Midnight at Marble Arch

chapter



9



IT WAS EARLY EVENING but the sun was still high. Charlotte was at the stove, her back to the kitchen table, but she could hear Pitt’s fingers drumming irritably on the wood. She could have asked him to stop, but she knew it was pointless. He was not even aware of doing it. His sense of helplessness was eating away at him. The death of Angeles Castelbranco was unexplained; in his mind it was still a bleeding wound.

She knew that it was not just a matter of solving a crime. It was not even the taking of some small step to absolve England’s reputation as a gentle and civilized country where women, children, the vulnerable were treated with respect; they must show that brutality was punished swiftly, and that no one pleaded for justice in vain.

Beyond that, it was the deep, visceral nature of the crime that ate at him, the knowledge that those he loved could as easily have been the victims, could yet be, and he had found nothing he could do to prevent it.

She never doubted that he loved his family fiercely. Sometimes he was too strict, true, expected too much of the children; other times she thought he was too lax, but either way, whatever the disappointments, the love was as certain as the ground beneath her feet or the warmth of the sun.

All over the country there were other men the same, in every town and village—people who loved, who worried, who protected their loved ones the best they could, who lay awake at night thinking about the unthinkable, praying that they would never have to face it.

But Pitt had had to face it, to see it in Rafael Castelbranco and be unable to do anything, unable even to try, because there was nothing to grasp, no evidence. Witnesses abounded, and yet they had seen nothing that did not lose substance, like mist, when it was examined.

Isaura Castelbranco had said her daughter’s violator was Neville Forsbrook. Charlotte herself had seen him taunt Angeles and felt her terror as if it were palpable in the room. But then you had Rawdon Quixwood, stricken and bereaved by the rape of his wife, who had sworn to Vespasia that he had been at the event where the rape of Angeles must have taken place, and he knew young Forsbrook could not be guilty. It was not a reference to his character but to his whereabouts.

Who was lying? Who was mistaken? Who was so prejudiced as to be unable to see or tell the truth?

To Pitt it was more than that. He felt uniquely responsible because he had been present when Angeles had died; he was a guardian of the law, supposed to protect people, or at the very least to find justice for those who were wronged. Charlotte knew that fact was in his mind far more than the angry words, the long silences, the overprotectiveness that was infuriating Jemima or the lectures begun and broken off that confused Daniel.

She wanted to say something to help, at least to let Pitt know that she understood and did not expect him, or any man, to slay all the dragons or keep safe all the dark corners of life, whether they were far away or in the familiar rooms of one’s own house.

Pitt was still drumming his fingers on the tabletop.

Charlotte lifted the lid of the pan with potatoes and pushed a skewer into one, then another, to see if it was time to put on the cabbage. She hated it overcooked. The potatoes could do with a few more minutes. The table was already set and the cold meat carved. There were three separate dishes of chutney out: apple and onion, orange and onion, spiced apricot. She was rather pleased with herself for that.

“Only three places,” Pitt said suddenly. “Who’s not here?”

“Jemima,” she replied. “She’s spending the evening with a friend.”

Pitt’s voice sharpened. “Who is it? Do you know the family? What is she like, this friend? How old is she?”

Charlotte put the lid down on the potato pan and turned around to face him. She saw again how tired he was. His hair was as untidy as usual, even though it had been cut recently. The light caught on the gray at his temples. His skin was pale and there were fine lines around his eyes she had not noticed before, although they must have come slowly.

“A very pleasant girl named Julia,” she replied as lightly as she could, as if she had not seen the tension in him. “She is rather studious and she likes Jemima because Jemima makes her laugh and forget to be self-conscious. I know her mother—not well, but enough to be certain Jemima is quite safe there. And before you ask, yes, Julia is fourteen as well, and she has no older brothers.”

Pitt lowered his head wearily. “Am I being ridiculous?” he asked.

Charlotte sat down on the chair opposite him. “Yes, my dear, completely. But I might think less of you if you weren’t.” She reached out her hand and put it lightly over his on the table, stopping his fingers in their nervous movement. “How could we look at people living our worst nightmare and feel nothing? If that happened, I would think Special Branch had changed you from the man I love to an efficient person I could only respect.”

