by Anne Perry
They were admitted reluctantly by the footman, but no persuasion would cause him to show them into the withdrawing room. Instead they were left together in the morning room, neither cheered nor warmed by the fire smoldering in the grate, and required to wait until Her Ladyship should decide whether she would receive them or not.
After twenty-five minutes the footman returned and conducted them to the boudoir, where Fabia was seated on her favorite settee, looking pale and somewhat strained, but perfectly composed.
“Good morning, Mr. Monk. Constable.” She nodded at Evan. Her eyebrows rose and her eyes became icier. “Good morning, Miss Latterly. I assume you can explain your presence here in such curious company?”
Hester took the bull by the horns before Monk had time to form a reply.
“Yes, Lady Fabia. I have come to inform you of the truth about my family’s tragedy—and yours.”
“You have my condolences, Miss Latterly.” Fabia looked at her with pity and distaste. “But I have no desire to know the details of your loss, nor do I wish to discuss my bereavement with you. It is a private matter. I imagine your intention is good, but it is entirely misplaced. Good day to you. The footman will see you to the door.”
Monk felt the first flicker of anger stir, in spite of the consuming disillusion he knew this woman was shortly going to feel. Her willful blindness was monumental, her ability to disregard other people total.
Hester’s face set hard with resolve, as granite hard as Fabia’s own.
“It is the same tragedy, Lady Fabia. And I do not discuss it out of good intentions, but because it is a truth we are all obliged to face. It gives me no pleasure at all, but neither do I plan to run away from it—”
Fabia’s chin came up and the thin muscles tightened in her neck, suddenly looking scraggy, as if age had descended on her in the brief moments since they entered the room.
“I have never run from a truth in my life, Miss Latterly, and I do not care for your impertinence in suggesting I might. You forget yourself.”
“I would prefer to forget everything and go home.” A ghost of a smile crossed Hester’s face and vanished. “But I cannot. I think it would be better if Lord Shelburne and Mr. Menard Grey were to be present, rather than repeat the story for them later. There may be questions they wish to ask—Major Grey was their brother and they have some rights in knowing how and why he died.”
Fabia sat motionless, her face rigid, her hands poised halfway towards the bell pull. She had not invited any of them to be seated, in fact she was on the point of asking again that they leave. Now, with the mention of Joscelin’s murderer, everything was changed. There was not the slightest sound in the room except the ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece.
“You know who killed Joscelin?” She looked at Monk, ignoring Hester.
“Yes ma’am, we do.” He found his mouth dry and the pulse beating violently in his head. Was it fear, or pity—or both?
Fabia stared at him, demanding he explain everything for her, then slowly the challenge died. She saw something in his face which she could not overcome, a knowledge and a finality which touched her with the first breath of a chill, nameless fear. She pulled the bell, and when the maid came, told her to send both Menard and Lovel to her immediately. No mention was made of Rosamond. She was not a Grey by blood, and apparently Fabia did not consider she had any place in this revelation.
They waited in silence, each in their separate worlds of misery and apprehension. Lovel came first, looking irritably from Fabia to Monk, and with surprise at Hester. He had obviously been interrupted while doing something he considered of far greater urgency.
“What is it?” he said, frowning at his mother. “Has something further been discovered?”
“Mr. Monk says he knows at last who killed Joscelin,” she answered with masklike calm.
“Who?”
“He has not told me. He is waiting for Menard.”
Lovel turned to Hester, his face puckered with confusion. “Miss Latterly?”
“The truth involves the death of my father also, Lord Shelburne,” she explained gravely. “There are parts of it which I can tell you, so you understand it all.”
The first shadow of anxiety touched him, but before he could press her further Menard came in, glanced from one to another of them, and paled.
“Monk finally knows who killed Joscelin,” Lovel explained. “Now for heaven’s sake, get on with it. I presume you have arrested him?”
