Death in the Devil's Acre - Anne Perry [30]
Ross’s face was blank. He was a very private man; it was not often easy to know what he thought or felt. Balantyne remembered Helena Doran, whom Ross had loved before Christina, and the painful idea occurred to him that possibly he had never entirely stopped loving her. It hurt him for both of them—for Ross himself and for Christina. Perhaps that was why she was so—so fragile at times, and so unkind. Jemima’s happiness must be like caustic in the wound.
And yet the happiness of how many marriages is based on anything else than a certain sharing of time, of experience that welds a couple together simply because it is something held in common? The fortunate marriages mellow into a kind of friendship. Had Christina even tried to win Alan Ross’s love? She had all the wit and beauty it could have needed; the gentleness, the generosity of spirit were her duty to acquire, and then to show him. Again the thought intruded that he must have Augusta speak to her.
Brandy was staring at him. “Pitt came here? Didn’t they know who he was?”
Balantyne brought his mind back to Max. “Apparently not. He was using several names, but Pitt recognized his face, or thought he did.”
They sat in silence. Perhaps in some obscure way they had half imagined it was not really the same man. Now it was different. It was undeniably a person they had known, had lived with and seen every day, even if as a servant he was merely a part of the household appurtenances, not an individual like themselves.
“Poor devil,” Brandy said at last.
“Do you think they’ll ever find who did it?” Ross asked, turning to look at Balantyne. His expression was very intense. “If he was trading in women, one has a certain understanding for whoever killed him. It has to be as low as a man can sink, this side of insanity.”
“The trade in children is the lowest,” Brandy said quietly. “Especially in boys.”
Ross winced. “Oh, God!” he breathed out. “I hadn’t even thought of that. How criminally ignorant we are! I cannot imagine what brings a human being to do such things. And yet there must be thousands who do, here in my own city. And I may pass them in the street every day of my life.”
“In boys,” Balantyne repeated, not entirely as a question. After thirty years in the army, he could not help being aware of the appetites and aberrations of men far from home, under pressure of war. Presumably such hungers were latent before loneliness and the absence of women brought them to the point of physical indulgence. But he had not thought of anyone earning a living by selling the bodies of children for such acts. It was beyond his capacity to comprehend the mind of such a person.
“Did Max deal in boys?” he asked.
“Women, I think,” Brandy replied. “At least that’s what the newspapers said. But perhaps they would have avoided mentioning it if he had used boys. People don’t want to know about the trade in children. Adult women we can blame, say they are immoral, and anything that happens to them is beyond society’s responsibility. Prostitution is as old as mankind, and will probably last as long. We can wink at that—even well-bred women affect not to know. That way they are not required to react. Ignorance is a most effective shield.”
Balantyne suddenly thought how little he really knew Brandy. There was anger in him, and bitterness he had never recognized before. Years had slipped by, and because Balantyne himself felt that he had barely changed, he assumed that Brandy had not changed either. The difference between forty-five and fifty was nothing; the difference from twenty-three to twenty-eight could be all the world.
He looked at his son, at the line of his brow and nose, utterly different from Alan Ross: very dark, smooth straight lines, and that stubborn, emotional mouth. One imagines vaguely that one’s son will be like