He was quite still for several moments, and she had no idea what he was thinking. She wanted to ask, but knew it would be intrusive.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said suddenly, avoiding her eyes. “I looked at Isaura Castelbranco a couple of days ago. She has courage, and immense dignity; in a way, more composure than her husband. But she’s broken inside. Whoever did this has destroyed far more than just one person. The pain he’s inflicted is beyond measure, and it will go on all their lives. Even if we catch the rapist, it seems a poor sort of justice, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Maybe, at times. But don’t we all need there to be justice, however cold the comfort of it is? What safety is there for anyone if people can do what this man did and then walk away free? If there’s no price, why shouldn’t he do it again, whenever he wishes to and has the chance? And surely if there’s no public justice, won’t there be people who’ll look for it privately? What are the chances they’ll take it from the wrong person? Or the right person, but who was guilty only of being intimate with the wrong person, not of rape?”

Pitt pushed his hair back hard as he straightened and leaned again against the hard frame of the chair. “Isaura knows it is Neville, and she’s right, prosecution would only make it worse.”

Charlotte was stunned. “But you told me Vespasia had said it couldn’t be him! Quixwood was there! You must make absolutely certain that the ambassador doesn’t take—”

“Isaura didn’t tell him anything,” he cut across her. “She won’t. She knows as well as you do that the temptation to take revenge would one day be more than he could resist. She didn’t even confirm to him that Angeles was raped, although I imagine he suspects.”

She frowned, tense now.

“You are sure?”

“Yes.” There was no uncertainty, no equivocation in his voice. “By the way, I questioned the maid.” He winced as he spoke. “Angeles was bleeding and badly bruised. Whoever it was, he must have used considerable force.”

Charlotte thought about it for several moments, her mind racing. The pain inside her was not only for Isaura Castelbranco, but for every other woman who lived with fear or grief, or who would do so in the future; everyone else who felt humiliated and helpless.

“But she did say it was Forsbrook?” she said aloud.

“Apparently that is what Angeles told her mother. But if Quixwood is telling the truth, she must have been mistaken. Perhaps someone even pretended to be Forsbrook. That’s not impossible. I’ve asked a few questions …” He smiled bleakly. “Don’t look like that. I was discreet. I asked people about functions over the last month or two, who attended and any incidents concerning the Portuguese. This damned Jameson Raid is an excellent cover for all kinds of inquiries.”

Charlotte had forgotten about the Jameson trial. It was on everybody’s lips, and yet it had held no meaning for her, because of the other things she had heard being discussed. There was pity for Isaura Castelbranco, certainly; however, in too many instances it was tempered by cruel remarks about foreigners and their different standards, as if the girl were to blame for her own death. Since the gossip had begun about the Church’s decision that she could not be buried with Catholic rites, the conclusion was that she must have committed suicide. The kindest speculation was that she was in love with someone who did not return her feelings. The cruelest that she was with child, that her fiancé had very understandably called off the betrothal, and in despair she had killed herself and her unborn baby.

Charlotte had seethed with anger, but all she could do was accuse the speaker of malice. And that would gain nothing, except enemies she knew she could ill afford, for Pitt’s sake as well as her own. If she was helpless, how much more so was Isaura Castelbranco?

“Did you learn anything?” she asked Pitt.

“Not that could be proof,” he replied.

“What else did Mr. Quixwood say about the party?”

“Only that Forsbrook was charming, flattered Angeles in the way most young women enjoy, but that she seemed to be upset by it. He implied that either she thought herself too good for Neville or her English was not sufficiently fluent for her to have understood him properly. The prevailing opinion was that she was too young, and too unsophisticated to be in Society yet, even when her mother was present at the same function, as she usually was. They suggested that perhaps Portuguese girls were more sheltered and less prepared to conduct themselves with appropriate grace.” He stopped, looking at Charlotte with a frown.

“That doesn’t mean anything. Everyone is saying whatever makes them feel most comfortable. It’s disgusting! How desperately alone she was … and her family is now.” She wanted to encourage him, but what was there to say? “There must be something you can do,” she tried. “Even indirectly, perhaps?”

