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‘Not yet.’ Jem was aware the second he’d said it that he should probably have lied. At least he should claim he’d told somebody all about it, in the event of anything happening to him. He couldn’t think of who he’d name, except Nicky, and wouldn’tthatopen another Pandora’s box, albeit one without any hope in it. ‘I wanted to give you a chance to explain.’
‘To explain,’ Aaron repeated, almost incredulous, as though Jem had no right to ask that at all.
‘I’d like to understand, that’s all. If you want to tell me about it, I’ll listen.’
‘And if I don’t choose to explain myself to you?’
Jem swallowed. ‘Then I’ll have to draw my own conclusions.’
Aaron’s eyes narrowed. They looked at each other in silence that seemed to stretch endlessly. Jem was damned if he’d be the one to break it, or to shift uncomfortably under Aaron’s gaze. His foot was aflame with pain.
‘Fine,’ Aaron said at last, as though exasperated beyond endurance. ‘Fine. Sit down, for God’s sake.’ He grabbed the chair, hauling it from the desk as Jem tried not to collapse too obviously onto the bed. ‘Very well. What do you know, and who from?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Aaron snapped. ‘This isn’t just about me, you pig-headed fool. It implicates others—people who could still be prosecuted, people who didn’t know Toby from Adam, and who don’t deserve to be caught up in your vengeance. I’d have thought you of all people would sympathise with the need to get around a damn fool unjust law.’
‘I do,’ Jem said, mind racing. ‘Obviously. That’s why I didn’t go to the police.’
‘I want to know how you found out,’ Aaron said. ‘This isn’t trivial, Jem.’
Jem pressed his hand into the bedclothes to cross his fingers. ‘I spoke to Miss Keele.’
‘Ah,’ Aaron said. That was all he said, but it wasn’tWhat the devil has she to do with anything?, and Jem put together a number of things at a speed that reminded him of the days he’d been on for a First.
‘Prue went to her to discuss her situation—that she was expecting. Miss Keele is a member of the Malthusian League. She said she’d have supported Prue if she’d sought abortion.’
‘Good.’ Aaron sounded vague, in the way of a man who was thinking hard.
Everything was falling into place: Aaron, speaking savagely of incompetent doctors and old wives’ remedies. Aaron, who had belonged to progressive medical societies, and had often been out in the evenings in their last year.
Ella would have known, of course, as close as they had been.
Jem took a deep breath. ‘What I wondered was, if Prue told Ella she was expecting and didn’t want to be, whether Ella might have told her she knew a safe pair of hands. Someone who could carry out the procedure safely. Someone she could trust.’
‘I will not confirm or deny any speculation about Prue, or about what Ella might have known. Absolutely not.’
Wrong angle of attack. Jem recalled again Toby’s furious threat to Ella:I can deal with him for good, and I will. And he’d asked the Master about serious offences…’Fine. Were you carrying out abortions?’
‘I was not.’ Aaron tipped his head back and let out a long breath. ‘Not personally. That was an established doctor, a man who knew what he was about, with a very experienced nurse. I acted as an assistant when required, not that the law or the Royal College of Physicians would regard that with any more leniency. I am well aware that what we did drove a coach and horses through medical ethics, but there are women alive now who would not be if they had gone to the back streets.’
A black man helping to procure abortions on, Jem would guess, mostly white women. The thought of what the newspapers and the judge would have said was eye-watering. ‘God almighty. You could have gone down for life! What were you thinking?’
‘I was thinkingof women bleeding out,’ Aaron said. ‘Clutching their bellies and screaming, rendered infertile and damaged for life if they’re lucky, dying if they’re not. I have seen it happen too often, and if you intend to give me moral disapproval, you may first stand in a women’s ward and wait for one of those cases to be brought in—it won’t take long—and see what that particular hell looks like for yourself.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jem said, holding up both hands against the barely controlled fury in Aaron’s voice. ‘And I’m not moralising. I don’t know nearly enough about it to have an opinion. I’m just saying, it was a devil of a risk for you to run.’
Aaron subsided a little. ‘I know. Good God, I know. But at the time it felt like the right thing to do. If you knew, if you saw…The nurse who led us was an inspiring woman, very like Ella in her way. She blazed. And she had seen too many deaths, and not one of our patients suffered complications, Jem. Not a single one.’
‘And Toby found out?’
Aaron exhaled. ‘Apparently so.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know. I had no idea he knew before that night. I didn’t even know during the argument in the Mitre. He spoke privately to Ella before I arrived.’
‘And what happened afterwards?’
