A Dangerous Mourning Part 31

"For G.o.d's sake why?" There was no softness in Percival, no relenting. Again Monk did not blame him. He was beyond the last hope now, perhaps there was no room in him for gentleness of any sort. If he once let go of the rage he might crumble and terror would win; the darkness of the night would be unbearable without the burning of hate.

"Because I don't think you killed her," Monk replied.

Percival laughed harshly, his eyes black and accusing. But he said nothing, just stared in helpless and terrible knowledge.

"But even if I were still on the case," Monk went on very quietly, "I don't know what I should do, because I have no idea who did." It was an overwhelming admission of failure, and he was stunned as he heard himself make it to Percival of all people. But honesty was the very least of all he owed him.

"Very impressive," Percival said sarcastically, but there was a brief flicker of something in his face, rapid as the sunlight let through the trees by a turning leaf, then gone again. "But since you are not there, and everyone else is busy covering their own petty sins, serving their grievances, or else obliged to Sir Basil, we'll never know-will we?"

"Hester Latterly isn't." Instantly Monk regretted he had said it. Percival might take it for hope, which was an illusion and unspeakably cruel now.

"Hester Latterly?" For an instant Percival looked confused, then he remembered her. "Oh-the terribly efficient nurse. Daunting woman, but you're probably right. I expect she is so virtuous it is painful. I doubt she knows how to smile, let alone laugh, and I shouldn't think any man ever looked at her," he said viciously. "She's taken her vengeance on us by spending her time ministering to us when we are at our most vulnerable-and most ridiculous."

Monk felt a deep uprush of rage for the cruel and unthinking prejudice, then he looked at Percival's haggard face and remembered where he was, and why, and the rage vanished like a match flame in a sea of ice. What if Percival did need to hurt someone, however remotely? His was going to be the ultimate pain.

"She came to the house because I sent her," Monk explained. "She is a friend of mine. I hoped that someone inside the household in a position where no one would pay much regard to them might observe things I could not."

Percival's amazement was as profound as anything could be over the surface of the enormous center of him, which knew nothing but the slow, relentless clock ticking away his days to the last walk, the hood, the hangman's rope around his neck, and the sharp drop to tearing, breaking pain and oblivion.

"But she didn't learn anything, did she?" For the first time his voice cracked and he lost control of it.

Monk loathed himself for stupidly giving this knife thrust of hope, which was not hope at all.

"No," he said quickly. "Nothing that helps. All sorts of trivial and ugly little weaknesses and sins-and that Lady Moidore believes the murderer is still in the house, and almost certainly one of her family-but she has no idea who either."

Percival turned away, hiding his face.

"What did you come for?"

"I'm not sure. Perhaps simply not to leave you alone, or to think no one believes you. I don't know if it helps, but you have the right to know. I hope it does."

Percival let out an explosion of curses, and swore over and over again until he was exhausted with repeating himself and the sheer, ugly futility of it. When he finished Monk had gone and the cell door was locked again, but through the tears and the bloodless skin, there was a very small light of grat.i.tude, ease from one of the clenched and terrible knots inside him.

On the morning Percival was hanged Monk was working on the case of a stolen picture, more probably removed and sold by a member of the family in gambling debt. But at eight o'clock he stopped on the pavement in Cheapside and stood still in the cold wind amid the crowd of costers, street peddlers of bootlaces and matches and other fripperies, clerks on errands, a sweep, black-faced and carrying a ladder, and two women arguing over a length of cloth. The babble and clatter rolled on around him, oblivious of what was happening in Newgate Yard, but he stood motionless with a sense of finality and a wounding loss-not for Percival individually, although he felt the man's terror and rage and the snuffing out of his life. He had not liked him, but he had been acutely aware of his vitality, his intensity of feeling and thought, his ident.i.ty. But his greatest loss was for justice which had failed. At the moment when the trapdoor opened and the noose jerked tight, another crime was being committed. He had been powerless to prevent it, for all the labor and thought he had put into it, but his was not the only loss, or even necessarily the main one. All London was diminished, perhaps all England, because the law which should protect had instead injured.

Hester was standing in the dining room. She had deliberately come to collect an apricot conserve from the table for Beatrice's tray at precisely this time. If she jeopardized her position, even if she lost it and were dismissed, she wanted to see the faces of the Moidores at the moment of hanging, and to be sure each one of them knew precisely what moment this was.