“It is in hand, sir.” Monk found himself more polite to them all than previously. It was a form of distancing himself, almost a sort of verbal defense.
“Then what is it you want of us?” Lovel demanded.
It was like plunging into a deep well of ice.
“Major Grey made his living out of his experience in the Crimean War—” Monk began. Why was he so mealymouthed? He was dressing it in sickening euphemisms.
“My son did not ‘make his living’ as you put it!” Fabia snapped. “He was a gentleman—there was no necessity. He had an allowance from the family estates.”
“Which didn’t begin to cover the expenses of the way he liked to live,” Menard said savagely. “If you’d ever looked at him closely, even once, you would have known that.”
“I did know it.” Lovel glared at his brother. “I assumed he was successful at cards.”
“He was—sometimes. At other times he’d lose—heavily-more than he had. He’d go on playing, hoping to get it back, ignoring the debts—until I paid them, to save the family honor.”
“Liar,” Fabia said with withering disgust. “You were always jealous of him, even as a child. He was braver, kinder and infinitely more charming than you.” For a moment a brief glow of memory superseded the present and softened all the lines of anger in her face—then the rage returned deeper than before. “And you couldn’t forgive him for it.”
Dull color burned up Menard’s face and he winced as if he had been struck. But he did not retaliate. There was still in his eyes, in the turn of his lips, a pity for her which concealed the bitter truth.
Monk hated it. Futilely he tried again to think of any way he could to avoid exposing Menard even now.
The door opened and Callandra Daviot came in, meeting Hester’s eyes, seeing the intense relief in them, then the contempt in Fabia’s eyes and the anguish in Menard’s.
“This is a family concern,” Fabia said, dismissing her. “You need not trouble yourself with it.”
Callandra walked past Hester and sat down.
“In case you have forgotten, Fabia, I was born a Grey. Something which you were not. I see the police are here. Presumably they have learned more about Joscelin’s death—possibly even who was responsible. What are you doing here, Hester?”
Again Hester took the initiative. Her face was bleak and she stood with her shoulders stiff as if she were bracing herself against a blow.
“I came because I know a great deal about Joscelin’s death, which you may not believe from anyone else.”
“Then why have you concealed it until now,” Fabia said with heavy disbelief. “I think you are indulging in a most vulgar intrusion, Miss Latterly, which I can only presume is a result of that same willful nature which drove you to go traipsing off to the Crimea. No wonder you are unmarried.”
Hester had been called worse things than vulgar, and by people for whose opinion she cared a great deal more than she did for Fabia Grey’s.
“Because I did not know it had any relevance before,” she said levelly. “Now I do. Joscelin came to visit my parents after my brother was lost in the Crimea. He told them he had lent George a gold watch the night before his death. He asked for its return, assuming it was found among George’s effects.” Her voice dropped a fraction and her back became even stiffer. “There was no watch in George’s effects, and my father was so embarrassed he did what he could to make amends to Joscelin—with hospitality, money to invest in Joscelin’s business enterprise, not only his ow
n but his friends’ also. The business failed and my father’s money, and all that of his friends, was lost. He could not bear the shame of it, and he took his own life. My mother died of grief a short while later.”
“I am truly sorry for your parents’ death,” Lovel interrupted, looking first at Fabia, then at Hester again. “But how can all this have anything to do with Joscelin’s murder? It seems an ordinary enough matter—an honorable man making a simple compensation to clear his dead son’s debt to a brother officer.”
Hester’s voice shook and at last her control seemed in danger of breaking.
“There was no watch. Joscelin never knew George—any more than he knew a dozen others whose names he picked from the casualty lists, or whom he watched die in Scutari—I saw him do it—only then I didn’t know why.”
Fabia was white-lipped. “That is a most scandalous lie—and beneath contempt. If you were a man I should have you horsewhipped.”
“Mother!” Lovel protested, but she ignored him.
