The church was filling. The cortege must be due soon. Hester was shivering in spite of her heavy black coat. She moved forward a step, ready to pay her own respects, and found herself immediately behind a very dark man she guessed to be in his forties. His face was striking, with strong, generous features, but she would have paid him no further attention had she not seen Kristian’s reaction to him. To that point his face had been pale and almost expressionless, like that of a man exhausted but unable to sleep, driven to stand upright only by the utmost self- discipline. Now suddenly there was a flash of light in his eyes and something close to a smile.
“Max!” he said with obvious amazement and just as clear pleasure. “How good of you to come! How did you know?”
“I was only in Paris,” Max replied. “I read it in the newspapers.” He clasped Kristian’s hand in both of his. “I’m so desperately sorry. There are too many things to say, a whole world for which there are no words. Something immeasurable has gone out of our lives.”
Kristian nodded without speaking, still clinging to Max’s hand. For the first time he looked close to losing his composure. It cost him a visible effort to turn to Pendreigh, clear his throat, and introduce the two men.
“This is Max Niemann, who stood with us in Vienna in the uprising. He and Elissa and I had a bond. .” He cleared his throat and coughed, unable to continue.
Pendreigh stepped into the momentary silence, his own voice thick with emotion. “How do you do, Herr Niemann. I am deeply grateful for all that you have been to my daughter in the past. She spoke of you with the profoundest admiration and affection. It is a great comfort to me, and I am sure it is to my son-in-law as well, that you should be here. Little in the world matters as much as friends at a time like this.”
Niemann bowed slightly, bringing his heels together, but without sound. He looked up at Pendreigh, met his eyes with the ghost of a smile, then turned away to allow Hester and Monk to offer their condolences also.
Kristian had regained control of himself sufficiently to speak to Monk, who was now side by side with Hester.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. He managed to sound as if he meant it. “It was good of you to come. I know you are doing all you can to help, and we appreciate it.” He did not look towards Pendreigh, but his inclusion of him was obvious. He looked at Hester, and suddenly speech was difficult for him again. Perhaps it was memory of the experiences they had shared, the long nights in the fever hospital, the battles for reform, the victories and the failures they had felt so deeply. She spoke quickly, to save him the necessity. The words did not matter.
“I’m so sorry. You know we are thinking of you all the time.”
“Thank you,” he murmured, his voice cracking.
To spare him, she turned to Fuller Pendreigh, and Kristian introduced them. She would have liked to say something original that would still have sounded sincere, but nothing came to mind except the usual platitudes.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Pendreigh.” She meant it, but there was nothing to add that made it more comforting. She could remember the stunned feeling she had had when she came home to her parents’ empty house, the place where they should have been and were not anymore.
“Thank you,” he murmured. It was five days since Elissa’s death, but she imagined it would be months before it no longer surprised him. It was still new, a wound, not an ache. He would be going through the ritual because it was expected of him. He was a man who did his duty.
Even as she turned to move on, the hearse arrived, drawn by four black horses, hooves muffled by the fog, black plumes waving. It loomed suddenly, as if it had materialized out of the smothering vapor. The undertaker climbed soundlessly to the pavement. Not a breath of air stirred the long, black weepers trailing from his tall hat. Six pallbearers carried the coffin into the church.
Hester and Monk were now obliged to go in by the side door as the music of the organ shivered through the aisles between the columns of stone and echoed high in the Gothic arches above, and the service began.
Charles had taken care of the funeral of their parents. She wondered now if she had ever thanked him properly for that. She looked around her at the ceremony. It was magnificent, almost frightening in its power, and yet as the music swelled, the familiar words pronounced and all the appropriate responses made, it was comforting also. Here at home, death was always a version of something like this, rich or poor, town or country. There was more splendor or less, but the same ritual. It made it decent, allowed people to do the right thing and have some feeling that it was complete.
Except for those whose grief remained.
It had been different in the Crimea. She had seen so much of it, young men in the flower of their lives, broken on the battlefield or rotted by disease. There were too many to hold funerals for, no churches, no music except a few ragged voices singing for courage rather than the glory of sound.
But the dead went into eternity just the same. This pomp and solemnity, the black feathers and ribbons, the elaborate performance of sorrow, was for the living. Did it really make people feel better, or just that they had done their best and were acquitted?
As the service proceeded, Hester looked sideways to watch Callandra, to their left and a row in front, next to the aisle. Hester wondered what thoughts teemed inside her. A widow could not marry again for years, but a widower could remarry almost immediately, and no one thought the worse of him. It was expected his new wife would wear black in mourning for her predecessor, and Hester wondered with a note of hysteria inside her if her wedding nightgown should be black as well.
She must discipline her thoughts. Callandra had said nothing so unseemly. But Hester knew it was in her mind. The very way she spoke Kristian’s name betrayed her.
Had she any idea what kind of a woman lay in the coffin? Could she imagine the beauty, the vitality and the courage she had had when she was alive, according to Fuller Pendreigh-and Kristian himself?
The service was over at last, and the mourners must leave in the proper order. There was a ritual to be observed. Only the men would go to the graveside, a custom she was sometimes grateful for, but today she found it both patronizing and irritating. Women were considered good enough to nurse the sick and dying, to wash them and lay them out, but not strong enough in temperament or spirit to watch the coffin lowered into the earth.
However, she could attend the funeral meal afterwards. It was to be held at Fuller Pendreigh’s home, not Kristian’s. Had he usurped that right? Or had Kristian yielded it willingly? They had been invited because of the help Monk had offered in attempting to solve the crime.
It seemed like an interminable wait between leaving the church and arriving at Pendreigh’s house in Ebury Street for the funeral meal. The guests were assembled in the splendid hall and in the even more beautiful withdrawing room. Hester noticed immediately that Callandra was not among them. Perhaps that was better, even if faintly hurtful. She had not known Elissa, and since she was representing the hospital, her only connection was with Kristian. Courtesy had been amply met, and for her to have been there might suggest a personal relationship. As Hester knew very well, funerals, even more than weddings, were places for rumor to abound and all kinds of speculation to be given birth.
The whole house was hung with crepe. All the servants were in unrelieved black, and their sorrow seemed genuine. Maids had red eyes and looked shocked and tired. Even the footmen, carrying trays of wine and small tidbits for the guests to eat, spoke softly and stood for the most part in silence.
Hester knew no one else present, other than Monk and Kristian, and it was impossible to speak to Kristian except briefly. This was Pendreigh’s house, but Kristian was equally involved since he was legally Elissa’s closest relative. He had to be seen to speak to everyone, to make them welcome and thank them for their tributes of time and words, and in many cases flowers as well. But standing in the corner, of choice by herself, she watched.
The people appeared to be largely Pendreigh’s friends. They were grave and polite to Kristian, but it was Pendreigh they knew. When they spoke to him there was emotion in the attitudes of their bodies, their bent heads and solemn expressions. They were his generation, and the cut and fabric of their clothes spoke of great wealth and a certain authority. She even recognized a few of them from photographs in the newspapers. At least two were Members of Parliament.
Did Kristian feel as much a foreigner as she felt for him? Was his reserve a matter of a grief he could barely control, or did he know few of these mourners at his wife’s funeral?
The marked exception to that was the striking figure of Max Niemann. While Monk was speaking to Pendreigh and finding himself introduced to varying other people, Hester managed to move closer to Kristian and still unnoticed by him; she listened to their conversation.
“. . good of you to come,” Kristian said warmly.