She excused herself past Fenella, uncharacteristically up so early; apparently she intended to ride in the park. Hester spooned a little of the conserve into a small dish.

"Good morning, Mrs. Sandeman," she said levelly. "I hope you have a pleasant ride. It will be very cold in the park this early, even though the sun is up. The frost will not have melted at all. It is three minutes to eight."

"How very precise you are," Fenella said with a touch of sarcasm. "Is that because you are a nurse-everything must be done to the instant, in strict routine? Take your medicine as the clock chimes or it will not do you good. How excruciatingly tedious.'' She laughed very slightly, a mocking, tinkly sound.

"No, Mrs. Sandeman," Hester said very distinctly. "It is because in two minutes now they will hang Percival. I believe they are very precise-I have no idea why. It can hardly matter; it is just a ritual they keep.''

Fenella choked on a mouthful of eggs and went into a spasm of coughing. No one a.s.sisted her.

"Oh G.o.d!" Septimus stared ahead of him, bleak and unblinking, his thoughts unreadable.

Cyprian shut his eyes as if he would block out the world, and all his powers were concentrated on his inner turmoil.

Araminta was sheet white, her curious lace frozen.

Myles Kellard slopped his tea, which he had just raised to his lips, sending splashes all over the tablecloth, and the stain spread out in a brown, irregular pattern. He looked furious and confused.

"Oh really," Romola exploded, her fece pink. "What a tasteless and insensitive thing to have said. What is the matter with you, Miss Latterly? No one wishes to know that. You had better leave the room, and for goodness' sake don't be so cra.s.s as to mention it to Mama-in-law. Really-you are too stupid.''

Basil's face was very pale and there was a nervous twitch in the muscles at the side of his cheek.

"It could not be helped," he said very quietly. "Society must be preserved, and the means are sometimes very harsh. Now I think we may call the matter closed and proceed with our lives as normal. Miss Latterly, you will not speak of it again. Please take the conserve, or whatever it is you came for, and carry Lady Moidore's breakfast to her."

"Yes, Sir Basil," Hester said obediently, but their faces remained in the mirror of her mind, the misery and finality of it like a patina of darkness upon everything.

Chapter 11.

Two days after Percival was hanged, Septimus Thirsk developed a slight fever, not enough to fear some serious disease, but sufficient to make him feel unwell and confine him to his room. Beatrice, who had kept Hester more for her company than any genuine need of her professional skills, dispatched her immediately to care for him, obtain any medication she considered advisable, and do anything she could to ease his discomfort and aid his recovery.

Hester found Septimus lying in bed and in his large, airy room. The curtains were drawn wide open onto a fierce February day, with the sleet das.h.i.+ng against the windows like grapeshot and a sky so low and leaden it seemed to rest close above the rooftops. The room was cluttered with army memorabilia, engravings of soldiers in dress uniform, mounted cavalry officers, and all along the west wall in a place of honor, unflanked by anything else, a superb painting of the charge of the Royal Scots Greys at Waterloo, horses with nostrils flared, white manes flying in the clouds of smoke, and the whole sweep of battle behind them. She felt her heart lurch and her stomach knot at the sight of it. It was so real she could smell the gunsmoke and hear the thunder of hooves, the shouting and the clash of steel, and feel the sun burning her skin, and knew the warm odor of blood would fill her nose and throat afterwards.

And then there would be the silence on the gra.s.s, the dead lying waiting for burial or the carrion birds, the endless work, the helplessness and the few sudden flashes of victory when someone lived through appalling wounds or found some ease from pain. It was all so vivid in the moment she saw the picture, her body ached with the memory of exhaustion and the fear, the pity, the anger and the exhilaration.

She looked and saw Septimus's faded blue eyes on her, and knew in that instant they understood each other as no one else in that house ever could. He smiled very slowly, a sweet, almost radiant look.

She hesitated, not to break the moment, then as it pa.s.sed naturally, she went over to him and began a simple nursing routine, questions, feeling his brow, then the pulse in his bony wrist, his abdomen to see if it were causing him pain, listened carefully to his rather shallow breathing and for telltale rattling in his chest.

His skin was flushed, dry and a little rough, his eyes over-bright, but beyond a chill she could find nothing gravely wrong with him. However a few days of care might do far more for him than any medication, and she was happy to give it. She liked Septimus, and felt the neglect and slight condescension he received from the rest of the family.

