by Anne Perry
“Yes,” Monk said miserably. “Yes—I am afraid I would too. Thank you for your time, Ginny. I’ll take myself downstairs.”
It was not until Monk had fruitlessly interviewed the rest of the staff, who bore out what Hagger and Ginny had said, partaken of luncheon in the servants’ hall, and was outside in the street that he realized just how much of his own life had come back to him unbidden: his training in commerce, his letters home, Walbrook’s ruin and his own consequent change of fortune—but not the face of the woman who so haunted him, who she was, or why he cared so intensely … or what had happened to her.
6
With Major Tiplady’s enthusiastic permission, Hester accepted an invitation to dine with Oliver Rathbone in the very proper circumstances of taking a hansom to the home in Primrose Hill of Rathbone’s father, who proved to be an elderly gentleman of charm and distinction.
Hester, determined not to be late, actually arrived before Rathbone himself, who had been held up by a jury taking far longer to return than foreseen. She alighted at the address given her, and when she was admitted by the manservant, found herself in a small sitting room. It opened onto a garden in which late daffodils were blowing in the shade under the trees and a massive honeysuckle vine all but drowned the gate in the wall leading into a very small, overgrown orchard whose apples, in full blossom, she could just see over the top.
The room itself was crowded with books of various shapes and sizes, obviously positioned according to subject matter and not to please the eye. On the walls were several paintings in watercolors, one which she noticed immediately because it held a place of honor above the mantel. It was of a youth in costume of leather doublet and apron, sitting on the base of a pillar. The whole work was in soft earth colors, ochers and sepia, except for the dark red of his cap, and it was unfinished; the lower half of his body, and a small dog he reached out to stroke, were still in sketch form.
“You like it?” Henry Rathbone asked her. He was taller than his son, and very lean, shoulders stooped as from many years of intensive study. His face was aquiline, all nose and jaw, and yet there was a serenity in it, a mildness that set her at ease the moment she saw him. His gray hair was very sparse, and he looked at her with shortsighted blue eyes.
“Yes I do, very much,” she answered honestly. “The more I look at it, the more it pleases me.”
“It is my favorite,” he agreed. “Perhaps because it is unfinished. Completed it might have been harder, more final. This leaves room for the imagination, almost a sense of collaboration with the artist.”
She knew precisely what he meant, and found herself smiling at him.
They moved on to discuss other things, and she questioned him shamelessly because she was so interested, and because she was so comfortable with him. He had traveled in many foreign places, and indeed spoke the German language fluently. He seemed not to have been enraptured with scenery, totally unlike herself, but he had met and fallen into conversations with all manner of unlikely people in little old shops which he loved rummaging through. No one was too outwardly ordinary to excite his interest, or for him to have discovered some aspect of their lives which was unique.
She barely noticed that Rathbone was an hour late, and when he came in in a flurry of apologies, she was amused to see the consternation in his face that no one had missed him, except the cook, whose preparations were discommoded.
“Never mind,” Henry Rathbone said easily, rising to his feet. “It is not worth being upset about. It cannot be helped. Miss Latterly, please come into the dining room; we shall do the best we can with what there is.”
“You should have started without me,” Oliver said with a flash of irritation across his face. “Then you would have had it at its best.”
“There is no need to feel guilty,” his father replied. He indicated where Hester was to sit, and the manservant held her chair for her. “We know you were detained unavoidably. And I believe we were enjoying ourselves.”
“Indeed I was,” Hester said sincerely, and took her place.
The meal was served. The soup was excellent, and Rathbone made no comment; to do so now would be so obviously ungracious. When the fish was brought, a little dry from having had to wait, he bit into it and met Hester’s eye, but refrained from comment.
“I spoke with Monk yesterday,” he said at length. “I am afraid we have made almost no progress.”
Hester was disappointed, yet the mere fact that he had kept from mentioning the subject for so long had forewarned her that the news would be poor.
“That only means that we have not yet discovered the reason,” she said doggedly. “We shall have to look harder.”
“Or persuade her to tell us,” Oliver added, placing his knife and fork together and indicating to the manservant that he might remove the plates.
The vegetables were a trifle overdone by any standard, but the cold saddle of mutton was perfect, and the array of pickles and chutneys with it rich and full of variety and interest.
“Are you acquainted with the case, Mr. Rathbone?” Hester turned to Henry enquiringly, not wishing him to be excluded from the conversation.
“Oliver has mentioned it,” he replied, helping himself liberally to a dark chutney. “What is it you hope to find?”
“The true reason why she killed him. Unfortunately it is beyond question that she did.”
“What reason has she given you?”
“Jealousy of her hostess of that evening, but we know that is not true. She said she believed her husband was having an affair with this woman, Louisa Furnival, but we know that he was not, and that she knew that.”
“But she will not tell you the truth?”
“No.”
He frowned, cutting off a piece of meat and spreading it liberally with the chutney and mashed potato.
“Let us be logical about it,” he said thoughtfully. “Did she plan this murder before she committed it?”
“We don’t know. There is nothing to indicate whether she did or not.”
