A Dangerous Mourning

by Anne Perry

  He looked up, saw the accusation in her eyes, and instantly his face hardened.

  “I see you have managed to escape the sickroom this afternoon,” he said with a heavy trace of sarcasm. “I presume now that the ‘illness’ is at an end, her ladyship will recover rapidly?”

  “Is the illness at an end?” she said with elaborate surprise. “I thought from Sergeant Evan that it was far from over; in fact it appears to have suffered a serious relapse, which may even prove fatal.”

  “For the footman, yes—but hardly her ladyship and her family,” he said without trying to hide his bitterness.

  “But for you.” She regarded him without the sympathy she felt. He was in danger of sinking into self-pity, and she believed most people were far better bullied out of it than catered to. Real compassion should be reserved for the helplessly suffering, of whom she had seen immeasurably too many. “So you have apparently given up your career in the police—”

  “I have not given it up,” he contradicted angrily. “You speak as if I did it with deliberate intent. I refused to arrest a man I did not believe guilty, and Runcorn dismissed me for it.”

  “Very noble,” she agreed tersely. “But totally foreseeable. You cannot have imagined for a second that he would do anything else.”

  “Then you will have an excellent fellow-feeling,” he returned savagely. “Since you can hardly have supposed Dr. Pomeroy would permit you to remain at the infirmary after prescribing the dispensing medicine yourself!” He was apparently unaware of having raised his voice, or of the couple at the next table turning to stare at them. “Unfortunately I doubt you can find me private employment detecting as a freelance, as you can with nursing,” he finished.

  “It was your suggestion to Callandra.” Not that she was surprised; it was the only answer that made sense.

  “Of course.” His smile was without humor. “Perhaps you can go and ask her if she has any wealthy friends who need a little uncovering of secrets, or tracing of lost heirs?”

  “Certainly—that is an excellent idea.”

  “Don’t you dare!” He was furious, offended and patronized. “I forbid it!”

  The waiter was standing at his elbow to accept their order, but Monk ignored him.

  “I shall do as I please,” Hester said instantly. “You will not dictate to me what I shall say to Callandra. I should like a cup of chocolate, if you would be so good.”

  The waiter opened his mouth, and then when no one took any notice of him, closed it again.

  “You are an arrogant and opinionated woman,” Monk said fiercely. “And quite the most overbearing I have ever met. And you will not start organizing my life as if you were some damned governess. I am not helpless nor lying in a hospital bed at your mercy.”

  “Not helpless?” Her eyebrows shot up and she looked at him with all the frustration and impotent anger boiling up inside her, the fury at the blindness, complacency, cowardice and petty malice that had conspired to have Percival arrested and Monk dismissed, and the rest of them unable to see any way to begin to redress the situation. “You have managed to find evidence to have the wretched footman taken away in manacles, but not enough to proceed any further. You are without employment or prospects of any, and have covered yourself with dislike. You are sitting in a chocolate house staring at the dregs of an empty cup. And you have the luxury to refuse help?”

  Now the people at all the tables in the immediate vicinity had stopped eating or drinking and were staring at them.

  “I refuse your condescending interference,” he said. “You should marry some poor devil and concentrate your managerial skills on one man and leave the rest of us in peace.”

  She knew precisely what was hurting him, the fear of the future when he had not even the experience of the past to draw on, the specter of hunger and homelessness ahead, the sense of failure. She struck where it would wound the most surely, and perhaps eventually do the most good.

  “Self-pity does not become you, nor does it serve any purpose,” she said quietly, aware now of the people around them. “And please lower your voice. If you expect me to be sorry for you, you are wasting your time. Your situation is of your own making, and not markedly worse than mine—which was also of my own making, I am aware.” She stopped, seeing the overwhelming fury in his face. She was afraid for a moment she had really gone too far.

  “You—” he began. Then very slowly the rage died away and was replaced by a sharp humor, so hard as to be almost sweet, like a clean wind off the sea. “You have a genius for saying the worst possible thing in any given situation,” he finished. “I should imagine a good many patients have taken up their beds and walked, simply to be free of your ministrations and go where they could suffer in peace.”

  “That is very cruel,” she said a little huffily. “I have never been harsh to someone I believed to be genuinely in distress—”

  “Oh.” His eyebrows rose dramatically. “You think my predicament is not real?”

  “Of course your predicament is real,” she said. “But your anguish over it is unhelpful. You have talents, in spite of the Queen Anne Street case. You must find a way to use them for remuneration.” She warmed to the subject. “Surely there are cases the police cannot solve—either they are too difficult or they do not fall within their scope to handle? Are there not miscarriages of justice—” That thought brought her back to Percival again, and without waiting for his reply she hurried on. “What are we going to do about Percival? I am even more sure after speaking to Lady Moidore this morning that there is grave doubt as to whether he had anything to do with Octavia’s death.”

  At last the waiter managed to intrude, and Monk ordered chocolate for her, insisting on paying for it, overriding her protest with more haste than courtesy.

  “Continue to look for proof, I suppose,” he said when the matter was settled and she began to sip at the steaming liquid. “Although if I knew where or what I should have looked already.”

