A Dangerous Mourning

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 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 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 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 hving 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."

"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 damned 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 fag-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 nightshirt, 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 embarrassed. 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 assist-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 circumstances. 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 circumstances of his "retirement."

Major Tallis's face clouded over immediately.

"An excellent officer, and one of the nicest men I ever knew. He was a fine commander of men. It came to him naturally because he had courage and a sense of justice that men admired. There was humor in him, and some love of adventure, but not bravado. He never took unnecessary chances." He smiled with great sadness. "I think more than most men, he wanted to live. He had a great love for his wife-in fact the army was not the career he would have chosen; he entered it only to earn himself the means to support his wife in the manner he wished and to make some peace with his father-in-law, Sir Basil Moidore-who paid for his commission as a wedding gift, I believe, and watched over his career with keen interest. What an ironic tragedy."

"Ironic?" she said quickly.

His face creased with pain and his voice lowered instinctively, but his words were perfectly clear.

"It was Sir Basil who arranged his promotion, and thus his transfer from the regiment in which he was to Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade, and of course they led the charge at Balaclava. If he had remained a lieutenant as he was, he would very probably be alive today."

"What happened?" An awful possibility was opening up in front of her, so ugly she could not bear to look at it, nor yet

could she look away. "Do you know of whom Sir Basil asked his favor? A great deal of honor depends upon it," she pressed with all the gravity she could. "And, I am beginning to think, the truth of Octavia Haslett's death. Please, Major Tallis, tell me about Captain Haslett's promotion?"

He hesitated only a moment longer. The debt he owed her, their common memories, and his admiration and grief over Haslett's death prevailed.

"Sir Basil is a man of great power and influence, perhaps you are not aware quite how much. He has far more wealth than he displays, although that is considerable, but he also had obligations owed him, debts both of assistance and of finance from the past, and I think a great deal of knowledge-" He left the uses of that unspoken. "He would not find it difficult to accomplish the transfer of an officer from one regiment to another in order to achieve his promotion, if he wished it. A letter-sufficient money to purchase the new commission-"

"But how would Sir Basil know whom to approach in the new regiment?" she pressed, the idea taking firmer shape in her mind all the time.

"Oh-because he is quite well acquainted with Lord Cardigan, who would naturally be aware of all the possible vacancies in command."

"And of the nature of the regiment," she added.

"Of course." He looked puzzled.

"And their likely dispositions?"

"Lord Cardigan would-naturally. But Sir Basil hardly-"

"You mean Sir Basil was unaware of the course of the campaign and the personalities of the commanders?" She allowed the heavy doubt through her expression for him to see.

"Well-" He frowned, beginning to glimpse what he also found too ugly to contemplate. "Of course I am not privy to his communication with Lord Cardigan. Letters to and from the Crimea take a considerable time; even on the fastest packet boats it would not be less than ten or fourteen days. Things can change greatly in that time. Battles can be won or lost and a great deal of ground altered between opposing forces."

"But regiments do not change their natures, Major." She forced him to realism."A competent commander knows which regiments he would choose to lead a charge, the more desperate the charge the more certain would he be to pick exactly the right man-and the right captain, who had courage, flair, and the absolute loyalty of his men. He would also choose someone tried in the field, yet uninjured so far, and not weary from defeat, or failure, or so scarred in spirit as to be uncertain of his mettle."

He stared at her without speaking.

"In fact once raised to captain, Harry Haslett would be ideal, would he not?"

"He would," he said almost under his breath.

"And Sir Basil saw to his promotion and his change of posting to Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade. Do you suppose any of the correspondence on the subject is still extant?"

"Why, Miss Latterly? What is it you are seeking?"

To lie to him would be contemptible-and also alienate his sympathies.

"The truth about Octavia Haslett's death," she answered.

He sighed heavily. "Was she not murdered by some servant or other? I seem to recollect seeing it in the newspapers. The man was just hanged, was he not?"

"Yes," she agreed with a heavy weariness of failure inside her. "But the day she died she learned something which shook her so deeply she told her uncle it was the most dreadful truth, and she wanted only one more piece of evidence to prove it. I am beginning to believe that it may have concerned die death of her husband. She was thinking of it the day of her own death. We had previously assumed that what she discovered concerned her family still living, but perhaps it did not. Major Tallis, would it be possible to learn if she came here that day- if she saw someone?"

Now he looked very troubled.

"What day was it?"

She told him.

He pulled a bell rope and a young officer appeared and snapped to attention.

"Payton, will you convey my compliments to Colonel Sidgewick and ask him if at any time around the end of November last year the widow of Captain Harry Haslett called upon his office. It is a matter of considerable importance, concerning both honor and life, and I would be most obliged if he would give me an answer of exactness as soon as may be possible. This lady, who is one of Miss Nightingale's nurses, is waiting upon the answer."

"Sir!" The junior snapped to attention once again, turned on his heel and departed.

While he was gone Major Tallis apologized for requiring Hester to spend her time in the waiting room, but he had other business obligations which he must discharge. She understood and assured him it was precisely what she expected and was perfectly content. She would write letters and otherwise occupy herself.

It was not long, a matter of fifteen or twenty minutes, before the door opened and the lieutenant returned. As soon as he left, Major Tallis called Hester in. His face was white, his eyes full of anxiety and fearful pity.

"You were perfectly correct," he said very quietly. "Oc-tavia Haslett was here on the afternoon of her death, and she spoke with Colonel Sidgewick. She learned from him exactly what you learned from me, and from her words and expression on hearing, it appears she drew the same conclusions. I am most profoundly grieved, and I feel guilty-I am not sure for what. Perhaps that the whole matter occurred, and no one did anything to prevent it. Truly, Miss Latterly, I am deeply sorry."

"Thank you-thank you, Major Tallis." She forced a sickly smile, her mind whirling. "I am most grateful to you."

"What are you going to do?" he said urgently.

"I don't know. I'm not sure what I can do. I shall consult with the police officer on the case; I think that would be wisest."

"Please do, Miss Latterly-please be most careful. I-"

"I know," she said quickly. "I have learned much in confidence. Your name will not be mentioned, I give you my word. Now I must go. Thank you again." And without waiting for him to add anything further, she turned and left, almost running down the long corridor and making three wrong turnings before she finally came to the exit.

