by Anne Perry
“Except the dignity of being master in his own house,” Hester said. “The freedom to have his own opinions, to come and go without deference to anyone else’s plans, and to choose his friends according to his own likes and emotions.”
“Oh, there is a price,” Septimus agreed wryly. “Sometimes I think a very high one.”
Hester frowned. “What about conscience?” She said it gently, aware of the difficult road along which it would lead and the traps for both of them. “If you live on someone else’s bounty, do you not risk compromising yourself so deeply with obligation that you surrender your own agency?”
He looked at her, his pale eyes sad. She had shaved him, and become aware how thin his skin was. He looked older than his years.
“You are thinking about Percival and the trial, aren’t you.” It was barely a question.
“Yes-they lied, didn’t they?”
“Of course,” he agreed. “Although perhaps they hardly saw it that way. They said what was in their best interest, for one reason or another. One would have to be very brave intentionally to defy Basil.” He moved his legs a fraction to be more comfortable. “I don’t suppose he would throw us out, but it would make life most unpleasant from day to day—endless restrictions, humiliations, little scratches on the sensitive skin of the mind.” He looked across at the great picture. “To be dependent is to be so damned vulnerable.”
“And Octavia wanted to leave?” she prompted after a moment.
He returned to the present. “Oh yes, she was all ready to, but Harry had not enough money to provide for her as she was used, which Basil pointed out to him. He was a younger son, you see. No inheritance. His father was very well-to-do. At school with Basil. In fact, I believe Basil was his fag—a junior who is sort of an amiable slave to a senior boy—but perhaps you knew that?”
“Yes,” she acknowledged, thinking of her own brothers.
“Remarkable man, James Haslett,” Septimus said thoughtfully. “Gifted in so many ways, and charming. Good athlete, fine musician, sort of minor poet, and a good mind. Shock of fair hair and a beautiful smile. Harry was like him. But he left his estate to his eldest son, naturally. Everyone does.”
His voice took on a bitter edge. “Octavia would have forfeited a lot if she left Queen Anne Street. And should there be children, which they both wanted very much, then the restrictions upon their finances would be even greater. Octavia would suffer. Of course Harry could not accept that.”
He moved again to make himself more comfortable. “Basil suggested the army as a career, and offered to buy him a commission—which he did. Harry was a natural soldier; he had the gift of command, and the men loved him. It was not what he wanted, and inevitably it meant a long separation—which I suppose was what Basil intended. He was against the marriage in the first place, because of his dislike for James Haslett.”
“So Harry took the commission to obtain the finance for himself and Tavie to have their own house?” Hester could see it vividly. She had known so many young officers that she could picture Harry Haslett as a composite of a hundred she had seen in every mood, victory and defeat, courage and despair, triumph and exhaustion. It was as if she had known him and understood his dreams. Now Octavia was more real to her than Araminta downstairs in the withdrawing room with her tea and conversation, or Beatrice in her bedroom thinking and fearing, and immeasurably more than Romola with her children supervising the new governess in the schoolroom.
“Poor devil,” Septimus said half to himself. “He was a brilliant officer—he earned promotion very quickly. And then he was killed at Balaclava. Octavia was never the same again, poor girl. Her whole world collapsed when the news came; the light fled out of her. It was as if she had nothing left even to hope for.” He fell silent, absorbed in his memory of the day, the numbing grief and the long gray stretch of time afterwards. He looked old and very vulnerable himself.
There was nothing Hester could say to help, and she was wise enough not to try. Words of ease would only belittle his pain. Instead she set about trying to make him more physically comfortable, and spent the next several hours doing so. She fetched clean linen and remade the bed while he sat wrapped up and huddled in the dressing chair. Then she brought up hot water in the great ewer and filled the basin and helped him wash so that he felt fresh. She also brought from the laundry a clean nightshirt, and when he was back in bed again she returned to the kitchen, prepared and brought him up a light meal. After which he was quite ready to sleep for over three hours.
He woke considerably restored, and so obliged to her she was embarrassed. After all, Sir Basil was paying her for her skill, and this was the first time she had exercised the latter in the manner in which he intended.
The following day Septimus was so much better she was able to attend to him in the early morning, then seek Beatrice’s permission to leave Queen Anne Street for the entire afternoon, as long as she returned in sufficient time to prepare Septimus for the night and give him some slight medication to see he rested.
In a gray wind laden with sleet, and with ice on the footpaths, she walked to Harley Street and took a cab, requesting the driver take her to the War Office. There she paid him and alighted with all the aplomb of one who knows precisely where she is going, and that she will be admitted with pleasure, which was not at all the case. She intended to learn all she could about Captain Harry Haslett, without any clear idea of where it might lead, but he was the only member of the family about whom she had known almost nothing until yesterday. Septimus’s account had brought him so sharply to life, and made him so likable and of such deep and abiding importance to Octavia, that Hester understood why two years after his death she still grieved with the same sharp and unendurable loneliness. Hester wished to know of his career.
