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loved him—except those few who were eaten with envy." Her eyes darted at Menard with something close to hatred. “Little men who couldn't bear to see anyone succeed beyond their own petty efforts." Her mouth trembled. "Lovel, because Rosamond loved Joscelin; he could make her laugh— and dream." Her voice hardened. "And Menard, who couldn't live with the fact that I loved Joscelin more than I loved anyone else in the world, and I always did."
She shuddered and her body seemed to shrink into itself as if withdrawing from something vile. "Now this woman has come here with her warped and fabricated story, and you stand there and listen to it. If you were men worthy of the name, you would throw her out and damn it for the slander it is. But it seems I must do it myself. No one has any sense of the family honor but me." She put her hands on the arm of her chair as if to rise to her feet.
"You'll have no one thrown out until I say so," Lovel said with a tight, calm voice, suddenly cutting like steel across her emotion. "It is not you who have defended the family honor; all you've defended is Joscelin—whether he deserved it or not. It was Menard who paid his debts and cleaned up the trail of cheating and welching he left behind—"
"Nonsense. Whose word do you have for that? Men-ard's?" She spat the name. "He is calling Joscelin a cheat, no one else. And he wouldn't dare, if Joscelin were alive. He only has the courage to do it now because he thinks you will back him, and there is no one here to call him the pathetic, treacherous liar he is."
Menard stood motionless, the final blow visible in the agony of his face. She had hurt him, and he had defended Joscelin for her sake for the last time.
Callandra stood up.
"You are wrong, Fabia, as you have been wrong all the time. Miss Latterly here, for one, will testify that Joscelin was a cheat who made money deceiving the bereaved who were too hurt and bewildered to see him for what he was. Menard was always a better man, but you were too fond of flattery to see it. Perhaps you were the one Joscelin
deceived most of all—first, last and always.'' She did not flinch now, even from Fabia's stricken face as she caught sight at last of a fearful truth. "But you wanted to be deceived. He told you what you wished to hear; he told you you were beautiful, charming, gay—all the things a man loves in a woman. He learned his art in your gullibility, your willingness to be entertained, to laugh and to be the center of all the life and love in Shelburne. He said all that not because he thought for a moment it was true, but because he knew you would love him for saying it— and you did, blindly and indiscriminately, to the exclusion of everyone else. That is your tragedy, as well as his."
Fabia seemed to wither as they watched her.
"You never liked Joscelin," she said in a last, frantic attempt to defend her world, her dreams, all the past that was golden and lovely to her, everything that gave her meaning as it crumbled in front of her—not only what Joscelin had been, but what she herself had been. "You are a wicked woman."
"No, Fabia," Callandra replied. "I am a very sad one." She turned to Hester. "I assume it is not your brother who killed Joscelin, or you would not have come here to tell us this way. We would have believed the police, and the details would not have been necessary.'' With immeasurable sorrow she looked across at Menard. "You paid his debts. What else did you do?"
There was an aching silence in the room.
Monk could feel his heart beating as if it had the force to shake his whole body. They were poised on the edge of truth, and yet it was still so far away. It could be lost again by a single slip; they could plunge away into an abyss of fear, whispered doubts, always seeing suspicions, double meanings, hearing the footstep behind and the hand on the shoulder.
Against his will, he looked across at Hester, and saw that she was looking at him, the same thoughts plain in her eyes. He turned his head quickly back to Menard, who was ashen-faced.
"What else did you do?" Callandra repeated. "You knew what Joscelin was—"
"I paid his debts." Menard's voice was no more than a whisper.
"Gambling debts," she agreed. "What about his debts of honor, Menard? What about his terrible debts to men like Hester's father and brother—did you pay them as well?"
"I—I didn't know about the Latterlys," Menard stammered.
Callandra's face was tight with grief.
"Don't equivocate, Menard. You may not have known the Latterlys by name, but you knew what Joscelin was doing. You knew he got money from somewhere, because you knew how much he had to gamble with. Don't tell us you didn't learn where it came from. I know you better than that. You would not have rested in that ignorance— you knew what a fraud and a cheat Joscelin was, and you knew there was no honest way for him to come by so much. Menard—" Her face was gentle, full of pity. "You have behaved with such honor so far—don't soil it now by lying. There is no point, and no escape."
He winced as if she had struck him, and for a second Monk thought he was going to collapse. Then he straightened up and faced her, as though she had been a long-awaited execution squad—and death was not now the worst fear.
"Was it Edward Dawlish?" Now her voice also was barely above a whisper. "I remember how you cared for each other as boys, and your grief when he was killed. Why did his father quarrel with you?"
Menard did not evade the
truth, but he spoke not to Callandra but to his mother, his voice low and hard, a lifetime of seeking and being rejected naked in it finally.
"Because Joscelin told him I had led Edward into gambling beyond his means, and that in the Crimea he had got in over his head with his brother officers, and would have died in debt—except that Joscelin settled it all for him."
There was a rich irony in that, and it was lost on no one. Even Fabia flinched in a death's-head acknowledgment of its cruel absurdity.
"For his family's sake," Menard continued, his voice husky, his eyes on Callandra. "Since I was the one who had led him to ruin."
He gulped. "Of course there was no debt. Joscelin never even served in the same area as Edward—I found that out afterwards. It was all another of his lies—to get money." He looked at Hester. "It was not as bad as your loss. At least Dawlish didn't kill himself. I am truly sorry about your family."
"He didn't lose any money." Monk spoke at last. "He didn't have time. You killed Joscelin before he could take it. But he had asked."
There was utter silence. Callandra put both her hands to her face. Lovel was stunned, unable to comprehend. Fabia was a broken woman. She no longer cared. What happened to Menard was immaterial. Joscelin, her beloved Joscelin, had been murdered in front of her in a new and infinitely more dreadful way. They had robbed her not only of the present and the future, but all the warm, sweet, precious past. It had all gone; there was nothing left but a handful of bitter ash.