  “I suppose it must be Myles,” she said thoughtfully. “Or Araminta—if Octavia were not as reluctant as we have been led to suppose. She might have known they had an assignation and taken the kitchen knife along, deliberately meaning to kill her.”

  “Then presumably Myles Kellard would know it,” Monk argued. “Or have a very strong suspicion. And from what you said he is more afraid of her than she of him.”

  She smiled. “If my wife had just killed my mistress with a carving knife I would be more than a trifle nervous, wouldn’t you?” But she did not mean it, and she saw from his face that he knew it as well as she. “Or perhaps it was Fenella?” she went on. “I think she has the stomach for such a thing, if she had the motive.”

  “Well, not out of lust for the footman,” Monk replied. “And I doubt Octavia knew anything about her so shocking that Basil would have thrown her out for it. Unless there is a whole avenue we have not explored.”

  Hester drank the last of her chocolate and set the glass down on its saucer. “Well I am still in Queen Anne Street, and Lady Moidore certainly does not seem recovered yet, or likely to be in the next few days. I shall have a little longer to observe. Is there anything you would like me to pursue?”

  “No,” he said sharply. Then he looked down at his own glass on the table in front of him. “It is possible that Percival is guilty; it is simply that I do not feel that what we have is proof. We should respect not only the facts but the law. If we do not, then we lay ourselves open to every man’s judgment of what may be true or false; and a belief of guilt will become the same thing as proof. There must be something above individual judgment, however passionately felt, or we become barbarous again.”

  “Of course he may be guilty,” she said very quietly. “I have always known that. But I shall not let it go by default as long as I can remain in Queen Anne Street and learn anything at all. If I do find anything, I shall have to write to you, because neither you nor Sergeant Evan will be there. Where may I send a letter, so that the rest of th
e household will not know it is to you?”

  He looked puzzled for a moment.

  “I do not post my own mail,” she said with a flicker of impatience. “I seldom leave the house. I shall merely put it on the hall table and the footman or the bootboy will take it.”

  “Oh—of course. Send it to Mr.—” He hesitated, a shadow of a smile crossing his face. “Send it to Mr. Butler—let us move up a rung on the social ladder. At my address in Grafton Street. I shall be there for a few weeks yet.”

  She met his eyes for a moment of clear and total understanding, then rose and took her leave. She did not tell him she was going to make use of the rest of the afternoon to see Callandra Daviot. He might have thought she was going to ask for help for him, which was exactly what she intended to do, but not with his knowledge. He would refuse beforehand, out of pride; when it was a fait accompli he would be obliged to accept.

  “He what?” Callandra was appalled, then she began to laugh in spite of her anger. “Not very practical—but I admire his sentiment, if not his judgment.”

  They were in her withdrawing room by the fire, the sharp winter sun streaming in through the windows. The new parlormaid, replacing the newly married Daisy, a thin waif of a girl with an amazing smile and apparently named Martha, had brought their tea and hot crumpets with butter. These were less ladylike than cucumber sandwiches, but far nicer on a cold day.

  “What could he have accomplished if he had obeyed and arrested Percival?” Hester defended Monk quickly. “Mr. Runcorn would still consider the case closed, and Sir Basil would not permit him to ask any further questions or pursue any investigation. He could hardly even look for more evidence of Percival’s guilt. Everyone else seems to consider the knife and the peignoir sufficient.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” Callandra admitted. “But he is a hot-headed creature. First the Grey case, and now this. He seems to have little more sense than you have.” She took another crumpet. “You have both taken matters into your own hands and lost your livelihoods. What does he propose to do next?”

  “I don’t know!” Hester threw her hands wide. “I don’t know what I am to do myself when Lady Moidore is sufficiently well not to need me. I have no desire whatever to spend my time as a paid companion, fetching and carrying and pandering to imaginary illnesses and fits of the vapors.” Suddenly she was overtaken by a profound sense of failure. “Callandra, what happened to me? I came home from the Crimea with such a zeal to work hard, to throw myself into reform and accomplish so much. I was going to see our hospitals cleaner—and of so much greater comfort for the sick.” Those dreams seemed utterly out of reach now, part of a golden and lost realm. “I was going to teach people that nursing is a noble profession, fit for fine and dedicated women to serve in, women of sobriety and good character who wished to minister to the sick with skill—not just to keep a bare standard of removing the slops and fetching and carrying for the surgeons. How did I throw all that away?”

  “You didn’t throw it away, my dear,” Callandra said gently. “You came home afire with your accomplishments in wartime, and did not realize the monumental inertia of peace, and the English passion to keep things as they are, whatever they are. People speak of this as being an age of immense change, and so it is. We have never been so inventive, so wealthy, so free in our ideas good and bad.” She shook her head. “But there is still an immeasurable amount that is determined to stay the same, unless it is forced, screaming and fighting, to advance with the times. One of those things is the belief that women should learn amusing arts of pleasing a husband, bearing children, and if you cannot afford the servants to do it for you, of raising them, and of visiting the deserving poor at appropriate times and well accompanied by your own kind.”

  A fleeting smile of wry pity touched her lips.