Suddenly Octavia had become more than just the victim of the crime, a face Hester had never seen and therefore for whom she felt no sense of personality. Since listening to Septimus, Octavia’s emotions had become real, her feelings those Hester might so easily have had herself, had she loved and been loved by any of the young officers she had known.
She climbed the steps of the War Office and addressed the man at the door with all the courtesy and charm she could muster, plus, of course, the due deference from a woman to a man of the military, and just a touch of her own authority, which was the least difficult, since it came to her quite naturally.
“Good afternoon, sir,” she began with an inclination of her head and a smile of friendly openness. “I wonder if I might be permitted to speak with Major Geoffrey Tallis? If you would give him my name I believe he will know it. I was one of Miss Nightingale’s nurses”—she was not above using that magic name if it would help— “and I had occasion to tend Major Tallis in Scutari when he was injured. It concerns the death of a widow of a former officer of distinction, and there is a matter to which Major Tallis may be able to assist—with information that would considerably ease the family’s distress. Would you be good enough to have that message conveyed to him?”
It was apparently the right mixture of supplication, good reasoning, feminine appeal, and the authority of a nurse which draws from most well-bred men an automatic obedience.
“I will certainly have that message delivered to him, ma’am,” he agreed, standing a trifle straighter. “What name shall I give?”
“Hester Latterly,” she answered. “I regret seeking him at such short notice, but I am still nursing a gentleman late of active service, and he is not well enough that I should leave him for above a few hours.” That was a very elastic version of the truth, but not quite a downright lie.
“Of course.” His respect increased. He wrote down the name “Hester Latterly” and added a note as to her occupation and the urgency of her call, summoned an orderly and dispatched him with the message to Major Tallis.
Hester was quite happy to wait in silence, but the doorman seemed disposed to converse, so she answered his questions on the battles she had witnessed and fou
nd they had both been present at the battle of Inkermann. They were deep in reminiscences when the orderly returned to say Major Tallis would receive Miss Latterly in ten minutes, if she would care to wait upon him in his office.
She accepted with a trifle more haste than she had meant to; it was a definite subtraction from the dignity she had tried to establish, but she thanked the doorman for his courtesy. Then she walked very uprightly behind the orderly inside the entrance hall, up the wide staircase and into the endless corridors until she was shown into a waiting room with several chairs, and left.
It was rather more than ten minutes before Major Tallis opened the inner door. A dapper lieutenant walked out past Hester, apparently without seeing her, and she was shown in.
Geoffrey Tallis was a handsome man in his late thirties, an ex-cavalry officer who had been given an administrative post after a serious injury, from which he still walked with a limp. But without Hester’s care he might well have lost his leg altogether and been unable to continue a career of any sort. His face lit with pleasure when he saw her, and he held out his hand in welcome.
She gave him hers and he grasped it hard.
“My dear Miss Latterly, what a remarkable pleasure to see you again, and in so much more agreeable circumstances. I hope you are well, and that things prosper with you?”
She was quite honest, not for any purpose but because the words were spoken before she thought otherwise.
“I am very well, thank you, and things prosper only moderately. My parents died, and I am obliged to make my way, but I have the means, so I am fortunate. But I admit it is hard to adjust to England again, and to peace, where everyone’s preoccupations are so different—” She left the wealth of implication unsaid: the withdrawing room manners, the stiff skirts, the emphasis on social position and manners. She could see that he read it all in her face, and his own experiences had been sufficiently alike for more explanation to be redundant.
“Oh indeed.” He sighed, letting go of her hand. “Please be seated and tell me what I may do to be of help to you.”
She knew enough not to waste his time. The preliminaries had already been dealt with.
“What can you tell me of Captain Harry Haslett, who was killed at Balaclava? I ask because his widow has recently met a most tragic death. I am acquainted with her mother; indeed I have been nursing her through her time of bereavement, and am presently nursing her uncle, a retired officer.” If he asked her Septimus’s name she would affect not to know the circumstances of his “retirement.”
Major Tallis’s face clouded over immediately.
“An excellent officer, and one of the nicest men I ever knew. He was a fine commander of men. It came to him naturally because he had courage and a sense of justice that men admired. There was humor in him, and some love of adventure, but not bravado. He never took unnecessary chances.” He smiled with great sadness. “I think more than most men, he wanted to live. He had a great love for his wife—in fact the army was not the career he would have chosen; he entered it only to earn himself the means to support his wife in the manner he wished and to make some peace with his father-in-law, Sir Basil Moidore—who paid for his commission as a wedding gift, I believe, and watched over his career with keen interest. What an ironic tragedy.”
“Ironic?” she said quickly.
His face creased with pain and his voice lowered instinctively, but his words were perfectly clear.
“It was Sir Basil who arranged his promotion, and thus his transfer from the regiment in which he was to Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade, and of course they led the charge at Balaclava. If he had remained a lieutenant as he was, he would very probably be alive today.”
“What happened?” An awful possibility was opening up in front of her, so ugly she could not bear to look at it, nor yet could she look away. “Do you know of whom Sir Basil asked his favor? A great deal of honor depends upon it,” she pressed with all the gravity she could. “And, I am beginning to think, the truth of Octavia Haslett’s death. Please, Major Tallis, tell me about Captain Haslett’s promotion?”