***

She found Monk at some inconvenience, and was obliged to wait at his lodgings until after dark, when he returned home. He was startled to see her.

"Hester! What has happened? You look fearful." "Thank you," she said acidly, but she was too full of her news to carry even an irritation for more than an instant. "I have just been to the War Office-at least I was this afternoon. I have been waiting here for you interminably-"

"The War Office." He took off his wet hat and overcoat, the rain felling from them in a little puddle on the floor. "From your expression I assume you learned something of interest?"

Only hesitating to draw breath when it was strictly necessary, she told him everything she had learned from Septimus, then all that had been said from the instant of entering Major Tallis's office.

"If that was where Octavia had been on the afternoon of her death," she said urgently,"if she learned what I did today, then she must have gone back to Queen Anne Street believing that her father had deliberately contrived her husband's promotion and transfer from what was a fine middle-order regiment to Lord Cardigan's Light Brigade, where he would be honor- and duty-bound to lead a charge in which casualties would be murderous." She refused to visualize it, but it crowded close at the back of her mind. "Cardigan's reputation is well known. Many would be bound to die in the first onslaught itself, but even of those who survived it, many would be so seriously wounded the field surgeons could do little to help them. They'd be transferred piled one upon another in open carts to the hospital in Scutari, and there they'd face a long convalescence where gangrene, typhus, cholera and other fevers killed even more than the sword or the cannon had."

He did not interrupt her.

"Once he was promoted," she went on, "his chances of glory, which he did not want, were very slight; his chances of death, quick or slow, were appallingly high.

"If Octavia did learn this, no wonder she went home ashen-faced and did not speak at dinner. Previously she thought it fate and the chances of war which bereaved her of the husband she loved so deeply and left her a dependent widow in her father's house, without escape." She shivered. "Trapped even more surely than before."

Monk agreed tacitly, allowing her to go on uninterrupted.

"Now she discovered it was not a blind misfortune which had taken everything from her." She leaned forward. "But a deliberate betrayal, and she was imprisoned with her betrayer, day after day, for as for as she could see into a gray future.

"Then what did she do? Perhaps when everyone else was asleep, she went to her father's study and searched his desk for letters, the communication which would prove beyond doubt the terrible truth." She stopped.

"Yes," he said very slowly. "Yes-then what? Basil purchased Harry's commission, and then when he proved a fine officer, prevailed upon his friends and purchased him a higher commission in a gallant and reckless tegiment. In whose eyes would that be more than a very understandable piece of favor seeking?"

"No one's," she answered bitterly. "He would protest innocence. How could he know Harry Haslett would lead in the charge and fall?"

"Exactly," he said quickly. "These are the fortunes of war. If you marry a soldier, it is the chance you take-all women do. He would say he grieved for her, but she was wickedly ungrateful to charge him with culpability in it all. Perhaps she had taken a little too much wine with dinner-a fault which she was apt to indulge rather often lately. I can imagine Basil's face as he said it, and his expression of distaste."

She looked at Monk urgently. "That would be useless. Oc-tavia knew her father and was the only one who had ever had the courage to defy him-and reap his revenge.

"But what defiance was left her? She had no allies. Cyprian was content to remain a prisoner in Queen Anne Street. To an extent he had a hostage to fortune in Romola, who obeyed her own instinct for survival, which would never include disobeying Basil. Fenella was uninterested in anyone but herself, Araminta seemed to be on her father's side in apparently everything. Myles Kellard was an additional problem, hardly a solution. And he too would never override Basil's wishes; certainly he would not do it for someone else!"

"Lady Moidore?" he prompted.

"She seemed driven, or else had retreated, to the periphery of things. She fought for Octavia's marriage in the first place, but after that it seems her resources were spent. Septimus might have fought for her, but he had no weapons."

"And Harry was dead." He took up the thread. "Leaving a void in her life nothing else could begin to heal. She must have felt an overwhelming despair, grief, betrayal and a sense of being trapped that were almost beyond endurance, and she was without a weapon to fight back."

"Almost?" she demanded. "Almost beyond endurance? Tired, stunned, confused and alone-what is 'almost' about it? And she did have a weapon, whether she intended it as such or not. Perhaps the thought had never entered her mind, but scandal would hurt Basil more than anything else-the fearful scandal of a suicide." Her voice became harsh with the tragedy and the irony of it. "His daughter, living in his home, under his care, so wretched, so comfortless, so un-Christian as to take her own life, not peacefully with laudanum, not even over the rejection of a lover, and it was too late to be the shock of Harry's death, but deliberately and bloodily in her own bedroom. Or perhaps even in his study with the betraying letter in her hand.

"She would be buried in unhallowed ground, with other sinners beyond forgiveness. Can you imagine what people would say? The shame of it, the looks, the whispers, the sudden silences. The invitations that would no longer come, the people one calls upon who would be unaccountably not at home, in spite of the fact that their carriages were in the mews and all the lights blazing. And where there had been admiration and envy, now there would be contempt-and worst of all, derision."

His face was very grave, the dark tragedy of it utterly apparent.

"If it had not been Annie who had found her, but someone else," he said,"one of the family, it would have been an easy thing to remove the knife, put her on the bed, tear her nightgown to make it seem as if there had been some struggle, however brief, then break the creeper outside the window and take a few ornaments and jewels. Then it would seem murder, appalling, grieving, but not shameful. There would be acute sympathy, no ostracism, no blame. It could happen to anyone.

"Then I seemed about to ruin it all by proving that no one had broken into the house, so a murderer must be found among the residents."

"So that is the crime-not the stabbing of Octavia, but the slow, judicial murder of Percival. How hideous, how immeasurably worse," she said slowly. "But how can we possibly prove it? They will go undiscovered and unpunished. They will get away with it! Whoever it is-"

"What a nightmare. But who? I still don't know. The scandal would harm them all. It could have been Cyprian and Rom-ola, or even Cyprian alone. He is a big man, quite strong enough to carry Octavia from the study, if that was where it happened, up to her room and lay her on the bed. He would not even run much risk of disturbing anyone, since his room was next to hers."

It was a startlingly distressing thought. Cyprian's face with its imagination and capacity for humor and pain came sharply to her mind. It would be like him to want to conceal his sister's act, to save her name and see that she might be grieved for, and buried in holy ground.

