Funeral In Blue

A Funeral in Blue.

by Anne Perry.

Chapter One.

The operating room was silent except for the deep, regular breathing of the gaunt young woman who lay on the table, the immense bulge of her stomach laid bare.

Hester stared across at Kristian Beck. It was the first operation of the day and there was no blood on his white shirt yet. The chloroform sponge had done its miraculous work and was set aside. Kristian picked up the scalpel and touched the point to the young woman"s flesh. She did not flinch, her eyelids did not move. He pressed deeper and a thin, red line appeared.

Hester looked up and met his eyes dark, luminous with intelligence.

They both knew the risk, even with anaesthesia, and the probability was that they could do little to help. A growth this size was likely to be fatal, but without surgery she would die anyway.

Kristian lowered his eyes and continued cutting. The blood spread.

Hester swabbed it up. Mary Ellsworth lay motionless except for her breathing, her face waxen pale, cheeks sunken, shadows around the sockets of her eyes. Her wrists were so thin the shape of the bones poked through the skin. It was Hester who had walked beside Mary from the ward along the corridor, half supporting her weight, trying to ease the anxiety which seemed to have tormented her every time she had been to the hospital over the last two months. Her pain seemed as much in her mind as her body.

Kristian had insisted on surgery, against the wishes of Fermin Thorpe, the Chairman of the Hospital Governors. Thorpe was a cautious man who enjoyed authority but had no courage to step outside the known order of things he could defend if anyone in power were to question him. He loved rules; they were safe. If you kept to the rules you could justify anything.

Kristian was from Bohemia, and in Thorpe"s mind he did not belong here in the Hampstead Hospital in London with his imagination and his foreign accent, however slight, and his disregard for the way things should be done. He should not risk the hospital"s reputation by performing an operation whose chances of success were so slight. But Kristian had an answer, an argument for everything. And of course Lady Callandra Daviot had taken his side; she always did!

Kristian smiled at the memory, not looking up at Hester but down at his hands as they explored the wound he had made, looking for the thing that caused the obstruction, the wasting, the nausea and the huge swelling.

Hester mopped away more blood and glanced at the woman"s face. It was still perfectly calm. Hester would have given anything she could think of to have had chloroform like this on the battlefield in the Crimea five years ago, or even at Mana.s.sas in America almost three months back.

"Ah!" Kristian let out a grunt of satisfaction and pulled back, gently easing out of the cavity something that looked like a dark, semi-porous loofah such as one might use to scrub one"s back, or even a saucepan.

It was about the size of a large domestic cat.

Hester was too astounded to speak. She stared at it, then at Kristian.

Trichobezoar," he said softly. Then he met her gaze of incredulity.

"Hair," he explained. "Sometimes when people have certain temperamental disorders, nervous anxiety and depression, they feel compelled to pull out their own hair and eat it. It is beyond their power to stop, without help." Hester stared at the stiff, repellent ma.s.s lying in the dish, and felt her own throat contract and her stomach gag at the thought of such a thing inside anyone.

"Swab," Kristian directed. "Needle."

"Oh!" She moved to obey just as the door opened and Callandra came in, closing it softly behind her. She looked at Kristian first, a softness in her eyes she disguised only as he turned to her. He gestured to the dish and smiled.

Callandra looked startled, then she turned to Hester. "What is it?"

"Hair," Hester replied, swabbing the blood away again as Kristian worked.

"Will she be all right?" Callandra asked.

"There"s a chance," Kristian answered. Suddenly he smiled, extraordinarily sweetly, but there was a sharp and profound satisfaction in his eyes. "You can go and tell Thorpe it was a trichobezoar, not a tumour, if you like."

"Oh yes, I"d like," she answered, her face melting into something almost like laughter, and without waiting she turned and went off on the errand.

Hester glanced across at Kristian, then bent to the work again, mopping blood and keeping the wound clean, as the needle pierced the skin and drew the sides together and finally the wound was bandaged.

"She"ll feel a great deal of pain when she wakens," Kristian warned.

"She mustn"t move too much."

"I"ll stay with her," Hester promised. "Laudanum?"

"Yes, but only for the first day," he warned. "I"ll be here if you need me. Are you going to stay? You"ve watched her all through, haven"t you?"

"Yes." Hester was not a nurse at the hospital. She came on a voluntary basis, like Callandra, who was a military surgeon"s widow, a generation older than Hester but with whom she had been the closest of friends now for five years. Hester was probably the only one who knew how deeply Callandra loved Kristian, and that only this week she had finally declined an offer of marriage to a dear friend, because she could not settle for honourable companionship and close for ever the door on dreams of immeasurably more. But they were only dreams.

