by Anne Perry
“Yes,” Miss Buchan agreed, turning towards Hester, a half smile on her lips. “Thaddeus had just the same way of looking at you, careful, as if he were measuring you in his mind.”
“Was he fond of his father too?” Hester tried to picture Randolf as a young man, proud of his only son, spending time with him, telling him about his great campaigns, and the boy’s face lighting up with the glamour and the danger and the heroism of it.
“Just the same,” Miss Buchan said with a strange, sad expression in her face, and a flicker of anger coming and going so rapidly Hester only just caught it.
“And to his mother?” Hester asked, not knowing what to say next.
Miss Buchan looked at her, then away again and out of the window, her face puckered with pain.
“Miss Felicia was different from Miss Alexandra,” she said with something like a sob in her voice. “Poor creature. May God forgive her.”
“And yet you find it in your heart to be sorry for her?” Hester said gently, and with respect.
“Of course,” Miss Buchan replied with a sad little smile. “You know what you are taught, what everyone tells you is so. You are all alone. Who is there to ask? You do what you think—you weigh what you value most. Unity: one face to the outside world. Too much to lose, you see. She lacked the courage …”
Hester did not understand. She groped after threads of it, and the moment she had them the next piece made no sense. But how much dare she ask without risking Miss Buchan’s rebuffing her and ceasing to talk at all? One word or gesture of seeming intrusion, a hint of curiosity, and she might withdraw altogether.
“It seems she had everything to lose, poor woman,” she said tentatively.
“Not now,” Miss Buchan replied with sudden bitterness. “It’s all too late now. It’s over—the harm is all done.”
“You don’t think the trial might make a difference?” Hester said with fading hope. “You sounded before as if you did.”
Miss Buchan was silent for several minutes. Outside a gardener dropped a rake and the sound of the wood on the path came up through the open window.
“It might help Miss Alexandra,” Miss Buchan said at last. “Please God it will, although I don’t see how. But what will it do to the child? And God knows, it can’t alter the past for anyone else. What’s done is done.”
Hester had a curious sensation, almost like a tingling in the brain. Suddenly shards of a pattern fell together, incomplete, vague, but with a tiny, hideous thread of sense.
“That is why she won’t tell us,” she said very slowly. “To protect the child?”
“Tell you?” Miss Buchan faced Hester, a pucker of confusion between her brows.
“Tell us the real reason why she killed the general.”
“No—of course not,” she said slowly. “How could she? But how did you know? No one told you.”
“I guessed.”
“She’ll not admit it. God help her, she thinks that is all there is to it—just the one.” Her eyes filled with tears of pity and helplessness, and she turned away again. “But I know there are others, of course there are. I knew it from his face, from the way he smiles, and tells lies, and cries at night.” She spoke very quietly, her voice full of old pain. “He’s frightened, and excited, and grown up, and a tiny child, and desperately, sickeningly alone, all at the same time like his father before him, God damn him!” Miss Buchan took a long, shuddering breath, so deep it seemed to rack her whole, thin body. “Can you save her, Miss Latterly?”
“I don’t know,” Hester said honestly. All the pity in the world now would not permit a lie. It was not the time. “But I will do everything I can—that I swear to you.”
Without saying anything else she stood up and left the room, closing the door behind her and walking away towards the rest of the small rooms in the wing. She was looking for Cassian.
She found him standing in the corridor outside the door to his bedroom, staring up at her, his face pale, his eyes careful.
“You did the right thing to get Edith to stop the fight,” she said matter-of-factly. “Do you like Miss Buchan?”
He continued to stare at her without speaking, his eyelids heavy, his face watchful and uncertain.
“Shall we go into your room?” she suggested. She was not sure how she was going to approach the subject, but nothing now would make her turn back. The truth was almost reached, at least this part of it.
Wordlessly he turned around and opened the door. She followed him in. Suddenly she was furious that the burden of so much tragedy, guilt and death should rest on the narrow, fragile shoulders of such a child.
He walked over to the window; the light on his face showed the marks of tears on his soft, blemishless skin. His bones were still not fully formed, his nose just beginning to strengthen and lose its childish outline, his brows to darken.
“Cassian,” she began quietly.
“Yes ma’am?” He looked at her, turning his head slowly.
“Miss Buchan was right, you know. Your mother is not a wicked person, and she does love you very much.”
“Then why did she kill my papa?” His lip trembled and with great difficulty he stopped himself from crying.
“You loved your papa very much?”
He nodded, his hand going up to his mouth.
The rage inside her made her tremble.
“You had some special secrets with your papa, didn’t you?”
His right shoulder came up and for an instant a half smile brushed over his mouth. Then there was fear in his eyes, a guarded look.
“I’m not going to ask you about it,” she said gently. “Not if he told you not to tell anyone. Did he make you promise?”
He nodded again.
“That must have been very difficult for you?”
“Yes.”
“Because you couldn’t tell Mama?”
He looked frightened and backed away half a step.
“Was that important, not to tell Mama?”
He nodded slowly, his eyes on her face.
“Did you want to tell her, at first?”
He stood quite still.