“Joscelin was a beautiful man—brave and talented and full of charm and wit,” she plunged on, her voice thick with emotion, the joy of the past, and the anguish. “Everyone loved him—except those few who were eaten with envy.” Her eyes darted at Menard with something close to hatred. “Little men who couldn’t bear to see anyone succeed beyond their own petty efforts.” Her mouth trembled. “Lovel, because Rosamond loved Joscelin; he could make her laugh—and dream.” Her voice hardened. “And Menard, who couldn’t live with the fact that I loved Joscelin more than I loved anyone else in the world, and I always did.”
She shuddered and her body seemed to shrink into itself as if withdrawing from something vile. “Now this woman has come here with her warped and fabricated story, and you stand there and listen to it. If you were men worthy of the name, you would throw her out and damn it for the slander it is. But it seems I must do it myself. No one has any sense of the family honor but me.” She put her hands on the arm of her chair as if to rise to her feet.
“You’ll have no one thrown out until I say so,” Lovel said with a tight, calm voice, suddenly cutting like steel across her emotion. “It is not you who have defended the family honor; all you’ve defended is Joscelin—whether he deserved it or not. It was Menard who paid his debts and cleaned up the trail of cheating and welching he left behind—”
“Nonsense. Whose word do you have for that? Menard’s?” She spat the name. “He is calling Joscelin a cheat, no one else. And he wouldn’t dare, if Joscelin were alive. He only has the courage to do it now because he thinks you will back him, and there is no one here to call him the pathetic, treacherous liar he is.”
Menard stood motionless, the final blow visible in the agony of his face. She had hurt him, and he had defended Joscelin for her sake for the last time.
Callandra stood up.
“You are wrong, Fabia, as you have been wrong all the time. Miss Latterly here, for one, will testify that Joscelin was a cheat who made money deceiving the bereaved who were too hurt and bewildered to see him for what he was. Menard was always a better man, but you were too fond of flattery to see it. Perhaps you were the one Joscelin deceived most of all—first, last and always.” She did not flinch now, even from Fabia’s stricken face as she caught sight at last of a fearful truth. “But you wanted to be deceived. He told you what you wished to hear; he told you you were beautiful, charming, gay—all the things a man loves in a woman. He learned his art in your gullibility, your willingness to be entertained, to laugh and to be the center of all the life and love in Shelburne. He said all that not because he thought for a moment it was true, but because he knew you would love him for saying it—and you did, blindly and indiscriminately, to the exclusion of everyone else. That is your tragedy, as well as his.”
Fabia seemed to wither as they watched her.
“You never liked Joscelin,” she said in a last, frantic attempt to defend her world, her dreams, all the past that was golden and lovely to her, everything that gave her meaning as it crumbled in front of her—not only what Joscelin had been, but what she herself had been. “You are a wicked woman.”
“No, Fabia,” Callandra replied. “I am a very sad one.” She turned to Hester. “I assume it is not your brother who killed Joscelin, or you would not have come here to tell us this way. We would have believed the police, and the details would not have been necessary.” With immeasurable sorrow she looked across at Menard. “You paid his debts. What else did you do?”
There was an aching silence in the room.
Monk could feel his heart beating as if it had the force to shake his whole body. They were poised on the edge of truth, and yet it was still so far away. It could be lost again by a single slip; they could plunge away into an abyss of fear, whispered doubts, always seeing suspicions, double meanings, hearing the footstep behind and the hand on the shoulder.
Against his will, he looked across at Hester, and saw that she was looking at him, the same thoughts plain in her eyes. He turned his head quickly back to Menard, who was ashen-faced.
“What else did you do?” Callandra repeated. “You knew what Joscelin was—”
“I paid his debts.” Menard’s voice was no more than a whisper.
“Gambling debts,” she agreed. “What about his debts of honor, Menard? What about his terrible debts to men like Hester’s father and brother—did you pay them as well?”
“I—I didn’t know about the Latterlys,” Menard stammered.