He hesitated only a moment longer. The debt he owed her, their common memories, and his admiration and grief over Haslett’s death prevailed.
“Sir Basil is a man of great power and influence, perhaps you are not aware quite how much. He has far more wealth than he displays, although that is considerable, but he also had obligations owed him, debts both of assistance and of finance from the past, and I think a great deal of knowledge—” He left the uses of that unspoken. “He would not find it difficult to accomplish the transfer of an officer from one regiment to another in order to achieve his promotion, if he wished it. A letter—sufficient money to purchase the new commission—”
“But how would Sir Basil know whom to approach in the new regiment?” she pressed, the idea taking firmer shape in her mind all the time.
“Oh—because he is quite well acquainted with Lord Cardigan, who would naturally be aware of all the possible vacancies in command.”
“And of the nature of the regiment,” she added.
“Of course.” He looked puzzled.
“And their likely dispositions?”
“Lord Cardigan would—naturally. But Sir Basil hardly—”
“You mean Sir Basil was unaware of the course of the campaign and the personalities of the commanders?” She allowed the heavy doubt through her expression for him to see.
“Well—” He frowned, beginning to glimpse what he also found too ugly to contemplate. “Of course I am not privy to his communication with Lord Cardigan. Letters to and from the Crimea take a considerable time; even on the fastest packet boats it would not be less than ten or fourteen days. Things can change greatly in that time. Battles can be won or lost and a great deal of ground altered between opposing forces.”
“But regiments do not change their natures, Major.” She forced him to realism. “A competent commander knows which regiments he would choose to lead a charge, the more desperate the charge the more certain would he be to pick exactly the right man—and the right captain, who had courage, flair, and the absolute loyalty of his men. He would also choose someone tried in the field, yet uninjured so far, and not weary from defeat, or failure, or so scarred in spirit as to be uncertain of his mettle.”
He stared at her without speaking.
“In fact once raised to captain, Harry Haslett would be ideal, would he not?”
“He would,” he said almost under his breath.
“And Sir Basil saw to his promotion and his change of posting to Lord Cardigan’s Light Brigade. Do you suppose any of the correspondence on the subject is still extant?”
“Why, Miss Latterly? What is it you are seeking?”
To lie to him would be contemptible—and also alienate his sympathies.
“The truth about Octavia Haslett’s death,” she answered.
He sighed heavily. “Was she not murdered by some servant or other? I seem to recollect seeing it in the newspapers. The man was just hanged, was he not?”
“Yes,” she agreed with a heavy weariness of failure inside her. “But the day she died she learned something which shook her so deeply she told her uncle it was the most dreadful truth, and she wanted only one more piece of evidence to prove it. I am beginning to believe that it may have concerned the death of her husband. She was thinking of it the day of her own death. We had previously assumed that what she discovered concerned her family still living, but perhaps it did not. Major Tallis, would it be possible to learn if she came here that day—if she saw someone?”
Now he looked very troubled.
“What day was it?”
She told him.
He pulled a bell rope and a young officer appeared and snapped to attention.
“Payton, will you convey my compliments to Colonel Sidgewick and ask him if at any time around the end of November last year the widow of Captain Harry Haslett called upon his office. It is a matter of considerable importance, con
cerning both honor and life, and I would be most obliged if he would give me an answer of exactness as soon as may be possible. This lady, who is one of Miss Nightingale’s nurses, is waiting upon the answer.”
“Sir!” The junior snapped to attention once again, turned on his heel and departed.
While he was gone Major Tallis apologized for requiring Hester to spend her time in the waiting room, but he had other business obligations which he must discharge. She understood and assured him it was precisely what she expected and was perfectly content. She would write letters and otherwise occupy herself.
It was not long, a matter of fifteen or twenty minutes, before the door opened and the lieutenant returned. As soon as he left, Major Tallis called Hester in. His face was white, his eyes full of anxiety and fearful pity.
“You were perfectly correct,” he said very quietly. “Octavia Haslett was here on the afternoon of her death, and she spoke with Colonel Sidgewick. She learned from him exactly what you learned from me, and from her words and expression on hearing, it appears she drew the same conclusions. I am most profoundly grieved, and I feel guilty—I am not sure for what. Perhaps that the whole matter occurred, and no one did anything to prevent it. Truly, Miss Latterly, I am deeply sorry.”
“Thank you—thank you, Major Tallis.” She forced a sickly smile, her mind whirling. “I am most grateful to you.”
“What are you going to do?” he said urgently.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure what I can do. I shall consult with the police officer on the case; I think that would be wisest.”
“Please do, Miss Latterly—please be most careful. I—”
“I know,” she said quickly. “I have learned much in confidence. Your name will not be mentioned, I give you my word. Now I must go. Thank you again.” And without waiting for him to add anything further, she turned and left, almost running down the long corridor and making three wrong turnings before she finally came to the exit.
