by Anne Perry
“No, no! Please,” Edith said quickly and a little awkwardly. “I should be most uncomfortable if you were to leave on my account. I have nothing in particular to say. I—I simply …” Now she too colored very pink. “I—I simply wished to be out of the house, away from my family—and …”
“Of course,” he said quickly. “You wished to be able to speak your mind without fear of causing offense or distress to those you love.”
Her face flooded with relief. “You are extraordinarily perceptive, Major Tiplady.”
Now his cheeks were very red and he had no idea where to look.
“Oh please sit down,” Hester interrupted, acting to stop the awkwardness, or at least to give it respite. “Edith.”
“Thank you,” Edith accepted, and for the first time in Hester’s acquaintance with her, she arranged her skirts elegantly and sat upright on the edge of the seat, as a lady should. In spite of the grimness of the situation Hester was obliged to hide a smile.
Edith sighed. “Hester, what is happening? I have never been to a trial before, and I don’t understand. Mr. Rathbone is supposed to be so brilliant, and yet from what I hear it seems he is doing nothing at all. I could do as much. So far all he has achieved is to persuade us all that Thaddeus was quite innocent of any affair, either with Louisa Furnival or anyone else. And to add that Alexandra knew it too. What possible good can that do?” Her face was screwed up with incomprehension, her eyes dark and urgent. “It makes Alexandra look even worse in a way, because it takes from her any possible reason that one could attempt to understand, if not forgive. Why? She has already confessed that she did do it, and it has been proved. He didn’t challenge that. In fact if anything he reconfirmed it. Why, Hester? What is he doing?”
Hester had told Edith nothing of their appalling discoveries, and now she hesitated, wondering if she should, or if by so doing she might foil Rathbone’s plans for examination in the witness box. Was it possible that in spite of the outrage she would undoubtedly feel, Edith’s family loyalty would be powerful enough for her to conceal the shame of it? Might she even disbelieve it?
Hester dare not put it to the test. It was not her prerogative to decide, not her life in the balance, nor her child whose future lay in the judgment.
She sat down in the chair opposite Edith.
“I don’t know,” she lied, meeting her friend’s eyes and hating the deceit. “At least I have only guesses, and it would be unfair to him and to you to give you those.” She saw Edith’s face tighten as if she had been struck, and the fear deepened in her eyes. “But I do know he has a strategy,” she hurried on, leaning forward a little, only dimly aware of Major Tiplady looking anxiously from one to the other of them.
“Does he?” Edith said softly. “Please don’t try to give me hope, Hester, if there really isn’t any. It is not a kindness.”
The major drew breath to speak, and both turned to look at him. Then he changed his mind and remained silent and unhappy, facing Hester.
“There is hope,” Hester said firmly. “But I don’t know how great it is. It all depends on convincing the jury that—”
“What?” Edith said quickly. “What can he convince them of? She did it! Even Rathbone himself has proved that! What else is there?”
Hester hesitated. She was glad Major Tiplady was there, although there was nothing he could do, but his mere presence was a kind of comfort.
Edith went on with a faint, bitter smile. “He can hardly persuade them she was justified. Thaddeus was painfully virtuous—all the things that count to other people.” She frowned suddenly. “Actually we still don’t know why she did do it. Is he going to say she is mad? Is that it? I don’t think she is.” She glanced at the major. “And they have subpoenaed me to give evidence. What shall I do?”
“Give evidence,” Hester answered. “There’s nothing else you can do. Just answer the questions they ask and no more. But be honest. Don’t try to guess what they want. It is up to Rathbone to draw it from you. If you look as if you are trying to help it will show and the jury won’t believe you. Just don’t lie—about anything he asks you.”
“But what can he ask me? I don’t know anything.”
“I don’t know what he will ask you,” Hester said exasperatedly. “He wouldn’t tell me, even if I were to ask him. I have no right to know. And far better I don’t. But I do know he has a strategy—and it could win. Please believe me, and don’t press me to give you answers I don’t have.”
“I’m sorry.” Edith was suddenly penitent. She rose to her feet quickly and walked over to the window, less graceful than usual because she was self-conscious. “When this trial is over I am still going to look for a position of some sort. I know Mama will be furious, but I feel suffocated there. I spend all my life doing nothing whatsoever that matters at all. I stitch embroidery no one needs, and paint pictures even I don’t like much. I play the piano badly and no one listens except out of politeness. I make duty calls on people and take them pots of conserve and give bowls of soup to the deserving poor, and feel like such a hypocrite because it does hardly any good, and we go with such an air of virtue, and come away as if we’ve solved all their problems, and we’ve hardly touched them.” Her voice caught for an instant. “I’m thirty-three, and I’m behaving like an old woman. Hester, I’m terrified that one day I’m going to wake up and I will be old—and I’ll have done nothing at all that was worth doing. I’ll never have accomplished anything, served any purpose, helped anyone more than was purely convenient, never felt anything really deeply once Oswald died—been no real use at all.” She kept her back to them, and stood very straight and still.
