by Anne Perry
At last, feeling numb with sadness, Hester was permitted to leave, and made her way to the street, where she hailed a hansom cab and gave the driver Callandra Daviot’s address. She did not even consider whether it was a courteous thing to turn up in the middle of the morning, unannounced and in a state of distress. Her desire to be warm and safe, and to hear a familiar voice, was so intense it drove out normal thoughts of decorum. Not that Callandra was someone who cared much for such things, but eccentricity was not the same as lack of consideration.
It was a gray day, with gusts of rain on the wind, but she was unaware of her surroundings. Grimy streets and soot-stained walls and wet pavements gave way to more gracious squares, falling leaves and splashes of autumn color, but they did not intrude into her consciousness.
“ ‘Ere y’are, miss,” the driver said at last, peering down at her through the peephole.
“What?” she said abruptly.
“We’re ’ere, miss. Ye goin’ ter get out, or d’yer wanner stay sitting in ’ere? I’ll ’ave ter charge yer. I got me livin’ ter make.”
“No, of course I don’t want to stay in here,” she said crossly, scrambling to open the door with one hand and grasp her bag with the other. She alighted awkwardly and, setting her bag on the pavement, paid him and bade him a good day. As the horse moved off, and the rain increased in strength, making broad puddles where the stones were uneven, she picked up the bag again and climbed the steps to the front door. Please heaven Callandra was at home, and not out engaged in one of her many interests. She had refused to think of that before, because she did not want to face the possibility, but now it seemed so likely she even hesitated on the step, and stood undecided in the rain, her feet wet, her skirts becoming sodden where they brushed the stones.
There was nothing to lose now. She pulled the bell knob and waited.
The door opened but it was a moment before the butler recognized her, then his expression changed.
“Good morning, Miss Latterly.” He made as if to say something further, then thought better of it.
“Good morning. Is Lady Callandra at home?”
“Yes ma’am. If you care to come in, I shall inform her you are here.” He moved aside to allow her to pass, his eyebrows slightly raised at her bedraggled appearance. He took her bag from her and set it down gingerly, then excused himself, leaving her dripping onto the polished floor.
It was Callandra herself who appeared, her curious, long-nosed face full of concern. As always, her hair was escaping its pins as if to take flight, and her green gown was more comfortable than elegant. The wide skirts had become her when she was younger and slimmer, now they no longer disguised a certain generosity of hip, but made her seem shorter than she was. However, her carriage, as always, was excellent, and her humor and intelligence more than made up for any lack of beauty.
“My dear, you look awful!” she said with anxiety. “Whatever has happened? I thought you had gone to Edinburgh. Was it canceled?” For the moment she ignored the sodden skirt and the generally crumpled gown, the hair as untidy as her own. “You look quite ill.”
Hester smiled in sheer relief at seeing her. It filled her with a sense of warmth far deeper than anything physical, like a homecoming after a lonely journey.
“I did go to Edinburgh. I came home on the overnight train. My patient died.”
“Oh my dear, I’m so sorry,” Callandra said quickly. “Before you got there? How wretched. Still—oh—” She searched Hester’s face. “That’s not what you mean, is it? She died in your charge?”
“Yes.”
“They had no business to dispatch you with someone so ill,” she said decisively. “Poor creature, to have died away from home, and on a train, of all things. You must feel dreadful. You certainly look it.” She took Hester’s arm. “Come in and sit down. That skirt is soaking wet. Nothing of mine will fit you, you’d step right through them. You’ll have to make do with one of the maid’s dresses. They are quite good enough until that dries out. Or you’ll catch your—” She stopped and pulled a sorrowful face.
“Death,” Hester supplied for her with a ghost of a smile. “Thank you.”
“Daisy,” Callandra called loudly. “Daisy, come here if you please!”
Obediently a slender dark girl with wide eyes came out of the dining room door, a duster in her hand, her lace cap a trifle crooked on her head.
“Yes, your ladyship?”
“You are about Miss Latterly’s height. Would you be good enough to lend her a dress until hers is dried out. I have no idea what she has been doing in it, but it is shedding a pool of water in here, and must be as cold as Christmas to wear. Oh, and you’d better find some boots and stockings for her too. Then on your way ask Cook to send some hot chocolate into the green room.”
“Yes, your ladyship.” She bobbed in something like a half curtsy, and with a glance at Hester to make sure she had understood the instruction, led her away to fulfill the errand.
Ten minutes later Hester was dressed in a gray stuff gown which fitted her excellently apart from being a couple of inches short at the ankle, showing her borrowed stockings and boots, and sitting beside the fire opposite Callandra.
The room was one of her favorites, decorated entirely in dark green and white, with white doors and window embrasures, directing one’s eye toward the light. The furniture was warm, dark rosewood, upholstered in cream brocade, and there was a bowl of white chrysanthemums on the table. She put her hands around the cup of hot chocolate and sipped it gratefully. It was ridiculous to be so cold; it was not even winter, and certainly far from frosty outside. And yet she was shivering.
“Shock,” Callandra said sympathetically. “Drink it. It will make you feel better.”
Hester sipped again, and felt the hot liquid down her throat.