“So it might have been a spur-of-the-moment act—lacking forethought, and possibly not considering the consequences either.”
“But she is not a foolish woman,” Hester protested. “She cannot have failed to know she would be hanged.”
“If she was caught!” he argued. “It is possible an overwhelming fury possessed her and she acted unreasonably.”
Hester frowned.
“My dear, it is a mistake to imagine we are all reasonable all of the time,” he said gently. “People act from all sorts of impulses, sometimes quite contrary to their own interests, had they stopped to think. But so often we don’t, we do what our emotions drive us to. If we are frightened we either run or freeze motionless, or we lash out, according to our nature and past experience.”
He ignored his food, looking at her with concentration. “I think most tragedies happen when people have had too little time to think or weigh one course against another, or perhaps even to assess the real situation. They leap in before they have seen or understood. And then it is too late.” Absentmindedly he pushed the pickle toward Oliver. “We are full of preconceptions; we judge from our own viewpoint. We believe what we have to, to keep the whole edifice of our views of things to be as they are. A new idea is still the most dangerous thing in the world. A new idea about something close to ourselves, coming quite suddenly and without warning, can make us so disconcerted, so frightened at the idea of all our beliefs about ourselves and those around us crumbling about our ears that we reach to strike at the one who has introduced this explosion into our lives—to deny it, violently if need be.”
“Perhaps we don’t know nearly enough about Alexandra Carlyon,” she said thoughtfully, staring at her plate.
“We know a great deal more now than we did a week ago,” Oliver said quietly. “Monk has been to her house and spoken with her servants, but the picture that emerges of both her and the general does nothing to set her in a better light, or explain why s
he should kill him. He was chilly, and possibly a bore, but he was faithful to her, generous with his money, had an excellent reputation, indeed almost perfect—and he was a devoted father to his son, and not unreasonable to his daughters.”
“He refused to allow Sabella to devote herself to the Church,” Hester said hotly. “And forced her to marry Fenton Pole.”
Oliver smiled. “Not unreasonable, really. I think most fathers might well do the same. And Pole seems a decent enough man.”
“He still ordered her against her will,” she protested.
“That is a father’s prerogative, especially where daughters are concerned.”
She drew in her breath sharply, longing to remonstrate, even to accuse him of injustice, but she did not want to appear abrasive and ungracious to Henry Rathbone. It was an inappropriate time to pursue her own causes, however justifiable. She liked him more than she had expected, and his ill opinion of her would hurt. He was utterly unlike her own father, who had been very conventional, not greatly given to discussion; and yet in his company she was reminded, with comfort and a stab of pain, of all the wealth of belonging, the ease of family. Her own loneliness was sharpened by the sudden awareness. She had forgotten, perhaps deliberately, how good it had been when her parents were alive, in spite of the restrictions, the discipline and the staid and old-fashioned views. She had chosen to forget, to accommodate her grief.
Now, unaccountably, with Henry Rathbone the best of it returned.
Henry interrupted her thoughts, jerking her back to the present and the Carlyon case. “But that all happened some time ago. The daughter is married already, from what you say?”
“Yes. They have a child,” she said hastily.
“So this may rankle still, but it will not be the motive for murder so long after?”
“No.”
“Let us suggest a hypothesis,” Henry said thoughtfully, his meal almost forgotten. “The crime seems to have been committed on the spur of the moment. Alexandra saw the opportunity and took it—rather clumsily, as it turns out. Which means, if we are correct, either that she learned something that evening which so distressed her that she lost all sense of reason or self-preservation, or that she already wished to kill him but had not previously found an opportunity to do it.” He looked at Hester. “Miss Latterly, in your judgment, what might shake a woman so? In other words, what would a woman hold so dear that she would kill to protect it?”
Oliver stopped eating, his fork in the air.
“We haven’t looked at it that way,” he said, turning to her. “Hester?”
She thought, wishing to give the most careful and intelligent answer she could.
“Well, I suppose the thing that would make me most likely to act without thinking, even of the risk to myself, would be some threat to the people I loved most—which in Alexandra’s case would surely be her children.” She allowed herself a half smile. “Regrettably it was obviously not her husband. To me it would have been my parents and brothers, but all of them except Charles are dead anyway.” She said it because it was high in her mind, not to seek sympathy, then immediately wished she had not. She went on before they could offer any. “But let us say family—and in the case where there are children, I imagine one’s home as well. There are some homes that go back for generations, even centuries. I would imagine one might care about them so extremely as to kill to preserve them, or to keep them from falling into the possession of others. But that does not apply here.”
“Not according to Monk,” Oliver agreed, watching with dark, intent eyes. “And anyway, the house is his, not hers—and not an ancestral home in any way. What else?”
Hester smiled wryly, very aware of him. “Well, if I were beautiful, I suppose my looks would also be precious to me. Is Alexandra beautiful?”
He thought for a moment, his face reflecting a curious mixture of humor and pain. “Not beautiful, strictly speaking. But she is most memorable, and perhaps that is better. She has a face of distinct character.”