Kristian was married and that ended all possibility of anything more than the loyalty and the pa.s.sion for healing and justice that held him and Callandra, and perhaps the shared laughter now and then, the small victories and the understanding.

Hester, recently married herself, and knowing the depth and the sweep of love, ached for Callandra that she sacrificed so much. And yet loving her husband as she did, for all his faults and vulnerabilities, Hester too would rather have been alone than accept anyone else.

It was late afternoon when she left the hospital and took the public omnibus down Hampstead High Street to Haverstock Hill, and then to Euston Road. A newsboy shouted something about five hundred American soldiers surrendering in New Mexico. The papers carried the latest word on the civil war, but the anxiety was far deeper over the looming cotton famine in Lancashire, because of the blockading of the Confederate States.

Hester hurried past him and walked the last few yards to Grafton Street. It was early October and still mild, but growing dark, and the lamplighter was well on his rounds. When she approached her own front door and saw a tall, slender man standing waiting impatiently outside.

He was immaculately dressed in high, wing collar, black frock coat and striped trousers, as one would expect of a City gentleman, but his whole att.i.tude betrayed agitation and deep unhappiness. It was not until he heard her footsteps and turned so the lamplight caught his face that she recognised her brother, Charles Latterly.

"Hester!" He moved towards her swiftly, then stopped. "How... how are you?"

"I"m very well," she answered truthfully. It was several months since she had seen him, and for someone as rigidly controlled and conventional as Charles to be waiting in the street like this was extraordinary. Presumably Monk was not here yet or Charles would have gone inside.

She opened the door and he followed her in. The gas lamp burned very low in the hall and she turned it up and led the way to the front room, which was where Monk received prospective clients who came with their terrors and anxieties for him to attempt to solve. Since they had both been out all day, there was a fire laid but not lit. A bowl of tawny chrysanthemums and scarlet nasturtiums gave a light and an illusion of warmth.

She turned to Charles.

As always he was meticulously polite. "I"m sorry to intrude. You must be tired. I suppose you have been nursing someone all day?"

"Yes, but I think she may get better. At least the operation was a success." He made an attempt at a smile. "Good."

"Would you like a cup of tea?" she offered. "I would."

"Oh... yes, yes, of course. Thank you." He sat gingerly on one of the two armchairs, his back stiff and upright as if to relax were impossible. She had seen so many of Monk"s clients sit like that, terrified of putting their fears into words, and yet so burdened by them they were so desperate for help that they had finally found the courage to seek a private agent of inquiry. It was as if Charles had come to see Monk, and not her. His face was pale and there was a sheen of sweat on it, and his hands in his lap were rigid. If she had touched him she would have felt locked muscles.

She had not seen him look so wretched since their parents had died five and a half years ago, when she was still in Scutari with Florence Nightingale. Their father had been ruined by a financial swindle, and taken his own life because of the ensuing disgrace. Their mother had died within the month. Her heart had been weak, and the grief and distress so soon after the loss of her younger son in battle had been too much for her.

Looking at Charles now, Hester"s similar fears for him returned with a force that took her by surprise. They had seen each other very little since Hester"s marriage, which he had found difficult to approve after all, Monk was a man without a past. A carriage accident six years ago had robbed him of his memory. He had deduced much, but the vast majority of his life remained unknown. And no one in the very respectable Latterly family had had any connections with the police, as Monk had been at the time of their meeting; and beyond question, no one had married into that type of social background.

Charles looked up, expecting her to fetch the tea. Should she ask him what troubled him so profoundly, or would it be tactless, and perhaps put him off confiding in her?

"Of course," she said briskly, and went to the small kitchen to riddle the stove, loosen the old ashes and put more coal on to boil the kettle. She set out biscuits on a plate. They were bought, not home-made. She was a superb nurse, a pa.s.sionate but unsuccessful social reformer and, as even Monk would admit, a pretty good detective, but her domestic skills were still in the making.

When the tea was brewed she returned and set the tray down, poured both cups and waited while he took one and sipped from it. His embarra.s.sment seemed to fill the air and made her feel awkward as well.

She watched him fidget with the cup and gaze around the small, pleasant room, looking for something to pretend to be interested in.

If she were blunt and asked him outright, would she make it better, or worse? "Charles..." she began.

He turned to look at her. "Yes?" She saw a profound unhappiness in his eyes. He was only a few years older than she, and yet there was a weariness in him as if he no longer had any vitality, and already felt himself past the best. It touched her with fear. She must be gentle. He was too complex, far too private for bluntness.

