"Perhaps not." She did not argue as he had expected her to. "But it still kills love."
"Hester, love is..." He did not know how to finish.
"What?" she asked.
"Different things." He was still seeking to explain. "Different things for one person from another. It"s not always obvious, you can love, and..."
"If your love remains, you don"t place your own needs before theirs," she said simply. "You might, with moral duties, but not appet.i.te.
Maybe : they can"t help it. I don"t know. But if it takes away your ability to sacrifice your own wants for the sake of someone else, then it has robbed you of honour and love. They aren"t just nice warm feelings, they are a willingness to act for someone else"s good before ; your own." He did not answer. He was surprised by what she had said, and even more that he had no argument with any part of it. He could ; still see Imogen"s pale face and bright eyes and the hectic excite-r ment in her.
t "I"m not saying she could help it," Hester went on. "I don"t know ;"if she could or not. I think after Vienna something inside her was changed. The reason doesn"t alter what she did to Kristian." I "What?" He spoke as if he had not heard her.
"Aren"t you listening to yourself?" Her voice became sharper.
"William! What else is it?" He hated telling her, but he could no longer avoid it. "I saw someone else there that I knew."
"Gambling?" There was fear in her voice as she watched him. She knew that this was what he had been putting off saying. "Who? Kristian?"
"No..." He saw the easing of tension in her, and loathed what he was going to do. For an instant he even thought of not telling her after all, but that was only his own cowardice speaking. "Imogen."
"Imogen?" she repeated very quietly. "Imogen, gambling?"
"Yes. I"m sorry." She did not seem startled or disbelieving. He had expected her to reject the possibility, and for him to have to persuade her, argue, even face her anger. But she was standing quite still, absorbing the information without fighting it at all. Certainly she was not angry with him.
"Hester?" For a few more moments she ignored him, still thinking about what he had told her, taking it into her mind, working out what it meant.
"Hester?" He reached forward and touched her gently. There was no resistance in her, none of the struggle he had expected. She turned her face and looked at him. Then suddenly he realised that she had known! There was no amazement in her eyes, even a kind of relief! He had gone through this agony of decision unnecessarily. She had known about it and said nothing to him.
"How long has it been going on?" he demanded roughly, drawing his hand away.
"I don"t know." She was looking not at him but into the distance, and some place within herself. "Only weeks..."
"Weeks? And after you discovered about Elissa Beck, you didn"t think to mention Imogen to me? Why not? Is your family loyalty to her so great you couldn"t have trusted me?" He realised as he said it how much it hurt to be excluded. He spoke from his own wound, like a child hitting back. He felt no ties of blood, that instinctive bond that was deeper than thought. Perhaps it was irrational, bone-deep, but if he had ever felt it, it was gone with all his memory. It left him alone, rootless, without an ident.i.ty that was anything more than a few years of action and thought.
He envied her. Whether she felt close to Charles or not, whether she liked or admired him, there was a chain to the past which was unbroken, an anchor.
"I didn"t know it was gambling," she said with a frown. "I knew there was something exciting and dangerous. I thought it was a lover. I suppose I"m glad it wasn"t."
"But you didn"t " "Tell you?" Her eyes were very wide. "That I was afraid my brother"s wife was having an affair with someone? Of course I didn"t. Would you have expected me to, if you couldn"t help?" He understood. He would have thought less of her if she had such a vulnerability for anyone else to see, even him. She was protecting her brother, instinctively, without thinking it needed explanation. She had temporarily forgotten that he had no one else but her. He had left his one sister behind in Northumberland when he came to London, however long ago that had been. He hardly ever wrote to her. A world of experience and ambition divided them, and there was no wealth of common memory to bridge it.
"I shall have to tell Charles," she said softly.
"Hester.. He was still confused by her, wanting to help but having no idea how to. "Are you... ?" he began, then did not know how to finish. Charles already knew. He had followed Imogen. Runcorn had not discovered that yet, but when he investigated further into Elissa"s playing at the gambling house, it was more than likely that he would.
Then he would know that he had praised Monk in his mind for an honesty that was partial, as if he would protect Charles Latterly, but not Kristian. Perhaps he understood family loyalty, or would he only see guilt?
