She obeyed, fumbling with her skirts to arrange them so she could pull the chair comfortably to the table.
He sat opposite her, leaning forward a little. "I have already been to see Connal Murdoch," he said gravely. "I thought I might persuade him that the whole matter is one of error, and not something in which the police should be involved at all." There was apology in his eyes. "Unfortunately I found him very rigid on the subject, and I have not been able to reason with him."
"What about Griselda, Mary"s daughter?"
"She barely spoke. She was present, but seemed to defer to him in everything and, frankly, to be in a state of considerable distress." He stopped, searching her face as if to judge from it how he should continue.
"Is that a polite way of saying she was not able to apply her mind?" she asked. She could not afford euphemisms.
"Yes," he conceded. "Yes, I suppose it is. Grief takes many forms, not a few of them unattractive, but she did not seem so much grieved as frightened-at least, that is the impression I received."
"Of Murdoch?"
"I am afraid I am not receptive enough to be certain. I thought not, but then I also felt that he made her nervous...or anxious? I have no clear impression. I"m sorry." He frowned. "But it is all of little importance now. I failed to persuade him to dismiss the matter. I am afraid it will proceed, and my dear, you must prepare yourself for it. I will do everything I can to see that it is settled as rapidly and discreetly as possible. But you must help me by answering everything you can with the utmost clarity." He stopped. His eyes were steady and seemed to look through all her defenses as if he could see not only her thoughts but the mounting fear inside her. A day ago she would have found that intrusive; she would have been angry at his presumption. Now she clung to it as if it were the only chance of rescue in a cold quicksand that was growing deeper by the moment.
"It doesn"t make any sense," she said desperately.
"It will do," he insisted with a faint smile. "It is simply that we do not have all the facts. It is my task to learn at least enough of them to prove that you have committed no crime."
No crime. Of course she had committed no crime. Perhaps she had overlooked something, and if she had not, then Mary Farraline might still be alive. But certainly she had not taken the brooch. She had never seen it before. A lift of hope brightened inside her. She met Rathbone"s eyes and he smiled, but it was a small, bleak gesture, a matter of determination rather than confidence.
Beyond the bare room in which they were sitting they could hear the sounds of slamming doors, heavy and resonating, iron against stone. Someone called out, and the sound echoed, even though the words were indistinguishable.
"Tell me again precisely what happened from the time you entered the Farraline house in Edinburgh," he instructed.
"But I-" she began, then saw the gravity in his face, and obediently recounted everything she could remember from the time she had stepped into the kitchen and met the butler, McTeer.
Rathbone listened intently. It seemed to Hester as if everything else in the world became distant except the two of them sitting opposite each other, leaning across the wooden table in desperate concentration. She thought that even with her eyes closed, she would see his face as it was now, every detail of it etched on her mind, even the silver flecks in his hair where it sprang smoothly from his temples.
He interrupted her for the first time. "You rested?"
"Yes-why?"
"Apart from your time in the library, was that the first occasion in which you were alone in the house?"
She perceived his meaning immediately.
"Yes." She spoke with difficulty. "I suppose they will say I could have gone back to the dressing room and taken the brooch then."
"I doubt it. It would be an extraordinarily dangerous thing to do. Mrs. Farraline was probably in her bedroom...."
"No-no, when I saw her, it was in a boudoir, a sitting room some distance from her bedroom, I think. Although I suppose I am not sure. Certainly it was some way from the dressing room."
"But the maid could have come into the dressing room," he argued. "In fact, her duties immediately prior to such a long journey would almost certainly have taken her there a number of times, checking that she had everything packed, all the necessary linen was clean, pressed, folded, placed where it should have been. Is that a time you would risk going in, if you were not supposed to be there?"
"No...no it isn"t!" Then her spirits fell again immediately. "And when I rested in the afternoon my valise was in the room with me. No one could have put the pin into it there."
"That is not the point, Hester," he said patiently. "I am trying to think what they will say, what opportunity you had to find the pin and take it. We must ascertain where it was kept."