"It"s... it"s rather a long time since I"ve seen you," he began apologetically. "I didn"t realise. The weeks seem to..." He looked away, fishing for words and losing them.

"How is Imogen?" she asked, and instantly knew from the way he avoided her eyes that the question hurt.

"Quite well," he replied. The words were automatic, bright and meaningless, as he would answer a stranger. "And William?" Hester could bear it no longer. She put her cup down. "Charles, something is terribly wrong. Please tell me what it is. Even if I cannot help, I would like you to trust me enough at least to share it." He was sitting forward, his elbows on his knees. For the first time since he had come into the room he met her gaze directly. His blue eyes were full of fear and absolute, total bewilderment.

She waited.

"I simply don"t know what to do." His voice was quiet, but jagged with desperation. "It"s Imogen. She"s... changed..." He stopped, a wave of misery engulfing him.

Hester thought of her charming, graceful sister-in-law, who had always seemed so confident, so much more at ease with society and with herself than Hester was. "How has she changed?" she asked gently.

He shook his head. "I"m not really sure. I suppose it must have been over a while. I ... I didn"t notice it." Now he kept his eyes down on his hands, knotted together, twisting slowly, knuckles white. "It seemed just weeks to me." Hester forced herself to be patient. He was in such obvious distress it would be unkind, and on a practical level pointless, to try to concentrate his mind. "In what way has she changed?" she asked him, keeping the emotion out of her voice. It was extraordinary to see her calm, rather pompous brother so obviously losing control of a situation which was so far merely domestic. It made her afraid that there was a dimension to it beyond anything she could yet see.

"She"s... unreliable," he said, searching for the words. "Of course, everyone has changes of mood, I know that days when they feel more cheerful than others, anxieties, just... just unpleasant things that make us feel hurt but Imogen"s either so happy she"s excited, can"t keep still.. ." His face was puckered with confusion as he sought to understand something which was beyond him. "She"s either elated or in despair. Sometimes she looks as if she"s frantic with worry, then a day later, or even hours, she"ll be full of energy, her eyes bright, her face flushed, laughing at nothing. And... this sounds absurd ..

. but I swear she keeps repeating silly little actions... like rituals." Hester was startled. "What sort of things?" He looked embarra.s.sed, apologetic. "Fastening her jacket with the middle b.u.t.ton first, then from the bottom up, and the top down. I"ve seen her count them to make certain. And..." he took a breath, "..

. and wear one pair of gloves, and carry an odd one that doesn"t match." It made no apparent sense. Hester wondered if he could possibly be correct, or in his own anxiety was imagining it. "Did she say why?" she asked.

"No. I asked her about the gloves, and she ignored me, just spoke about something else." Hester looked at Charles sitting in front of her. He was tall and slender, perhaps a little too thin now. His fair hair was receding, but not much. His features were regular; he would have been handsome if there were more conviction in his face, more pa.s.sion, even humour.

He had never recovered from his father"s suicide. He was marked with a pity he did not know how to express, and a shame he bore in silence. He would have felt it a betrayal to offer explanations of such a private grief. Hester had no idea what he had shared with Imogen. Perhaps he had tried to shelter her from it, or imagined it would be helpful to her to see him as invulnerable, always in control. Perhaps he was right!

On the other hand she might have wanted pa.s.sionately to have shared his pain, to have known that he trusted her with it, her kindness and her strength to bear it with him. Perhaps she had felt excluded? Hester would have, she knew that absolutely.

"I suppose you have asked her directly what troubles her?" she said quietly.

"She says there is nothing wrong," he replied. "She changes the subject, talks about anything else, mostly things that neither of us care about, just anything, a wall of words to keep me out." It was like probing a wound, afraid to strike the nerves, and yet knowing you must find the bullet. She had done it too many times on the battlefield and in military hospitals. She could smell blood and fear in her imagination as the simile came to her mind. Only months ago she and Monk had been in America and seen the first pitched battle of the civil war.

"Do you really have no idea what is causing it, Charles?" she asked.

He looked up wretchedly. "I think she may be having an affair with someone," he answered hoa.r.s.ely. "But I"ve no idea who... or why?" Hester could have thought of a dozen reasons why. She pictured Imogen"s lovely face with its soft features, wide dark eyes, the hunger and emotion in her. How much had she changed in the sixteen years since she had been so excited to marry a gentle and respectable young man with a promising future? She had been so full of optimism, thrilled not to be one of those still desperately seeking a husband, and perhaps paired off by an ambitious mother with someone she would find it difficult even to like, let alone to love.

