by Anne Perry
She had resolved not even to think of the future, not to project her mind forward to the trial, to picture the courtroom as she had seen it so many times before from the gallery when watching Rathbone. This time she would be in the dock, looking down on it all. Would they try her in the Old Bailey? Would it be the same courtroom she had been in before, feeling such compassion and dread for others? She rolled her fear around in her mind, although she had sworn she would not, testing it, trying to guess how different the reality would be from the imagining. It was like touching a wound over and over again, to see if it really hurt as much as you had thought, if it was any better yet, or any worse.
How often had she criticized injured soldiers for doing just that? It was both stupid and destructive. And here she was doing exactly the same. It was as if one had had to look at one’s own doom all the time, deluding oneself that it might change, that it might not have been as it had seemed.
And there was the other idea at the back of her mind, that if she absorbed all the pain now, in some way when it really happened she would be prepared.
Her misery was interrupted by the sound of a key in the lock and the door swinging open. There was no privacy here; it was both totally isolated and yet open at any time to intrusion.
The wardress she hated most stood glaring at her, her pale hair drawn back in a knot on her head so tightly it dragged the skin around her eyes. Her face was almost expressionless. Only a tiny flicker at the corner of her mouth betrayed both her contempt and the satisfaction she had in showing it.
“Stand up, Latterly,” she ordered. “There’s someone ’ere ter see yer.” She invested the announcement with both surprise and anger. “Yer lucky. Better make the best of it. Can’t be long now till yer goin’ ter trial, then there won’t be people comin’ and goin’ all hours.”
“I shan’t be here to care,” Hester said tartly.
The wardress’s thin eyebrows rose.
“Think yer goin’ ’ome, do yer? That’ll be the day! They’ll ’ang yer, my fine lady, by yer skinny white neck, until ye’re dead. No point nobody comin’ te see ye then!”
Hester looked at her slowly, carefully, meeting her eyes.
“I’ve seen too many people hanged, and found innocent afterwards, to argue with you,” she said clearly. “The difference is that that doesn’t bother you. You want to see someone hanged, and the truth doesn’t interest you.”
A dull red color washed up the woman’s face and the heavy muscles in her neck tightened. She took half a step forward.
“You watch yer mouth, Latterly, or I’ll ’ave yer! You just remember who ’olds the keys ’ere—an’ it ain’t you. I got power—and yer’ll be glad enough to ’ave me on yer side—when the end comes. I seen a lot o’ people think ’emselves brave—till the night before the rope.”
“After a month in your charge, the rope may not seem so bad,” Hester said bitterly, but inside her stomach was knotted and her breath came unevenly. “Who is my visitor?”
She had hoped it would be Rathbone. He was her lifeline to sanity, and hope. Callandra had been twice, but somehow Hester found herself very emotional when she saw her. Perhaps it was Callandra’s very obvious affection and the depth of her concern. Hester had felt uncontrollably lonely after she had gone. It had taken all the willpower she possessed not to give in to a fit of weeping. It was primarily the thought of the wardress’s returning, and her contempt and satisfaction, that prevented her.
Now beyond the wardress’s powerful shoulder she could see not Rathbone but her brother Charles. He looked pale and profoundly unhappy.
Suddenly memory overwhelmed her. She was almost drowned in the recollection of his face when she had arrived home from the Crimea after her parents’ deaths and Charles had met her at the house to tell her the full extent of the tragedy, not only the death by suicide of their father, but the broken heart so shortly afterwards which had taken their mother also, and the financial ruin left behind. He had just the same, familiar look of embarrassment and anxiety now. He looked curiously emotionally naked, and seeing him, Hester felt like a child again.
He came in past the wardress, walking a little around her, his eyes intent on Hester.
Hester was standing, as she had been bidden. Charles’s eyes glanced around the cell, taking in the details of the bare walls, the single deep window high above the level of anyone’s sight, the gray sky beyond the bars. Then he looked at the cot with its built-in commode. Lastly he looked at Hester, in her plain blue-gray nursing dress. He looked at her face reluctantly, as if he could not bear to see what must be there in it.