"Of course," she said eagerly. "She may have kept it in a jewel case in her bedroom. It would be much more sensible than having it in the dressing room." She looked at his face, and saw a gentleness in it which gave her a curious p.r.i.c.kle of pleasure, but there was no lightness in him which corresponded to hers. Surely if Mary had kept it in her room, that was almost proof Hester could not have taken the brooch?
He looked almost guilty, like someone who must disillusion a child.
"What?" she demanded. "Isn"t that good? I never went into her bedroom. And all the time except when I was in the library, or resting, I was with other people."
"At least one of whom, my dear, must be lying. Someone placed the pin in your case, and it cannot have been by accident."
She leaned forward urgently. "But it ought to be possible to show that I had no chance to take it from the bedroom, which will be where she kept her jewel case. I am almost certain it was not in the dressing room. To begin with, there was nothing for it to rest on." Her voice rose in excitement as she recalled the details of the room. She leaned closer towards him. "There were three wardrobes along one wall, a window in the second, a tallboy with drawers on the third, and also a dressing table with a stool in front of it, and three mirrors. I remember the brushes and combs and the crystal jars for pins and hair combings. There was no jewel case on it. It would have blocked the mirrors. And there was nothing on the tallboy, and it was too high to be reached."
"And the farther wall?" He smiled wryly.
"Oh...the door, of course. And another chair. And there was a sort of daybed."
"But no jewel case?"
"No. I am certain of it." She felt triumphant. It was such a small piece of memory and reason, but it was the first. "It has to mean something."
"It means your recollection is very clear, not a great deal more."
"But it has to," she said urgently. "If the case was not there, then I could not have taken anything from it."
"But, Hester, there is only your word that the case was not there," he said very softly, his mouth pinched with concern and sadness.
"The maid-" she began, then stopped.
"Precisely," he agreed. "The two people who would know that are the maid, who may well have been the one to place the pin in your luggage...and Mary herself, who is beyond our reach. Who else? The eldest daughter, Oonagh McIvor? What will she say?" There were both anger and pain in his face, though he was attempting to be as formal as his profession demanded.
She stared at him wordlessly.
He reached one hand across the table as if to touch her, then changed his mind and withdrew it.
"Hester, we cannot afford to hide from the truth," he said earnestly. "You have fallen into the midst of something we do not yet understand, and it would be foolish to imagine anyone involved in it is your friend, or will necessarily tell the truth if it is contrary to their interests. If Oonagh McIvor has to choose whether to blame someone in her own household or you, a stranger, we cannot rely upon her either wishing, or being able, to recall and repeat the exact truth."
"But...but if someone in her house is a thief, surely she would wish to know that?" she protested.
"Not necessarily, particularly if it is not a maid, but one of her family."
"But why? Why just one brooch? And why put it in my case?"
His face tightened, as if he were suddenly colder, and the anxiety in his eyes deepened.
"I don"t know, but the only alternative I can see is to suppose that you did take it, and that is not tolerable."
The enormity of what he had said became hideously plain to her. How could she expect anyone to believe she had not seized the chance, suddenly offered, and taken the brooch...then when Mary was found dead, suddenly become frightened and tried to return it? She met Rathbone"s eyes and knew he was thinking precisely the same thing.
Did he really believe her, in his heart? Or was he only behaving as if he did because it was his professional obligation to do so? She felt as if reality were slipping away from her and nightmare closing in, isolation and helplessness, endless confusion where nothing made sense, one moment"s sanity was the next moment"s chaos.
"I didn"t take it," she said suddenly, her voice loud in the silence. "I never saw it before I found it in my bag. I gave it straight to Callandra. What else could I have done?"
His hands closed over hers, surprisingly warm when she was so cold.
"I know you didn"t take it," he said firmly. "And I shall prove it. But it will not be easy. You will have to resign yourself to a battle."
She said nothing, struggling to keep the panic under control.