But Percival had been hanged for it.

"Was Cyprian so weak he would have permitted that, knowing Percival could not be guilty?" she said aloud. She wished profoundly she could dismiss that as impossible, but Cyprian yielding to Romola's emotional pressure was too clear in her mind, as was the momentary desperation she had seen in his face when she had watched him unobserved. And he of all of them seemed to grieve most deeply for Octavia, with the most wounding pity.

"Septimus?" Monk asked.

It was the kind of reckless, compassionate act Septimus might perform.

"No," she denied vehemently. "No-he would never permit Percival to hang."

"Myles would." Monk was looking at her with intense emotion now, his face bleak and strained. "He would have done it to save the family name. His own status is tied inextricably with the Moidores'- in fact it is totally dependent on it. Araminta might have helped him-and might not."

A sharp memory returned to Hester of Araminta in the library, and of the charged emotion between her and Myles. Surely she knew he had not killed Octavia-and yet she was prepared to let Monk think he had, and watch Myles sweat with fear. That was a very peculiar kind of hatred-and power. Was it fueled by the horror of her own wedding night and its violence, or by his rape of the maid Martha-or by the fact that they were conspirators in concealing the manner of Oc-tavia's death, and then of allowing Percival to hang for it?

"Or Basil himself?" she suggested.

"Or even Basil for reputation-and Lady Moidore for love?" he said. "In fact Fenella is the only one for whom I can find no reason and no means." His face was white, and there was a look of such grief and guilt in his eyes she felt the most intense admiration for his inner honesty, and a warmth towards the pity he was capable of but so rarely showed.

"Of course it is all only speculation," she said much more gently. "I know of no proof for any of it. Even if we had learned this before Percival was ever charged, I cannot even imagine how we might prove it. That is why I have come to you-and of course I wished to share the knowledge with you."

There was a look of profound concentration on his fece. She waited, hearing the sounds of Mrs. Worley working in the kitchen and the rattle of hansoms and a dray cart passing in the street outside.

"If she killed herself," he said at last, "then someone removed the knife at the time they discovered her body, and presumably replaced it in the kitchen-or possibly kept it, but that seems unlikely. It does not seem, so far as we can see, the act of someone in panic. If they put the knife back... no." His face screwed up in impatience. "They certainly did not put the peignoir back. They must have hidden them both in some place we did not search. And yet we found no trace of anyone having left the house between the time of her death and the time the police constable and the doctor were called." He stared at her, as if seeking her thoughts, and yet he continued to speak. "In a house with as many staff as that, and maids up at five, it would be difficult to leave unseen-and to be sure of being unseen."

"But surely there were places in the family's rooms you did not search?" she said.

"I imagine so." His face was dark with the ugliness of it. "God! How brutal! They must have kept the knife and the peignoir, stained with her blood, just in case they were needed-to incriminate some poor devil." He shuddered involuntarily, and she felt a sudden coldness in the room that had nothing to do with the meager fire or the steady sleet outside, now turning to snow.

"Perhaps if we could find the hiding place," she said tentatively, "we might know who it was who used it?"

He laughed, a jerky, painful sound.

"The person who put it in Percival's room behind the drawers in his dresser? I don't think we can assume that the hiding place incriminates them."

She felt foolish.

"Of course not," she admitted quietly. "Then what can we look for?"

He sank into silence again for a long time, and she waited, racking her brains.

"I don't know," he said at last, with obvious difficulty. "Blood in the study might be indicative-Percival would not have killed her there. The whole premise is that he forced his way into her bedroom and she fought him off and was killed in the process-"

She stood up, suddenly full of energy now that there was something to do. ' "I will look for it. It won't be difficult-"

"Be careful," he said so sharply that it was almost a bark. "Hester!"

She opened her mouth to be dismissive, full of the excitement of at last having some idea to pursue.

"Hester!" He caught her by the shoulder, his hands hard.

She winced and would have pulled away had she the strength.

"Hester-listen to me!"' he said urgently. "This man-or woman-has done far more than conceal a suicide. They have committed a slow and very deliberate murder." His face was tight with distress."Have you ever seen a man hanged? I have. And I watched Percival struggle as the net tightened around him for the weeks before-and then I visited him in Newgate. It is a terrible way to die."

She felt a little sick, but she did not retreat.

"They will have no pity for you," he went on relentlessly, "if you threaten them in even the slightest way. In fact I think now that you know this, it would be better if you were to send in your notice. Tell them by letter that you have had an accident and cannot return. No one is needing a nurse; a ladies' maid could perfectly well perform all that Lady Moidore wants."

"I will not." She stood almost chest to chest with him and glared. "I am going back to Queen Anne Street to see if I can discover what really happened to Octavia-and possibly who did it and caused Percival to be hanged." She realized the enormity of what she was saying, but she had left herself no retreat.

"Hester."

"What?"

He took a deep breath and let her go. "Then I will remain in the street nearby, and shall look to see you at least every hour at a window that gives to the street. If I don't, I shall call Evan at the police station and have him enter the place-"

"You can't!" she protested.

"lean!"

"On what pretext, for heaven's sake?"

He smiled with bitter humor. "That you are wanted in connection with a domestic theft. I can always release you afterwards-with unblemished character-a case of mistaken identity."

She was more relieved than she would show.

"I am obliged to you." She tried to say it stiffly, but her emotion showed through, and for a moment they stared at each other with that perfect understanding that occasionally flashed between them. Then she excused herself, picked up her coat again and allowed him to help her into it, and took her leave.

***

She entered the Queen Anne Street house discreetly and avoided all but the most essential conversation, going upstairs to check that Septimus was still recovering well. He was pleased to see her and greeted her with interest. She found it hard not to tell him anything of her discoveries or conclusions, and she made excuses to escape and go to Beatrice as soon as she could without hurting his feelings.

After she had brought up her dinner she asked permission to retire early, saying she had letters to write, and Beatrice was content to acquiesce.