“How are you?” he asked, his voice husky.
She had been going to tell him, unburden herself of the loneliness and the fear, but looking at his tiredness, his red-rimmed eyes, and knowing he could do nothing whatever to help, except hurt as well and feel guilty because he was powerless, she found it impossible. She did not even consider it.
“I’m perfectly well,” she said in a clear, precise voice. “No one could say it is pleasant, but I have survived a great deal worse without coming to any harm.”
His whole body relaxed and some of the tension eased out of his face. He wanted to believe her and he was not going to question what she said.
“Yes—yes, of course you have,” he agreed. “You are a remarkable woman.”
The wardress had been waiting to give him instructions to recall her, but she felt excluded by the exchange, and she withdrew and slammed the door without speaking again.
Charles jumped at the sound, and swung around to see the blank, iron barrier, handleless on the inside.
“It’s all right,” Hester said quickly. “She’ll be back when your time is up.”
He looked at her, forcing himself to smile, but it was a sickly gesture.
“Do they feed you properly? Keep you warm enough? It feels cold here to me.”
“It’s not bad,” she lied. “And really it isn’t so important. There must be many people who never have better.”
He was struggling for something to say. Polite conversation seemed so ridiculous, and yet he dreaded the realities.
Hester took the decision for him, otherwise the whole visit would have come and gone and they would never have said anything that mattered.
“Monk has gone up to Edinburgh to find out what really happened,” she began.
“Monk? Oh, that policeman you were … acquainted with. Do you—” He stopped, changed his mind about what he had been going to say.
“Yes,” she finished for him. “I think he has as good a chance as anyone of learning the truth. In fact, better. He won’t accept lies, and he knows I did not kill her, so he will keep on asking and watching and thinking until he finds out who did.” She felt better for putting it into words. It had been said to convince Charles, but it had lifted her at least as much.
“Are you sure?” he said anxiously. “You couldn’t have made a mistake, could you? You were tired, unfamiliar with the patient….” He looked acutely apologetic, his face pink, his eyes desperately earnest.
She wanted to be furious with him, but her anger died in pity and long familiarity. What was the point in hurting him? He was going to suffer enough as it was.
“No,” she said quickly. “There was one vial of medicine for each dose. I gave her one vial. She wasn’t some vague little old lady who didn’t know what she was doing, Charles. She was interesting, funny, wise, and very much aware of everything. She wouldn’t have allowed me to make a mistake, even if I had been in a frame of mind to do so.”
He frowned. “Then you mean someone else killed her deliberately?”
It was a very ugly thought, but inescapable.
“Yes.”
“Could the apothecary have made up a wrong medicine altogether?” He struggled for a more acceptable answer.
“No—I don’t think so. That was not the first one to be taken. If the whole lot had been wrong, the first one would have killed her. And who put the bro
och in my bag? That certainly wasn’t the apothecary.”
“The lady’s maid?”
“That would be impossible to do by mistake. All her jewelry was together in her own traveling case, which was put in her bag for overnight. This one piece was loose in my bag, which was nothing like hers anyway, and the two were never together until we were on board the train.”
His face pinched with unhappiness. “Then I suppose someone meant to kill her … and to blame you.” He bit his lip, his eyes narrowing and his brows drawing down. “Hester, for God’s sake, why couldn’t you be content to work at some more respectable occupation? You are always getting involved in crimes and disasters of one sort or another. First the Grey case, then the Moidores, and the Carlyons, and that appalling business at the hospital. What is the matter with you? Is it that man Monk who is involving you in all this?”
The suggestion caught her on the raw, mostly her pride, and the idea that somehow Monk, or her affection for him, ruled her life.
“No it is not,” she said tartly. “Nursing is a vocation that is bound to be involved with death, now and again. People do die, Charles, most especially those who are ill to begin with.”
He looked confused. “But if Mrs. Farraline was so ill, why did they assume she was murdered? That seems most unreasonable to me.”