"Would you like me to inform your brother and sister-"
"No! No-please don"t tell Charles." Her voice was sharp, and unconsciously she had jerked forward. "You mustn"t tell Charles-or Imogen." She took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking. "It will be hard enough for him if he has to know, but if we can fight it first ..."
He was frowning at her. "Don"t you think he would wish to know? Surely he would wish to offer you some support, some comfort?"
"Of course he would wish it," she agreed with a fierce mixture of anger, pity and defensiveness. "But he wouldn"t know what to believe. He would want to think I was innocent, and he would not know how to. Charles is very literal. He cannot believe something he cannot understand." She knew she sounded critical, and she had not meant to, but all her own fear and anguish was in her voice, she could hear it and it was out of control. "It would distress him, and he could do nothing to help. He would feel he ought to visit me, and that would be terrible for him."
She wanted to explain to Rathbone about her father"s suicide when he was ruined by a cheat, and their mother"s death shortly afterwards, and the shock it had been for Charles. He had been the only one of the three children to be in England at the time, James having died recently in the Crimea, and Hester being still out there nursing. The full weight of the disgrace and the financial ruin had fallen on Charles, and then the grief afterwards.
Of course Rathbone knew something of it, because he had defended the man charged in the resulting murder case. But if he had not known the full extent of her father"s disgrace, she was not willing to tell him now, or to expose and relive her father"s vulnerability. She found herself sitting silently, risking his thinking her sullen.
Rathbone smiled very slightly, a small expression of resignation, and a kind of bitter humor.
"I think you are judging him ill," he said calmly. "But it is not of great importance now. Perhaps later on we can discuss it again." He rose to his feet.
"What are you going to do?" She stood up also, too quickly, knocking herself against the table and sc.r.a.ping the chair legs loudly on the floor. She lost her balance clumsily and only regained it by holding on to the table. "What happens next?"
He was close to her, so close she could smell the faint odor of the wool of his coat and feel the warmth of his skin. She longed for the comfort of being held with a depth that made the blood rush up to her face in shame. She straightened and took a step backwards.
"They will keep you here," he answered, wincing. "I shall go and seek Monk and send him to learn more of the Farralines and what really happened."
"To Edinburgh?" she said with surprise.
"Of course. I doubt there is anything more we can discover in London."
"Oh."
He moved to the door and knocked. "Wardress!" He turned back to see her. "Keep heart," he said gently. "There is an answer, and we shall find it."
She forced herself to smile. She knew he was speaking only to comfort her, but even so the words themselves had some power. She clung to them, willing herself to believe.
"Of course. Thank you...."
They were prevented from saying anything further by the clang of the keys in the lock and the wardress"s appearing, grim-faced and implacable.
Before calling upon Monk, which Rathbone viewed with very mixed thoughts, he returned to his offices in Vere Street. He had learned little of practical value from his interview with Hester, and he felt more emotionally drained than he had foreseen. Visiting clients accused of crime was always trying. Naturally they were frightened, shocked by arrest. Even when they were guilty, capture and charge took them by surprise. When they were innocent the sense of bewilderment and having been overtaken by events out of their control was devastating.
He had seen Hester angry before, burning with injustice, frightened for other people, close to despair, but never with the fear for herself. In a sense she had always been in some control of events, her own freedom not at stake.
He took off his coat and gave it to the clerk waiting to take it from him. Hester was so impatient of fools, so fierce to charge into battle. It was a characteristic most alarming, and highly unattractive in a woman. Society would not tolerate it. He smiled as he imagined how it would be greeted by most of the respectable ladies he knew. He could visualize the expressions in their well-bred faces. And it alarmed him, as his smile broadened with self-mockery, that it was the quality in her which most appealed to him. Gentler, more conventionally behaved women he found more comfortable, less challenging, less disturbing to his well-being, his a.s.sumptions and certainly his social and professional ambitions, but they did not remain always in his memory after they had parted. He was neither troubled by them nor invigorated. Safety was beginning to cloy, for all its seeming advantages.