Now she was in her mid-thirties, childless, and perhaps wondering with even more desperation what life offered beyond mere safety. She had never been cold or hungry or outcast from Society. Maybe she did not value her good fortune very much. To be loved, provided for and protected was not always enough. Sometimes to be needed counted more.

Could that be what had happened to Imogen? She had found someone who had offered her the intoxication of being told she was necessary to him, in a way Charles would never say, no matter how much it might actually be true?

Would she do more than flirt? She had so much to lose, surely she could not be so infatuated as to forget that? Society did not frown on adultery if it were conducted with such discretion that no one was forced to know about it, but even a married woman could lose her reputation if she were indiscreet. And, of course, a divorced woman, whatever the reason for the divorce, simply ceased to exist. A woman cast aside for adultery could very easily find herself penniless and on the streets. Someone like Imogen, who had never fended for herself, might not survive.

Charles would not divorce her unless her behaviour became so outrageous he had no choice, if he were to preserve his own reputation. He would simply live side by side with her, but separated by a gulf of pain.

Hester wanted to touch him, but the distance of time and intimacy between them was too great. It would be artificial, even intrusive.

"I"m sorry," she said softly. "I hope that isn"t true. Perhaps it"s only a momentary thing and it may die long before it becomes any more." How false that sounded. She winced at herself even as she heard her own words.

He looked up at her. "I can"t just sit by and hope, Hester! I need to know... and do something. Doesn"t she realise what will happen to her to all of us if she"s found out? Please... help me?" Hester was bewildered. What could she do that Charles had not already done? There was no easy cure for unhappiness that she could produce and persuade Imogen to take.

Charles was waiting. Her silence was making him realise more acutely just what he had asked of her, and already embarra.s.sment was overtaking hope.

"Yes, of course," she said quickly.

"If I just knew for certain," he started to rationalise, filling in the silence with too many words, "then perhaps I would understand." He was watching her intently, in spite of himself part of him still clinging to the belief that she could help. "I don"t know the right questions to ask her. She might be able to explain to you, then..." he tailed off, not knowing what else to say.

If only understanding were the answer! She was afraid it would increase the hurt, because he would see that there was no way to escape the fact that Imogen did not love him the way he had a.s.sumed, and needed.

But then perhaps he did not love her with the pa.s.sion or the urgency that she wanted?

He was waiting for Hester to say something. He seemed to think that because she was a woman she would understand Imogen and be able to reach her emotions in a way he could not. Maybe she could; that did not mean she could change them. But even if the truth would not help, it was a certainly that nothing else would.

"I"ll go to see her," she said. "Do you know if she will be in tomorrow afternoon?" Relief ironed out Charles"s face. "Yes, I should imagine so," he said eagerly. "If you go early enough. She may go calling herself at about four o"clock." He stood up. "Thank you, Hester. It"s very good of you. Rather better than I deserve." He looked acutely uncomfortable.

"I"m afraid I haven"t been very... considerate lately. I ... am sorry."

"No, you have almost ignored me," she said with a smile, trying to make light of it without contradicting him. "But then I am equally guilty.

I could easily have called upon you, or at least written, and I didn"t."

"I suppose your life is too exciting." There was a shadow of disapproval in his voice. He may not have intended it this moment, but it was too deeply ingrained in his habit of thought to get rid of it in an instant.

"Yes," she agreed with a lift of her chin. It was the truth, but even if it had not been, she would have defended Monk and the life they shared to anyone. "America was extraordinary."

"About the worst time you could choose to go," he observed.

With an effort of will she smiled at him. "We didn"t choose! We went in order to help someone in very desperate trouble. I am sure you can understand that." His face softened and he blinked a little. "Yes, of course I can." He coloured with embarra.s.sment. "Do you have the fare for a hansom for tomorrow?" With a considerable effort she resisted snapping. Afterall, it was possible she might not have. There had certainly been times. "Yes, thank you."

"Oh ... good. Then I"ll... er..."

"I"ll come to see you when I have anything to say," she promised.

"Oh ... of course." And still uncertain exactly how to conduct himself, he gave her a light kiss on the cheek and went to the door.

When Monk returned home in the evening Hester said nothing of Charles"s visit. Monk had solved a small case of theft, and collected the payment for it, and consequently was pleased with himself. He was also interested in her story of the trichobezoar.

"Why?" he said with amazement. "Why would anyone do something so ...

so self-destructive?"