Monk realised with surprise that he knew nothing about Runcorn"s parents, or if he had brothers or sisters. Surely he had known before the accident? Or had he never cared?
"Charles is already aware there is something," Hester interrupted his thoughts. "I think he would rather it were gambling, most people would. It"s... it"s less of a betrayal. They may still love you as much as they love anyone." She looked away a moment. "Is it only bored people who gamble like that, William? I can"t imagine wanting to, but perhaps if I did nothing but manage a house, with no children, no purpose, nothing to gain or lose, no excitement of life, no crises, I might create my own." He wanted to laugh. "I"m sure you would." Then his smile withered.
His agonising over her pain had been pointless. He was not sure if he was relieved or angry, or both. She was right about an affair too. He would rather she were obsessed with gambling, ruinous as it could be, than with another man. He was shocked by the knowledge that he was not certain if he could endure that. He had meant never, ever to be so dependent on someone else. Love was acceptable, but not the power to be so hurt, to be crippled beyond ever being whole again.
Was that what Charles Latterly faced? Or Kristian? Had Allardyce had a part in Elissa"s secret life, other than as a bystander who drew pictures, and provided an occasional refuge? One thing was true for certain: somebody had killed both women.
"Why did Charles think it was an affair?" Monk asked. "Did he tell you?"
"He found some letters, agreeing to meet, from someone who didn"t bother to sign them," she answered. "The way they were phrased made it obvious Imogen and this person met often. Perhaps it was someone she gambled with..." She sounded uncertain.
A smattering of memory came back to Monk. "Some people like to have company, especially someone they think brings them luck... and Imogen was lucky, at least so far. But the gambling house will put an end to that. Hester, if Charles can"t stop her, you must. They won"t let her go on winning! The Swinton Street house has already had enough."
"She goes somewhere else as well," she said miserably. "He followed her the night of the murders, down in Drury Lane."
"Drury Lane?" he said with a chill of fear. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. Why? Don"t they have gambling houses there too?"
"He didn"t go down Drury Lane the night Elissa was killed."
"Yes, he did. He told me..." Now she was staring at him with growing alarm. "Why?"
"Drury Lane was closed," he said softly. "A dray slid over and dumped a load of raw sugar kegs, most of which cracked open over the road."
"He just said that direction," she lied. "I a.s.sumed he meant Drury Lane." Her mind was whirling, trying to absorb Monk"s words, and conceal her emotions from him.
The sauce in the pan thickened and went cold, and she ignored it. Why had Charles lied? Only because the truth was dangerous. He was trying to protect either Imogen, or himself. Either he thought she had been in Acton Street that night, or he knew it because he had been there himself. Vividly Hester saw again in her mind his ashen face and shaking hands, the fear in him and the rising sense of panic. The stable, safe world he had so painstakingly constructed around himself was falling apart. Things he had believed to be certainties were spinning away out of his grasp. She realised with a sick churning in her stomach that she did not think it impossible that he had killed Elissa Beck, and then also Sarah Mackeson who had unintentionally witnessed the crime.
She was almost unaware of Monk watching her as the reason took hideous form in her mind. She remembered the letter Charles had shown her. It was still upstairs in the bottom drawer of her jewel box. It was a strong, firm hand, but not necessarily a man"s. What if the person who had introduced Imogen to gambling and set her on her own ruinous course were Elissa Beck? What if Charles had seen them together that night, and had followed Elissa when she left, and caught up with her in Allardyce"s studio. He might have a.s.sumed it was where she lived! He would have challenged her, begged her to leave Imogen alone. She would have laughed at him. It was already too late to rescue Imogen, but perhaps he would not know that, or would refuse to believe it. They could have struggled, and he had tightened his grip on her neck without even realising his strength.
Then Sarah would have awakened from her stupor and staggered through just in time to witness what had happened and began screaming, or even flown at him. He would have gone after her to silence her... and the same swift movement, more deliberate this time...
No! It was nonsense! She must go to Kristian"s house and find a letter of Elissa"s, compare the writing. That would end it! It could not be Charles! He had not the physical skill, the decisiveness, even the strength.
That was d.a.m.ning! So condescending. She did not know that side of him at all. She had no idea how deep his pa.s.sions might run under his self-controlled exterior. That calm banker"s face might hide anything!
