Death in the Devil's Acre (9 page)

“For goodness’ sake, why ever should we talk about her!” Christina shot him a contemptuous glance. “She was the most ordinary creature. The only possible thing remarkable about her was a good head of hair. And even parlormaids can have good hair!”

“My dear girl, parlormaids have to have good hair,” Brandy answered scornfully. “And all the other physical attributes as well. Any house with pretensions to quality chooses its parlormaids for their looks. But you know that as well as I do.”

“Are we really to be reduced to discussing the appearance of parlormaids?” Augusta’s nostrils flared as if at some faintly unpleasant odor.

Balantyne was compelled to defend Charlotte—or was it his memory of her? A thing that mattered to him needed safeguarding. “Miss Ellison was hardly a parlormaid,” he said quickly. “In fact, she was not a servant at all—”

“She certainly was not a lady!” Christina snapped back a shade too rapidly. “I can tell the difference, even if Brandy cannot! Really, sometimes I think anything the least bit handsome in a skirt, and some men lose whatever judgment they once had!”

“Christina!” Augusta’s voice was like ice cracking and her face was whiter than Balantyne could remember ever having seen it before. Was she so angry for him because his daughter had insulted him at his own table? Or was it for Jemima, who had once been so little more than a servant? Oddly, he would rather believe it was for Jemima.

He turned to stare at his daughter. “One of the qualities of a lady, Christina,” he said quietly, “is that she has good manners and does not, even accidentally, cause offense to others by her clumsiness.”

Christina sat perfectly still, her eyes glittering, her cheeks bloodless, fist clenched over her napkin.

“On the contrary, Papa, it is servants—and social climbers—who do not give offense, because they know they cannot afford to.”

There was a ruffle of embarrassment round the table. It was Alan Ross who spoke, laying his fork down beside his plate. He had good hands—strong, without excess of flesh.

“Servants do not give offense because they dare not, my dear,” he said quietly to his wife. “A lady would not wish to. That is the difference. It is people who are obliged to no one, but have not the mastery of themselves, nor sufficient sensitivity to understand the feelings of others, who offend.”

“You have everything worked out so neatly, don’t you, Alan!” She said it as though it were a challenge, even an insult, implying he had curtailed thought with some preconceived answer.

Balantyne felt a cold wave of unhappiness, and pushed his plate away from him. Alan Ross was dignified; he had a sense of decency. He did not deserve this ill-behavior from his wife. Mere beauty was not nearly enough. One hungered for gentleness in a woman, no matter how splendid her wit or her face, or even her body. Christina had better learn that before it was too late and she forfeited Alan’s affection beyond retrieval. He must have Augusta speak to her about it. Someone should warn her—

Brandy jarred him back to an even uglier subject. “It was Max Burton, who used to be our footman, who was killed in the Devil’s Acre, wasn’t it?” He looked at them in turn.

His remark had the presumably desired effect of stopping the previous conversation utterly. Augusta’s hands hung paralyzed over her plate. Christina dropped her knife. Alan Ross sat motionless.

A petal fell from one of the flowers onto the tablecloth, whiter, purer than the starched linen.

Christina swallowed. “Really, Brandy, how on earth would we know? And, for that matter, why should we care? Max left here years ago, and it’s all completely disgusting!”

“The Devil’s Acre and its occupants are not of the least concern to us,” Augusta agreed huskily. “And I refuse to have them or their obscenities discussed at my table.”

“I disagree, Mama.” Brandy was not impressed. “As long as everybody refuses to talk about them—”

“I imagine half the city is talking of little else,” Augusta cut him off. “There are plenty of people whose nature wallows in such things. I do not intend to be among them—and neither will you while you are in my house, Brandon!”

“I’m not thinking of the details.” Brandy leaned forward, his face earnest. “I’m talking about the general social conditions in our slums. Apparently, Max was a pimp. He procured women for prostitution—”

“Brandon!”

He ignored the interruption. “Do you know how many prostitutes there are in London, Mama?”

Balantyne looked across at Augusta’s face and thought he would not forget her expression as long as he lived.

Her eyebrows rose and her eyes widened. “Am I to assume, Brandon, that you do?” she inquired in a voice that could have chipped stone.