Pitt raised his head.

“I haven’t given up.” His voice had an edge to it he failed to hide.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m asking for miracles, aren’t I?”

“Yes. And your potatoes are boiling over.”

She leaped to her feet. “Oh blitheration! I forgot them. Now it’s too late to put the cabbage on.” She pulled the pan off the stove and lifted the lid cautiously. She jabbed the skewer into one. They were very definitely cooked, a little too much so. She would have to mash them.

Pitt was smiling. “We’ll just have more pickle,” he said with amusement. She was always teasing him that he used too much.


THE FOLLOWING MORNING PITT sat in his office studying the papers, mostly looking for information he could use professionally. Often Stoker selected articles for Pitt, to save him time.

“Lot about the upcoming Jameson trial,” Stoker observed drily, putting more papers on Pitt’s desk.

“Anything I need to know right now?” Pitt asked, hoping he could avoid reading them.

“Not much.” Stoker’s face creased in distaste. “Still haven’t solved the murder of Rawdon Quixwood’s wife. Sometimes I think I’d understand it if somebody murdered a few of these journalists, or the damn people who write letters expressing their arrogant opinions.”

Pitt looked at Stoker curiously. It was an unusual expression of emotion for him. More often he showed only disinterest, or occasionally a dry humor, especially at political contortions to evade the truth, or blame for anything.

Rather than ask him, Pitt turned over the pages of the first newspaper until he came to the letters to the editor. He saw with anger what Stoker meant. A good deal of space was devoted to the subject of rape.

One writer expressed the heated opinion that morality in general, and sexual morality in particular, was in serious decline. Women of a certain type behaved in a way that excited the baser appetites in men, leading to the destruction of both and to the general degradation of humanity. But the author conceded that rapists, if caught and the matter proved beyond any doubt, should be hanged, for the good of all. No names were mentioned, but Pitt noted that the writer lived in a neighborhood not two streets away from Catherine Quixwood.

“Why the devil does the editor print this sort of thing?” he demanded angrily. “It’s vicious, ignorant, and will only stir up ill feeling.”

“And produce more letters in answer,” Stoker replied. “Dozens of them, of all opinions. And loads of people will buy the paper, to see if their answer has been printed, or just for the fun of watching a scrap. Same thing as the idle who gather to watch a street fight, and then demand we clean up the mess afterward, all the time shaking their heads and saying how terrible it is. But heaven help you if you get between them and the view.”

Pitt looked up at Stoker with surprise. There had been more heat in his voice than Pitt had heard in a while. It flickered through his mind to wonder if Stoker had known and cared for someone who had been violated: a sister, even a lover at some time. He knew little of Stoker’s personal life—or that of most people in Special Branch, for that matter. And he wasn’t likely to learn more about them through this subject, as it was the sort of thing a man did not talk about even to those he knew best, let alone relative strangers.

“Of course.” Pitt looked down at the newspaper again. “It was a stupid question. People attack what they’re afraid of. Like poking a hornets’ nest with a stick. Makes you feel brave, as if you’re doing something. Don’t care who the damn things sting afterward. Poor Quixwood must feel like hell.”

“Yes, sir,” Stoker agreed. “But I’ve met Knox before; I know he is a good man. If anyone can find the truth, it’s him.”

Pitt looked up at him again. “I notice you didn’t say ‘catch who did it.’ Do you think it wasn’t murder, then? Suicide, because she allowed herself to be raped?” He heard the anger in his own voice and could not control it.

Stoker looked slightly embarrassed. “Whoever it was, sir, she let him in herself, with no servants around. That doesn’t make attacking her right, but it does make it a lot more complicated.”

“Sometimes, Stoker, I look back to my time in Bow Street, when murders seemed simpler. Greed, revenge, fear of blackmail I can understand. I quite often felt a degree of pity for even the worst people, but I knew that I still had no acceptable choice but to arrest them. If the jury decided they were innocent, then I could live with that and it was a comfort to know they might catch my mistakes, if that’s what they were. But who catches ours?”

