though she were fighting to keep control of herself. 'I wanted to believe he would have stayed alive, and fought them, faced his friends, even those who lost money, rather than-' She stopped, otherwise she would have wept. She stood quite still, swallowing hard.
'I'm sorry,' he said very quietly. He wanted to touch her, but he was hurtfully aware of the difference between them. It would be a familiarity and would break the moment's trust, the illusion of closeness.
She waited a moment longer, as if for something which did not come; then she abandoned it.
'Thank you. I am sure you have done everything you could. Perhaps I saw what I wished to see.'
There was a movement up the aisle, towards the door of the church, and the vicar came down, looking vague, and behind him the same woman with the highly individual face whom Monk had seen on the first occasion in the church. She also was dressed in dark, plain clothes, and her thick hair with a very slight wave was pulled back in a manner that owed more to expediency than fashion.
'Mrs. Latterly, is that you?' the vicar asked uncertainly, peering forward. 'Why my dear, what are you doing here all by yourself? You mustn't brood, you know. Oh!' He saw Monk. 'I beg your pardon. I did not realize you had company.'
'This is Mr. Monk,' she said, explaining him. 'From the police. He was kind enough to help us when Papa… died.'
The vicar looked at Monk with disapproval.
'Indeed. I do think, my dear child, that it would be wiser for all of us if you were to let the matter rest. Observe mourning, of course, but let your poor father-in-law rest in peace.' He crossed the air absently. 'Yes-in peace.'
Monk stood up. Mrs. Latterly; so she was married-or a widow? He was being absurd.
'If I learn anything more, Mrs. Latterly'-his voice was tight, almost choking-'do you wish me to inform you?' He did not want to lose her, to have her disappear into the past with everything else. He might not discover anything, but he must know where she was, have a reason to see her.
She looked at him for a long moment, undecided, fighting with herself. Then she spoke carefully.
'Yes please, if you will be so kind, but please remember your promise! Good night.' She swiveled around, her skirts brushing Monk's feet. 'Good night, Vicar. Come, Hester, it is time we returned home; Charles will be expecting us for dinner.' And she walked slowly up towards the door. Monk watched her go arm in arm with the other woman as if she had taken the light away with her.
Outside in the sharper evening air Hester Latterly turned to her sister-in-law.
'I think it is past time you explained yourself, Imogen,' she said quietly, but with an edge of urgency in her voice. 'Just who is that man?'
'He is with the police,' Imogen replied, walking briskly towards their carriage, which was waiting at the curbside. The coachman climbed down, opened the door and handed them in, Imogen first, then Hester. Both took his courtesy for granted and Hester arranged her skirts merely sufficiently to be comfortable, Imogen to avoid crushing the fabric.
'What do you mean, 'with'?' Hester demanded as the carriage moved forward. 'One does not accompany the police; you make it sound like a social event! 'Miss Smith is with Mr. Jones this evening.' '
'Don't be pedantic,' Imogen criticized. 'Actually you can say it of a maid as well-'Tilly is with the Robinsons at present'!'
Hester's eyebrows shot up. 'Indeed! And is that man presently playing footman to the police?'
Imogen remained silent.
'Ifri sorry,' Hester said at length. 'But I know there is something distressing you, and I feel so helpless because I don't know what it is.'
Imogen put out her hand and held Hester's tightly.
'Nothing,' she said in a voice so low it could only just be heard above the rattle of the carriage and the dull thud of hooves and the noises of the street. 'It is only Papa's death, and all that followed. None of us are over the shock of it yet, and I do appreciate your leaving everything and coming home as you did.'
'I never thought of doing less,' Hester said honestly, although her work in the Crimean hospitals had changed her beyond anything Imogen or Charles could begin to understand. It had been a hard duty to leave the nursing service and the white-hot spirit to improve, reform and heal that had moved not only Miss Nightingale but so many other women as well. But the death of first her father, then within a few short weeks her mother also, had made it an undeniable duty that she should return home and be there to mourn, and to assist her brother and his wife in all the affairs that there were to be attended to. Naturally Charles had seen to all the business and the finances, but there had been the house to close up, servants to dismiss, endless letters to write, clothes to dispose of to the poor, bequests of a personal nature to be remembered, and the endless social facade to be kept up. It would have been desperately unfair to expect Imogen to bear the burden and that responsibility alone. Hester had given no second thought as to whether she should come, simply excused herself, packed her few belongings and embarked.
It had been an extraordinary contrast after the desperate years in the Crimea with the unspeakable suffering she had seen, the agony of wounds, bodies torn by shot and sword; and to her even more harrowing, those wasted by disease, the racking pain and nausea of cholera, typhus and dysentery, the cold and the starvation; and driving her almost beyond herself with fury, the staggering incompetence.
She, like the other handful of women, had worked herself close to exhaustion, cleaning up human waste where there were no sanitary facilities, excrement from the helpless running on the floor and dripping through to the packed and wretched huddled in the cellars below. She had nursed men delirious with fever, gangrenous from amputations of limbs lost to everything from musket shot, cannon shot, sword thrust, even frostbite on the exposed and fearful bivouacs of the winter encampments where men and horses had perished by the thousands. She had delivered babies of the hungry and neglected army wives, buried many of them, then comforted the bereaved.
And when she could bear the pity no longer she had expended her last energy in fury, fighting the endless, idiotic inadequacy of the command, who seemed to her not to have the faintest grasp of ordinary sense, let alone management ability.
She had lost a brother, and many friends, chief among them Alan Russell, a brilliant war correspondent who had written home to the newspapers some of the unpalatable truths about one of the bravest and foolhardiest campaigns ever fought. He had shared many of them with her, allowing «her to read them before they were posted.
Indeed in the weakness of fever he had dictated his last letter to her and she had sent it. When he died in the hospital at Scutari she had in a rash moment of deep emotion written a dispatch herself, and signed his name to it as if he were still alive.
It had been accepted and printed. From knowledge gleaned from other injured and feverish men she had learned their accounts of battle, siege and trench warfare, crazy charges and long weeks of boredom, and other dispatches had followed, all with Alan's name on them. In the general confusion no one realized.
Now she was home in the orderly, dignified, very sober grief of her brother's household mourning both her parents, wearing black as if this were the only loss and there were nothing else to do but conduct a gentle life of embroidery, letter writing and discreet good works with local charities. And of course obey Charles's continuous and rather pompous orders as to what must be done, and how, and when. It was almost beyond bearing. It was as if she were in suspended animation. She had grown used to having authority, making decisions and being in the heart of emotion, even if overtired, bitterly frustrated, full of anger and pity, desperately needed.
Now Charles was driven frantic because he could not understand her or comprehend the change in her from the brooding, intellectual girl he knew before, nor could he foresee any respectable man offering for her in marriage. He found the thought of having her living under his roof for the rest of her life well nigh insufferable.
The prospect did not please Hester either, but then she had no intention of allowing it to come to pass. As long as Imogen needed her she would remain, then she would consider her future and its possibilities.
However, as she sat in the carriage beside Imogen while they rattled through the dusk streets she had a powerful conviction that there was much troubling her sister-in-law and it was something that, for whatever reasons, Imogen was keeping secret, telling neither Charles nor Hester, and bearing the weight of it alone. It was