“Then you must find work of some sort to do,” Hester said firmly. “Even if it is hard or dirty, paid or unpaid, even thankless—it would be better than waking up every morning to a wasted day and going to bed at night knowing you wasted it. I have heard it said that most of what we regret is not what we did but what we did not do. I think on the whole that is correct. You have your health. It would be better to wait on others than do nothing at all.”
“You mean go into service?” Edith was incredulous and there was a frail, slightly hysterical giggle under the surface of her voice.
“No, nothing quite so demanding—it would really be more than your mother deserves. I meant helping some poor creature who is too ill or too mithered to help herself.” She stopped. “Of course that would be unpaid, and that might not work …”
“It wouldn’t. Mama would not permit it, so I would have to find lodgings of my own, and that requires money—which I don’t have.”
Major Tiplady cleared his throat.
“Are you still interested in Africa, Mrs. Sobell?”
She turned around, her eyes wide.
“Go to Africa? How could I do that? I don’t know anything about it. I hardly think I should be of any use to anyone. I wish I were!”
“No, not go there.” His face was bright pink now. “I—er—well, I’m not sure, of course …”
Hester refused to help him, although with a sweet surge of pleasure she knew what he wanted to say.
He threw an agonized glance at her, and she smiled back charmingly.
Edith waited.
“Er …” He cleared his throat again. “I thought—I thought I might … I mean if you are serious about people’s interest? I thought I might write my memoirs of Mashonaland, and I—er …”
Edith’s face flooded with understanding—and delight.
“Need a scribe. Oh yes, I should be delighted. I can think of nothing I should like better! My Adventures in Mashonaland, by Major—Major Tiplady. What is your given name?”
He blushed crimson and looked everywhere but at her.
Hester knew the initial was H, but no more. He had signed his letter employing her only with that initial and his surname.
“You have to have a name,” Edith insisted. “I can see it, bound in morocco or calf—nice gold lettering. It will be marvelous! I shall count it suc
h a privilege and enjoy every word. It will be almost as good as going there myself—and in such splendid company. What is your name, Major? How will it be styled?”
“Hercules,” he said very quietly, and shot her a look of total pleading not to laugh.
“How very fine,” she said gently. “My Adventures in Mashonaland, by Major Hercules Tiplady. May we begin as soon as this terrible business is over? It is the nicest thing that has happened to me in years.”
“And to me,” Major Tiplady said happily, his face still very pink.
Hester rose to her feet and went to the door to ask the maid to prepare luncheon for them, and so that she could give rein to her giggles where she could hurt no one—but it was laughter of relief and a sudden bright hope, at least for Edith and the major, whom she had grown to like remarkably. It was the only good thing at the moment, but it was totally good.
11
Monk began the weekend with an equal feeling of gloom, not because he had no hope of finding the third man but because the discovery was so painful. He had liked Peverell Erskine, and now it looked inevitable it was he. Why else would he have given a child such highly personal and useless gifts? Cassian had no use for a quill knife, except that it was pretty and belonged to Peverell—as for a silk handkerchief, children did not use or wear such things. It was a keepsake. The watch fob also was too precious for an eight-year-old to wear, and it was personal to Peverell’s profession, nothing like the Carlyons’, which would have been something military, a regimental crest, perhaps.
He had told Rathbone, and seen the same acceptance and unhappiness in him. He had mentioned the bootboy also, but told Rathbone that there was no proof Carlyon had abused him, and that that was the reason the boy had turned and fled in the Furnival house the night of the murder. He did not know if Rathbone had understood his own action, what were the reasons he accepted without demur, or if he felt his strategy did not require the boy.
Monk stood at the window and stared out at the pavement of Grafton Street, the sharp wind sending a loose sheet of newspaper bowling along the stones. On the corner a peddler was selling bootlaces. A couple crossed the street, arm in arm, the man walking elegantly, leaning over a little towards the woman, she laughing. They looked comfortable together, and it shot a pang of loneliness through him that took him by surprise, a feeling of exclusion, as if he saw the whole of life that mattered, the sweeter parts, through glass, and from a distance.
Evan’s last case file lay on the desk unopened. In it might lie the answer to the mystery that teased him. Who was the woman that plucked at his thoughts with such insistence and such powerful emotion, stirring feelings of guilt, urgency, fear of loss, and over all, confusion? He was afraid to discover, and yet not to was worse. Part of him held back, simply because once he had uncovered it there would be nothing left to offer hope of finding something sweet, a better side of himself, a gentleness or a generosity he had failed in so far. It was foolish, and he knew it, even cowardly—and that was the one criticism strong enough to move him. He walked over to the table and opened the cover.
He read the first page still standing. The case was not especially complex. Hermione Ward had been married to a wealthy and neglectful husband, some years older than herself. She was his second wife and it seemed he had treated her with coolness, keeping her short of funds, giving her very little social life and expecting her to manage his house and care for the two children of his first wife.
The house had been broken into during the night, and Albert Ward had apparently heard the burglar and gone downstairs to confront him. There had been a struggle and he had been struck on the head and died of the wound.
Monk pulled around a chair and sat down. He continued with the second page.