Afterall, who, looking at her with the saucepan in front of her, could imagine the places she had been to, the violence and death she had seen, or the decisions she had made and carried through, the courage or the pain, or anything else?
Monk spoke to her gently, and she nodded without having heard. If Imogen had driven Charles to that, would she now at least stand by him if Runcorn started questioning, probing, and the net tightened around him? What if he were arrested, even tried? Would she leave the gambling and stand strong and loyal beside him? Or would she crumble, weak, frightened, essentially selfish? If she did that, Hester might not find it within her ever to forgive it. And that was a bitter and terrible thought. Not to forgive is a kind of death.
And yet if Imogen could not now be loyal, place Charles before her own fears, it would hurt him beyond his ability to survive, perhaps beyond his desire to. And if that was weak too, so much the more must Imogen be strong!
That was illogical, perhaps unfair, but it was what Hester felt as she looked at the congealed mess in the saucepan, and started to consider what to do with it.
Callandra stood in the middle of her garden looking at the last of the roses, the petals carrying that peculiar warmth of tone that only late flowers possess, as if they knew their beauty would be short. There were a dozen tasks that needed doing, and the gardener overlooked half of them if she did not tell him specifically. There were dead heads to take off, Michaelmas daisies to tie up before the weight of the flowers bent them too far and they broke. The buddleia needed pruning it was far too big and there were windfall apples to pick up before they rotted.
She could not be bothered with any of them. She had come out with gloves and a knife, and a trug to carry the dead heads, thinking she wanted to throw herself into the effort of a physical job. Now that she was here she could not concentrate on it. Her mind was leaping from one thing to another, and always around and around the same black centre. About the only thing she was fit for was weeding. She bent down and started to pull, first one, then another, ignoring the trug and leaving them in little piles to be picked up later.
She had acknowledged to herself some time ago that she loved Kristian Beck, even if it were a feeling that would never lead to anything but the profoundest friendship. She would not marry again. Francis Bellingham had asked her. She liked him deeply and he could have offered her a life of companionship, loyalty and a very considerable freedom to pursue the causes she believed in. He was both intelligent, honourable and not in the least unattractive. If she had met him a few years ago she would have accepted his offer.
What she felt for him was affection, kindness, respect, but no more. If she had married him, as many of her friends had expected her to, then she would have to cut Kristian from her dreams, and that she was not prepared to do, perhaps she was not even able to. She could not commit the dishonour of marrying one man while loving another not at her age, when there was no need. She had more than sufficient money to care for herself, the social position of a t.i.tled widow, work for charity to fill her time, friends she valued. She was perfectly aware of her own foolishness.
Her fingers stopped moving in the cold earth as she remembered what Hester had told her yesterday afternoon. She had known immediately that it was bad news of some kind. She had seen too many doctors with just that expression, the mixture of resolution and pity, the stiff shoulders and pale face, the softness in the eyes.
At the moment it could only concern Kristian. She had not needed to ask what it was about. Then Hester had told her that Elissa Beck was a compulsive gambler, so addicted to the excitement of the game that she had thrown away all she owned, and almost all Kristian owned as well.
She had poured out money, p.a.w.ned or sold her possessions until finally even the furniture had gone and debts piled up, the house was cold and dark, and ruin was on the doorstep.
She could not even imagine the fear and the shame that Kristian must have felt, although she did nothing but try to! Elissa"s death must have been a bitter loss to him, a part of his life torn away. And yet it had to have been a relief as well. The bleeding out of money was ended and, like a patient whose haemorrhage has at last been stanched, he could begin to rebuild his strength.
She closed her hand on a weed and yanked it out, throwing it at the trug and seeing it fly far beyond.
She had worked beside Kristian, caring for the sick, fighting for reform and improvement. She had seen his compa.s.sion, knew he had driven himself beyond exhaustion. She could not believe he would have killed Elissa, still less have added to the crime by killing another woman whose only offence was to have seen him.
But everyone has limits to their endurance or their patience, a threshold to their pain. You cannot always say what grief or loss, what outrage will carry anyone over the precipice. It may catch you completely by surprise, desperation erupting and overwhelming you before you know how close it is. She had felt that dark edge of panic brushing her. She did not imagine Kristian was immune. That would be naive, and rob him of reality.
