for a first visit. Most important, their purpose was achieved. With great dignity she took leave for all of them, and, after the appropriate civilities had been exchanged, swept them out to the carriage.
'Excellent,' she said as they seated themselves, arranging their skirts so as to be crushed as little as possible before the next call. 'Charlotte, did you say this wretched child was only thirteen when he began his disgusting trade?'
'Albie Frobisher? Yes, so he said. He looked only a little more now-he's very thin and underdeveloped-no beard at all.'
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'And how do you know, may I ask?' Aunt Vespasia fixed her with a cool eye.
'I was in the courtroom,' Charlotte replied without thinking. 'I saw him.'
'Were you indeed?' Aunt Vespasia's brows shot up and her face looked very long. 'Your conduct becomes more extraordinary by the moment. Tell me more. In fact, tell me everything! Or, no-not yet. We are going to visit Mr. Somerset Carlisle. I daresay you remember him?'
Charlotte remembered him vividly, and the whole unspeakable affair around Resurrection Row. He had been the keenest of all of them in fighting to get the child-poverty bill passed through Parliament. He knew as much as Pitt did of the slums-indeed he had frightened and appalled poor Dominic by taking him to the Devil's Acre, under the shadow of Westminster.
But would he be interested in the facts of one extremely unlikable tutor, who was very possibly guilty of a despicable crime anyway?
'Do you think Mr. Carlisle will be bothered over Mr. Jerome?' she asked doubtfully. 'The law is not at fault. It is hardly a Parliamentary matter.'
'It is a matter for reform,'' Aunt Vespasia replied as the carriage swayed around a comer rather fiercely and she was obliged to brace her body to prevent herself falling into Charlotte's lap. Opposite them, Emily clung on quite ungracefully. Aunt Vespasia snorted. 'I shall have to speak to that young man! He has visions of becoming a charioteer. I think he sees me as a rather elderly Queen Boudicca! Next thing you know, he will have put sabers on the wheels!'
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,
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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 Ves-pasia 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 Way-bourne 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 byond control.
Added to that, Charlotte conceded, they may well believe in all honesty that Jerome was guilty. And perhaps he was!