Stoker chewed his lip. “Sometimes we do,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “Otherwise, probably no one. You’d like me to say different?” He was polite, just, but there was a challenge in his voice, one he would not have dared use with Narraway.

“No, not if you can’t do it believably,” Pitt retorted. “At least we’re not in the diplomatic service, or the Foreign Office. Thank God Leander Starr Jameson and his damn raid aren’t on our desks.”

“No, sir. And neither is poor Angeles Castelbranco.”

“Yes she is,” Pitt replied grimly. “Someone raped her here in London, and brought about her death.”

“Not a diplomatic incident, sir,” Stoker said firmly.

“Are you sure?” Pitt stared at him, holding his gaze.

Stoker blinked. For the first time uncertainty showed on his face as he considered other possibilities. “Rape, as a tool of fear, civil disruption? I don’t think so, sir. It’s just a regular crime of selfishness, violence, and uncontrolled appetite. She was a very pretty girl, and some vicious bastard saw his chance and took it. I don’t see it makes any difference that she was Portuguese, except maybe it made her easier to get at.” He swallowed. “And maybe he reckoned her parents would be in less of a position to insist on his arrest, punishment—although honestly, I don’t believe he’d even have thought of that. Rape’s a kind of hot-blooded crime, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily. But does that make any difference?” Pitt asked, still holding Stoker’s gaze. “If an anarchist throws a bomb on impulse, or shoots a political figure, is it less dangerous than if he’d planned it ahead of time?”

This time Stoker’s answer was immediate. “No, sir. D’you think it’ll become an international incident? That might put it on our plate. Castelbranco didn’t seem the sort of man to use his daughter’s death like that. Although I suppose his temperament and philosophy might change if no one is charged.”

“And if he doesn’t, others might, in his—Angeles’s—name,” Pitt pointed out. “I’m pretty sure most fathers would want to see someone pay for this.”

Stoker looked bleak. “Except the father of whoever did it, sir. He sure as hell wouldn’t. Maybe some of that is what’s behind it?”

“We’ve opened up some ugly possibilities, Stoker,” Pitt admitted. “We need to look further into the thought of people taking advantage of the event for political manipulation, repulsive as that is. Bring me what we know about Pelham Forsbrook and any interests he might have that connect in any way to Portugal, or Castelbranco personally.” He rose to his feet. “I think I need to know a lot more about this. With the Quixwood case we will—it’s on everyone’s minds—but not this one, poor girl.”

“We’d better try our best to figure it out, sir. We don’t want to be caught looking as if we didn’t care. Someone could dig a real deep hole for us with that.”

“Yes,” Pitt agreed with a shiver. “You’d better see if you can find out who else was at that party I told you Lady Vespasia mentioned. See if you can find a servant who noticed people, things. Some of them do. Claim robbery as a cover. Be careful what you say.”

“Right, sir. Thank heaven the Quixwood case is nothing to do with us,” Stoker said with feeling. “Count it up how you want, it looks as if it had to be a lover. I’m sorry for Quixwood. Not only lost his wife pretty horribly, but the whole world knows she was betraying him. There’s another man you couldn’t blame if he lost his control and killed the bastard … if they find him.”

“If they find him they’ll hang him,” Pitt replied, taking his hat and jacket from the coat stand.

“Even if she took her own life, which is what some people are saying?” Stoker questioned.

“She was a respectable married woman,” Pitt answered, jamming the hat on his head. “Important husband with influence. And she was British.”

Stoker pulled a sour face, but he did not reply.


PITT WENT TO LINCOLN’S Inn Fields to find the man he had been advised was the best and most experienced prosecuting lawyer in cases of rape. He had telephoned in advance to make an appointment, using his position as leverage to force himself into the man’s already busy schedule.

Aubrey Delacourt was tall and lean, with a shock of dark brown hair. He had a long face with heavy-lidded eyes, which were surprisingly blue.

“I can spare you about twenty minutes, Commander,” he said, shaking Pitt’s hand briefly, then indicating a chair opposite his desk. His manner was impatient, making it clear he resented being obliged to disrupt his day. “You might be best served by omitting any preamble. I already assume this is important to you, or you would not waste your own time, never mind mine.”

