You never even asked.” And that, I have come to think, is the whole indictment of Arthur Vance in a single sentence from a nine-year-old, more complete than anything the lawyers or the officers or I myself ever managed to articulate.

He never even asked.

That is the root of it, the thing underneath the cruelty.

A grandfather who loved his grandson, confronted with an accusation, would have asked.

Would have knelt down and said, tell me what happened.

Would have given the child the most basic dignity of being heard before being judged.

Arthur did not ask, because to Arthur the child’s account was not worth soliciting; the boy was a subordinate, a small person whose version of events did not merit inquiry, whose guilt could simply be assumed and punished.

The failure to ask was not an oversight in the heat of the moment.