Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [68]
Was it something much uglier than that, a need to subjugate in the most intimate and physical manner the boys he taught, the youths who held the privileges he could not?
Pitt sat in the parlor and stared into the flames. For some reason, Charlotte had lit the fire in here tonight, instead of preparing dinner to be eaten in the kitchen, as they often did. He was glad of it. Perhaps she also felt like spending an evening by the warm open hearth, sitting in the best chairs, and all the lamps lit and sparkling, revealing the gleam and nap of the velvet curtains. They were an extravagance, but she had wanted them so much it had been worth the cheap mutton stews and the herrings they had eaten for nearly two months!
He smiled, remembering, then looked across at her. She was watching him, her eyes, steady on his face, almost black in the shadows from the lamp behind her.
“I saw Eugenie after the trial,” she said almost casually. “I took her home and stayed with her for nearly two hours.”
He was surprised, then realized he should not have been. That was what she had gone to the trial for—to offer Eugenie some fragment of comfort or at least companionship.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Shocked,” she said slowly. “As if she could not understand how it had happened, how anyone could believe it of him.”
He sighed; it was natural. Who ever does believe such a thing of a husband or a wife?
“Did he do it?” she asked solemnly.
It was the question he had been avoiding ever since he walked out of the courtroom. He did not want to talk about it now, but he knew she would insist until he gave her an answer.
“I imagine so,” he said wearily. “But I am not part of the jury, so what I think doesn’t matter. I gave them all the evidence I had.”
She was not so easily put off. He noticed the sewing was idle in her lap. She had the thimble on her finger and had threaded the needle, but she had not put it through the cloth.
“That’s not an answer,” she said, frowning at him. “Do you believe he did it?”
He took a deep breath and let it out silently.
“I can’t think of anyone else.”
She was on to it immediately. “That means you don’t believe it!”
“It doesn’t!” She was being unfair, illogical. “It means just what I said, Charlotte. I cannot think of any other explanation, therefore I have to accept that it was Jerome. It makes excellent sense, and there is nothing whatsoever against it—no awkward facts that have to be faced, nothing unexplained, nothing to indicate anyone else. It’s a pity about Eugenie, and I understand the way she feels. I’m as sorry as you are! Criminals sometimes have nice families—innocent and likable, and they suffer like hell! But that doesn’t stop Jerome from being guilty. You can’t fight it and you won’t help by trying. You certainly can’t help Eugenie Jerome by encouraging her to believe there is some hope. There isn’t! Now accept, and leave it alone!”
“I’ve been thinking,” she replied, exactly as if he had not spoken.
“Charlotte!”
She took no notice of him.
“I’ve been thinking,” she repeated. “If Jerome is innocent, then someone else must be guilty.”
“Obviously,” he said crossly. He did not want to think about it anymore. It was not a good case, and he wanted to forget it. It was finished. “And there isn’t anyone else implicated at all,” he added in exasperation. “No one else had any reason.”
“They might have!”
“Charlotte—”
“They might have!” she insisted. “Let’s imagine Jerome is innocent and that he is telling the truth! What do we know for a fact?”
He smiled sourly at the “we.” But there was no purpose in trying any longer to evade talking about it. He could see she was going to follow it to the bitter end.
“That Arthur Waybourne was homosexually used,” he answered. “That he had syphilis, and that he was drowned in bathwater,