“She was so well the evening before,” she said vehemently. “We sat up and talked about all sorts of things. She would have talked longer, only her daughter instructed me she should not stay up later than quarter past eleven at the outside.”
“If she was well until the very last evening of her life, she was most fortunate,” Callandra said, looking at Hester over the top of the cup. “Most people have at least some period of illness, usually weeks. Of course it is a shock, but in a little while it will seem more of a blessing.”
“I expect it will,” Hester said slowly. Her brain knew that what Callandra said was perfectly true, but her emotions were sharp with guilt and regret. “I liked her very much,” she said aloud.
“Then be glad for her that she did not suffer.”
“I felt so—inefficient, so uncaring,” Hester protested. “I didn’t help her in the slightest. I didn’t even wake up. For any use or comfort I was to her, I could have stayed at home.”
“If she died in her sleep, my dear girl, there was no use or comfort you could have been,” Callandra pointed out.
“I suppose so….”
“I imagine you had to inform someone? Family?”
“Yes. Her daughter and son-in-law had come to meet her. She was very distressed.”
“Of course. And sometimes sudden grief can make people very angry, and quite unreasonable. Was she unpleasant to you?”
“No—not at all. She was really very fair.” Hester smiled bitterly. “She didn’t blame me at all, and she could well have done. She seemed more distressed that she could not learn what her mother was going to tell her than anything else. The poor soul is with child, and it is her first. She was anxious about her health, and Mrs. Farraline had gone to reassure her. She was almost distracted that she would never know what it was that Mrs. Farraline was going to say.”
“A most unfortunate situation altogether,” Callandra said sympathetically. “But no one is at fault, unless it is Mrs. Farraline for having undertaken such a journey when she was in such delicate health herself. A long letter would have been much better advised. Still, we can all be clever after the event.”
“I don’t think th
at I have ever liked a patient more thoroughly or more immediately,” Hester said, swallowing hard. “She was very direct, very honest. She told me about dancing the night away before the Battle of Waterloo. Everyone who was anyone in Europe was there that night, she said. It was all gaiety, laughter and beauty, with a desperate, wild kind of life, knowing what the morrow might bring.” For a moment the dim lamplight of the carriage, and Mary’s quick, intelligent face, seemed more real man the green room and the fire of the present.
“And then their partings in the morning,” she went on. “The men in their scarlet and braid, the horses smelling the excitement and the whiff of battle, harnesses jingling, hooves never still.” She finished the last of the chocolate but kept holding the empty cup. “There was a portrait of her husband in the hall. He had a remarkable face, full of emotion, and yet so much of it half hidden, only guessed at. Do you know what I mean?” She looked at Callandra questioningly. “There was passion in his mouth, but uncertainty in his eyes, as if you would always have to guess at what he was really thinking.”
“A complex man,” Callandra agreed. “And a clever artist to catch all that in a face, by the sound of it.”
“He formed the family printing company.”
“Indeed.”
“He died eight years ago.”
Callandra listened for another half hour while Hester told her about the Farralines, about the little she had seen of Edinburgh, and what she would do about obtaining another position. Then she rose and suggested that Hester tidy her hair, which was still lacking several pins and far from dressed, and they should consider luncheon.
“Yes—yes of course,” Hester said quickly, only just realizing how much of Callandra’s time she had taken. “I’m sorry…. I … should have …”
Callandra stopped her with a look.
“Yes,” Hester said obediently. “Yes, I’ll go and find some more pins. And I daresay Daisy will wish for her dress back. It was very kind of her to lend me this.”
“Yours will hardly be dry yet,” Callandra pointed out. “There will be plenty of time after we have eaten.”
Without further argument Hester went upstairs to the spare bedroom where Daisy had put her bag, and opened it to find her comb and some additional pins. She poked her hand down the side hopefully and felt around. No comb. She tried the other side and her fingers touched it after a moment. The pins were harder. They should be in a little screw of paper, but after several minutes she still had not come across it.
Impatiently she tipped up the bag and emptied the contents out onto the bed. Still the pins were not immediately visible. She picked up her chemise that she had changed out of in Mrs. Farraline’s house when she had rested. It was hard to realize that had been only yesterday. She shook it and something flew out and went onto the floor with a faint sound. It must be the screw of paper with the pins. It was the right size and weight. She went around to the far side of the bed and knelt down to find it. It was gone again. She moved her hand over the carpet, gently feeling for it.
There it was. Next to the leg of the bed. She picked it up, and instantly knew something was wrong. It was not paper, or even loose pins. It was a complicated scroll of metal. She looked at it. Then her stomach lurched and her mouth went suddenly dry. It was a jeweled pin, a hoop and scroll set with diamonds and large gray pearls. She had never seen it before, but its description was sharp in her mind. It was Mary Farraline’s brooch, the one she had said was her favorite and which she had left behind because the dress it complemented was stained.
With clumsy fingers she clasped it, and, her hair still trailing out of its pins, she went back down the stairs and into the green room.
Callandra looked up.
“What is it?” She had taken one look at Hester’s face and knew there was something new and seriously wrong. “What has happened?”