But she could not help him if she did not know the truth, whatever it was. Half blind to it, believing what she wanted rather than what was, she could do more harm than good.
Had Fuller Pendreigh known of Elissa"s gambling and paid her debts when Kristian could not? Or was it possible she owed more than she could meet and had found some desperate way of her own of raising the money?
Could that somehow have led to her murder? She had been beautiful, imaginative and never lacked physical courage. She would not be the first woman to sell herself when it seemed the only resort.
Had Pendreigh"s wealth cushioned her or not?
Callandra rose to her feet, leaving the weeds where they were, and went up the lawn to the French door and inside. She dropped the trug and the secateurs on the step and peeled off her gloves. Inside she took off her shoes and went straight up the stairs to her bedroom.
She was already washed and in fresh under linen when she finally called her maid to help her lace up her stays and fasten the small b.u.t.tons of the bodice. Her hair was another matter. No one had ever been able to make that look elegant for more than fifteen minutes, but the maid, woman of endless patience, did her best.
An hour after making the decision, Callandra sat in her carriage on the way to visit Fuller Pendreigh. She would wait for him as long as necessary, or travel into the City if that was where he was, but she would see him.
He was not at Ebury Street, but he was expected very shortly, and she was shown to a most pleasant conservatory. Had she had less on her mind, she would have enjoyed recognising the various exotic plants, and trying to decide where their native habitat might be.
She was looking at a large yellow flower, without really seeing it, when she heard footsteps across the hall, the low murmuring of voices, and the moment after, Pendreigh was in the doorway, regarding her with slight puzzlement. She saw the signs of strain in his face. There was little colour to his skin and a shadow about his cheeks almost as if he had not shaved, although actually he was immaculate. It was exhaustion which tightened his lips and hollowed the flesh.
"Lady Callandra?" It was a question not as to her ident.i.ty, rather a confusion as to what she was doing waiting here, in the middle of the afternoon, and without having sent any letter or card to say that she was calling. They knew each other only by repute. She had worked tirelessly for reform of the way injured and ill soldiers were treated.
Her husband had been an army surgeon, and she had learned from him of the problems which could be overcome with foresight and intelligence.
She had certainly made sufficient complaints, pleas and arguments, and written to all manner of people, for her name to be known. She was intimidated by no one, nor did flattery have any effect upon her.
Pendreigh, she had heard, had compaigned for the reform of the laws pertaining to property. That was largely why he had come from Liverpool to London, and of course to Parliament. It sounded a thing in which she would be little interested. To her mind, human pain had always far outweighed the disposition of wealth.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Pendreigh," she replied, recollecting herself and unconsciously using the enormous charm she possessed, and was quite unaware of because it lay in her warmth and simplicity of manner. "I apologise for calling upon you without writing first, but sometimes events move too rapidly to allow for such courtesy, and I confess I am deeply concerned." Only for an instant did he wonder why, then knowledge of it was plain in his eyes. He came further into the room. His expression softened a little, but it obviously cost him an effort of will. "Of course. It would be absurd to wait upon convention at such a time. Would you prefer to speak here or in the withdrawing room? Have you taken tea?"
"Not yet," she replied. She did not care whether she had tea or not, but he might be tired and thirsty, and feel more comfortable if he offered hospitality. It gave one something to do with one"s hands, time to think of a reply to an unforeseen or difficult question, and an excuse to look away without rudeness. "That would be most agreeable, thank you." A flicker of relief crossed his face and he led her back across the hall to the withdrawing room, instructing the maid to bring tea for them both.
It faced south, and there were long windows to the front, which meant that the unusually large amount of blue in curtains and furniture did not make it cold, rather it gave it a depth and a sense of calm that warmer tones would not.
He caught her admiration and smiled, but he made no comment.
She did not wish to open the subject of Elissa until the maid had brought the tea and gone. Until then she would prefer to speak of something of mutual interest, but no emotional heat. She remained standing and looked at the very fine portraits on the wall. One in particular caught her eye. It was of a woman with a handsome face and magnificent hair the shade of warm, dry sand, paler even than corn. The style of her gown was of some twenty years ago, and she looked to be in her middle or late thirties. The resemblance was so marked that she a.s.sumed it was Pendreigh"s sister, or at the most distant, a cousin.