Absentmindedly he thanked the clerk and walked past him to his office. He closed the door behind him and sat down at his desk. He must not allow this to happen to Hester. He was one of the best barristers in England, he was the ideal person to protect her and get this absurd charge dismissed. It irritated him that he would have to use Monk to find out the truth of what had happened, or at least enough of it to prove Hester"s innocence-and reasonable doubt would be far from satisfactory-but without facts he could do nothing.
It was not that he disliked Monk, not entirely. The man had an excellent mind, courage, and a kind of honor; even the fact that he was abrasive, often ill-mannered, and always arrogant was not of itself a strike against him. He was not a gentleman, for all his confidence, his elegance, his fine diction. The difference was indefinable, but it was there. There was a certain underlying aggression in him of which Rathbone was always aware. And his att.i.tude towards Hester was intensely irritating.
Hester"s welfare was the only thing that mattered at the moment. His own feelings about Monk were irrelevant. He would send a messenger to fetch him, and while he was waiting for him to arrive, prepare sufficient money to send him to Edinburgh on the night train with instructions to remain there until he could learn precisely what jealousies, pressures financial or emotional, existed in the Farraline household which had produced this ridiculous accident of circ.u.mstance.
He rang the bell for the clerk to come, and when the door opened, drew breath to speak, then saw the man"s face.
"What is it, Clements? What is wrong?"
"The police, sir. Sergeant Daly is here to see you."
"Ah." Perhaps the charge had been withdrawn, and he would not need to send for Monk after all. "Ask him to come in, Clements."
Clements bit his lip, his eyes troubled, and withdrew to obey.
"Yes?" Rathbone said hopefully as Sergeant Daly appeared in the doorway looking solid and sad. Rathbone was about to ask if the charges had been dropped when something in Daly"s face stopped him.
Daly closed the door behind him quietly, the latch clicking home with a snick.
"I"m sorry, Mr. Rathbone." His voice was light and very clear. In other circ.u.mstances it would have been pleasant, in spite of the London edge to the accent. "But I"ve got some rather unpleasant news."
The words were very mild, and yet Rathbone felt a sense of dread out of all proportion to the situation. He breathed in, and his stomach lurched. His mouth was suddenly dry.
"What is it, Sergeant?" He managed to sound almost as calm as Daly had, completely belying the fear inside him.
Daly remained standing, his blunt face filled with sorrow.
"Well sir, I"m afraid Mr. and Mrs. Murdoch weren"t totally satisfied with the way poor Mrs. Farraline died, it being so unexpected like, and they called their own doctor to make an examination ..." He left the words hanging in the air.
"You mean a postmortem?" Rathbone said sharply. Why on earth did the man not come to the point? "What of it?"
"He"s not satisfied she died natural, sir."
"What?"
"He"s not satisfied-"
"I heard you!" Rathbone made as if to rise from his seat but his legs betrayed him and he changed his mind. "What was...unnatural about it? Didn"t the police surgeon say it was heart failure?"
"Yes sir, he did that," Daly agreed. "But it was a somewhat hasty examination, made with the understanding that the lady was elderly and that she suffered from a heart ailment already."
"Are you now saying that that is not true?" Rathbone"s voice rose, even though he had not intended it to. He sounded shrill and he knew it. He must keep more control of himself!
"No sir, o" course I"m not," Daly said, shaking his head. "There"s no question she was elderly, and apparently she"d "ad this complaint for some time. But when Mr. Murdoch"s own doctor had a closer look, like "e was asked to, he wasn"t so sure. Mr. Murdoch suggested a postmortem examination, as is Mrs. Murdoch"s right, in the circ.u.mstances, what with the theft, an" all."
"What on earth do you mean, man?" Rathbone exploded. "You aren"t suggesting Miss Latterly strangled her patient for a piece of jewelry, are you? And then immediately reported finding it and made every effort to return it to the family?"
"No sir, not strangled ..." Daly said quietly.
Rathbone"s throat tightened so he could hardly breathe.