Hester held out the pin.
“It is Mary Farraline’s,” she said huskily. “I just found it in my bag.”
“You had better sit down,” Callandra said grimly, holding out her hand for the brooch.
Hester sank into the chair gratefully. Her legs seemed to have no strength in them.
Callandra took the brooch and turned it over carefully, examining the pearls, then the hallmark on the back.
“I think it is probably worth a good deal,” she said in a soft, very grave voice. “At least ninety to a hundred pounds.” She looked at Hester with a frown between her brows. “I suppose you have no idea how it came to be in your bag?”
“No—none at all. Mrs. Farraline said she had not brought it with her because the dress she wears it with had been stained.”
“Then it would seem that her maid did not obey instructions very well.” Callandra bit her lip. “And is also … a great deal less than honest. It is hard to see how this could have happened by accident. Hester, there is something seriously wrong here, but try as I might, I cannot understand it. We need assistance, and I propose that you ask William …”
Hester froze.
“… to give us his advice,” Callandra finished. “This is not something we can deal with ourselves, nor would it be sensible to try. My dear, there is something very wrong. The poor woman is dead. It may be some kind of unfortunate error that her jewelry has found its way into your belongings, but for the life of me I cannot think what.”
“But do you think …” Hester began, hating the thought of going to Monk for help. It seemed so ineffectual, and at the moment she felt too tired and stunned to be up to the kind of emotional battle Monk would engender.
“Yes I do,” Callandra said, yielding nothing. “Or I would not have suggested it. I will not override your wishes, but I cannot urge you strongly enough to get counsel and do so without delay.”
Hester stood still for several moments, thinking, trying to find an explanation so she would not have to go to Monk, and even as she was doing it, knowing it was futile. There was no explanation that made any kind of sense.
Callandra waited, knowing she had carried the argument, it was simply a matter of coming to the point of surrender.
“Yes …” Hester said quietly. “Yes, you are right. I shall go back upstairs and find the pins, then I’ll go and see if I can find Monk.”
“You may take my carriage,” Callandra offered.
Hester smiled wanly. “Do you not trust me to go?” But she did not wait for an answer. They both knew it was the only course that made sense.
Monk looked at her with a frown. They were in the small sitting room she had suggested he use as a place to receive prospective clients. It would make them feel much more at ease than his rather austere office, which was far too functional and intimidating. Monk himself was unnerving enough, with his smooth, lean-boned face and unwavering eyes.
He was standing by the mantelpiece, having heard the outer door open and come in immediately. His expression on recognizing her was an extraordinary mixture of pleasure and irritation. Obviously he had been hoping for a client. Now he regarded with disfavor her plain dress, the one borrowed from Callandra’s maid, her pale face and her hastily done hair.
“What’s wrong? You look dreadful.” It was said in a tone of pure criticism. Then a flicker of anxiety crossed his eyes. “You are not ill, are you?” There was anger in his voice. It would inconvenience him if she were ill. Or was it fear?
“No, I’m not ill,” she said tartly. “I have returned from Edinburgh on the overnight train, with a patient.” It was difficult to say this with the composure and the chill she wished. If only there had been someone else to turn to who would be equally able to see the dangers and give good and practical advice.
He drew breath to make some stinging retort, then, knowing her as well as he did, realized there was something profoundly wrong. He waited, looking at her intently.
“My patient was an elderly lady of some position in Edinburgh,” she went on, her voice growing quieter and losing its sharpness. “A Mrs. Mary Farraline. I was employed to give
her her medicine last thing at night, that was really all I had to do. Apart from that, I think it was mainly company for her.”
He did not interrupt. She smiled with a bitter amusement. A few months ago he would have. Being obliged to seek customers in order to obtain a living, instead of having them as a right, as he had when a police inspector, had taught him, if not humility, at least enlightened self-interest.
He motioned her to sit down, while he sat opposite her, still listening.
She returned her mind painfully to her reason for being there.
“She went to sleep about half past eleven,” she continued. “At least she seemed to. I slept quite well myself, having been up … in a second-class carriage all the way from London the night before.” She swallowed. “When I awoke in the morning, shortly before our arrival in London, I tried to rouse her, and discovered she was dead.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. There was sincerity in his voice, but also a waiting. He knew it must have disturbed her. Although it was probably beyond her control, it was a kind of failure and he knew she would regard it as such. But she had never confided her failures or sadnesses to him before … or at least only indirectly. She would not have come simply to say this. He stood with one foot on the fender, shoulder against the mantelshelf, waiting for her to continue.
“Of course I had to inform the stationmaster, and then her daughter and son-in-law, who had come to meet her. It was some time before I was able to leave the station. When I did, I went to see Callandra….”
He nodded. It was what he would have expected. In fact, it was what he would have done himself. Callandra was perhaps the only person in whom he would confide his emotions. He would never willingly allow Hester to see his vulnerability. Of course she had seen it a few times as Callandra never had, but that was different, and had been unintentional.
“While I was there I had occasion to go upstairs and search for some further hairpins….”
His smile was sarcastic. She knew her hair was still untidy, and exactly what was passing through his mind. Her voice sharpened again.