“You are quite right,” Pitt agreed, sitting down and crossing his legs comfortably, as if he refused to be hurried. “I wouldn’t. However, I must start by saying that what I’m about to tell you is in absolute confidence. If you require me to retain your services for that, give me a bill for your time.”

“Not necessary,” Delacourt replied. “You have told me you are the head of Special Branch, and I took the precaution of confirming that for myself. What is the advice you wish?”

Very briefly Pitt summarized his account of the rape and death of Angeles Castelbranco. Before he had finished, Delacourt interrupted him.

“You have no case to bring,” he said bluntly. “I would have expected you to know that.” There was brisk condescension in his tone. “Even if you find the man who raped her, from what you have said you cannot prove it. All you will do is damage the poor girl’s name even more.”

“I know that.” Pitt did not hide his own irritation. “I have advised her father to that effect, but quite naturally he cannot bring himself to accept it. I myself have a daughter only two years younger, and when I look at her I know perfectly well I would not accept it either. I would want to beat him senseless, even tear the man apart with my own hands. Knowing I would end up in jail for assault, and it would leave my wife and children in an even worse position perhaps might stop me, but I can’t swear to it.”

Delacourt’s eyebrows rose slightly. “You want me to advise you how to stop Castelbranco? Say to him exactly what you have said to me.”

“I want to know more about rape cases,” Pitt answered sharply. “It can’t always be as hopeless as this. If it is, then we need to do something about the law. Does everyone just … give in? One of the misfortunes of life, like a cold in the head, or measles?”

Delacourt smiled and the anger seeped out of him, his body easing in his chair into a different kind of tension.

“I won’t wrap it up for you, Commander. Rape is a crime that is desperately difficult to prosecute. That is partly why I chose to specialize in such cases. I like to delude myself that I can achieve the impossible.”

He steepled his fingers. “People react to it in different ways. Most often, I believe, it is not even reported. Women are so ashamed and so hopeless of any justice that they tell no one. Strangers tend to think they must have deserved it in some way. That is the most comfortable thing to think, especially for other women. Then it cannot happen to them, because they do not deserve it.”

He moved slightly again. “Some people believe that if a woman defends herself thoroughly, she will not be raped.” He smiled bitterly. “Only beaten to a pulp, or murdered, which would, of course, show she was a virtuous woman, albeit a dead one.

“Men whose daughters are raped feel the rage you just described,” Delacourt went on, his face puckered with his own anger and sense of futility. “The younger the girl, the deeper the pain and the fury, and usually the sense of personal failure, that they did not prevent the atrocity from happening. What use are you as a father if your child is violated in this terrible way, and you were not there to stop it?”

Pitt could imagine it only too easily.

Delacourt was watching him. “We don’t want our children to grow up, except in the sense of happiness,” he said. “We want them to find someone who will love them, when they are ready for the idea, not before. We want them to have children of their own, and if they are sons then to have successful careers—all without the pain and the failures that we have had.”

Pitt shook his head, not able to find words.

“We know it’s not possible,” Delacourt agreed. “But we are still not ready for reality. If it is our wives who are raped, then we are confused, outraged not only for her but for ourselves. She has been violated, and something we considered ours has been taken away—not only from her but from us. Life will not ever be the same again. Somebody must be punished. Our civilized minds say it should be long imprisonment. Our more primitive core demands death. In our dreams that we would not admit to, we would accept mutilation as well.”

Pitt opened his mouth to protest, then merely sighed, and again said nothing.

Delacourt had not yet finished. “And thoughts we don’t want to have enter our minds.” Delacourt had not yet finished. “Was it really rape? Did she in some way invite it? Surely she must have. Why did it happen to her, and not to someone else? She’s different now. She doesn’t want anyone to touch her, even me! And I’m not certain that I want to touch her anyway. This man has ruined my life. I want to ruin his, slowly and with exquisite pain, as he has done to me.

