Pitt looked at his earnest face above the white collar. He wanted to hate him, and yet he was obliged to admit the advice
203
was fair. If their roles had been reversed, it was just what he would have said. The case was over. It was bending reason to suppose that the truth was other than the obvious. In most crimes there were far more victims than just the immediate person robbed or violated; this time it was Eugenie Jerome- perhaps obscurely even Jerome himself. To expect to be able to tidy up all the injustices was to be childishly simplistic.
'Mr. Pitt?' Gillivray was looking anxious.
'Yes,' Pitt said sharply. 'Yes, you are quite right. To suppose that all the people, quite independently of each other, were telling the same lie to incriminate Jerome is quite ridiculous. And to'imagine they had anything in common is even more so.'
'Exactly,' Gillivray agreed, relaxing a little. 'The two prostitutes might, although it is unlikely they even knew each other-there is nothing to indicate they did. But to suppose they had anything in common with a child like Titus Swynford is twisting reason beyond any sense at all.'
Pitt had no argument. He had talked to Titus and he could not imagine him even knowing of the existence of such people as Albie Frobisher, much less having met him and conspired with him. If Titus needed an ally to defend him, he would have chosen someone of his own class, someone he already knew. And frankly, he found it hard to believe Titus had anything for which he needed defense.
'Right!' he said with more anger than he could account for. 'Arson! What have we done about this damn fire?'
Gillivray immediately produced a piece of paper from his inside pocket and began to read a string of answers. They provided no solution, but several possibilities that should be investigated. Pitt assigned two of the most promising to Gillivray, and, without realizing it, chose for himself two more that took him to that area on the edge of Bluegate Fields, within half a mile of the brothel where Abigail Winters had a room.
It was a dark day. The streets dripped with a steady, fine rain; gray houses leaned together like sour old men, brooding with complaint, impotent in senility. There was the familiar smell of staleness, and he imagined he could hear the rising
204
tide of the river in the creaking boards and the slow-moving water.
What kind of a person came here for pleasure? Perhaps a tidy little clerk who sat on a high stool all day, dipping his quill in the ink and copying figures from ledger to ledger, keeping accounts of someone else's money, and went home to a sharp-tongued wife who regarded pleasure as sin and flesh as the tool of the deyil.
Pitt had seen dozens of clerks like that, pale-faced, starch-collared, models of rectitude because they dared not be anything else. Economic necessity, together with the need to live by society's rules, was a total taskmaster.
So people like Abigail Winters made a living.
The arson inquiry proved surprisingly fruitful. To be honest, he had expected Gillivray's leads to be the real ones, and it gave him a perverse satisfaction when his own turned up the answer. He took a statement, wrote it carefully, and put it in his pocket. Then, since he was only two streets away and it was still early, he walked to the house where Abigail Winters lived.
The old woman at the door looked at him with surprise.
'My, you're an early one!' she said with a sneer. 'Can't yer let them girls get any sleep?'
'I want to talk to Abigail Winters,' he replied with a slight smile, hoping it would soften her.
'Talk, eh? That's a new one,' she said with heavy disbelief. 'Well, it don't matter wot yer do-time's time just the same. Yer pays by the hour.' She held out her hand, rubbing her fingers together.
'Why should I pay you?' He made no move.
' 'Cause this is my 'ouse,' she snapped.
