knew about it, boy.'
Pitt restrained himself. He must learn, fact by fact, small impressions that built a believable picture of a man who had lost years of cold control in a sudden insane hunger-insane because it defied reality, because it could never have achieved anything but the most transient, ephemeral of pleasures while destroying everything else he valued.
Slowly, Pitt asked questions about their studies, about Jerome's manner, the subjects he taught well and those that appeared to bore him. He questioned whether the tutor's discipline was good, his temper, his enthusiasms. Waybourne grew more and more impatient, almost contemptuous of Pitt, as
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if he were being foolish, evading the real issue in a plethora of trivialities. But Godfrey became more confident in his answers.
A picture emerged so close to the man Pitt had imagined that it gave him no comfort at all. There was nothing new to grasp, no new perspective to try on all the fragments he already possessed. Jerome was a good teacher, a disciplinarian with little humor. And what humor he had was far too dry, too measured . through years of self-control, to be understandable to a thirteen-year-old bom and bred in privilege. Ambition that to Jerome was unachievable was to Godfrey an expected part of the adult life he was being groomed for. He was unaware of any injustice in the relationship with his tutor. They belonged to different levels of society, and would always do so. That Jerome might resent him had never occurred to the boy. Jerome was a schoolmaster; that was not the same thing as possessing the qualities of leadership, the courage of decision, the innate knowledge and acceptance of duty-or the burden, the loneliness of responsibility.
The irony was that perhaps Jerome's very bitterness was partly born of a whisper at the back of his brain that reminded him of the gulf between them-not only because of birth but because he was too small of vision-too self-obsessed, too aware of his own position-to command. A gentleman is a gentleman because he lives unself-consciously. He is too secure to take offense, too certain of his finances to account for shillings.
All this went through Pitt's mind as he watched the boy's solemn, rather smug face. He was at ease now-Pitt was ineffectual, not to be feared after all. It was time to come to the point.
'Did Mr. Jerome show any consistent favoritism toward your brother?' he asked quite lightly.
'No, sir,' Godfrey answered. Then confusion spread on his face as he realized what had half dawned on him through the haze of grief-hints of something that was unknown but abominably shameful, that the imagination hardly dared conjure up, and yet could not help but try. 'Well, sir, not that I realized at the time. He was pretty-sort of-well, he spent a lot of time with Titus Swynford, too, when he took lessons with us. He did quite often, you know. His own tutor wasn't any good at Latin and Mr. Jerome was very good indeed. And he knew Greek,
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too. And Mr. Hollins-that's Titus's tutor-was always getting colds in the head. We called him 'Sniffles.' ' He gave a juicy, realistic imitation.
Way bourne's face twitched with disapproval of mentioning to a person of Pitt's social inferiority such details of frivolous and rather childish malice.
'And was he also overfamiliar with Titus?' Pitt inquired, ignoring Waybourne.
Godfrey's face tightened. 'Yes, sir. Titus told me that he was.'
'Oh? When did he tell you?'
Godfrey stared back at him without blinking.
'Yesterday evening, sir. I told him that Mr. Jerome had been arrested by the police because he had done something terrible to Arthur. I told him what I told you, about what Mr. Jerome did to me. And Titus said he'd done it to him, too.'
Pitt felt no surprise, only a gray sense of inevitability. Jerome's weakness had shown itself after all. It had not been the secret thing, erupting without warning, that had struck Pitt as so unlikely. Perhaps surrender to it had been sudden, but once he had recognized it and allowed the hunger to release itself in action, then it had been uncontrollable. It could only have been a matter of time until some adult had seen it and understood it for what it was.
What a tragic mischance that the violence-the murder-had arisen so quickly. If even one of those boys had spoken to a parent, the greater tragedy could have been avoided-for