“So far you have only mentioned one thing which she might care about sufficiently,” Henry Rathbone pointed out. “What about her reputation?”
“Oh yes,” Hester agreed quickly. “If one’s honor is sufficiently threatened, if one were to be accused of something wrongfully, that could make one lose one’s temper and control and every bit of good sense. It is one of the things I hate above all else. That is a distinct possibility. Or the honor of someone I loved—that would cut equally deeply.”
“Who threatened her honor?” Oliver asked with a frown. “We have heard nothing at all to suggest anyone did. And if it were so, why should she not tell us? Or could it have been someone else’s honor? Who? Not his, surely?”
“Blackmail,” Hester said immediately. “A person blackmailed would naturally not tell—or it would reveal the very subject she had killed to hide.”
“By her husband?” Oliver said skeptically. “That would be robbing one pocket to pay the other.”
“Not for money,” she said quickly, leaning forward over the table. “Of course that would make no sense. For something else—perhaps simply power over her.”
“But who would he tell, my dear Hester? Any scandal about her would reflect just as badly upon him. Usually if a woman has disgraced herself, it is the husband whom the blackmailer would tell.”
“Oh.” She saw the point of what he was saying and it made excellent sense. “Yes.” She looked at his eyes, expecting criticism, and saw a gentleness and a humor that for an instant robbed her of her concentration. She was far too comfortable here with the two of them she liked so much. It would be so easy to wish to stay, to wish to belong. She recalled herself rapidly to the subject.
“It doesn’t make sense as it is,” she said quietly, lowering her eyes and looking away from him. “You said he was an excellent father, with the exception a couple of years ago of forcing Sabella to marry instead of taking the veil.”
“Then if it doesn’t make sense as it is,” Henry said thoughtfully, “it means that either there is some element which you have not thought of, or else you are seeing something wrongly.”
Hester looked at his mild, ascetic face and realized what intelligence there was in his eyes. It was the cleverest face she had seen that held absolutely nothing spiteful or ungenerous whatever. She found herself smiling, without any specific reason.
“Then we had better go back and look at it again,” she resolved aloud. “I think perhaps it is the second of those two cases, and we are seeing something wrongly.”
“Are you sure it is worth it?” Henry asked her gently. “Even if you do discover why she killed him, will it alter anything? Oliver?”
“I don’t know. Quite possibly not,” Oliver confessed. “But I cannot go into court with no more than I know now.”
“That is your pride,” Henry said frankly. “What about her interests? Surely if she wished you to defend her with the truth, she would have told it you?”
“I suppose so,” he conceded. “But I should be the judge of what is her best defense in law, not she.”
“I think you simply don’t wish to be beaten,” his father said, returning to his plate. “But I fear you may find the victory very small, even if you can obtain it. Who will it serve? It may merely demonstrate that Oliver Rathbone can discover the truth and lay it bare for all to see, even if the wretched accused would rather be hanged than reveal it herself.”
“I shan’t reveal it if she does not give me permission,” Oliver said quickly, his face pink, his dark eyes wide. “For heaven’s sake, what do you take me for?”
“Occasionally hotheaded, my dear boy,” Henry replied. “And possessed of an intellectual arrogance and curiosity, which I fear you have inherited from me.”
They continued the evening very pleasantly speaking of any number of things other than the Carlyon case. They discussed music, of which all were fond. Henry Rathbone was quite knowledgeable, having a great love of Beethoven’s late quartets, compo
sed when Beethoven himself was already severely deaf. They had a darkness and a complexity he found endlessly satisfying, and a beauty wrought out of pain which excited his pity but also reached a deeper level of his nature and fed a hunger there.
They also spoke of political events, the news from India and the growing unrest there. They touched only once on the Crimean War, but Henry Rathbone was so infuriated by the incompetence and the unnecessary deaths that after a quick glance at each other, Hester and Oliver changed the subject and did not hark back to it again.
Before leaving Hester and Oliver took a slow stroll around the garden and down to the honeysuckle hedge at the border of the orchard. The smell of the first flowers was close and sweet in the hazy darkness and she could see only the outline of the longest upflung branches against the starlit sky. For once they did not talk of the case.
“The news from India is very dark,” she said, staring across at the pale blur of the apple blossoms. “It is so peaceful here it seems doubly painful to think of mutiny and battle. I feel guilty to have such beauty …”
He was standing very close to her and she was aware of the warmth of him. It was an acutely pleasant feeling.
“There is no need for guilt,” he replied. She knew he was smiling although she had her back to him, and could scarcely have seen him in the dark anyway. “You could not help them,” he went on, “by not appreciating what you have. That would merely be ungrateful.”
“Of course you are right,” she agreed. “It is selfindulgent for the sake of conscience, but actually achieves nothing at all, except ingratitude, as you say. I used to walk near the battlefields sometimes, in the Crimea, and knew what had happened so close by, and yet I needed the silence and the flowers, or I could not have gone on. If you don’t keep your strength, both physical and spiritual, you are of no help to those who need you. All my intelligence knows that.”