Hester waited. Far outside she heard faint murmurs from the street, carriage wheels, a horse’s hooves. Beyond the window the leaves flickered in the wind and threw patterns of light across the glass.
Slowly he nodded.
“Did it hurt?”
Again the long hesitation, then he nodded.
“But it was a very grown-up thing to do, and being a man of honor, you didn’t tell anyone?”
He shook his head.
“I understand.”
“Are you going to tell Mama? Papa said if she ever knew she’d hate me—she wouldn’t love me anymore, she wouldn’t understand, and she’d send me away. Is that what happened?” His eyes were very large, full of fear and defeat, as if in his heart he had already accepted it was true.
“No.” She swallowed hard. “She went because they took her, not because of you at all. And I’m not going to tell her, but I think perhaps she knows already—and she doesn’t hate you. She’ll never hate you.”
“Yes she will! Papa said so!” His voice rose in panic and he backed away from her.
“No she won’t! She loves you very much indeed. So much she is prepared to do anything she can for you.”
“Then why has she gone away? She killed Papa, Grandmama told me—and Grandpapa said so too. And they’ll take her away and she’ll never come back. Grandmama said so. She said I’ve got to forget her, not think about her anymore! She’s never coming back!”
“Is that what you want to do—forget her?”
There was a long silence.
His hand came up to his mouth again. “I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t, I’m sorry. I should not have asked. Are you glad now no one is doing that to you anymore—what Papa did?”
His eyelids lowered again and he hunched his right shoulder and looked at the ground.
Hes
ter felt sick.
“Someone is. Who?”
He swallowed hard and said nothing.
“Someone is. You don’t have to tell me who—not if it’s secret.”
He looked up at her.
“Someone is?” she repeated.
Very slowly he nodded.
“Just one person?”
He looked down again, frightened.
“All right—it’s your secret. But if you want any help any time, or someone to talk to, you go to Miss Buchan. She’s very good at secrets, and she understands. Do you hear me?”
He nodded.
“And remember, your mama loves you very much, and I am going to try to do everything I can to see that she comes back to you. I promise you.”
He looked at her with steady blue eyes, slowly filling with tears.
“I promise,” she repeated. “I’m going to start right now. Remember, if you want to be with somebody, talk to them, you go to Miss Buchan. She’s here all the time, and she understands secrets—promise me?”
Again he nodded, and turned away as his eyes brimmed over.
She longed to go over and put her arms around him, let him weep, but if he did he might not be able to regain the composure, the dignity and self-reliance he must have in order to survive the next few days or weeks.
Reluctantly she turned and went out of the door, closing it softly behind her.
Hester excused herself to Edith as hastily as possible and without any explanation, then as soon as she was on the pavement she began to walk briskly towards William Street. She hailed the very first hansom she saw and requested the driver to take her to Vere Street, off Lincoln’s Inn Fields, then she sat back to compose herself until she should arrive at Rathbone’s office.
Once there she alighted, paid the driver and went in. The clerk greeted her civilly, but with some surprise.
“I have no appointment,” she said quickly. “But I must see Mr. Rathbone as soon as possible. I have discovered the motive in the Carlyon case, and as you must know, there is no time to be lost.”
He rose from his seat, setting down his quill and closing the ledger.
“Indeed, ma’am. Then I will inform Mr. Rathbone. He is with a client at the moment, but I am sure he will be most obliged if you are able to wait until he is free.”
“Certainly.” She sat down and with the greatest difficulty watched the hands on the clock go around infinitely slowly until twenty-five minutes later the inner office door opened. A large gentleman came out, his gold watch chain across an extensive stomach. He glanced at her without speaking, wished the clerk good-day, and went out.
The clerk went in to Rathbone immediately, and within a moment was out again.
“If you please, Miss Latterly?” He stood back, inviting her in.
“Thank you.” She barely glanced at him as she passed. Oliver Rathbone was sitting at his desk and he rose to his feet before she was across the threshold.
“Hester?”
She closed the door behind her and leaned against it, suddenly breathless.
“I know why Alexandra killed the general!” She swallowed hard, an ache in her throat. “And my God, I think I would have done it too. And gone to the gallows before I would have told anyone why.”
“Why?” His voice was husky, little more than a whisper. “For God’s sake why?”
“Because he was having carnal knowledge of his own son!”
“Dear heaven! Are you sure?” He sat down suddenly as though all the strength had gone out of him. “General Carlyon—was …? Hester …?”
“Yes—and not only he, but probably the old colonel as well—and God knows who else.”
Rathbone shut his eyes and his face was ashen.
“No wonder she killed him,” he said very quietly.
Hester came over and sat down on the chair opposite the desk. There was no need to spell it out. They both knew the helplessness of a woman who wanted to leave her husband without his agreement, and that even if she did, all children were legally his, not hers. By law she would forfeit all right to them, even nursing babies, let alone an eight-year-old son.
“What else could she do?” Hester said blankly. “There was no one to turn to—I don’t suppose anyone would have believed her. They’d lock her up for slander, or insanity, if she tried to say such a thing about a pillar of the military establishment like the general.”
