Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [52]
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Why?” she demanded, moving suddenly. “Isn’t it true?” Her eyes were wide and angry, her face white.
“Yes, of course it’s true, but I shouldn’t have told you.”
Now her anger, fierce and scalding, was directed at him.
“Why not? Do you think I need to be protected, politely deceived like some child? You used not to treat me so condescendingly! I remember when I lived in Cater Street, you forced me to learn something of the rookeries, whether I would or not—”
“That was different! That was starvation. It was poverty you knew nothing of. This is perversion.”
“And I ought to know about people starving to death in the alleys, but not about children being bought to be used by the perverted and the sick? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Charlotte—you can’t do anything about it.”
“I can try!”
“You can’t possibly make any difference!” He was exasperated. The day had been long and wretched, and he was in no mood for high-flown moral rhetoric. There were thousands of children involved, maybe tens of thousands; there was nothing any one person could do. She was indulging in a flight of imagination to salve conscience, and nothing more. “You’ve simply no idea of the enormity of it.” He waved his hands.
“Don’t you dare talk down at the like that!” She caught up the cushion from the sofa and flung it at him as hard as she could. It missed, flew past him, and knocked a vase of flowers from the sideboard onto the floor, spilling water on the carpet but fortunately not breaking the vase.
“Damnation!” she said loudly. “You clumsy creature! You could have at least have caught it! Now look what you’ve done! I’ll have to clean all that up!”
It was grossly unjust of her, but it was not worth arguing about. She picked up her skirts and swept out to the kitchen, then returned with the dustpan and brush, a cloth, and a jug of fresh water. She silently tidied up, refilled the vase with water from the jug, set the flowers back in, and replaced them on the sideboard.
“Thomas!”
“Yes?” He was deliberately cool, but ready to accept an apology with dignity, even magnanimity.
“I think you may be wrong. That man may not be guilty.”
He was stunned. “You what?”
“I think he might not be guilty of killing Arthur Waybourne,” she repeated. “Oh, I know Eugenie looks as if she couldn’t count up to ten without some man helping her, and she goes dewy-eyed at the sound of a masculine voice, but she puts it all on—it’s an act. She’s as sharp underneath as I am. She knows he’s humorless and full of resentment, and that hardly anybody likes him. I’m not even sure if she likes him very much herself. But she does know him! He has no passion, he’s as cold as a cod, and he didn’t particularly like Arthur Waybourne. But he knew that working in the Waybourne house was a good position. Actually, the one he preferred was Godfrey. He said Arthur was a nasty boy, sly and conceited.”
“How do you know that?” he asked. His curiosity was roused, even though he thought she was being unfair to Eugenie. Funny how even the nicest women, the most levelheaded, could give way to feminine spite.
“Because Eugenie said so, of course!” she said impatiently. “And she might be able to play you like a threepenny violin, but she doesn’t pull the wool over my eyes for a moment—she has too much wit to try! And don’t look at me like that!” She glared at him. “Just because I don’t melt into tears in front of you and tell you you’re the only man in London who is clever enough to solve a case! That doesn’t mean I don’t care. I care very much indeed. And I think it’s all frighteningly convenient for everyone else that it’s Jerome. So much tidier—don’t you think? Now you can leave all the important people alone to get on with their lives without having to answer a lot of very personal and embarrassing questions, or have the police