dovetail into one another and complete the pattern. Jerome, a sad, unsatisfied man, cramped into a livelihood that stifled his talents and curbed his pride, had fallen in love with a boy who promised to be all the things Jerome himself might have been. Then, when all that envy and hunger had spilled over into physical passion, what? Perhaps a sudden revulsion, a fear—and Arthur had turned on him, threatening exposure? Searing shame for Jerome, all his private weakness torn apart, laughed at. And then dismissal without hope of ever finding another position—ruin. And doubtless the loss of the wife, who was—what? What was she to him?
Or had Arthur been more sophisticated than that? Was he capable of blackmail, even if it consisted of only the gentle, permanent pressure of his knowledge and its power? The slow smiles, the little cuts of the tongue.
From what Pitt had learned of Arthur Waybourne, he was neither so ingenious nor so enamored of integrity that the thought could not have occurred to him. He seemed to have been a youth determined to wade into adulthood with all its excitements as soon as chance allowed. Perhaps that was not uncommon. For most adolescents, childhood hung on like old clothes, when new and glamorous ones, more flattering ones, were waiting.
Charlotte met him as soon as he walked in the door.
“I heard from Emily today, and you’ll never believe—” She saw his face. “Oh. What is it?”
He smiled in spite of himself. “Do I look so grim?”
“Don’t evade me, Thomas!” she said sharply. “Yes, you do. And what has happened? Is it something to do with that boy who was drowned? It is, isn’t it?”
He took off his coat and Charlotte put it on the peg for him. She remained in the middle of the hallway, determined on an explanation.
“It appears as if it was the tutor,” he replied. “It’s all very sad and grubby. Somehow I can’t be outraged with any pleasure anymore when it stops being anonymous and I can attach a face to it and a life before it. I wish I could find it incomprehensible—it would be so much damnably easier!”
She knew he was referring to the emotions, not the crime. He had no need to explain. She turned in silence, just offering him her hand, and led the way into the warm kitchen—its blacked stove open, with live embers behind the bars, its wooden table scrubbed white, gleaming