"My sister, Amelia," he said quietly from a few feet behind her. There was a sorrow in his voice she could not miss. She did not know whether he had meant to conceal it or had allowed it to be heard because the wound was still raw and it comforted him to share something of it.
"She has a remarkable face," she said sincerely. "Rather more than beautiful."
"She was," he replied. "She had extraordinary courage, and..." he stopped for a moment, as if to compose himself, "generosity of spirit," he finished.
The use of the past tense, and the emotion in his voice required she pursue the subject, but with the greatest delicacy. "She looks no more than thirty-five," she said, leaving it open for him to say whatever he pleased, or to pa.s.s on to something else, perhaps the next picture.
"Thirty-eight, actually," he answered her. "It was the year before she died."
"I"m so sorry." It would be tactless to ask what had happened. It could be any of a score of illnesses, without even considering accident.
"Poverty!" His voice was so harsh it actually distorted the word so that for a moment Callandra was not sure if she had heard him correctly. She turned to face him, and the pain and the anger she saw in him startled her. It was as fresh as if it had only just happened, and yet from the picture, it must have been a quarter of a century ago.
"You think I can"t mean it, don"t you?" he asked with a sharp gesture at the room around him, which was obviously that of a wealthy man. "My family had money. My father died quite young, and he was generous to Amelia as well as to me. She was an heiress when she married." He left the conclusion for her to draw, a challenge in his eyes, hard and bright.
Of course when she married everything she owned would automatically have become her husband"s. It was the law, everyone knew that. Only unmarried women owned anything.
"I see," she said very quietly.
"Do you?" he demanded. "He took her to Europe, first to Paris, then to Italy. We did not know that he spent everything and left her with barely a roof over her head, or that she was living on the few meals offered her by compa.s.sionate friends, most of whom had little more than she did. And she was too proud to tell us that the husband she adored was a wastrel and had deserted her in every practical sense. She died in Naples, alone and dest.i.tute." Callandra felt the loss as if he had been able to transfer it to her physically. Her imagination painted a terrible picture of the woman in the portrait being thin to gauntness, racked with fever, lips bloodless, skin flushed and sweating, alone in an ill-furnished room in a foreign land.
"I"m so sorry," she said in little more than a whisper. "I"m not surprised you cannot forget it ... or forgive. I don"t imagine I could either."
"That"s why I fight for women to retain some rights in their property," he said harshly. "The law is blind. It gives them no protection. We speak publicly as if we honour and cherish our women, give them the safety from the ills and strife of the world, the dark and the sordid battles of trade and politics, the uses and abuses of power and yet we leave them open to being mere vehicles for gaining money that was intended for their protection from hunger and want, and the law offers nothing!"
"A law for married women to keep rights in their own property?" she said, filled with a sudden blaze of understanding.
"Yes! Both inherited and earned. That swine sent Amelia out to work to provide for his extravagances, but the law gave him the right to her wages even so." The outrage in him was palpable, like a thing in the air.
She shared it not the pa.s.sion because she had not been touched by it personally as he had, but in her mind the injustice was as great, and the need to amend it. "I see," she said, and she meant it.
He drew in breath to argue, then looked at her more closely. "Yes, perhaps you do. I apologise. I was about to deny that possibility. I know you have also fought for reform, and often against extraordinary blindness. We are both seeking to protect those who are vulnerable and need the strong to defend them." There was fury in his voice, and also a ring of pride.
Callandra was glad to hear it. The willingness to fight, and the courage were exactly what she needed, and her pity for his loss was now touched with admiration as well.
"Do you have hope of achieving such a thing?" she asked with some eagerness.
Pendreigh smiled very slightly. "I"ve worked towards it for the greater part of my career, and I believe that it is within sight. There is a by-election coming up. If I can do this, I will have benefited both men and women, though they may not at first accept that. But surely justice is a boon for all?"
"Of course it is," she agreed wholeheartedly.
There was a momentary interruption as the maid brought in the tray with the tea and set it out on the low table for them. She poured and then left.
Callandra was surprised how welcome the hot, fragrant drink was after all, and the tiny sandwiches of cuc.u.mber, and egg and cress. It gave her time to compose her thoughts.
She must address the purpose of her visit. He could not for a moment have thought she came simply to talk of good causes, however urgent.