Delacourt leaned forward a little. “And if it is brought to trial she will have to tell the whole court, detail by detail, everything he did to her, and how hard she fought, or not. He will be there, in the dock, watching, listening and reliving it himself. Possibly as you look at him you will see the light in his eyes, his tongue flickering over his lips. His lawyer will say everything he can either to suggest she has the wrong man, is mistaken, hysterical, deliberately lying—or else that she was perfectly willing at the time, but is now crying otherwise to try to protect her reputation. Perhaps she is afraid that she is with child, and her husband knows perfectly well it is not his, but a lover’s?”

“I am back to the beginning, then,” Pitt replied, now paralyzed by futility. “We can do nothing. We rule an empire that stretches around the world, and we cannot protect women from the depraved among us?”

Delacourt gave a very slight shrug, rueful, but there was a gentleness in his face. “It’s not impossible, Commander, just extremely difficult. And even when we succeed, the cost is high—not to us, but to the women. You have to be certain that you think it’s worth it. Are you sure you are willing not only to live with the result yourself, but to watch this girl’s family live with it?”

Pitt managed a bleak smile. “Do you tell this to all your clients?”

“Perhaps not quite as brutally,” Delacourt admitted. “What is it you want to achieve, Mr. Pitt? Angeles Castelbranco is dead. Her reputation is ruined. If you could prove she was raped, and that would be extremely difficult without her alive to speak, then you might achieve something. But the young man would no doubt defend himself vigorously, and whatever he says, there is no one to say otherwise.”

“Yes. But if we do nothing, then the Portuguese ambassador will believe we don’t care,” Pitt argued. “It might damage the relationship between our two countries for some time—not vastly perhaps, but how can you trust a nation that allows such a thing to occur and then lets it go unpunished?”

Delacourt grimaced. “I can see the ugliness of that. I don’t know what help I could suggest, Commander, but I will give it some thought.”

“And the other part of it is that if the young man gets away with it completely, as seems the case, will he do it again?” Pitt asked. “Put simply, why shouldn’t he?”

“There you have the worst of it. Almost assuredly he will. From the little you’ve told me, it was hardly a crime of passion.” Delacourt clenched his teeth and shook his head very slightly. “A crime of hate, the desire to dominate and to shame. Have you ever been in the slightest tempted to take a woman for whom you had some regard, at any cost?”

The thought was repulsive. “Of course not!” Pitt said with more feeling than he had intended. “But I am not—” He had been going to say “a rapist,” but stopped, realizing the thought answered itself.

“A man subject to desire?” Delacourt asked with quite open amusement.

Pitt felt himself coloring with embarrassment, not that he had felt desire, almost overwhelmingly at times, but that he should have sounded so naïve.

“I’m sorry,” Delacourt apologized. “I led you into that, partly to show you how easy it is to twist someone’s words and feelings on the subject. Even a man as experienced as you are in police work and evidence in sensitive matters can be led to awkwardness. Imagine being on the witness stand, vulnerable, trying desperately to be both honest and to give evidence that will trap a dangerous man and still preserve some dignity and reputation for the woman concerned.”

“But you’re pretty certain he’ll do it again?” Pitt said.

“Yes,” Delacourt agreed. “Don’t most thieves do it again? Most arsonists? Most embezzlers, vandals, liars, anyone whose crime benefits them in some way in their appetite for money, power, revenge, or excitement?”

Pitt rose to his feet.

“There is one thing,” Delacourt added, looking up at Pitt. “All that I have said is true; I know it by bitter experience in the courtroom. But if this young man is as violent as you say, then it is possible he has shown it in other ways. Look for loss of temper when he is crossed, when he is beaten in some sport or other, or even loses badly at cards. If he is a risk-taker, look for gambling losses that are heavy or unexpected.”

Pitt was not certain he grasped the importance of things so trivial. “How will that help the Castelbrancos? Proving Forsbrook is ill-tempered is a far cry from rape.”

“Not so very far, if he is a bully who can’t take losing,” Delacourt replied. “But that isn’t my point. I’ve tried to convince you of the difficulty of proving rape at all, never mind the danger to the victim of trying. Sometimes one can settle for what is admittedly far less, pathetically so: a prosecution for assault can damage a man’s reputation; people don’t want to do business with him, invite him to the better social events, have him marry into the family. Several such convictions, or even prosecutions without a serious sentence, can mar his life.”