She slept very restlessly, and it was no difficulty to rise at a little after two in the morning and creep downstairs with a candle. She dared not turn up the gas. It would glare like the sun and be too far away for her to reach to turn it down should she hear anyone else about. She slipped down the female servants' staircase to the landing, then down the main staircase to the hall and into Sir Basil's study. With an unsteady hand she knelt down, candle close to the floor, and searched the red-and-blue Turkey carpet to find an irregularity in the pattern that might mark a bloodstain.

It took her about ten minutes, and it seemed like half the night, before she heard the clock in the hall chime and it nearly startled her into dropping the candle. As it was she spilled hot wax and had to pick it off the wool with her fingernail.

It was then she realized the irregularity was not simply the nature of the carpet maker but an ugliness, an asymmetry nowhere else balanced, and on bending closer she saw how large it was, now nearly washed out, but still quite discernible. It was behind the large oak desk, where one might naturally stand to open any of the small side drawers, only three of which had locks.

She rose slowly to her feet. Her eye went straight to the second drawer, where she could see faint scoring marks around the keyhole, as if someone had forced it open with a crude tool and a replacement lock and repolishing of the bruised wood could not completely hide it.

There was no way in which she could open it; she had neither skill nor instrument-and more than that, she did not wish to alarm the one person who would most notice a further damage to the desk. But she could easily guess what Octavia had found-a letter, or more than one, from Lord Cardigan, and perhaps even the colonel of the regiment, which had confirmed beyond doubt what she already had learned from the War Office.

Hester stood motionless, staring at the desk with its neatly laid-out dish of sand for blotting ink on a letter, sticks of scarlet wax and tapers for seals, stand of carved sardonyx and red jasper for ink and quills, and a long, exquisite paper knife in imitation of the legendary sword of King Arthur, embedded in its magical stone. It was a beautiful thing, at least ten inches long and with an engraved hilt. The stone itself which formed its stand was a single piece of yellow agate, the largest she had ever seen.

She stood, imagining Octavia in exactly the same spot, her mind whirling with misery, loneliness and the ultimate defeat. She must have stared at that beautiful thing as well.

Slowly Hester reached out her hand and took it. If she had been Octavia she would not have gone to the kitchen for Mrs. Boden's carving knife; she would have used this lovely thing. She took it out slowly, feeling its balance and the sharpness of its tip. It was many seconds in the silent house, the snow falling past the uncurtained window, before she noticed the feint dark line around the joint between the blade and the hilt. She moved it to within a few inches of the candle's flame. It was brown, not the gray darkness of tarnish or inlaid dirt, but the rich, reddish brown of dried blood.

No wonder Mrs. Boden had not missed her knife until just before she told Monk of it. It had probably been there in its rack all the time; she simply confused herself with what she assumed to be the facts.

But there had been blood on the knife they found. Whose blood, if this slender paper knife was what had killed Octavia?

Not whose. It was a kitchen knife-a good cook's kitchen would have plenty of blood available from time to time. One roast, one fish to be gutted, or a chicken. Who could tell the difference between one sort of blood and another?

And if it was not Octavia's blood on the knife, was it hers on the peignoir?

Then a sudden shaft of memory caught her with a shock like cold water. Had not Beatrice said something about Octavia having torn her peignoir, the lace, and not being skilled at such fine needlework, she had accepted Beatrice's offer to mend it for her? Which would mean she had not even been wearing it when she died. But no one knew that except Beatrice-and out of sensitivity to her grief, no one had shown her the blood-soaked garment. Araminta had identified it as being the one Octavia had worn to her room that night-and so it was-at least as far as the upstairs landing. Then she had gone to say good-night to her mother and left the garment there.

Rose too could be mistaken, for the same reason. She would only know it was Octavia's, not when she had worn it.

Or would she? She would at least know when it was last laundered. It was her duty to wash and iron such things-and to mend them should it be necessary. How had she overlooked mending the lace? A laundrymaid should do better.

She would have to ask her about it in the morning.

Suddenly she was returned to the present-and the realization that she was standing in her nightgown in Sir Basil's study, in exactly the same spot where Octavia in her despair must have lolled herself-holding the same blade in her hand. If anyone found her here she would have not a shred of an excuse-and if it was whoever found Octavia, they would see immediately that she also knew.

The candle was low and the bowl filling with melted wax. She replaced the knife, setting it exactly as it had been, then picked up the candle and went as quickly as she could to the door and opened it almost soundlessly. The hallway was in darkness; she could make out only the dimmest luminescence from the window that faced onto the front of the house, and the falling snow.

Silently she tiptoed across the hall, the tiles cold on her bare feet, and up the stairs, seeing only a tiny pool of light around herself, barely enough to place her feet without tripping. At the top she crossed the landing and with difficulty found the bottom of the female servants' stairway.

At last in her own room she snuffed out the candle and climbed into her cold bed. She was chilled and shaking, the perspiration wet on her body and her stomach sick.

***

In the morning it took all the self-control she possessed to see first to Beatrice's comfort, and her breakfast, and then to Septimus, and to leave him without seeming hasty or neglectful in her duty. It was nearly ten o'clock before she was able to make her way to the laundry and find Rose.

"Rose," she began quietly, not to catch Lizzie's attention. She would certainly want to know what was going on, to supervise if it was any kind of work, and to prevent it until a more suitable time if it was not.

"What do you want?" Rose looked pale; her skin had lost its porcelain clarity and bloom and her eyes were very dark, almost hollow. She had taken Percival's death hard. There was some part of her still intrigued by him, and perhaps she was haunted by her own evidence and the part she had played before the arrest, the petty malice and small straw of direction that might have led Monk to him.

"Rose," Hester spoke again, urgently, to draw Rose's attention away from the apron of Dinah's she was smoothing with the flatiron. "It is about Miss Octavia-"

"What about her?" Rose was uninterested, and her hand moved back and forth with the iron, her eyes bent on her work.

"You cared for her clothes, didn't you? Or was it Lizzie?"

"No." Still Rose did not look at her. ' "Lizzie usually cared for Lady Moidore's and Miss Araminta's, and sometimes Mrs. Cyprian's. I did Miss Octavia's, and the gentlemen's linens, and we split the maids' aprons and caps as the need came. Why? What does it matter now?"

"When was the last time you laundered Miss Octavia's peignoir with the lace lilies on it-before she was killed?"

Rose put down the iron at last and turned to Hester with a frown. She considered for several minutes before she answered.

