“It was ghastly. A fiasco almost from the beginning.” She opened her eyes again and stared at Hester. “Do you really want to know about it?”
“Unless you find it too painful.” That was not the truth. She wanted to know about it regardless, but decency, and compassion, prevented her from pressing too hard.
Damaris shrugged, but she did not meet Hester's eyes. “I don't mind talking about it-it is all going on inside my head anyway, repeating over and over again. Some parts of it don't even seem real anymore.”
“Begin at the beginning,” Edith prompted, curling her feet up under her. ' “That is the only way we have a hope of making any sense of it. Apparently someone did kill Thad-deus, and it is going to be extremely unpleasant until we find out who.”
Damaris shivered and shot her a sour glance, then addressed Hester.
“Peverell and I were the first to arrive. You haven't met him, but you will like him when you do.” She said it unselfconsciously and without desire for effect, simply as a comment of fact. “At that time we were both in good spirits and looking forward to the evening.” She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Can you imagine that? Do you know Maxim and Louisa Furnival? No, I don't suppose you do. Edith says you don't waste time in Society.”
Hester smiled and looked down at her hands in her lap to avoid meeting Edith's eyes. That was a charmingly euphemistic way of putting it. Hester was too old to be strictly marriageable, well over twenty-five, and even twenty-five was optimistic. And since her father had lost his money before his death, she had no dowry, nor any social background worth anyone's while to pursue. Also she was of an unbecomingly direct character and both held and expressed too many opinions.
“I have no time I can afford to waste,” she answered aloud.
“And I have too much,” Edith added.
Hester brought them back to the subject. “Please tell me something of the Furnivals.”
Damaris's face lost its momentary look of ease.
“Maxim is really quite agreeable, in a brooding, dark sort of way. He's fearfully decent, and he manages to do it without being stuffy. I often felt if I knew him better he might be quite interesting. I could easily imagine falling madly in love with him-just to know what lies underneath-if I didn't already know Peverell. But whether it would stand a close acquaintance I have no idea.” She glanced at Hester to make sure she understood, then continued, staring up at the molded and painted ceiling. “Louisa is another matter altogether. She is very beautiful, in an unconventional way, like a large cat-of the jungle sort, not the domestic. She is no one's tabby. I used to envy her.” She smiled ruefully. “She is very small. She can be feminine and look up at any man at ail-where I look down on far more than I wish. And she is all curves in the most flattering places, which I am not. She has very high, wide cheekbones, but when I stopped being envious, and looked a little more closely, I did not care for her mouth.”
“You are not saying much of what she is like, Ris,” Edith prompted.
“She is like a cat,” Damaris said reasonably. “Sensuous, predatory, and taking great care of her own, but utterly charming when she wishes to be.”
Edith looked across at Hester. “Which tells you at least that Damaris doesn't like her very much. Or that she is more than a trifle envious.”
“You are interrupting,” Damaris said with an aloof air. “The next to arrive were Thaddeus and Alexandra. He was just as usual, polite, pompous and rather preoccupied, but Alex looked pale and not so much preoccupied as distracted. I thought then that they must have had a disagreement over something, and of course Alex had lost.”
Hester nearly asked why “of course,” then realized the question was foolish. A wife would always lose, particularly in public.
“Then Sabella and Fenton came,” Damaris continued. ' “That's Thaddeus's younger daughter and her husband,” she explained to Hester. “Almost immediately Sabella was rude to Thaddeus. We all pretended we hadn't noticed, which is about all you can do when you are forced to witness a family quarrel. It was rather embarrassing, and Alex looked very…” she searched for the word she wanted. “… very brittle, as though her self-control might snap if she were pressed too hard.” Her face changed swiftly, and a shadow passed over it. “The last ones to arrive were Dr. Hargrave and his wife.” She altered her position slightly in the chair, with the result that she was no longer facing Hester. ”It was all very polite, and trivial, and totally artificial.”
“You said it was ghastly.” Edith's eyebrows rose. “You don't mean you sat around through the entire evening being icily civil to each other. You told me Thaddeus and Sabella quarreled and Sabella behaved terribly, and Alex was white as a sheet, which Thaddeus either did not even notice-or else pretended not to. And that Maxim was hovering over Alex, and Louisa obviously resented it.”
Damaris frowned, her shoulders tightening. “I thought so. But of course it may simply have been that it was Maxim's house and he felt responsible, so he was trying to be kind to Alex and make her feel better, and Louisa misunderstood.” She glanced at Hester. ”She likes to be the center of attention and wouldn't appreciate anyone being so absorbed in someone else. She was very scratchy with Alex all evening.”
“You all went in to dinner?” Hester prompted, still searching for the factual elements of the crime, if the police were correct and there had been one.
“What?” Damaris knitted her brows, staring at the window. “Oh-yes, all on each other's arms as we had been directed, according to the best etiquette. Do you know, I can't even remember what we ate.” She lifted her shoulders a little under the gorgeous blouse. “It could have been bread pudding for all I tasted. After the desserts we went to the withdrawing room and talked nonsense while the men passed the port, or whatever men do in the dining room when the women have gone. I've often wondered if they say anything at all worth listening to.” She looked up at Hester quickly. “Haven't you?”
Hester smiled briefly. “Yes I have. But I think it may be one of those cases where the truth would be disappointing. The mystery is far better. Did the men rejoin you?”
Damaris grimaced in a strange half smile, rueful and ironic. “You mean was Thaddeus still alive then? Yes he was. Sabella went upstairs to be alone, or I think more accurately to sulk, but I can't remember when. It was before the men came in, because I thought she was avoiding Thaddeus.”
“So you were all in the withdrawing room, apart from Sabella?”
“Yes. The conversation was very artificial. I mean more so than usual. It's always pretty futile. Louisa was making vicious little asides about Alex, all with a smooth smile on her face, of course. Then Louisa rose and invited Thaddeus to go up and visit Valentine-” She gave a quick little gasp as if she had choked on something, and then changed it into a cough. “Alex was furious. I can picture the look on her face as if I had only just seen it.”
Hester knew Damaris was speaking of a subject about which she felt some deep emotion, but she had no idea why, or quite what emotion it was. But there was little point in pressing the matter at all if she stopped now.
“Who is Valentine?”
Damaris's voice was husky as she answered. “He is the Furnivals' son. He is thirteen-nearly fourteen.”
“And Thaddeus was fond of him?” Hester said quietly.
“Yes-yes he was.” Her tone had a kind of finality and her face a bleakness that stopped Hester from asking any more. She knew from Edith that Damaris had no children of her own, and she had enough sensitivity to imagine the feelings that might lie behind those words. She changed the subject and brought it back to the immediate.
“How long was he gone?”
Damaris smiled with a strange, wounded humor.
“Forever.”
“Oh.” Hester was more disconcerted than she was prepared for. She felt dismay, and for a moment she was robbed of words.
“I'm sorry,” Damaris said quickly, looking at Hester with wide, dark eyes. “Actually I don't know. I was absorbed in my own thoughts. Some time. People were coming and going.” She smiled as if there were some punishing humor in that thought. “Maxim went off for something, and Louisa came back alone. Alex went off too, I suppose after Thaddeus, and she came back. Then Maxim went off again, this time into the front hall-I should have said they went up the back stairs to the wing where Valentine has his room, on the third floor. It is quicker that way.”
“You've been up?”
Damaris looked away. “Yes.”
“Maxim went into the front hall?” Hester prompted.
“Oh-yes. And he came back looking awful and saying there had been an accident. Thaddeus had Mien over the