Pitt said nothing, thinking slowly.

Delacourt was watching his face. “A small victory,” he admitted, “when you want to beat the man to pulp, and then tear him apart for what he has done to a woman you care about. But it is better than nothing—and it can be a foundation on which to build if you ever do get him to court on a heavier charge.”

“Thank you, Mr. Delacourt,” Pitt said. “You have spared me more time than you can probably afford. And although only moderately encouraged, I am at least wiser. I understand why people take the law into their own hands. They have looked hard at those of us who are supposed to protect them, or at the very least avenge them, and see that we are powerless. I shall try to prevent the Portuguese ambassador from taking action … even though I still can’t say that I am entirely averse to it. In his place I would do so, and then leave immediately for Portugal and never return.”

Delacourt shrugged. “Frankly, Mr. Pitt, so would I.”

Pitt hesitated, wanting to say more, but not knowing what, precisely. “Thank you,” he said finally. “Good day.”

Outside in the street he walked slowly, oblivious of passersby, of the traffic, even of the open brougham with a beautifully dressed woman riding in it, parasol up to protect her face from the sun, colored silks fluttering in the slight breeze.

What Delacourt had said to him filled his mind. He believed that it was true, but he was unable to accept that there was no possible way to fight. There had to be. They must make it so, whatever that demanded of them. To be helpless was unendurable.

He came to the curb and waited a moment or two for a brewer’s dray to pass, then crossed the road.

Instead of thinking of Jemima, he was now thinking about Daniel. How many men feared for their sons? What would Pitt do if Daniel, grown to adulthood, should be wrongly accused of such a violent and repulsive crime?

The answer was immediate and shaming. His instinctive reaction would be to assume that the woman was lying, to protect herself from blame for some relationship she dared not acknowledge. His own assumption would be that Daniel could not be at fault, not seriously.

In six or seven years, Daniel would be a young man, with all the hungers and the curiosity that were there for every young man. His father was probably the last person with whom he would discuss such things. How would Pitt know what Daniel thought of women who perhaps teased him, provoked him, with little or no idea what tigers they were awakening?

He crossed Drury Lane into Long Acre, only peripherally mindful of the traffic.

How would he prevent Daniel from becoming a young man who treated women as something he had the right to use, to hurt, even to destroy? Where did such beliefs begin? How would he ever make certain his son could lose any competition with the same grace as when he won? That he would govern himself in temper, loss, even humiliation? The answer was obvious—he must learn at home. Would it be Pitt’s fault if Daniel grew up arrogant, brutal? Of course it would.

If Neville Forsbrook was guilty of raping Angeles Castelbranco and thereby causing her death, was it Pelham Forsbrook’s fault as well as Neville’s? Probably. Would that same father defend him now if he was accused? Almost certainly. Any man would, not only to save his child, and out of a refusal to believe he was guilty, but also to defend himself. Pelham Forsbrook would be socially ruined, and perhaps professionally damaged irreparably, if his son was convicted of such a crime.

The defense would be savage, a fight for survival. Was Pitt prepared to involve himself in that? Winning would not bring Angeles back, and the risks were great.

But if he did not try? What would that cost?

Without being aware of it he increased his pace along the footpath. How would he feel if it was his daughter, his wife who was violated in such an intimate and terrible way? What if it was not so immediate, so visceral? What if it was Charlotte’s sister Emily? He had known her as long as he had known Charlotte.

What if it was Vespasia? Age was no protection. No woman was too young, or too old. Vespasia had such courage, such dignity. Even to imagine her violation was a kind of blasphemy. It jerked him to a stop on the footpath with a pain that was almost physical. He must not allow Neville Forsbrook, or anyone else, to break his world in pieces like that. Whatever the cost, to stand by and do nothing, paralyzed with fear and hopelessness, was even worse. He must think how to attack. It was they who should feel frightened and cornered, not he, not the women he cared for, or any others.

He started along the pavement again, moving as if he had purpose.