“His parents?” he said, then laughed bitterly. “I don’t suppose they’d ever believe it, even if they saw the act.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “The old colonel does it too—so he would be no help. Presumably Felicia never knew? I don’t know how Alexandra did; the child certainly didn’t tell her. He was sworn to secrecy, and terrified. He’d been told his mother wouldn’t love him anymore, that she’d hate him and send him away if she ever found out.”
His face was pale, the skin drawn tight.
“How do you know?”
Detail by detail she related to him the events of the afternoon. The clerk knocked on the door and said that the next client was here. Rathbone told him to go away again.
“Oh God,” he said quietly when she had finished. He turned from the window where he had moved when she was halfway through. His face was twisted with pity, and anger for the pain and loneliness and the fear of it. “Hester …”
“You can help her, can’t you?” she pleaded. “She’ll hang for it, if you don’t, and he’ll have no one. He’ll be left in that house—for it to go on.”
“I know!” He turned away and looked out of the window. “I’ll do what I can. Let me think. Come back tomorrow, with Monk.” His hands clenched by his sides. “We have no proof.”
She wanted to cry out that there must be, but she knew he did not speak lightly, or from defeat, only from the need to be exact. She rose to her feet and stood a little behind him.
“You’ve done what seemed impossible before,” she said tentatively.
He looked back at her, smiling, his eyes very soft.
“My dear Hester …”
She did not flinch or ease the demand in her face.
“I’ll try,” he said quietly. “I promise you I will try.”
She smiled quickly, reached up her hand and brushed his cheek, without knowing why, then turned and left, going out into the clerk’s office with her head high.
The following day, late in the morning, Rathbone, Monk and Hester sat in the office in Vere Street with all doors closed and all other business suspended until they should have reached a decision. It was June 16.
Monk had just heard from Hester what she had learned at the Carlyon house. He sat pale-faced, his lips tight, his knuckles clenched. It marred his opinion of himself that he was shocked, but he was, too deeply to conceal it. It had not occurred to him that someone of the breeding and reputation of General Carlyon should indulge in such a devastating abuse. He was too angry even to resent the fact that it had not occurred to him to look for such an answer. All his thoughts were outward, to Alexandra, to Cassian, and to what was to come.
“Is it a defense?” he demanded of Rathbone. “Will the judge dismiss it?”
“No,” Rathbone said quietly. He was very grave this morning and his long face was marked by lines of tiredness; even his eyes looked weary. “I have been reading cases all night, checking every point of law I can find on the subject, and I come back each time to what is, I think, our only chance, and that is a defense of provocation. The law states that if a person receives extraordinary provocation, and that may take many forms, then the charge of murder may be reduced to manslaughter.”
“That’s not good enough,” Monk interrupted, his voice rising with his emotion. “This was justifiable. For God’s sake, what else could she do? Her husband was committing incest and sodomy against her child. She had not only a right but a duty to protect him. The law gave her nothing—she has no rights in her son. In law it is his child, but the law never intended he should be free to do that to him.�
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“Of course not,” Rathbone agreed quietly, the effort of restraint trembling behind it. “Nevertheless, the law gives a woman no rights in her child. She has no means to support it, and no freedom to leave her husband if he does not wish her to, and certainly no way to take her child with her.”
“Then what else can she do but kill him?” Monk’s face was white. “How can we tolerate a law which affords no possible justice? And the injustice is unspeakable.”
“We change it, we don’t break it,” Rathbone replied.
Monk swore briefly and violently.
“I agree,” Rathbone said with a tight smile. “Now may we proceed with what is practical?”
Monk and Hester stared at him wordlessly.
“Manslaughter is the best we can hope for, and that will be extremely difficult to prove. But if we succeed, the sentence is largely at the discretion of the judge. It can be as little as a matter of months, or as great as ten years.”
Both Hester and Monk relaxed a little. Hester smiled bleakly.
“But we must prove it,” Rathbone went on. “And that will be very hard to do. General Carlyon is a hero. People do not like their heroes tarnished, let alone utterly destroyed.” He leaned back a little, sliding his hands into his pockets. “And we have had more than enough of that with the war. We have a tendency to see people as good or evil; it is so much easier both on the brain and on the emotions, but especially the emotions, to place people into one or the other category. Black or white. It is a painful adjustment to have to recognize and accommodate into our thinking the fact that people with great qualities which we have admired may also have ugly and profoundly repellent flaws.”
He did not look at either of them, but at a space on the farther wall. “One then has to learn to understand, which is difficult and painful, unless one is to swing completely ’round, tear up one’s admiration, and turn it into hate—which is also painful, and wrong, but so much easier. The wound of disillusion turns to rage because one has been let down. One’s own sense of betrayal outweighs all else.”
His delicate mouth registered wry pity.
“Disillusion is one of the most difficult of all emotions to wear gracefully, and with any honor. I am afraid we will not find many who will do it. People will be very reluctant to believe anything so disturbing. And we have had far too much disturbance to our settled and comfortable world lately as it is—first the war, and all the ugly whispers there are of inefficiency and needless death, and now wind of mutiny in India. God knows how bad that will turn out to be.”
