by Anne Perry
“Of course—I forgot.” He pulled a wry face. He had only remembered that she was a friend of a war correspondent in the Crimea, and when he had died in the hospital in Scutari, she had sent his last dispatches home and then, born out of the intensity of her feelings and observations, herself written the succeeding dispatches and sent them under his name. Since the casualty lists were unreliable, his editor had not been aware of the change.
“What are they saying?” she asked. “Anything that affects us?”
“Generally? They are bemoaning the state of the nation that a footman can murder his mistress, that servants are so above themselves that they entertain ideas of lust and depravity involving the well-born; that the social order is crumbling; that we must hang Percival and make an example of him, so that no such thing will ever happen again.” He pulled his face into an expression of disgust. “And of course they are full of sympathy for Sir Basil. All his past services to the Queen and the nation have been religiously rehearsed, all his virtues paraded, and positively fulsome condolences written.”
She sighed and stared into the dregs of her cup.
“All the vested interests are ranged against us,” he said grimly. “Everyone wants it over quickly, society’s vengeance taken as thoroughly as possible, and then the whole matter forgotten so we can pick up our lives and try to continue them as much like before as we can.”
“Is there anything at all we can do?” she asked.
“I can’t think of anything.” He stood up and held her chair. “I shall go and see him.”
She met his eyes with a quick pain, and admiration. There was no need either for her to ask or for him to answer. It was a duty, a last rite which failure did not excuse.
As soon as Monk stepped inside Newgate Prison and the doors clanged shut behind him he felt a sickening familiarity. It was the smell, the mixture of damp, mold, rank sewage and an all-pervading misery that hung in the stillness of the air. Too many men who entered here left only to go to the executioner’s rope, and the terror and despair of their last days had soaked into the walls till he could feel it skin-crawling like ice as he followed the warder along the stone corridors to the appointed place where he could see Percival for the last time.
He had misrepresented himself only slightly. Apparently he had been here before, and as soon as the warder saw his face he leaped to a false conclusion about his errand, and Monk did not explain.
Percival was standing in a small stone cell with one high window to an overcast sky. He turned as the door opened and Monk was let in, the gaoler with his keys looming huge behind.
For the first moment Percival looked surprised, then his face hardened into anger.
“Come to gloat?” he said bitterly.
“Nothing to gloat about,” Monk replied almost casually. “I’ve lost my career, and you will lose your life. I just haven’t worked out who’s won.”
“Lost your career?” For a moment doubt flickered across Percival’s face, then suspicion. “Thought you’d have been made. Gone on to something better! You solved the case to everyone’s satisfaction—except mine. No ugly skeletons dragged out, no mention of Myles Kellard raping Martha, poor little bitch, no saying Aunt Fenella is a whore—just a jumped-up footman filled with lust for a drunken widow. Hang him and let’s get on with our lives. What more could they ask of a dutiful policeman?”
Monk did not blame him for his rage or his hate. They were justified—only, at least in part, misdirected. It would have been fairer to blame him for incompetence.
“I had the evidence,” he said slowly. “But I didn’t arrest you. I refused to do it, and they threw me out.”
“What?” Percival was confused, disbelieving.
Monk repeated it.
“For God’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 gratitude, 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 identity. 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 assisted her.
“Oh God!” 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 face 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 face 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 crass 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.
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 dashing 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 grass, 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 passed 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 pronounced 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 passenger, 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 pass 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 assured 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 grassy 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 emoti
ons, 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 comradeship, 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, brasses 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 passionately 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 living in Queen Anne Street with the carriages and the staff, the ambassadors 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.”