“She wasn’t ill!” Hester said furiously. She was caught in a trap of her own making, and she knew it. “She was just elderly, and had a slight condition of the heart. She could have lived for years.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Hester. Either her death was normal, and to be expected, or it wasn’t! Sometimes women are most illogical.” He smiled very slightly. It was not unkind, not even critical, merely patient.
It was like a spark to tinder.
“Rubbish!” she shouted. “Don’t you dare stand there and call me ‘most women.’ Anyway, most women are no more illogical than most men. We are just different, that’s all. We take less account of your so-called facts and more of people’s feelings. And we are more often right. And we are certainly a great deal more practical. You are all theories, half of which don’t work because there was something wrong in them, or something you didn’t know which makes nonsense of the rest.” She stopped abruptly, out of breath and conscious of the pitch and volume of her voice, and now suddenly aware that she was quarreling with the one person in the entire building, perhaps in the whole city, who was truly on her side, and who was finding nothing but grief from the whole affair. Perhaps she should apologize, pompous and quite mistaken as he was?
He preempted her by making the matter even worse.
“So who did kill Mrs. Farraline?” he asked with devastating practicality. “And why? Was it money? She was obviously far too old for any sort of romantic involvement.”
“People don’t stop being in love just because they are over thirty,” she snapped.
He stared at her. “I have never heard of a woman over sixty being the victim of a crime of passion,” he said, his voice rising slightly with disbelief.
“I didn’t say it was a crime of passion.”
“You are really being very trying, my dear. Why don’t you at least sit down, so we can talk a little more comfortably?” He indicated the cot, where they could sit side by side, and suited his own actions to his words. “Is there anything I may bring you to ease your situation at all? If they will allow it, I will certainly do so. I did bring some clean linen from your lodgings, but they took it from me on my way in. No doubt they will give it to you in due course.”
“Yes please. You could ask Imogen to find me some toilet soap. This carbolic takes the skin off my face. It’s fearful stuff.”
“Of course.” He winced in sympathy. “I am sure she will be pleased to. I shall bring it as soon as I am able.”
“Could Imogen not bring it? I should like to see her.” Even as she said it she knew it was foolish, and only inviting hurt.
A shadow crossed his eyes, and there was the faint beginning of a flush to his cheeks, as if he were aware of something wrong, but not certain what, or why.
“I am sorry, Hester, but I could not allow Imogen to come to this place. It would distress her fearfully. She would never be able to forget it, it would come back to her mind again and again. She would have nightmares. It is my duty to protect her from all that I can. I wish it could be more.” He looked hurt as he said it, as if the pain were within his own mind and body.
“Yes, it is a nightmare,” she said chokingly. “I dream about it too. Only when I wake up I’m not lying in my own bed in a safe home, with someone to look after me and protect me from reality. I’m still here, with the long, cold day in front of me, and another tomorrow, and the day after.”
His face closed over, as if he could not bear to grasp the knowledge.
“I know that, Hester. But that is not Imogen’s fault, nor mine. You chose your path. I did everything I could to dissuade you. I never ceased to try to convince you to marry, when you had offers, or could have had if you had given a little encouragement. But you would not listen. No, I’m afraid it is too late. Even if this matter is resolved as I pray it will be, and you are exonerated of all fault, you are unlikely to find any man offering you an honorable marriage, unless there is some widower who wishes for a decent woman to—”
“I don’t want some widower to keep house for,” she said, the tears thick in her voice. “I’d rather be paid as a housekeeper—and have my dignity, and the freedom to leave—than married as one, with the pretense that there was some kind of love in it, when he only wanted a servant he didn’t have to pay and I only wanted a roof over my head and food on my plate.”
Charles stood up, his face pale and tight.
“A great many marriages are merely convenient and practical to begin with. Often a mutual respect comes later. There is no loss of dignity in that.” His smile brightened his eyes and touched his lips. “For a woman, and you say women are so practical, you are the most romantic and totally impractical creature I ever knew.”
