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Araminta clenched her hands so hard the knuckles showed, and her skin was as white as paper.
“I suppose there is some purpose to this?” Romola said irritably. “I hate melodrama. Please explain yourself and stop play-acting.”
“Oh be quiet!” Fenella snapped. “You hate anything that isn’t comfortable and decently domestic. If you can’t say something useful, hold your tongue.”
“Octavia Haslett died in the study,” Rathbone said with a level, careful voice that carried above every other rustle or murmur in the room.
“Good God!” Fenella was incredulous and almost amused. “You don’t mean Octavia had an assignation with the footman on the study carpet. How totally absurd—and uncomfortable, when she has a perfectly good bed.”
Beatrice swung around and slapped her so hard Fenella fell over sideways and collapsed into one of the armchairs.
“I’ve wanted to do that for years,” Beatrice said with intense satisfaction. “That is probably the only thing that will give me any pleasure at all today. No—you fool. There was no assignation. Octavia discovered how Basil had Harry set at the head of the charge of Balaclava, where so many died, and she felt as trapped and defeated as we all do. She took her own life.”
There was an appalled silence until Basil stepped forward, his face gray, his hand shaking. He made a supreme effort.
“That is quite untrue. You are unhinged with grief. Please go to your room, and I shall send for the doctor. For heaven’s sake, Miss Latterly, don’t stand there, do something!”
“It is true, Sir Basil.” She stared at him levelly, for the first time not as a nurse to her employer but as an equal. “I went to the War Office myself, and learned what happened to Harry Haslett, and how you brought it about, and that Octavia had been there the afternoon of her death and heard the same.”
Cyprian looked at his father, then at Evan, then at Rathbone.
“But then what was the knife and the peignoir in Percival’s room?” he asked. “Papa is right. Whatever Octavia learned about Harry, it doesn’t make any sense. The evidence was still there. That was Octavia’s peignoir, with her blood on it, wrapped around the knife.”
“It was Octavia’s peignoir with blood on it,” Rathbone agreed. “Wrapped around a knife from the kitchen—but it was not Octavia’s blood. She was killed with the paper knife in the study, and when someone found her, they carried her upstairs and put her in her own room to make it seem as if she had been murdered.” His fastidious face showed distress and contempt. “No doubt to save the shame of a suicide and the disgrace to the family and all it would cost socially and politically. Then they cleaned the knife and returned it to its place.”
“But the kitchen knife,” Cyprian repeated. “And the peignoir. It was hers. Rose identified it, and so did Mary, and more important, Minta saw her in it on the landing that night. And there is blood on it.”
“The kitchen knife could have been taken any time,” Rathbone said patiently. “The blood could have come from any piece of meat purchased in the course of ordering supplies for the table—a hare, a goose, a side of beef or mutton—”
“But the peignoir.”
“That is the crux of the whole matter. You see, it was sent up from the laundry the day before, in perfect order, clean and without mark or tear—”
“Of course,” Cyprian agreed angrily. “They wouldn’t send it up in any other way. What are you talking about, man?”
“On the evening of her death”—Rathbone ignored the interruption, if anything he was even more polite—“Mrs. Haslett retired to her room and changed for the night. Unfortunately the peignoir was torn, we shall probably never know how. She met her sister, Mrs. Kellard, on the landing, and said good-night to her, as you pointed out, and as we know from Mrs. Kellard herself—” He glanced at Araminta and saw her nod so slightly only the play of light on her glorious hair showed the movement at all. “And then she went to say goodnight to her mother. But Lady Moidore noticed the tear and offered to mend it for her—is that not so, ma’am?”
“Yes—yes it is.” Beatrice’s voice was intended to be low, but it was a hoarse whisper, painful in its grief.
“Octavia took it off and gave it to her mother to mend,” Rathbone said softly, but every word was as distinct as a separate pebble falling into iced water. “She went to bed without it—and she was without it when she went to her father’s study in the middle of the night. Lady Moidore mended it, and it was returned to Octavia’s room. It was from there that someone took it, knowing Octavia had worn it to bid them goodnight but not that she had left it in her mother’s room—”
One by one, first Beatrice, then Cyprian, then the others, they turned to Araminta.
Araminta seemed frozen, her face haggard.
“Dear God in heaven. You let Percival hang for it,” Cyprian said at last, his lips stiff, his body hunched as if he had been beaten.
Araminta said nothing; she was as pale as if she herself were dead.
“How did you get her upstairs?” Cyprian asked, his voice rising now as if anger could somehow release a fraction of the pain.
Araminta smiled a slow, ugly smile, a gesture of hate as well as hard, bitter hurt.
“I didn’t—Papa did that. Sometimes I thought if it were discovered, I should say it was Myles, for what he did to me, and has done all the years we’ve been married. But no one would believe it.” Her voice was laden with years of impotent contempt. “He hasn’t the courage. And he wouldn’t lie to protect the Moidores. Papa and I would do that—and Myles wouldn’t protect us when it came to the end.” She rose to her feet and turned to face Sir Basil. There was a thin trickle of blood running down her fingers from where her nails had gouged the skin of her palms.
“I’ve loved you all my life, Papa—and you married me to a man who took me by force and used me like a whore.” Her bitterness and pain were overwhelming. “You wouldn’t let me leave him, because Moidores don’t do things like that. It would tarnish the family name, and that’s all you care about—power. The power of money—the power of reputation—the power of rank.”
Sir Basil stood motionless and appalled, as if he had been struck physically.