"I ironed it the morning before, and took it up about noon. She wore it that night, I expect-" She took a deep breath. "And I heard she did the night after, and was killed in it."

"Was it torn?"

Rose's lace tightened. "Of course not. Do you think I don't know my job?"

"If she had torn it the first night, would she have given it to you to mend?"

"More probably Mary, but then Mary might have brought it to me-she's competent, and pretty good at altering tailored things and dinner gowns, but those lilies are very fine work. Why? What does it matter now?" Her face screwed up. "Anyway, Mary must have mended it, because I didn't-and it wasn't torn when the police gave it to me to identify; the lilies and all the lace were perfect."

Hester felt a sick excitement.

"Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure-to swear someone's life on?"

Rose looked as if she had been struck; the last vestige of blood left her face.

"Who is there to swear for? Percival's already dead! You know that! What's wrong with you? Why do you care now about a piece of lace?"

"Are you?" Hester insisted. "Are you absolutely sure?"

"Yes I am." Rose was angry because she did not understand Hester's insistence and it frightened her. "It wasn't torn when the police showed it to me with the blood on it. That part of it wasn't stained, and it was perfectly all right."

"You couldn't be mistaken? Is there more than one piece of lace on it?"

"Not like that." She shook her head."Look, Miss Latterly, whatever you may think of me, and it shows in your hoity-toity manners-I know my job and I know a shoulder from a hem of a peignoir. The lace was not torn when I sent it up from the laundry, and it was not torn when I identified it for the police-for any good that does anyone."

"It does a lot," Hester said quietly. "Now would you swear to it?"

"Why?"

"Would you?" Hester could have shaken her in sheer frustration.

"Swear to who?" Rose persisted. "What does it matter now?" Her face worked as if some tremendous emotion shook her. "You mean-" She could hardly find the words. "You mean-it wasn't Percival who killed her?"

"No-I don't think so."

Rose was very white, her skin pinched. "God! Then who?"

"I don't know-and if you've any sense at all, and any desire to keep your life, let alone your job, you'll say nothing to anyone."

"But how do you know?" Rose persisted.

"You are better not understanding-believe me!"

"What are you going to do?" Her voice was very quiet, but there was anxiety in it, and fear.

"Prove it-if I can."

At that moment Lizzie came over, her lips tight with irritation.

"If you need something laundered, Miss Latterly, please ask me and I will see it is done, but don't stand here gossiping with Rose-she has work to do."

"I'm sorry," Hester apologized, forcing a sweet smile, and fled.

She was back in the main house and halfway up the stairs to Beatrice's room before her thoughts cleared. If the peignoir was whole when Rose sent it up, and whole when it was found in Percival's room, but torn when Octavia went to say goodnight to her mother, then she must have torn it some time during that day, and no one but Beatrice had noticed. She had not been wearing it when she died; it had been in Beatrice's room. Some time between Octavia leaving it there and its being discovered, someone had taken it, and a knife from the kitchen, covered the knife in blood and wrapped the peignoir around it, then hidden them in Percival's room.

But who?

When had Beatrice mended it? Surely that night? Why would she bother after she knew Octavia was dead?

Then where had it been? Presumably lying in the workbas-ket in Beatrice's room. No one would care about it greatly after that. Or was it returned to Octavia's room? Yes, surely returned, since otherwise whoever had taken it would realize their mistake and know Octavia had not been wearing it when she went to bed.

She was on the top stair on the landing now. It had stopped raining and the sharp, pale winter sun shone in through the windows, making patterns on the carpet. She had passed no one else. The maids were all busy about their duties, the ladies' maids attending to wardrobe, the housekeeper in her linen room, the upstairs maids making beds, turning mattresses and dusting everything, the tweeny somewhere in the passageway. Dinah and the footmen were somewhere in the front of the house, the family about their morning pleasures, Romola in the schoolroom with the children, Araminta writing letters in the boudoir, the men out, Beatrice still in her bedroom.

Beatrice was the only one who knew about the torn lily, so she would not make the mistake of staining that peignoir-not that Hester had ever suspected her in the first place, or certainly not alone. She might have done it with Sir Basil, but then she was also frightened that someone had murdered Octavia, and she did not know who. Indeed she feared it might have been Myles. Hester considered for only an instant that Beatrice might have been a superb actress, then she abandoned it. To begin with, why should she? She had no idea Hester would repeat anything she said, let alone everything.

Who knew which peignoir Octavia wore that evening? She had left the withdrawing room fully dressed in a dinner gown, as did all the women. Whom had she seen after changing for the night but before retiring?

Only Araminta-and her mother.

Proud, difficult, cold Araminta. It was she who had hidden

her sister's suicide, and when it was inevitable that someone should be blamed for murder, contrived that it should be Per-cival.

But she could not have done it alone. She was thin, almost gaunt. She could never have carried Octavia's body upstairs. Who had helped her? Myles? Cyprian? Or Basil?

And how to prove it?

The only proof was Beatrice's word about the torn lace lilies. But would she swear to that when she knew what it meant?

Hester needed an ally in the house. She knew Monk was outside; she had seen his dark figure every time she had passed the window, but he could not help in this.

Septimus. He was the one person she was sure was not involved, and who might have the courage to fight. And it would take courage. Percival was dead and to everyone else the matter was closed. It would be so much easier to let it all lie.

She changed her direction and instead of going to Beatrice's room went on along the passage to Septimus's.

He was propped up on the bed reading with the book held far in front of him for his longsighted eyes. He looked up with surprise when she came in. He was so much better her attentions were more in the nature of friendship than any medical need. He saw instantly that there was something gravely concerning her.

"What has happened?" he asked anxiously. He set the book down without marking the page.

There was nothing to be served by prevarication. She closed the door and came over and sat on the bed.

"I have made a discovery about Octavia's death-in fact two."

"And they are very grave," he said earnestly. "I see that they trouble you. What are they?"

She took a deep breath. If she was mistaken, and he was implicated, or more loyal to the family, less brave than she believed, then she might be endangering herself more than she could cope with. But she would not retreat now.

"She did not die in her bedroom. I have found where she died." She watched his face. There was nothing but interest. No start of guilt. "In Sir Basil's study," she finished.

