Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [69]
It was not there. She was thinking.
“Then Arthur had a relationship with someone, or with several people,” she said slowly.
“Charlotte! You’re making the boy seem like—like a—” He struggled for a word that would not be too coarse or too extreme.
“Why not?” She raised her eyebrows and stared at him. “Why should we assume that Arthur was nice? Lots of people who get murdered have brought it upon themselves, one way or another. Why not Arthur Waybourne? We’ve been supposing he was an innocent victim. Well, perhaps he wasn’t.”
“He was sixteen!” His voice rose in protest.
“So?” She opened her eyes wide. “There’s no reason why he couldn’t have been spiteful or greedy, or thoroughly cunning, just because he’s young. You don’t know children very well, do you? Children can be horrible.”
Pitt thought of all the child thieves he knew who were everything she had just said. And he could so easily understand why and how they were. But Arthur Waybourne? Surely he had only to ask for what he wanted and it was given him? There was no need—no cause.
She smiled at him with an oblique, unhappy satisfaction.
“You made me look at the poor, and it was good for me.” She still held the needle poised. “Perhaps I ought to show you a little of another world—the inside of it—for your education!” she said quietly. “Society children can be unhappy too, and unpleasant. It’s relative. It’s only a matter of wanting something you can’t have, or seeing someone else with something and thinking you should have it. The feeling is much the same, whether it’s for a piece of bread or a diamond brooch—or someone to love. All sorts of people cheat and steal, or even kill, if they care enough. In fact”—she took a deep breath—“in fact, maybe people who are used to getting their own way are quicker to defy the law than those who often have to go without.”
“All right,” he conceded a little reluctantly. “Suppose Arthur Waybourne was thoroughly selfish and unpleasant—what then? Surely he wasn’t so unpleasant that someone killed him for it? That might get rid of half the aristocracy!”
“There’s no need to be sarcastic!” she said, her eyes glinting. She poked the needle into the cloth, but did not pull it through. “He may well have been just that! Suppose—” She scowled, concentrating on the idea, tightening it into words. “Suppose Jerome was telling the truth? He never went to Albie Frobisher’s, and he was never overfamiliar with any of the boys—not Arthur, not Godfrey, and not Titus.”
“All right, we have only Godfrey and Titus’s word for it,” he argued. “But there was no doubt about Arthur. The police surgeon was positive about it. It couldn’t be a mistake. And why should the other boys lie? It doesn’t make sense! Charlotte, however much you don’t like it, you are standing reason on its head to get away from Jerome! Everything points to him.”
“You are interrupting.” She put the sewing things on the table beside her and pushed them away. “Of course Arthur had a relationship—probably with Albie Frobisher—why not? Maybe that’s where he got his disease. Did anyone test Albie?”
She knew instantly that she had struck home; it was in her face, a mixture of triumph and pity. Pitt felt a cold tide rush up inside him. No one had thought to test Albie. And since Arthur Waybourne was dead, murdered, Albie would naturally be loath to admit having known him! He would be the first suspect; if Albie could have been guilty, it would have suited everyone. None of them had even thought to test him for venereal disease. How stupid! How incredibly, incompetently stupid!
But what about Albie’s identification of Jerome? He had picked out the likeness immediately.
But then what had Gillivray