He looked at her, a quizzical expression on his face. She thought quite suddenly that if she had p.r.o.nounced pneumonia or consumption he would not have been afraid-or even grievously shaken. He had long ago accepted that death comes to everyone, and he had seen the reality of it many times, both by violence and by disease. And he had no deep purpose in extending his life anymore. He was a pa.s.senger, a guest in his brother-in-law's house, tolerated but not needed. And he was a man born and trained to fight and to protect, to serve as a way of life.

She touched him very gently.

"A nasty chill, but if you are cared for it should pa.s.s without any lasting effect. I shall stay with you for a while, just to make sure.'' She saw his face brighten and realized how used he was to loneliness. It had become like the ache in the joints one moves so as to accommodate, tries to forget, but never quite succeeds. She smiled with quick, bright conspiracy. "And we shall be able to talk.''

He smiled back, his eyes bright for once with pleasure and not the fever in him.

"I think you had better remain," he agreed. "In case I should take a sudden turn for the worse." And he coughed dramatically, although she could also see the real pain of a congested chest.

"Now I will go down to the kitchen and get you some milk and onion soup," she said briskly.

He pulled a face.

"It is very good for you," she a.s.sured him. "And really quite palatable. And while you eat it, I shall tell you about my experiences-and then you may tell me about yours!"

"For that," he conceded, "I will even eat milk and onion soup!"

Hester spent all that day with Septimus, bringing her own meals up on a tray and remaining quietly in the chair in the corner of the room while he slept fitfully in the afternoon, and then fetching him more soup, this time leek and celery mixed with creamed potato into a thick blend. When he had eaten it they sat through the evening and talked of things that had changed since his day on the battlefield-she telling him of the great conflicts she had witnessed from the gra.s.sy sward above, and he recounting to her the desperate cavalry battles he had fought in the Afghan War of 1839 to 1842-then in the conquest of Sind the year after, and in the later Sikh wars in the middle of the decade. They found endless emotions, sights and fears the same, and the wild pride and horror of victory, the weeping and the wounds, the beauty of courage, and the fearful, elemental indignity of dismemberment and death. And he told her something of the magnificent continent of India and its peoples.

They also remembered the laughter and the comrades.h.i.+p, the absurdities and the fierce sentimental moments, and the regimental rituals with their splendor, farcical at a glance, silver candelabra and full dinner service with crystal and porcelain for officers the night before battle, scarlet uniforms, gold braid, bra.s.ses like mirrors.

"You would have liked Harry Haslett," Septimus said with a sweet, sharp sadness. "He was one of the nicest men. He had all the qualities of a friend: honor without pomposity, generosity without condescension, humor without malice and courage without cruelty. And Octavia adored him. She spoke of him so pa.s.sionately the very day she died, as if his death were still fresh in her mind." He smiled and stared up at the ceiling, blinking a little to hide the tears in his eyes.

Hester reached for his hand and held it. It was a natural gesture, quite spontaneous, and he understood it without explanation. His bony fingers tightened on hers, and for several minutes they were silent.

"They were going to move away," he said at last, when his voice was under control. "Tavie wasn't much like Araminta. She wanted her own house; she didn't care about the social status of being Sir Basil Moidore's daughter or hving in Queen Anne Street with the carriages and the staff, the amba.s.sadors to dine, the members of Parliament, the foreign princes. Of course you haven't seen any of that because the house is in mourning for Tavie now-but before that it was quite different. There was something special almost every week."

"Is that why Myles Kellard stays?" Hester asked, understanding easily now.

"Of course," he agreed with a thin smile. "How could he possibly live in this manner on his own? He is quite well off, but nothing like the wealth or the rank of Basil. And Araminta is very close to her father. Myles never stood a chance-not that I am sure he wants it. He has much here he would never have anywhere else."

"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 d.a.m.ned 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 feet, I believe Basil was his f.a.g-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 Aiaminta 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 nights.h.i.+rt, 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 embarra.s.sed. 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 witii an inclination of her head and a smile of friendly openness. "I wonder if I might be permitted to speak wim 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 a.s.sist-with information that would considerably ease the femily'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 found 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 circ.u.mstances. 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 circ.u.mstances of his "retirement."

Major Tallis's face clouded over immediately.