The color came up Brandy’s cheeks slightly, but his face set in the same defiance that echoed as far back as nursery days over such trivialities as rice pudding and talcing naps. He swallowed. “Eighty-five thousand.” To have added “approximately” would have diminished the impact. “And some of them are no more than ten or eleven years old!”

“Nonsense!” she snapped.

For the first time, Alan Ross joined in. “I am sorry, Mama-in-law, but that is true. Several people of some reputation and quality have been espousing the cause of these people lately, and there has been much investigation.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Christina laughed, but it was a high sound, without happiness. “Mama is perfectly correct. How could a person of any quality whatsoever take up such a cause? That’s preposterous. It really is not worth discussing. We are descending to absurdity, and it is most unpleasant.”

Balantyne wondered at Christina’s agreeing so readily with her mother; it was not like her. He was surprised to hear his own voice. “Eighty-five thousand unfortunates in London!” He had unconsciously used the current euphemism for prostitution. It made the whole dark, amorphous misery seem less terrible; it allowed one to think that people were moved by compassion.

“Unfortunates!” Brandy’s eyes were narrow with scorn. He ripped Balantyne’s thought apart exactly as if he had read it from his mind. “Don’t make it sound as if we had some kind of pity for them, Papa. We don’t even want to know about them! We’ve just said they are not suitable conversation for our table. We prefer to pretend they don’t exist, or that they are all doing it quite happily and sinfully, because they want to—”

“Don’t talk rubbish, Brandy!” Christina snapped. “You know nothing about it. And Mama is perfectly correct. It is most disagreeable, and I think you are ill-mannered to force it upon us. We have already made it as plain as we can that we don’t care to learn of such coarse subjects! Jemima.” She stared across the table. “I’m sure you don’t wish to hear about prostitutes over your dinner, do you?”

Balantyne leaned forward, wanting to defend Jemima. She was peculiarly vulnerable. She was in love with Brandy—and she had married wildly above herself.

But Jemima smiled back at Christina, her gray eyes clear and level. “I should find it extremely uncomfortable at any time,” she answered. “But then, when I can regard other women’s distress, either physical or moral, without feeling uncomfortable about it, then I am in need of a very sharp reminder of my responsibilities as a human being.”

There was a moment’s silence.

Brandy’s face broke into a dazzling smile and his hand moved for a moment as if he would reach across the table and touch her.

“How very pious,” Christina said with delicate contempt. “You sound as if you were still in the schoolroom. You really must learn not to be so unimaginative, my dear. It’s such a bore! And, above everything else in the world, Society hates a bore!”

The color drained out of Brandy’s face. “But it usually forgives a hypocrite, darling.” He turned on his sister. “So you will remain a success, as long as you are careful not to become too obvious—which you are doing at the moment. A clumsy hypocrite is worse than a bore—it is insulting!”

“You know nothing about Society.” Christina’s voice was brittle, her face hot. “I was trying to be helpful. After all, Jemima is my sister-in-law. No one wishes to sound like a governess, even if one thinks like one! Good heavens, Brandy—we have all had more than enough of the schoolroom!”

“Of course we have.” Augusta came to life again at last. “No one wishes to be instructed about social ills, Brandy. Take a seat in Parliament if you are interested in such things. Christina is right. But it is not poor Jemima who is a bore—she is merely being loyal to you, as a wife should be. It is you who are being extremely tedious. Now please either entertain us with something pleasant or else hold your tongue and allow someone else to do so.”

She turned to Alan Ross, ignoring Balantyne at the end of the table. He was still unhappy, and sought the words to convey his sense that the subject could not so easily be dismissed. Its comfort or discomfort was irrelevant; it was its truth that mattered.

“Alan,” Augusta said with a slight smile. “Christina tells me you have been to see the exhibition at the Royal Academy? Do tell us what was interesting? Did Sir John Millais show a picture this season?”

There was no alternative but to answer. Ross gave in gracefully, offering her a light and delicately humorous description of the paintings at the Academy.

Balantyne thought again how much he liked the man.

After the dessert had been cleared away, Augusta rose and the ladies excused themselves to the withdrawing room, leaving the gentlemen free to smoke, if they chose, and to drink the port that the footman Stride brought in in a Waterford crystal decanter, with a silver neck and an exquisite fluted stopper. He left it on the table and retired discreetly.

