' There was no j ar of memory, nothing even faintly familiar. The echo was as far away now as if he had never heard it.
“Yes, Mrs. Carlyon. It is what I would have expected you to say.”
“It is the truth.” Her voice rose and there was a note of desperation in it, almost of pleading. “You must not accuse Sabella! If you are employed by Mr. Rathbone-Mr. Rathbone is my lawyer. He cannot say what I forbid him to.”
It was half a statement, half a reassurance to herself.
“He is also an officer of the court, Mrs. Carlyon,” he said with sudden gentleness. “He cannot say something which he knows beyond question to be untrue.”
She stared at him without speaking.
Could his memory have something to do with that older woman who wept without distorting her face? She had been the wife of the man who had taught him so much, upon whom he had modeled himself when he first came south from Northumberland. It was he who had been ruined, cheated in some way, and Monk had tried so hard to save him, and failed.
But the image that had come to him today was of a young woman, another woman like Alexandra, charged with murdering her husband. And he had come here, like this, to help her.
Had he failed? Was that why she no longer knew him? There was no record of her among his possessions, no letters, no pictures, not even a name written down. Why? Why had he ceased to know her?
The answers crowded in on him: because he had failed, she had gone to the gallows…
“I shall do what I can to help, Mrs. Carlyon,” he said quietly. “To find the truth-and then you and Mr. Rathbone must do with it whatever you wish.”
Chapter 4
At mid-morning on May 11, Hester received an urgent invitation from Edith to call upon her at Carlyon House. It was hand-written and delivered by a messenger, a small boy with a cap pulled over his ears and a broken front tooth. It requested Hester to come at her earliest convenience, and that she would be most welcome to stay for luncheon if she wished.
“By all means,” Major Tiplady said graciously. He was feeling better with every day, and was now quite well enough to be ferociously bored with his immobility, to have read all he wished of both daily newspapers and books from his own collection and those he requested from the libraries of friends. He enjoyed Hester's conversation, but he longed for some new event or circumstance to intrude into his rife.
“Go and see the Carlyons,” he urged. “Learn something of what is progressing in that wretched case. Poor woman! Although I don't know why I should say that.” His white eyebrows rose, making him look both belligerent and bemused. “I suppose some part of me refuses to believe she should kill her husband-especially in such a way. Not a woman's method. Women use something subtler, like poison-don't you think?” He looked at Hester's faintly surprised expression and did not wait for an answer. “Anyway, why should she kill him at all?” He frowned. “What could he have done to her to cause her to resort to such a-a-fatal and inexcusable violence?”
“I don't know,” Hester admitted, putting aside the mending she had been doing. “And rather more to the point, why does she not tell us? Why does she persist in this lie about jealousy? I fear it may be because she is afraid it is her daughter who is guilty, and she would rather hang than see her child perish.”
“You must do something,” Tiplady said with intense feeling. “You cannot allow her to sacrifice herself. At least…” He hesitated, pity twisting his emotions so plainly his face reflected every thought that passed through his mind: the doubt, the sudden understanding and the confusion again. “Oh, my dear Miss Latterly, what a terrible dilemma. Do we have the right to take from this poor creature her sacrifice for her child? If we prove her innocent, and her daughter guilty, surely that is the last thing she would wish? Do we then not rob her of the only precious thing she has left?”
“I don't know,” Hester answered very quietly, folding the linen and putting the needle and thimble back in their case. “But what if it was not either of them? What if she is confessing to protect Sabella, because she fears she is guilty, but in fact she is not? What hideous irony if we know, only when it is too late, that it was someone else altogether?”
He shut his eyes. “How perfectly appalling. Surely this friend of yours, Mr. Monk, can prevent such a thing? You say he is very clever, most particularly in this field.”
A flood of memory and sadness washed over her. “Cleverness is not always enough…”
“Then you had better go and see what you can learn for yourself,” he said decisively. “Find out what you can about this wretched General Carlyon. Someone must have hated him very dearly indeed. Go to luncheon with his family. Watch and listen, ask questions, do whatever it is detectives do. Goon!”
“I suppose you don't know anything about him?” she asked without hope, looking around the room a last time before going to her own quarters to prepare herself. Everything he might need seemed to be available for him, the maid would serve his meal, and she should be back by mid-afternoon herself.
“Well, as I said before, I know him by repute,” Tiplady replied somberly. “One cannot serve as long as I have and not know at least the names of all the generals of any note- and those of none.”
She smiled wryly. “And which was he?” Her own opinion of generals was not high.
“Ah…”He breathed out, looking at her with a twisted smile. “I don't know for myself, but he had a name as a soldier's soldier, a good-enough leader, inspiring, personally heroic, but outside uniform not a colorful man, tactically neither a hero nor a disaster.”
“He did not fight in the Crimea, then?” she said too quickly for thought or consideration to guard her tongue. “They were all one or the other-mostly the other.”
A smile puckered his lips against his will. He knew the army's weaknesses, but they were a closed subject, like family faults, not to be exposed or even admitted to outsiders- least of all women.
“No,” he said guardedly. “As I understand it he served most of his active time in India-and then spent a lot of years here at home, in high command, training younger officers and the like.”
“What was his personal reputation? What did people think of him?” She straightened -his blanket yet again, quite unnecessarily but from habit.
“I've no idea.” He seemed surprised to be asked. “Never heard anything at all. I told you-he was not personally a colorful man. For heaven's sake, do go and see Mrs. Sobell. You have to discover the truth in the matter and save poor Mrs. Carlyon-or the daughter.”
“Yes, Major. I am about to go.” And without adding anything further except a farewell, she left him alone to think and imagine until she should return.
Edith met her with a quick, anxious interest, rising from the chair where she had been sitting awkwardly, one leg folded under her. She looked tired and too pale for her dark mourning dress to flatter her. Her long fair hair was already pulled untidy, as if she had been running her hand over her head and had caught the strands of it absentmindedly.
“Ah, Hester. I am so glad you could come. The major did not mind? How good of him. Have you learned anything? What has Mr. Rathbone discovered? Oh, please, do come and sit down-here.” She indicated the place opposite where she had been, and resumed her own seat.
Hester obeyed, not bothering to arrange her skirts.
“I am afraid very little so far,” she answered, responding to the last question, knowing it was the only one which mattered. “And of course there will be limits to what he could tell me anyway, since I have no standing in the case.”
Edith looked momentarily confused, then quite suddenly she understood.
“Oh yes-of course.” Her face was bleak, as if the different nature of things lent a grimmer reality to it. “But he is working on it?”
“Of course. Mr. Monk is investigating. I expect he will come here in due course.”