She stood up as well. Too full of emotion to answer.
“I shall bring you some soap next time I come. Please … please do not lose hope.” He said the words awkwardly, as if they were a matter of duty rather than anything he could mean. “Mr. Rathbone is the best possible—”
She cut him off. “I know!” She could not bear the rehearsed insincerity of it. “Thank you for coming.”
He made a move forward, as if to kiss her cheek, but she backed away from him sharply. He looked surprised for an instant, but accepted the rebuff with something like relief that at last he was excused and could escape, both from the encounter and from the place.
“I’ll … I’ll see you … soon,” he replied, turning to go to the door and bang on it for the wardress to release him.
It was the following day before she had another visitor, and this time it was Oliver Rathbone. She was too miserable to feel any lift of spirits seeing him, and the perception of her mood was instant in his face. And then after formal greetings had been exchanged, with a leaden heart, she realized it was also a reflection of his own feelings.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded shakily. She had not thought she was capable of any further emotion, but she was suddenly sickeningly afraid. “What’s happened?”
They were standing face-to-face in the whitewashed room with its table and wooden chairs. He took hold of both her hands. It was not a calculated move, but instinctive, and its gentleness only added to her fear. Her mouth was dry and she took a breath to ask again what was wrong, but her voice would not come.
“They have ordered that you are tried in Scotland,” he said very quietly. “In Edinburgh. I have no grounds on which to fight it. It appears to them that the poison was administered on Scottish soil, and since we contend it was actually prepared in the Farraline house, and had nothing to do with you, then it was beyond question a Scottish crime. I’m so sorry.”
She did not understand. Why was that so
crippling a blow? He looked devastated, and there seemed no reason.
He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them again, dark, dark brown and filled with misery.
“You will be tried under Scottish law,” he explained. “I am English. I cannot represent you.”
At last she understood. It hit her like a physical blow to the body. In a single move the only help she could hope for had been removed from her. She was absolutely alone. She was too stunned to speak, even to cry.
He was gripping her hand so hard the pressure of his fingers hurt. The slight pain of it was her only link with reality. It was almost a relief.
“We will find the best Scottish lawyer we can,” he was saying. His voice seemed far away. “Callandra will remunerate him of course. And don’t argue about that. Such things can come later. Naturally I will come up to Edinburgh and advise him in every way I know how. But he will have to speak, even if some of the words are mine.”
She wanted to ask him if there was not some way in which he could still conduct the case. She had seen his skill, the power of his brain, his charm and serpentine subtlety to delude, to seem harmless, and then to strike mortally. It had been the one thread of hope she had clung to. But she knew he would not have told her had there been any chance whatever that he could still do it. He would have tried every avenue already, and failed. It was childish, and pointless, to rail against the inevitable. Best to accept it and hoard one’s strength for whatever battles were still to be fought.
“I see….”
He could think of nothing to say. Wordlessly he moved a step forward and took her in his arms, holding her tightly, standing perfectly still, not even stroking her hair or touching her cheek, just holding her.
It was three more largely fruitless days before Monk returned to Ainslie Place to dine. He had spent the intervening time learning more about the reputation of the Farralines, which was interesting, but as far as clearing Hester was concerned, quite useless. They were well respected, both in business and in their private lives. No one had any criticism of them apart from the small jibes that fairly obviously sprang from envy. Apparently Hamish had founded the printing company when he retired from the army and returned to Edinburgh a short time after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Hector had played no part in that, and still did not. He lived, as far as anyone knew, on his army pension, having remained in the service until he was well past middle age. He had visited his father’s family frequently and was always made welcome, and now lived there entirely, in a luxury far beyond anything he could have afforded himself. He drank too much, a great deal too much, and so far as anyone knew, contributed nothing either to the family or the community, but apart from that he was agreeable enough, and caused no one else any trouble. If his family were prepared to put up with him, that was their affair. Every family seemed to have its black sheep, and if there were any disgrace attached to him, it was not known outside the four walls of the Farraline house.