He was confused. "In Basil's study? But, my dear, that doesn't make any sense! Why would Percival have gone to her there? And what was she doing there in the middle of the night anyway?" Then slowly the light faded from his face. "Oh- you mean that she did learn something that day, and you know what it was? Something to do with Basil?"

She told him what she had learned at the War Office, and that Octavia had been there the day of her death and learned the same.

"Oh dear God!" he said quietly. "The poor child-poor, poor child." For several seconds he stared at the coverlet, then at last he looked up at her, his face pinched, his eyes grim and frightened. "Are you saying that Basil killed her?"

"No. I believe she killed herself-with the paper knife there in the study."

"Then how did she get up to the bedroom?"

"Someone found her, cleaned the knife and returned it to its stand, then carried her upstairs and broke the creeper outside the window, took a few items of jewelry and a silver vase, and left her there for Annie to discover in the morning."

"So that it should not be seen as suicide, with all the shame and scandal-" He drew a deep breath and his eyes widened in appalled horror. "But dear God! They let Percival hang for it!"

"I know."

"But that's monstrous. It's murder."

"I know that."

"Oh-dear heaven," he said very quietly. "What have we sunk to? Do you know who it was?"

She told him about the peignoir.

"Araminta," he said very quietly. "But not alone. Who helped her? Who carried poor Octavia up the stairs?"

"I don't know. It must have been a man-but I don't know who."

"And what are you going to do about this?"

"The only person who can prove any of it is Lady Moidore. I think she would want to. She knows it was not Percival, and I believe she might find any alternative better than the uncertainty and the fear eating away at all her relationships forever."

"Do you?" He thought about it for some time, his hand curling and uncurling on the bedspread. "Perhaps you are

right. But whether you are or not, we cannot let it pass like this-whatever its cost."

"Then will you come with me to Lady Moidore and see if she will swear to the peignoir's being torn the night of Octa-via's death and in her room all night, and then returned some time later?"

"Yes." He moved to climb to his feet, and she put out both her hands to help him. "Yes," he agreed again. "The least I can do is be there-poor Beatrice."

He had not yet fully understood.

"But will you swear to her answer, if need be before a judge? Will you strengthen her when she realizes what it means?"

He straightened up until he stood very erect, shoulders back, chest out.

"Yes, yes I will."

Beatrice was startled to see Septimus behind Hester when they entered her room. She was sitting at the dressing table brushing her hair. This was something which would ordinarily have been done by her maid, but since it was not necessary to dress it, she was going nowhere, she had chosen to do it herself.

"What is it?" she said quietly. "What has happened? Septimus, are you worse?"

"No, my dear." He moved closer to her. "I am perfectly well. But something has happened about which it is necessary that you make a decision, and I am here to lend you my support."

"A decision? What do you mean?" Already she was frightened. She looked from him to Hester. "Hester? What is it? You know something, don't you?" She drew in her breath and made as if to ask, then her voice died and no sound came. Slowly she put the hairbrush down.

"Lady Moidore," Hester began gently. It was cruel to spin it out. "On the night she died, you said Octavia came to your room to wish you good-night."

"Yes-" It was barely even a whisper.

"And that her peignoir was torn across the lace lilies on the shoulder?"

"Yes-"

"Are you absolutely sure?"

Beatrice was puzzled, some small fraction of her fear abating.

"Yes, of course I am. I offered to mend it for her." The tears welled up in her eyes, beyond her control."I did-" She gulped and fought to master her emotion. "I did-that night, before I went to sleep. I mended them perfectly."

Hester wanted to touch her, to take her hands and hold them, but she was about to deal another terrible blow, and it seemed such hypocrisy, a Judas kiss.

"Would you swear to that, on your honor?"

"Of course-but who can care-now?"

"You are quite sure, Beatrice?" Septimus knelt down awkwardly in front of her, touching her with clumsy, tender hands. "You will not take that back, should it become painful in its meanings?"

She stared at him. "It is the truth-why? What are its meanings, Septimus?"

"That Octavia killed herself, my dear, and that Araminta and someone else conspired to conceal it, to protect the honor of the family." It was so easily encapsulated, all in one sentence.

"Killed herself? But why? Harry has been dead for-for two years."

"Because she learned that day how and why he died." He spared her the last, ugly details, at least for now. "It was more than she could bear."

"But Septimus." Now her mouth and throat were so dry she could scarcely force the words. "They hanged Percival for killing her!"

"I know that, my dear. That is why we must speak;"

"Someone in my house-in my family-murdered Percival!"

"Yes."

"Septimus, I don't know how I can bear it!"

"There is nothing to do but bear it, Beatrice." His voice was very gentle, but there was no wavering in it. "We cannot run away. There is no way of denying it without making it immeasurably worse."

She clutched his hand and looked at Hester.

"Who was it?" she said, her voice barely trembling now, her eyes direct.

"Araminta," Hester replied.

"Not alone."

"No. I don't know who helped her."

Beatrice put her hands very slowly over her face. She knew- and Hester realized it when she saw her clenched knuckles and heard her gasp. But she did not ask. Instead she looked for a moment at Septimus, then turned and walked very slowly out of the room, down the main stairs, and out of the front door into the street to where Monk was standing in the rain.

Gravely, with the rain soaking her hair and her dress, oblivious of it, she told him.

***

Monk went straight to Evan, and Evan took it to Runcorn.

"Balderdash!" Runcorn said furiously. "Absolute balderdash! Whatever put such a farrago of total nonsense in your head? The Queen Anne Street case is closed. Now get on with your present case, and if I hear any more about this you will be in serious trouble. Do I make myself clear, Sergeant?" His long face was suffused with color. "You are a great deal too like Monk for your own good. The sooner you forget him and all his arrogance, the better chance you will have of making yourself a career in the police force."

"You won't question Lady Moidore again?" Evan persisted.

"Great guns, Evan. What is wrong with you? No I won't. Now get out of here and go and do your job."

Evan stood to attention for a moment, the words of disgust boiling up inside him, then turned on his heel and went out. But instead of returning to his new inspector, or to any part of his present case, he found a hansom cab and directed it to take him to the offices of Oliver Rathbone.

Rathbone received him as soon as he could decently dismiss his current, rather garrulous client.

"Yes?" he said with great curiosity. "What is it?"