Callandra’s face was tight with grief.
“Don’t equivocate, Menard. You may not have known the Latterlys by name, but you knew what Joscelin was doing. You knew he got money from somewhere, because you knew how much he had to gamble with. Don’t tell us you didn’t learn where it came from. I know you better than that. You would not have rested in that ignorance—you knew what a fraud and a cheat Joscelin was, and you knew there was no honest way for him to come by so much. Menard—” Her face was gentle, full of pity. “You have behaved with such honor so far—don’t soil it now by lying. There is no point, and no escape.”
He winced as if she had struck him, and for a second Monk thought he was going to collapse. Then he straightened up and faced her, as though she had been a long-awaited execution squad—and death was not now the worst fear.
“Was it Edward Dawlish?” Now her voice also was barely above a whisper. “I remember how you cared for each other as boys, and your grief when he was killed. Why did his father quarrel with you?”
Menard did not evade the truth, but he spoke not to Callandra but to his mother, his voice low and hard, a lifetime of seeking and being rejected naked in it finally.
“Because Joscelin told him I had led Edward into gambling beyond his means, and that in the Crimea he had got in over his head with his brother officers, and would have died in debt—except that Joscelin settled it all for him.”
There was a rich irony in that, and it was lost on no one. Even Fabia flinched in a death’s-head acknowledgment of its cruel absurdity.
“For his family’s sake,” Menard continued, his voice husky, his eyes on Callandra. “Since I was the one who had led him to ruin.”
He gulped. “Of course there was no debt. Joscelin never even served in the same area as Edward—I found that out afterwards. It was all another of his lies—to get money.” He looked at Hester. “It was not as bad as your loss. At least Dawlish didn’t kill himself. I am truly sorry about your family.”
“He didn’t lose any money.” Monk spoke at last. “He didn’t have time. You killed Joscelin before he could take it. But he had asked.”
There was utter silence. Callandra put both her hands to her face. Lovel was stunned, unable to comprehend. Fabia was a broken woman. She no longer cared. What happened to Menard was immaterial. Joscelin, her beloved Joscelin, had been murdered in front of her in a new and infinitely more dreadful way. They had robbed her not only of the present and the future, but all the warm, sweet, precious past. It had a
ll gone; there was nothing left but a handful of bitter ash.
They all waited, each in a separate world in the moments between hope and the finality of despair. Only Fabia had already been dealt the ultimate blow.
Monk found the nails of his hands cutting his palms, so tightly were his fists clenched. It could all still slip away from him. Menard could deny it, and there would be no proof sufficient. Runcorn would have only the bare facts, and come after Monk, and what was there to protect him?
The silence was like a slow pain, growing with each second.
Menard looked at his mother and she saw the movement of his head, and turned her face away, slowly and deliberately.
“Yes,” Menard said at last. “Yes I did. He was despicable. It wasn’t only what he had done to Edward Dawlish, or me, but what he was going to go on doing. He had to be stopped—before it became public, and the name of Grey was a byword for a man who cheats the families of his dead comrades-in-arms, a more subtle and painful version of those who crawl over the battlefield the morning after and rob the corpses of the fallen.”
Callandra walked over to him and put her hand on his arm.
“We will get the best legal defense available,” she said very quietly. “You had a great deal of provocation. I think they will not find murder.”
“We will not.” Fabia’s voice was a mere crackle, almost a sob, and she looked at Menard with terrible hatred.
“I will,” Callandra corrected. “I have quite sufficient means.” She turned back to Menard again. “I will not leave you alone, my dear. I imagine you will have to go with Mr. Monk now—but I will do all that is necessary, I promise you.”
Menard held her hand for a moment; something crossed his lips that was almost a smile. Then he turned to Monk.
“I am ready.”
Evan was standing by the door with the manacles in his pocket. Monk shook his head, and Menard walked out slowly between them. The last thing Monk heard was Hester’s voice as she stood next to Callandra.