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‘How?’
‘I can’t disclose that,’ Jem said. ‘I’m sorry, but you understand, the last thing I want is to spread gossip. But I’ve heard something recently that worries me and?—’
‘Why don’t you speak to Lenster directly, in that case?’
‘I have. I went to see her a few days ago.’
‘How is she?’
‘Not marvellous,’ Jem said. ‘She’s a village schoolmistress now. Widowed.’ Miss Keele tutted. ‘And her son died last year, an accident.’
‘Oh,’ Miss Keele said slowly. ‘How did she feel about that?’
Jem blinked. The obvious response was,How the blazes do you think?, and he felt a furious urge to shake this bloodless woman into some semblance of human sympathy. ‘Distraught, of course. Devastated.’
‘So she loved it. A son, you say. She loved him.’
‘Of course she did!’
‘There’s noof courseabout it,’ Miss Keele snapped, with such unexpected force that Jem recoiled. ‘Don’t give me pap about maternal instincts, when you will never have to deal with an unwanted child foisted upon you by the curse of biology and the injustice of law.’ She jabbed a finger at him. ‘Women are not all mothers in waiting, MrKite, and maternity isnotour highest or only destiny.’
‘No, of course?—’
‘The expectation that a womanmustbe a mother, mustwishto be a mother, must embrace motherhood willingly in any circumstances—oh, if men bore children, they would sing a very different song.’
‘I couldn’t?—’
‘I may as well tell you that I am a proud member of the Malthusian League. I support the legalisation of birth control and education of women in family planning, across the nation, in all walks of life.’
‘So do I,’ Jem said. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Really, MrKite?’ She gave him a deeply sceptical look.
Jem cast about for something to make his assertion more convincing and found it. ‘I was speaking with a doctor just the other day on the subject of, uh—’ Was it indelicate to mention abortion in front of a woman, or would Miss Keele eviscerate him for using euphemisms? ‘Of abortion,’ he rushed out. ‘I don’t pretend to any great knowledge of the subject, but I cannot believe the current situation of illegal procedures dangerously carried out is the best way for the health of the nation, or of its women. And I should be very interested to learn more about the Malthusian League,’ he added shamelessly.
‘You are quite right.’ Miss Keele put down her teacup with an enthusiastic chink. ‘Quiteright. One sees women reduced to shadows by excessive childbearing, struggling to feed a family that could have been quite happy with two children but is ruined by ten. Women with marvellous futures reduced to mediocrity. Look at Lenster. She had so much to offer, and—what did you say, a village schoolmistress? Not that teaching is ever less than an honourable profession, but Lenster could have done far more, and wanted to. She had ambitions. The waste enrages me.’
Jem nodded slowly, not entirely sure of his ground. ‘I don’t think she thought it was a waste. She loved her son very much.’
‘I’m glad of that.’
‘It must be a terribly hard thing, though,’ Jem said, unobtrusively crossing his fingers for luck. ‘For an unmarried woman to find herself expecting, with so much to lose. I would have quite understood if Prue had not wished to have, or keep, the child.’
‘Oh, indeed. The consequences for unmarried women are shame, ignominy, a hasty, ill-judged marriage or a blighted future, while the swine responsible for her condition goes unpunished. I should have supported her absolutely in whatever course she decided to take.’
So Prue had indeed been expecting at Oxford. That opened up a number of questions, most of which Miss Keele couldn’t answer.
‘And abortion is very dangerous,’ he tried, attempting to build on the sliver of common ground he’d established.
‘Unnecessarily so. It could be a hospital procedure—it is considered a quite usual form of family planning for married women in France, carried out by doctors—but British law has never been concerned for women. They die in their hundreds every year, at their own hands or those of backstreet abortionists, because the law denies them safe medical treatment in hygienic conditions.’
‘That seems quite unjust,’ Jem said. ‘But Prue didn’t—that is, she had the child.’
‘Indeed. She made her choice, and I am glad to know she loved the child, despite everything.’
‘Yes. I suppose all this would have been around the time that Toby was murdered.’
‘Poor Lenster. It was devastating for her,’ Miss Keele said, picking up the teacup again and turning it in her hands. ‘To lose a friend so terribly, paired with Feynsham’s extraordinary behaviour…’