Clearly and concisely Evan told him what Hester had done, and saw with a mixture of emotions the acute interest with which Rathbone listened, and the alternating fear and amusement in his face, the anger and the sudden gentleness. Young as Evan was, he recognized it as an involvement of more than intellectual or moral concern.

Then he recounted what Monk had added, and his own still smoldering experience with Runcorn.

"Indeed," Rathbone said slowly and with deep thought. "Indeed. Very slender, but it does not take a thick rope to hang a man, only a strong one-and I think this may indeed be strong enough."

"What will you do?" Evan asked. "Runcorn won't look at it."

Rathbone smiled, a neat, beautiful gesture. "Did you imagine he might?"

"No-but-" Evan shrugged.

"I shall take it to the Home Office." Rathbone crossed his legs and placed his fingers tip to tip. "Now tell me again, every detail, and let me be sure."

Obediently Evan repeated every word.

"Thank you." Rathbone rose to his feet. "Now if you will accompany me I shall do what I can-and if we are successful, you may choose yourself a constable and we shall make an arrest. I think perhaps we had better be quick." His face darkened. "From what you say, Lady Moidore at least is already aware of the tragedy to shatter her house."

***

Hester had told Monk all she knew. Against his wishes she had returned to the house, soaked and bedraggled and without an excuse. She met Araminta on the stairs.

"Good heavens," Araminta said with incredulity and amusement. "You look as if you have taken a bath with all your clothes on. Whatever possessed you to go out in this without your coat and bonnet?"

Hester scrambled for an excuse and found none at all.

"It was quite stupid of me," she said as if it were an apology for half-wittedness.

"Indeed it was idiotic!" Araminta agreed. "What were you thinking of?"

"I-er-"

Araminta's eyes narrowed. "Have you a follower, Miss Latterly?"

An excuse. A perfectly believable excuse. Hester breathed a prayer of gratitude and hung her head, blushing for her carelessness, not for being caught in forbidden behavior.

"Yes ma'am."

"Then you are very lucky," Araminta said tartly. "You are plain enough, and won't see twenty-five again. I should take whatever he offers you." And with that she swept past Hester and went on down the hall.

Hester swore under her breath and raced up the stairs, brushing past an astonished Cyprian without a word, and then up the next flight to her own room, where she changed every item of clothing from the skin out, and spread her wet things the best she could to dry.

Her mind raced. What would Monk do? Take it all to Evan, and thus to Runcom. She could imagine Ruricorn's fury from what Monk had told her of him. But surely now he would have no choice but to reopen the case?

She fiddled on with small duties. She dreaded returning to Beatrice after what she had done, but she had little else justification to be here, and now least of all could she afford to arouse suspicion. And she owed Beatrice something, for all the pain she was awakening, the destruction which could not now be avoided.

Heart lurching and clammy-handed, she went and knocked on Beatrice's door.

They both pretended the morning's conversation had not happened. Beatrice talked lightly of all sorts of things in the past, of her first meeting with Basil and how charmed she had been with him, and a little in awe. She spoke of her girlhood growing up in Buckinghamshire with her sisters, of her uncle's tales of Waterloo and the great eve of battle ball in Brussels, and the victory afterwards, the defeat of the emperor Napoleon and all Europe free again, the dancing, the fireworks, the laughter, the great gowns and the music and fine horses. Once as a child she had been presented to the Iron Duke himself. She recalled it with a smile and a faraway look of almost forgotten pleasure.

Then she spoke of the death of the old king, William IV, and the accession of the young Victoria. The coronation had been splendid beyond imagination. Beatrice had been in the prime of her beauty then, and without conceit she told of the celebrations she and Basil had attended, and how she had been admired.

Luncheon came and went, and tea also, and still she fought off reality with increasing fierceness, the color heightening in her cheeks, her eyes more feverish.

If anyone missed them, they made no sign of it, nor came to seek them.

It was half past four, and already dark, when there was a knock on the door.

Beatrice was ashen white. She looked at Hester once, then with a massive effort said quite levelly, "Come in."

Cyprian came in, his face furrowed with anxiety and puzzlement, not yet fear.

"Mama, the police are here again, not that fellow Monk, but Sergeant Evan and a constable-and that wretched lawyer who defended Percival."

Beatrice rose to her feet; only for a moment did she sway.

"I will come down."

"I am afraid they do wish to speak to all of us, and they refuse to say why. I suppose we had better oblige them, although I cannot mink what it can be about now."

"I am afraid, my dear, that it is going to be extremely unpleasant."

"Why? What can there be left to say?"

"A great deal," she replied, and took his arm so that he might support her along the corridor and down the stairs to the withdrawing room, where everyone else was assembled, including Septimus and Fenella. Standing in the doorway were Evan and a uniformed constable. In the middle of the floor was Oliver Rathbone.

"Good afternoon, Lady Moidore," he said gravely. In the circumstances it was a ridiculous form of greeting.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Rathbone," she answered with a slight quiver in her voice. "I imagine you have come to ask me about the peignoir?"

"I have," he said quietly. "I regret that I must do this, but there is no alternative. The footman Harold has permitted me to examine the carpet in the study-" He stopped, and his eyes wandered around the assembled faces. No one moved or spoke.

"I have discovered the bloodstains on the carpet and on the handle of the paper knife." Elegantly he slid the knife out of his pocket and held it, turning it very slowly so its blade caught the light.

Myles Kellard stood motionless, his brows drawn down in disbelief.

Cyprian looked profoundly unhappy.

Basil stared without blinking.

Araminta clenched her hands so hard the knuckles showed, and her skin was as white as paper.

"I suppose there is some purpose to this?" Romola said irritably. "I hate melodrama. Please explain yourself and stop play-acting."

"Oh be quiet!" Fenella snapped. "You hate anything that isn't comfortable and decently domestic. If you can't say something useful, hold your tongue."

"Octavia Haslett died in the study," Rathbone said with a level, careful voice that carried above every other rustle or murmur in the room.

"Good God!" Fenella was incredulous and almost amused. "You don't mean Octavia had an assignation with the footman on the study carpet. How totally absurd-and uncomfortable, when she has a perfectly good bed."

Beatrice swung around and slapped her so hard Fenella fell over sideways and collapsed into one of the armchairs.

