Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [91]
Charlotte pretended to sneeze in order to hide her expression.
“Reform?” she said after a moment, straightening up under the cold and highly perceptive eye of Vespasia. “I don’t see how.”
“If children of thirteen can be bought and sold for these practices,” Vespasia snapped, “then there is something grossly wrong, and it needs to be reformed. Actually, I have been considering it for some time. You have merely brought it to the forefront of my mind. I think it is a cause worthy of our best endeavors. I imagine Mr. Carlisle will think so, too.”
Carlisle listened to them with great attention and, as Aunt Vespasia had expected, distress for the conditions of people like Albie Frobisher in general, and for the possible injustice of the case against Jerome.
After some thought, he posed several questions and theories himself. Had Arthur threatened Jerome with blackmail, threatened to tell his father about the relationship? And when Waybourne had faced Jerome, could Jerome have told him a great deal more of the truth than Arthur had envisioned? Did he tell Waybourne of their visits to Abigail Winters—even to Albie Frobisher—and that it was Arthur himself who had introduced the two younger boys to such practices? Could it then have been Waybourne, in rage and horror, who had killed his own son, rather than face the unbearable scandal that could not be suppressed forever? The possibilities had been very far from explored!
But now, of course, the police, the law, the whole establishment had committed itself to the verdict. Their reputations, indeed their very professional office, depended upon the conviction standing. To admit they had been precipitate in duty, perhaps even negligent, would make a public exhibition of their inadequacies. And no one does that unless driven to it by forces beyond control.
Added to that, Charlotte conceded, they may well believe in all honesty that Jerome was guilty. And perhaps he was!
And would smart, clean, pink young Gillivray ever admit that he might have helped Albie Frobisher just a little in his identification, planted the seed of understanding in a mind so quick, so subtle, and so anxious to survive that Albie had grasped what he wanted and given it to him?
Could Gillivray afford such a thought, even if it occurred to him? Of course not! Apart from anything else, it would be betraying Athelstan, leaving him standing alone—and that would be cataclysmic!
Abigail Winters might not have been lying entirely. Maybe Arthur had been there; his tastes may have been more catholic than for boys only. And perhaps Abigail had tacitly accepted some immunity for herself by including Jerome in her evidence. The temptation to tie a case up conclusively that you were morally sure of anyway was very real. Gillivray may have succumbed to it—visions of success, favor, promotion dancing before his eyes. Charlotte was ashamed of the thought when she expressed it to Carlisle, but felt it should not be dismissed.
And what did they wish of him? Carlisle asked.
The answer was quite explicit. They wished to have correct and detailed facts of prostitution in general, and that of children in particular, so that they might present them to the women of society, whose outrage at such conditions might in time make the abuse of children so abhorrent that they would refuse to receive any man of whom such a practice, or even tolerance, was suspected.
Ignorance of its horrors was largely responsible for the women’s indifference to it. Some knowledge, however dependent upon imagination for the reality of its fear and despair, would mobilize all their very great social power.
Carlisle vacillated at presenting