Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [83]
The maid appeared instantly. She had obviously been on the other side of the door waiting. Emily gave her a sour look.
“Bring fresh tea, please, Gwenneth, and toast for Mrs. Pitt.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I don’t need toast,” Charlotte replied, thinking of getting into the butterfly silks.
“Have it anyway—off you go, Gwenneth—we don’t want it at lunchtime!” Emily waited until the door was closed. “Who’s been murdered?” she repeated. “And how? And why?”
“A boy called Arthur Waybourne,” Charlotte answered quite bluntly. “He was drowned in the bath—and I’m not sure why—exactly.”
Emily screwed up her face impatiently.
“What do you mean ‘exactly’? Do you mean ‘approximately,’ then? You aren’t making a lot of sense, Charlotte. Who would want to kill a child? He’s not an unknown baby that might embarrass someone, because you just told me his name.”
“He was not a baby at all. He was sixteen.”
“Sixteen! Are you trying to be irritating, Charlotte? He probably drowned quite accidentally. Does Thomas think it was murder, or are you just doing this by yourself?” Emily sat back, a shadow of disappointment in her eyes.
The whole dark, miserable story was suddenly very real again.
“It’s very unlikely he drowned by accident,” Charlotte replied, looking across the table spread with fine bone china, fruit preserves in jars, and a scatter of crumbs. “And he certainly did not put his own body down a manhole into the sewers!”
Emily caught her breath and choked.
“Down the sewers!” she cried, coughing and banging her chest. “Did you say sewers?”
“Quite. He also had been homosexually abused, and had caught a most unpleasant disease.”
“How disgusting!” Emily took a deep breath and a sip of lukewarm tea. “What sort of a person was he? I presume he came from the city somewhere, one of those areas—”
“On the contrary,” Charlotte interrupted. “He was the eldest son of a gentleman of—”
At that point, the door opened and the parlormaid came in with fresh tea and a rack of toast. There was utter silence while she set them on the table, paused for a moment or two in case the conversation continued, then met Emily’s frozen glance and left with a swing of skirts.
“What?” Emily demanded. “What did you say?”
“He was the eldest son of a family of distinction,” Charlotte repeated clearly. “Sir Anstey and Lady Waybourne, of Exeter Street.”
Emily stared, ignoring the teapot, and the fragrant steam rising gently in front of her.
“That’s preposterous!” she exploded. “How in heaven’s name could that happen?”
“He and his brother had a tutor,” Charlotte said, beginning to tell the parts of the story that mattered. “May I have the tea? A man called Maurice Jerome, really rather an unpleasant man, very cold and very prim. He’s clever and he resents being patronized by richer people with fewer brains. Thank you.” She took the tea; the cup was very light and painted with flowers in blue and gold. “The younger son, the one still alive, has said that Jerome made improper advances to him. And so has the son of a friend.”
“Oh, dear!” Emily looked as though her tea had suddenly turned sour in her mouth. “How sordid. Do you want the toast? The apricot preserve is very good. How very nasty indeed. I really don’t understand that sort of thing. In fact, I didn’t even know much about it until I overheard one of George’s friends say something quite horrible.” She pushed the butter across. “So what is the mystery? You said something rather extreme to Gwenneth about great injustice. The scandal is obvious, but unless this wretched than is going to get away with it, where is the injustice? He has been tried and he will be hanged. And so he should be.”
Charlotte avoided the argument of whether anyone should be hanged or not. That would have to wait for another time. She took the butter.
“But it hasn’t really been proved that he was guilty!” she said urgently. “There are all sorts of other possibilities that haven’t been proved or disproved yet!”
Emily squinted at her suspiciously.
“Such as what? It all seems