“Shock,” Callandra said sympathetically. “Drink it. It will make you feel better.”
Hester sipped again, and felt the hot liquid down her throat.
“She was so well the evening before,” she said vehemently. “We sat up and talked about all sorts of things. She would have talked longer, only her daughter instructed me she should not stay up later than quarter past eleven at the outside.”
“If she was well until the very last evening of her life, she was most fortunate,” Callandra said, looking at Hester over the top of the cup. “Most people have at least some period of illness, usually weeks. Of course it is a shock, but in a little while it will seem more of a blessing.”
“I expect it will,” Hester said slowly. Her brain knew that what Callandra said was perfectly true, but her emotions were sharp with guilt and regret “I liked her very much,” she said aloud.
“Then be glad for her that she did not suffer.”
“I felt so-inefficient, so uncaring,” Hester protested. “I didn’t help her in the slightest. I didn’t even wake up. For any use or comfort I was to her, I could have stayed at home.”
‘Tf she died in her sleep, my dear girl, there was no use or comfort you could have been,” Callandra pointed out.
“I suppose so…”
“I imagine you had to inform someone? Family?”
“Yes. Her daughter and son-in-law had come to meet her. She was very distressed.”
“Of course. And sometimes sudden grief can make people very angry, and quite unreasonable. Was she unpleasant to you?”
“No-not at all. She was really very fair.” Hester smiled bitterly. “She didn’t blame me at all, and she could well have done. She seemed more distressed that she could not learn what her mother was going to tell her man anything else. The poor soul is with child, and it is her first. She was anxious about her health, and Mrs. Farraline had gone to reassure her. She was almost distracted that she would never know what it was that Mrs. Farraline was going to say.”
“A most unfortunate situation altogether,” Callandra said sympathetically. “But no one is at fault, unless it is Mrs. Farraline for having undertaken such a journey when she was in such delicate health herself. A long letter would have been much better advised. Still, we can all be clever after the event.”
“I don’t think that I have ever liked a patient more thoroughly or more immediately,” Hester said, swallowing hard. “She was very direct, very honest She told me about dancing the night away before the Battle of Waterloo. Everyone who was anyone in Europe was there that night, she said. It was all gaiety, laughter and beauty, with a desperate, wild kind of life, knowing what the morrow might bring.” For a moment the dim lamplight of the carriage, and Mary’s quick, intelligent face, seemed more real than the green room and the fire of the present.
“And then their partings in the morning,” she went on. “The men in their scarlet and braid, the horses smelling the excitement and the whiff of battle, harnesses jingling, hooves never still.” She finished the last of the chocolate but kept holding the empty cup. “There was a portrait of her husband in the hall. He had a remarkable face, full of emotion, and yet so much of it half hidden, only guessed at. Do you know what I mean?” She looked at Callandra ques-tioningly. “There was passion in his mouth, but uncertainty in his eyes, as if you would always have to guess at what he was really thinking.”
“A complex man,” Callandra agreed. “And a clever artist to catch all that in a face, by the sound of it.”
“He formed the family printing company.”
“Indeed.”
“He died eight years ago.”
Callandra listened for another half hour while Hester told her about the Farralines, about the little she had seen of Edinburgh, and what she would do about obtaining another position. Then she rose and suggested that Hester tidy her hair, which was still lacking several pins and far from dressed, and they should consider luncheon.
“Yes-yes of course,” Hester said quickly, only just realizing how much of Callandra’s time she had taken. “I’m sorry… I… should have…”
Callandra stopped her with a look.
“Yes,” Hester said obediently. “Yes, I’ll go and find some more pins. And I daresay Daisy will wish for her dress back. It was very kind of her to lend me this.”
“Yours will hardly be dry yet,” Callandra pointed out. “There will be plenty of time after we have eaten.”
Without further argument Hester went upstairs to the spare bedroom where Daisy had put her bag, and opened it to find her comb and some additional pins. She poked her hand down the side hopefully and felt around. No comb. She tried the other side and her fingers touched it after a moment. The pins were harder. They should be in a little screw of paper, but after several minutes she still had not come across it.
Impatiently she tipped up the bag and emptied the contents out onto the bed. Still the pins were not immediately visible. She picked up her chemise that she had changed out of in Mrs. Farraline’s house when she had rested. It was hard to realize that had been only yesterday. She shook it and something flew out and went onto the floor with a faint sound. It must be the screw of paper with the pins. It was the right size and weight. She went around to the far side of the bed and knelt down to find it. It was gone again. She moved her hand over the carpet, gently feeling for it.
There it was. Next to the leg of the bed. She picked it up, and instantly knew something was wrong. It was not paper, or even loose pins. It was a complicated scroll of metal. She looked at it. Then her stomach lurched and her mouth went suddenly dry. It was a jeweled pin, a hoop and scroll set with diamonds and large gray pearls. She had never seen it before, but its description was sharp in her mind. It was Mary Farraline’s brooch, the one she had said was her favorite and which she had left behind because the dress it complemented was stained.
With clumsy fingers she clasped it, and, her hair still trailing out of its pins, she went back down the stairs and into the green room.
Callandra looked up.
“What is it?” She had taken one look at Hester’s face and knew there was something new and seriously wrong. “What has happened?”
Hester held out the pin.
“It is Mary Farraline’s,” she said huskily. “I just found it in my bag.”
“You had better sit down,” Callandra said grimly, holding out her hand for the brooch.
Hester sank into the chair gratefully. Her legs seemed to have no strength in them.
Callandra took the brooch and turned it over carefully, examining the pearls, then the hallmark on the back.
“I think it is probably worth a good deal,” she said in a soft, very grave voice. “At least ninety to a hundred pounds.” She looked at Hester with a frown between her brows. “I suppose you have no idea how it came to be in your bag?”
“No-none at all. Mrs. Farraline said she had not brought it with her because the dress she wears it with had been stained.”
“Then it would seem that her maid did not obey instructions very well.” Callandra bit her lip. “And is also… a great deal less than honest. It is hard to see how this could have happened by accident. Hester, there is something seriously wrong here, but try as I might, I cannot understand it. We need assistance, and I propose that you ask William…”
Hester froze.
“… to give us his advice,” Callandra finished. “This is not something we can deal with ourselves, nor would it be sensible to try. My dear, there is something very wrong. The poor woman is dead. It may be some kind of unfortunate error that her jewelry has found its way into your belongings, but for the life of me I cannot think what.”
“But do you think…” Hester began, hating the thought of going to Monk for help. It seemed so ineffectual, and at the moment she felt too tired and stunned to be up to the kind of emotional battle Monk would engender.
“Yes I do,” Callandra said, yielding nothing. “Or I would not have suggested it. I will not override your wishes, but I cannot urge you strongly enough to get counsel and do so without delay.”
Hester stood still for several moments, thinking, trying to find an explanation so she would not have to go to Monk, and even as she was doing it, knowing it was futile. There was no explanation that made any kind of sense.