  “Never, in any circumstance, should you raise your voice, or try to assert your opinions in the hearing of gentlemen, and do not attempt to appear clever or strong-minded; it is dangerous, and makes them extremely uncomfortable.”

  “You are laughing at me,” Hester accused her.

  “Only slightly, my dear. You will find another position nursing privately, if we cannot find a hospital to take you. I shall write to Miss Nightingale and see what she can advise.” Her face darkened. “In the meantime, I think Mr. Monk’s situation is rather more pressing. Has he any skills other than those connected with detecting?”

  Hester thought for a moment.

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “Then he will have to detect. In spite of this fiasco, I believe he is gifted at it, and it is a crime for a person to spend his life without using the talents God gave him.” She pushed the crumpet plate towards Hester and Hester took another.

  “If he cannot do it publicly in the police force, then he will have to do it privately.” She warmed to the subject. “He will have to advertise in all the newspapers and periodicals. There must be people who have lost relatives, I mean mislaid them. There are certainly robberies the police do not solve satisfactorily—and in time he will earn a reputation and perhaps be given cases where there has been injustice or the police are baffled.” Her face brightened conspicuously. “Or perhaps cases where the police do not realize there has been a crime, but someone does, and is desirous to have it proved. And regrettably there will be cases where an innocent person is accused and wishes to clear his name.”

  “But how will he survive until he has sufficient of these cases to earn himself a living?” Hester said anxiously, wiping her fingers on the napkin to remove the butter.

  Callandra thought hard for several moments, then came to some inner decision which clearly pleased her.

  “I have always wished to involve myself in something a trifle more exciting than good works, however necessary or worthy. Visiting friends and struggling for hospital, prison or workhouse reform is most important, but we must have a little color from time to time. I shall go into partnership with Mr. Monk.” She took another crumpet. “I will provide the money, to begin with, sufficient for his needs and for the administration of such offices as he has to have. In return I shall take some of the profits, when there are any. I shall do my best to acquire contacts and clients—he will do the work. And I shall be told all that I care about what happens.” She frowned ferociously. “Do you think he will be agreeable?”

  Hester tried to keep a totally sober face, but inside she felt a wild upsurge of happiness.

  “I imagine he will have very little choice. In his position I should leap at such a chance.”

  “Excellent. Now I shall call upon him and make him a proposition along these lines. Which does not answer the question of the Queen Anne Street case. What are we to do about that? It is all very unsatisfactory.”

  However it was another fortnight before Hester came to a conclusion as to what she was going to do. She had returned to Queen Anne Street, where Beatrice was still tense, one minute struggling to put everything to do with Octavia’s death out of her mind, the next still concerned that she might yet discover some hideous secret not yet more than guessed at.

  Other people seemed to have settled into patterns of life more closely approximating normal. Basil went into the City on most days, and did whatever it was he usually did. Hester asked Beatrice in a polite, rather vague way, but Beatrice knew very little about it. It was not considered necessary as part of her realm of interest, so Sir Basil had dismissed her past inquiries with a smile.

  Romola was obliged to forgo her social activities, as were they all, because the house was in mourning. But she seemed to believe that the shadow of investigation had passed completely, and she was relentlessly cheerful about the house, when she was not in the schoolroom supervising the new governess. Only rarely did an underlying unhappiness and uncertainty show through, and it had to do with Cyprian, not any suspicion of murder. She was totally satisfied that Percival was the guilty one and no one else was implicated.

  Cyprian spent more time speaking with Hester, ask
ing her opinions or experiences in all manner of areas, and seemed most interested in her answers. She liked him, and found his attention flattering. She looked forward to her meetings with him on the few occasions when they were alone and might speak frankly, not in the customary platitudes.

  Septimus looked anxious and continued to take port wine from Basil’s cellar, and Fenella continued to drink it, make outrageous remarks, and absent herself from the house as often as she dared without incurring Basil’s displeasure. Where she went to no one knew, although many guesses were hazarded, most of them unkind.

  Araminta ran the house very efficiently, even with some flair, which in the circumstances of mourning was an achievement, but her attitude towards Myles was cold with suspicion, and his towards her was casually indifferent. Now that Percival was arrested, he had nothing to fear, and mere displeasure did not seem to concern him.

  Below stairs the mood was somber and businesslike. No one spoke of Percival, except by accident, and then immediately fell silent or tried to cover the gaffe with more words.

  In that time Hester received a letter from Monk, passed to her by the new footman, Robert, and she took it upstairs to her room to open it.

  December 19th, 1856

  Dear Hester,

  I have received a most unexpected visit from Lady Callandra with a business proposition which was quite extraordinary. Were she a woman of less remarkable character I would suspect your hand in it. As it is I am still uncertain. She did not learn of my dismissal from the police force out of the newspapers; they do not concern themselves with such things. They are far too busy rejoicing in the solution of the Queen Anne Street case and calling for the rapid hanging of footmen with overweening ideas in general, and Percival in particular.

  The Home Office is congratulating itself on such a fortunate solution, Sir Basil is the object of everyone’s sympathy and respect, and Runcorn is poised for promotion. Only Percival languishes in Newgate awaiting trial. And maybe he is guilty? But I do not believe it.