Without knowing why he said it—the subject had been a ghost on the edge of his mind for days—Balantyne returned to Max and the Devil’s Acre. “It was our old footman who was murdered.” He filled his glass and picked it up, turning it, looking at the light on the ruby-reflecting facets. “Pitt came here. He asked me to go and identify the body.”

Ross’s face was blank. He was a very private man; it was not often easy to know what he thought or felt. Balantyne remembered Helena Doran, whom Ross had loved before Christina, and the painful idea occurred to him that possibly he had never entirely stopped loving her. It hurt him for both of them—for Ross himself and for Christina. Perhaps that was why she was so—so fragile at times, and so unkind. Jemima’s happiness must be like caustic in the wound.

And yet the happiness of how many marriages is based on anything else than a certain sharing of time, of experience that welds a couple together simply because it is something held in common? The fortunate marriages mellow into a kind of friendship. Had Christina even tried to win Alan Ross’s love? She had all the wit and beauty it could have needed; the gentleness, the generosity of spirit were her duty to acquire, and then to show him. Again the thought intruded that he must have Augusta speak to her.

Brandy was staring at him. “Pitt came here? Didn’t they know who he was?”

Balantyne brought his mind back to Max. “Apparently not. He was using several names, but Pitt recognized his face, or thought he did.”

They sat in silence. Perhaps in some obscure way they had half imagined it was not really the same man. Now it was different. It was undeniably a person they had known, had lived with and seen every day, even if as a servant he was merely a part of the household appurtenances, not an individual like themselves.

“Poor devil,” Brandy said at last.

“Do you think they’ll ever find who did it?” Ross asked, turning to look at Balantyne. His expression was very intense. “If he was trading in women, one has a certain understanding for whoever killed him. It has to be as low as a man can sink, this side of insanity.”

“The trade in children is the lowest,” Brandy said quietly. “Especially in boys.”

Ross winced. “Oh, God!” he breathed out. “I hadn’t even thought of that. How criminally ignorant we are! I cannot imagine what brings a human being to do such things. And yet there must be thousands who do, here in my own city. And I may pass them in the street every day of my life.”

“In boys,” Balantyne repeated, not entirely as a question. After thirty years in the army, he could not help being aware of the appetites and aberrations of men far from home, under pressure of war. Presumably such hungers were latent before loneliness and the absence of women brought them to the point of physical indulgence. But he had not thought of anyone earning a living by selling the bodies of children for such acts. It was beyond his capacity to comprehend the mind of such a person.

“Did Max deal in boys?” he asked.

“Women, I think,” Brandy replied. “At least that’s what the newspapers said. But perhaps they would have avoided mentioning it if he had used boys. People don’t want to know about the trade in children. Adult women we can blame, say they are immoral, and anything that happens to them is beyond society’s responsibility. Prostitution is as old as mankind, and will probably last as long. We can wink at that—even well-bred women affect not to know. That way they are not required to react. Ignorance is a most effective shield.”

Balantyne suddenly thought how little he really knew Brandy. There was anger in him, and bitterness he had never recognized before. Years had slipped by, and because Balantyne himself felt that he had barely changed, he assumed that Brandy had not changed either. The difference between forty-five and fifty was nothing; the difference from twenty-three to twenty-eight could be all the world.

He looked at his son, at the line of his brow and nose, utterly different from Alan Ross: very dark, smooth straight lines, and that stubborn, emotional mouth. One imagines vaguely that one’s son will be like oneself. But had Brandy ever been much like him? Thinking about it now—perhaps not?

“Are we as shallow as that?” he said aloud.

“Defensive,” Brandy answered. “Self-preserving.”

Alan Ross ran his hand over his hair. “Most of us avoid looking at the unbearable,” he said so quietly they could only just hear him. “Especially when there is nothing we can do about it. You can’t blame a woman who doesn’t choose to know that her husband uses a prostitute—particularly if that prostitute is a child. To accept that the child is also a boy would force her to leave him. We all know that divorce ruins a woman. Even to quite moderate society she ceases to exist. She would be an object of intolerable pity, not to mention the obscene imaginations and suggestions of the less charitable. No.” He shook his head in a fierce little gesture. “Her only option is to connive at his secrecy, and never in any circumstances allow herself to kill the last precious doubt. There is nothing else she can afford to do.”