The local police in Guildford had investigated, and found several circumstances which roused their suspicions. The glass from the broken window was outside, not in, where one might have expected it to fall. The widow could name nothing which had been stolen, nor did she ever amend her opinion in the cooler light of the following week. Nothing was found in pawnshops or sold to any of the usual dealers known to the police. The resident servants, of whom there were six, heard nothing in the night, no sound, no disturbance. No footprints or any other marks of intruders were seen.
The police arrested Hermione Ward and charged her with having murdered her husband. Scotland Yard was sent for. Runcorn dispatched Monk to Guildford. The rest of the record presumably lay with the Guildford police.
The only way he could find out would be to go there. It was a short journey and easily made by train. But this was Saturday. It might be awkward. Perhaps the officer he needed would not be there. And the Carlyon trial would be resumed on Monday, and he must be present. What could he do in two days? Maybe not enough.
They were excuses because he was afraid to find out.
He despised cowardice; it was the root of all the weaknesses he hated most. Anger he could understand, thoughtlessness, impatience, greed, even though they were ugly enough—but without courage what was there to fire or to preserve any virtue, honor or integrity? Without the courage to sustain it, not even love was safe.
He moved over to the window again and stared at the buildings opposite and the roofs shining in the sun. There was not even any point in evading it. It would hurt him until he found out what had happened, who she was and why he had felt so passionately, and yet walked away from it, and from her. Why were there no mementos in his room that reminded him of her, no pictures, no letters, nothing at all? Presumably the idea of her was one thing too painful to wish to remember. The reality was quite different. This would go on hurting. He would wake in the night with scalding disillusion—and terrible loneliness. For once he could easily, terribly easily, understand those who ran away.
And yet it was also too important to forget, because his mind would not let him bury it. Echoes kept tugging at him, half glimpses of her face, a gesture, a color she wore, the way she walked, the softness of her hair, her perfume, the rustle of silk. For heaven’s sake, why not her name? Why not all her face?
There was nothing he could do here over the weekend. The trial was adjourned and he had nowhere else to search for the third man. It was up to Rathbone now.
He turned from the window and strode over to the coat stand, snatching a jacket and his hat and going out of the door, only just saving it from slamming behind him.
“I’m going to Guildford,” he informed his landlady, Mrs. Worley. “I may not be back until tomorrow.”
“But you’ll be back then?” she said firmly, wiping her hands on her apron. She was an ample woman, friendly and businesslike. “You’ll be at the trial of that woman again?”
He was surprised. He had not thought she knew.
“Yes—I will.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you want to be on cases like that for, I’m sure. You’ve come a long way down, Mr. Monk, since you was in the police. Then you’d ’a bin chasin’ after people like that, not tryin’ to ’elp them.”
“You’d have killed him too, in her place, if you’d had the courage, Mrs. Worley,” he said bitingly. “So would any woman who gave a damn.”
“I would not,” she retorted fiercely. “Love o’ no man’s ever goin’ to make me into a murderess!”
“You know nothing about it. It wasn’t love of a man.”
“You watch your tongue, Mr. Monk,” she said briskly. “I know what I read in the newspapers as comes ’round the vegetables, and they’re plain enough.”
“They know nothing, either,” he replied. “And fancy you reading the newspapers, Mrs. Worley. What would Mr. Worley say to that? And sensational stories, too.” He grinned at her, baring his teeth.
She straightened her skirts with a tweak and glared at him.
“That isn’t your affair, Mr. Monk. What I read is between me and Mr. Worley.”
“It’s between you and your conscience, Mrs. Worley—it’s no one else’s concern at all. But th
ey still know nothing. Wait till the end of the trial—then tell me what you think.”
“Ha!” she said sharply, and turned on her heel to go back to the kitchen.
He caught the train and alighted at Guildford in the middle of the morning. It was a matter of another quarter of an hour before a hansom deposited him outside the police station and he went up the steps to the duty sergeant at the desk.
“Yes sir?” The man’s face registered dawning recognition. “Mr. Monk? ’Ow are you, sir?” There was respect in his voice, even awe, but Monk did not catch any fear. Please God at least here he had not been unjust.
“I’m very well, thank you, Sergeant,” he replied courteously. “And yourself?”
The sergeant was not used to being asked how he was, and his face showed his surprise, but he answered levelly enough.
“I’m well, thank you sir. What can I do for you? Mr. Markham’s in, if it was ’im you was wanting to see? I ain’t ’eard about another case as we’re needin’ you for; it must be very new.” He was puzzled. It seemed impossible there could be a crime so complicated they needed to call in Scotland Yard and yet it had not crossed his desk. Only something highly sensitive and dangerous could be so classed, a political assassination, or a murder involving a member of the aristocracy.
“I’m not with the police anymore,” Monk explained. There was little to be gained and everything to be risked by lying. “I’ve gone private.” He saw the man’s incredulity and smiled. “A difference of opinion over a case—a wrongful arrest, I thought.”
The man’s face lightened with intelligence. “That’d be the Moidore case,” he said with triumph.
