Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [6]
“This way, sir. I warn you.” He suddenly regarded Waybourne levelly, as an equal, perhaps even condescendingly; he knew death, he had felt the grief, the anger. But at least he could control his stomach through sheer habit. “I’m afraid it is not pleasant.”
“Get on with it, man,” Waybourne snapped. “I have not all day to spend on this. And I presume when I have satisfied you it is not my son, then you will have other people to consult?”
Pitt led the way into the bare white room where the corpse was laid out on a table, and gently removed the covering sheet from the face. There was no point in showing the rest of the body with its great autopsy wounds.
He knew what was coming; the features were too alike: the fair wavy hair, the long soft nose, the full lips.
There was a faint sound from Waybourne. Every vestige of blood vanished from his face. He swayed a little, as though the room were afloat and had shifted under his feet.
Gillivray was too startled to react for an instant, but the morgue attendant had seen it more times than he could recall. It was the worst part of his job. He had a chair ready, and as Waybourne’s knees buckled he eased him into it as if it were all one natural movement—not a collapse but a seating.
Pitt covered the face.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he said quietly. “You identify this as the body of your son Arthur Waybourne?”
Waybourne tried to speak but at first his voice would not come. The attendant gave him a glass of water and he took a sip of it.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, that is my son Arthur.” He grasped the glass and drank some more of it slowly. “Would you be so good as to tell me where he was discovered and how he died?”
“Of course. He was drowned.”
“Drowned?” Obviously, Waybourne was startled. Perhaps he had never seen a drowned face before and did not recognize the puffy flesh, marble white.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Drowned? How? In the river?”
“No, sir, in a bath.”
“You mean he—he fell? He hit his head or something? What a ridiculous accident! That’s the sort of thing that happens to old men!” Already the denial had begun, as if its ridiculousness could somehow make it untrue.
Pitt took a breath and let it out slowly. Evasion was not possible.
“No, sir. It seems he was murdered. His body was not found in a bath—not even in a house. I’m sorry—it was found in the sewers below Bluegate Fields, up against the sluice gates to the Thames. But for a particularly diligent sewer cleaner, we might not have found him at all.”
“Oh, hardly!” Gillivray protested. “Of course he would have been found!” He wanted to contradict Pitt, prove him wrong in something, as if it could even now in some way disprove everything. “He could not have disappeared. That’s nonsense. Even in the river—” He hesitated, then decided the subject was too unpleasant and abandoned it.
“Rats,” Pitt said simply. “Twenty-four hours more in the sewer and he would not have been recognizable. A week, and there would have been nothing but bones. I’m sorry, Sir Anstey, but your son was murdered.”
Waybourne bridled visibly, his eyes glittering in the white face.
“That’s preposterous!” His voice was high now, even shrill. “Who on earth would have any reason to murder my son? He was sixteen! Quite innocent of anything at all. We lead a perfectly proper and orderly life.” He swallowed convulsively and regained a fraction of his control. “You have mixed too much among the criminal element and the lower classes, Inspector,” he said. “There is no one whatsoever who would wish Arthur any harm. There was no reason.”
Pitt felt his stomach tighten. This was going to be the most painful of all: the facts Waybourne would find intolerable, beyond acceptance.
“I’m sorry.” He seemed to be beginning every sentence with an apology. “I’m sorry, sir, but your son was suffering from the early stages of venereal disease—and he had been homosexually used.”
Waybourne stared at him, scarlet blood suffusing his skin.
“That’s obscene!” he shouted, starting from the chair as if to stand up, but his legs buckled.