'You didn't discover the truth,' he said at last. 'Maybe that was asking too much. Maybe you're a victim as much as I am. Only, you are free to walk away and repeat your mistakes. I'm the one who will pay.'
'You didn't kill Arthur?' Pitt put it forward as a proposition.
'I did not.'
'Then who did? And why?'
Jerome stared at his feet. Pitt moved to sit on the straw beside him.
'He was an unpleasant boy,' Jerome said after a few moments. 'I've been wondering who did kill him. I've no idea. If I had, I would have offered it to you to investigate!'
'My wife has a theory.' Pitt began.
'Indeed.' Jerome's voice was flat, contemptuous.
'Don't be so bloody patronizing!' Pitt snapped. Suddenly his anger at the whole affair, the system, the monumental and stupid tragedy exploded in offense for the slight to Charlotte. His voice was loud and harsh. 'It's more than you have-damn you!'
Jerome turned to look at him, his eyebrows high.
'You mean she doesn't think I did it?' He was still disbelieving, his face cold, eyes showing no emotion except surprise.
'She thinks that perhaps Arthur was the perverted one,' Pitt said more coolly. 'And that he drew the younger boys into his practices. They complied to begin with, and then when each learned the other was also involved, they banded together and killed him.'
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'A pleasant thought,' Jerome said sourly. 'But I can hardly see Godfrey and Titus having the presence of mind to carry the body to a manhole and dispose of it so effectively. If it had not been for an overdiligent sewerman, and indolent rats, Arthur would never have been identified, you know.'
'Yes, I do know,' Pitt said. 'But one of their fathers might have helped.'
For an instant Jerome's eyes widened; something flashed across them that could have been hope. Then his face darkened again.
'Arthur was drowned. Why not just say it was an accident? Easier, infinitely more respectable. It doesn't make any sense to put him down a sewer. Your wife is very imaginative, Mr. Pitt, but not very realistic. She has a lurid picture of the Anstey Waybournes of the world. If she had met a few, she would realize they do not panic and act in such an hysterical fashion.'
Pitt was stung. Charlotte's breeding had never been more utterly irrelevant, and yet he found himself replying with all the resentment of the ambitious middle classes and the values he despised.
'She is perfectly well acquainted with them.' His voice was acid. 'Her family is of considerable means. Her sister is fhe Lady Ashworth. She is perhaps better aware than either you or I of the sort of thing that panics the socially elite-like discovering that your son is a carrier of venereal disease and is homosexual. Perhaps you do not know last year's amendment to the law? Homosexuality is a criminal offense now, and punishable by imprisonment.'
Jerome turned sideways, his face against the light so Pitt could not read his expression.
'In fact,' Pitt went on a little recklessly, 'perhaps Way-bourne discovered Arthur's practices and killed him himself. One's eldest son and heir, a syphilitic pervert! Better dead-far better dead. Don't tell me you don't know the upper classes well enough to believe that, Mr. Jerome?'
'Oh, I believe it.' Jerome let out his breath very slowly. 'I believe it, Mr. Pitt. But not you, or your wife, or an angel of God will prove it! And the law won't try! I'm a far better sus-
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pect. 'Nobody'll miss me, nobody'll mind. This answer suits everyone who matters. You've less chance of changing their minds than you have of becoming Prime Minister.'' His mouth suddenly twisted with harsh mockery. 'Not, of course, that I seriously imagined you meant to try! I can't think why