"IVe wanted to do that for years," Beatrice said with intense satisfaction. "That is probably the only thing that will give me any pleasure at all today. No-you fool. There was no assignation. Octavia discovered how Basil had Harry set at the head of the charge of Balaclava, where so many died, and she felt as trapped and defeated as we all do. She took her own life."

There was an appalled silence until Basil stepped forward, his face gray, his hand shaking. He made a supreme effort.

"That is quite untrue. You are unhinged with grief. Please go to your room, and I shall send for the doctor. For heaven's sake, Miss Latterly, don't stand there, do something!"

"It is true, Sir Basil." She stared at him levelly, for the first time not as a nurse to her employer but as an equal. "I went to the War Office myself, and learned what happened to Harry Haslett, and how you brought it about, and that Octavia had been there the afternoon of her death and heard the same."

Cyprian looked at his father, then at Evan, then at Rath-bone.

"But then what was the knife and the peignoir in Percival's

room?" he asked. "Papa is right. Whatever Octavia learned about Harry, it doesn't make any sense. The evidence was still there. That was Octavia's peignoir, with her blood on it, wrapped around the knife."

"It was Octavia's peignoir with blood on it," Rathbone agreed."Wrapped around a knife from the kitchen-but it was not Octavia's blood. She was killed with the paper knife in the study, and when someone found her, they carried her upstairs and put her in her own room to make it seem as if she had been murdered." His fastidious face showed distress and contempt. "No doubt to save the shame of a suicide and the disgrace to the family and all it would cost socially and politically. Then they cleaned the knife and returned it to its place."

"But the kitchen knife," Cyprian repeated. "And the peignoir. It was hers. Rose identified it, and so did Mary, and more important, Minta saw her in it on the landing that night. And there is blood on it."

"The kitchen knife could have been taken any time," Rath-bone said patiendy. "The blood could have come from any piece of meat purchased in the course of ordering supplies for the table-a hare, a goose, a side of beef or mutton-"

"But the peignoir."

"That is die crux of the whole matter. You see, it was sent up from the laundry the day before, in perfect order, clean and without mark or tear-"

"Of course," Cyprian agreed angrily."They wouldn't send it up in any other way. What are you talking about, man?"

"On the evening of her death"-Rathbone ignored the interruption, if anything he was even more polite-"Mrs. Has-lett retired to her room and changed for the night. Unfortunately the peignoir was torn, we shall probably never know how. She met her sister, Mrs. Kellard, on the landing, and said good-night to her, as you pointed out, and as we know from Mrs. Kellard herself-" He glanced at Araminta and saw her nod so slightly only die play of light on her glorious hair showed the movement at all."And then she went to say goodnight to her mother. But Lady Moidore noticed the tear and offered to mend it for her-is that not so, ma'am?"

"Yes-yes it is." Beatrice's voice was intended to be low, but it was a hoarse whisper, painful in its grief.

"Octavia took it off and gave it to her mother to mend,"

Rathbone said softly, but every word was as distinct as a separate pebble Ming into iced water. "She went to bed without it-and she was without it when she went to her father's study in the middle of the night. Lady Moidore mended it, and it was returned to Octavia's room. It was from there that someone took it, knowing Octavia had worn it to bid them goodnight but not that she had left it in her mother's room-"

One by one, first Beatrice, then Cyprian, then the others, they turned to Araminta.

Araminta seemed frozen, her face haggard.

"Dear God in heaven. You let Percival hang for it," Cyprian said at last, his lips stiff, his body hunched as if he had been beaten.

Araminta said nothing; she was as pale as if she herself were dead.

"How did you get her upstairs?" Cyprian asked, his voice rising now as if anger could somehow release a fraction of the pain.

Araminta smiled a slow, ugly smile, a gesture of hate as well as hard, bitter hurt.

"I didn't-Papa did that. Sometimes I thought if it were discovered, I should say it was Myles, for what he did to me, and has done all the years we've been married. But no one would believe it." Her voice was laden with years of impotent contempt. "He hasn't the courage. And he wouldn't lie to protect the Moidores. Papa and I would do that-and Myles wouldn't protect us when it came to the end." She rose to her feet and turned to face Sir Basil. There was a thin trickle of blood running down her fingers from where her nails had gouged the skin of her palms.

"IVe loved you all my life, Papa-and you married me to a man who took me by force and used me like a whore." Her bitterness and pain were overwhelming. "You wouldn't let me leave him, because Moidores don't do things like that. It would tarnish the family name, and that's all you care about-power. The power of money-the power of reputation-the power of rank."

Sir Basil stood motionless and appalled, as if he had been struck physically.

"Well, I hid Octavia's suicide to protect the Moidores," Araminta went on, staring at him as if he were the only one who could hear her. "And I helped you hang Percival for it. Well now that we're finished-a scandal-a mockery"-her voice shook on the edge of dreadful laughter-"a byword for murder and corruption-you'll come with me to the gallows for Percival. You're a Moidore, and you'll hang like one-with me!"

"I doubt it will come to that, Mrs. Kellard," Rathbone said, his voice wrung out with pity and disgust. "With a good lawyer you will probably spend the rest of your life in prison- for manslaughter, while distracted with grief-"

"I'd rather hang!" she spat out at him.

"I daresay," he agreed."But the choice will not be yours." He swung around. "Nor yours, Sir Basil. Sergeant Evan, please do your duty."

Obediently Evan stepped forward and placed the iron manacles on Araminta's thin white wrists. The constable from the doorway did the same to Basil.

Romola began to cry, deep sobs of self-pity and utter confusion.

Cyprian ignored her and went to his mother, quietly putting his arms around her and holding her as if he had been the parent and she the child.

"Don't worry, my dear; we shall take care of you," Septimus said clearly. "I think perhaps we shall eat here tonight and make do with a little hot soup. We may wish to retire early, but I think it will be better if we spend the evening together by the fire. We need each other's company. It is not a time to be alone."

Hester smiled at him and walked over to the window and drew the curtain sufficiently to allow her to stand in the lighted alcove. She saw Monk outside in the snow, waiting, and raised her hand to him in a slight salute so that he would understand.

The front door opened and Evan and the constable led out Basil Moidore and his daughter for the last time.