“Thank you anyway.” Pitt turned to leave, his tea only half-drunk. His throat felt too tight to swallow.
Brinsley took a breath.
Pitt turned back. “Yes?”
“Was there anything particularly different about the victims? Or about the places of attack, or the circumstances?”
“Would that account for it being two men?”
“I don’t know. It’s possible.” There was no lift in Brinsley’s voice, no brightness in his face. “But you should look.”
“Thank you,” Pitt said again.
He did not tell Charlotte what Brinsley had said when they sat alone in the parlor late into the evening. There was no need for her to hear the details Brinsley had told him. He could spare her that much. She sat in one of the big armchairs. Pitt was too restless to sit, and too angry. The sense of helplessness burned inside him like acid, eating away at his belief in himself.
“He’ll go on,” he said bitterly, staring out at the familiar garden. This was where his children had grown up. They had played here with hoops, a skipping rope, had built castles with piles of colored bricks, ridden imaginary horses, used as make-believe swords the garden canes that now held up the delphiniums in bloom.
What good was he if he could not protect Jemima from such hideous violation of all her future promise? Or Daniel from turning into a monster? Would they ask of him one day, “Papa, why did you let it happen?” Charlotte wouldn’t accuse him, but it would be in her mind, it would have to be. Try as she wished, she would never again see him as the man she trusted always, the man he wanted to be.
And what was he doing? Advising Townley and Castelbranco to do nothing, admitting that the law, his law, was helpless to protect them or to find any justice. The legal system too would look the other way and pretend nothing had happened: timid, circumspect, afraid of making a fuss.
Neville Forsbrook, and anyone else like him, would go on without someone standing in their way or calling them to account. He reached to pull the curtain closed and it stuck. He yanked it harder and it tore.
“Thomas …” Charlotte began.
“Don’t tell me to sit down!” he shouted, yanking harder at the curtain and pulling the whole thing down off the wall to lie in a heap.
“I wasn’t going to,” she replied, standing up herself and walking over to join him at the glass, completely ignoring the pile of velvet on the floor. “You are sure Forsbrook will go on and rape other people?”
“Yes. I’d stop him if I could, Charlotte!” He felt his hands clench. He was behaving like a fool and he knew it. It was not her fault, but every word seemed like criticism, because he blamed himself. It was his responsibility to do better than this.
She took a deep breath and held it a moment or two. She was controlling her own temper, and he was sharply aware of it. There was no point in apologizing because he knew he would do it again, probably within moments.
“I was going to say …” She was choosing her words carefully, still ignoring the curtain. “I was going to say that if this pattern of violence stretches into the future, how do we know that it does not also stretch into the past?”
“I imagine it does,” he said slowly.
“Then might there not be something there that you could find, and prosecute, without mentioning Angeles, or this new poor girl?” she asked. “Perhaps it was something less serious, but still enough to bring a charge?”
He let the idea take form slowly, testing every step of it. “Anyone who did not accuse him then would be unlikely to do so now,” he pointed out. “The disgrace would be the same, and the proof even harder to find.”
“But if you know the pattern of the past, then you can predict the future more accurately, maybe even prevent him next time he tries?” She would not give up. “One woman alone can’t do anything to him, but several might be able to. Or at least the fathers of several, if they know they are not alone.”
He turned to look at her. In the evening light the tiny lines of her face were invisible. To him she was more beautiful at forty than she had been in her twenties, though the softness of youth was gone. She still looked at life bravely and honestly with her steady eyes, but was better able to deal with it in a measured way.
“And do what?” he asked quietly, but he was not dismissing it. “It still may not be possible; Pelham Forsbrook will defend Neville to the very last ditch. It is not only his son’s reputation on the line, but his own.”
“The victims won’t accuse him because to do so would ruin them socially for the rest of their lives,” she began.
He almost interrupted her, but bit back the words.
“Surely the accusation from many people, all prepared to stand together, whether it was proven in a court of law or not, would also ruin him?” she asked. “Reputation doesn’t require legal proof. If it did there’d be thousands of people still in Society who are not here now, because ill is believed of them, although never more than whispers. They do not fight because there is nothing said plainly enough for slander.”
He blinked. “You mean we should spread a rumor?”
“No!” Now she was angry too. “You don’t need to do it! Just prove you could, so Pelham Forsbrook knows it is true, and that you mean to stop his son because he has to be stopped.”
He turned it over in his mind, carefully, uncertain.
“Thomas?” She put her hand on his arm. He felt the strength of her fingers as well as the warmth.
He waited.
“How would you feel if it were not Alice Townley, but Jemima?”
“The same as Townley, exactly,” he answered. “I would see Neville in hell, if I could, but more than anything else I would want to protect my daughter.”
“And if it were me, instead of Catherine Quixwood?”
He felt cold to the bone. “I would want to kill him,” he said honestly. “I might even do it.”
“So isn’t this worth at least trying?” She smiled very slightly, pleased at his anger, as if it were a shield for her, at least in her mind.
“Perhaps,” he said. “A little unorthodox, but then the orthodox isn’t working. But don’t do anything yourself, Charlotte. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, of course,” she said obediently. “If I were clumsy, it would warn him. Give me credit for a little sense, Thomas.”
He had several answers for that, but he forbore from giving them. Fifteen years of marriage had taught him something at least.
“I want to know anything that might be interesting,” he told Stoker the next morning. The door was closed and he had given orders that he was not to be interrupted. “The man’s a rapist. He may have started years ago.” He explained Charlotte’s reasoning, without mentioning her name.
Stoker looked a little puzzled. “What am I looking for, sir?”
“I don’t know,” Pitt admitted. “Why does a young man have this kind of rage inside him? He barely knows the young women concerned. Who does he really hate? Could he help himself if he wanted to? Who else did he hurt in the past, who also dared not accuse him? Does his father know? Does he care? Has he ever disciplined him himself, or paid off anyone to keep their silence?”
“Pelham Forsbrook?” Stoker said in surprise. “Why would he need to? He’s one of the most influential bankers in London. If he grants you a loan for business venture capital, you’re made. If he puts word out against you, then no one else’ll back you either. Although whisper has it that he’ll lose pretty badly if the British South Africa Company has to pay damages to the Boers after the Jameson Raid.”
Pitt was suddenly interested. “Really? Has he partners in the venture, or is he all on his own?”
“No idea. Do you want me to find out?”
“Not unless it has anything to do with his son.”
Stoker shrugged. “If I had a son like that I’d keep an eye on him, and definitely want him where I had enough influence to protect him.”
“Would you? Would you protect him?” Pitt thought for several moments. “I’m not sure what I’d do if it were Daniel. Maybe I’d ship him off to Australia, and let him take what’s coming to him if he didn’t straighten himself
