took her arm and held it hard, the pressure of his fingers so strong as to be almost painful. 'Watch and listen as your opportunities allow, but do not ask anything! Do you hear me?'
She backed away, rubbing her arm. 'Of course I hear you. You requested me to help-I am doing so. I have no intention of asking any questions-they would not answer them anyway but would dismiss me for being impertinent and intrusive. I am a servant here.''
'What about the servants?' He did not move away but remained close to her. 'Be careful of the menservants, Hester, particularly the footmen. It is quite likely one of them had amorous ideas about Octavia, and misunderstood'-he shrugged-'or even understood correctly, and she got tired of the affair-'
'Good heavens. You are no better than Myles Kellard,' she snapped at him. 'He all but implied Octavia was a trollop.'
'It is only a possibility!' he hissed sharply. 'Keep your voice down. For all we know there may be a row of eavesdroppers at the door. Does your bedroom have a lock?'
'No.'
'Then put a chair behind the handle.'
'I hardly think-' Then she remembered that Octavia Has-lett had been murdered in her bedroom in the middle of the night, and she found she was shaking in spite of herself.
'It is someone in this house!' Monk repeated, watching her closely.
'Yes,' she said obediently. 'Yes, I know that. Weallknow that-that is what is so terrible.'
Chapter 6
Hester left her interview with Monk considerably chastened. Seeing him again had reminded her that this was not an ordinary household, and the difference of opinion, the quarrels, which seemed a trivial nastiness, in one case had been so deep they had led to violent and treacherous death. One of those people she looked at across the meal table, or passed on the stairs, had stabbed Octavia in the night and left her to bleed.
It made her a little sick as she returned to Beatrice's bedroom and knocked on the door before entering. Beatrice was standing by the window staring out into the remains of the autumn garden and watching the gardener's boy sweeping up the fallen leaves and pulling a few last weeds from around the Michaelmas daisies. Arthur, his hair blowing in the wind, was helping with the solemnity of a ten-year-old. Beatrice turned as Hester came in, her face pale, her eyes wide and anxious.
'You look distressed,' she said, staring at Hester. She walked over to the dressing chair but did not sit, as if the chair would imprison her and she desired the freedom to move suddenly. 'Why did the police want to see you? You weren't here when-when Tavie was killed.'
'No, Lady Moidore.' Hester's mind raced for a reason which would be believed, and perhaps which might even prompt Beatrice to yield something of the fear Hester was sure so troubled her. 'I am not entirely certain, but I believe he thought I might have observed something since I came. And I
have no cause for prevaricating, insofar as I could not fear he might accuse me.'
'Who do you think is lying?' Beatrice asked.
Hester hesitated very slightly and moved to tidy the bed, plump up the pillows and generally appear to be working. 'I don't know, but it is quite certain that someone must be.'
Beatrice looked startled, as though it were not an answer she had foreseen.
“You mean someone is protecting the murderer? Why? Who would do such a thing and why? What reason could they have?'
Hester tried to excuse herself. 'I meant merely that since it is someone in the house, that person is lying to protect himself.' Then she realized the opportunity she had very nearly lost. 'Although when you mention it, you are quite right, it seems most unlikely that no one else has any idea who it is, or why. I daresay several people are evading the truth, one way or another.' She glanced up from the bed at Beatrice. “Wouldn't you, Lady Moidore?''
Beatrice hesitated. 'I fear so,' she said very quietly.
“If you ask me who,'' Hester went on, disregarding the fact that no one had asked her, 'I have formed very few opinions. I can easily imagine why some people would hide a truth they knew, or suspected, in order to protect someone they cared for-' She watched Beatrice's face and saw the muscles tighten as if pain had caught her unaware. 'I would hesitate to say something,' Hester continued, 'which might cause an unjustified suspicion-and therefore a great deal of distress. For example, an affection that might have been misunderstood-'
Beatrice stared back at her, wide-eyed. 'Did you say that to Mr. Monk?'
'Oh no,' Hester replied demurely.”He might have thought I had someone in particular in mind.''
Beatrice smiled very slightly. She walked back towards the bed and lay on it, weary not in body but in mind, and Hester gently pulled the covers over her, trying to hide her own impatience. She was convinced Beatrice knew something, and every day that passed in silence was adding to the danger that it might never be discovered but that the whole household would close in on itself in corroding suspicion and concealed
accusations. And would her silence be enough to protect her indefinitely from the murderer?
'Are you comfortable?' she asked gently.
'Yes thank you,' Beatrice said absently. 'Hester?'
'Yes?'
'Were you frightened in the Crimea? It must have been dangerous at times. Did you not fear for yourself-and for those of whom you had grown fond?''
'Yes of course.' Hester's mind flew back to the times when she had lain in her cot with horror creeping over her skin and the sick knowledge of what pain awaited the men she had seen so shortly before, the numbing cold in the heights above Se-bastopol, the mutilation of wounds, the carnage of battle, bodies broken and so mangled as to be almost unrecognizable as human, only as bleeding flesh, once alive and capable of unimaginable pain. It was seldom herself for whom she had been frightened; only sometimes, when she was so tired she felt ill, did the sudden specter of typhoid or cholera so terrify her as to cause her stomach to lurch and the sweat to break out and stand cold on her body.
Beatrice was looking at her, for once her eyes sharp with real interest-there was nothing polite or feigned in it.
Hester smiled. 'Yes I was afraid sometimes, but not often. Mostly I was too busy. When you can do something about even die smallest part of it, the overwhelming sick horror goes. You stop seeing the whole thing and see only the tiny part you are dealing with, and the fact that you can do something calms you. Even if all you accomplish is easing one person's distress or helping someone to endure with hope instead of despair. Sometimes it is just tidying up that helps, getting a kind of order out of the chaos.''
Only when she had finished and saw the understanding in Beatrice's face did she realize the additional meanings of what she had said. If anyone had asked her earlier if she would have changed her life for Beatrice's, married and secure in status and well-being with family and friends, she would have accepted it as a woman's most ideal role, as if it were a stupid thing even to doubt.
Perhaps Beatrice would just as quickly have refused. Now they had both changed their views with a surprise which was still growing inside them. Beatrice was safe from material misfortune, but she was also withering inside with boredom and lack of accomplishment. Pain appalled her because she had no part in addressing it. She endured passively, without knowledge or weapon with which to fight it, either in herself or in those she loved or pitied. It was a kind of distress Hester had seen before, but never more than casually, and never with so sharp and wounding an understanding.
Now it would be clumsy to try to put into words what was far too subtle, and which they both needed time to face in their own perceptions. Hester wanted to say something that would offer comfort, but anything that came to her mind sounded patronizing and would have shattered the delicate empathy between them.
'What would you like for luncheon?' she asked.
'Does it matter?' Beatrice smiled and shrugged, sensing the subtlety of moving from one subject to another quite different, and painlessly trivial.
'Not in the least.' Hester smiled ruefully. 'But you might as well please yourself, rather than the cook.'
