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“Believe me, Miss Latterly, I wouldn’t dream of it. I am too old a soldier to mount an unnecessary charge.”
“Quite,” she agreed. “And I have cleared up after too many.”
For an instant his face was perfectly sober, his blue eyes very clear, the lines of anxiety ironed out, and they shared a complete understanding. Both had seen the carnage of the battlefield and the long torture of wounds afterwards and the maimed lives. They knew the price of incompetence and bravado. It was an alien life from this house and its civilized routine and iron discipline of trivia, the maids rising at five to clean the fires, black the grates, throw damp tea leaves on the carpets and sweep them up, air the rooms, empty the slops, dust, sweep, polish, turn the beds, launder, iron dozens of yards of linens, petticoats, laces and ribbons, stitch, fetch and carry till at last they were excused at nine, ten or eleven in the evening.
“You tell them about nursing,” he said at last, and quite openly took out the bottle and repositioned it more comfortably, then turned and left, walking with a lift in his step and a very slight swagger.
Upstairs Hester had just brought the tray for Beatrice and set it down, and was about to leave when Araminta came in.
“Good afternoon, Mama,” she said briskly. “How are you feeling?” Like her father she seemed to find Hester invisible. She went and kissed her mother’s cheek and then sat down on the nearest dressing chair, her skirts overflowing in mounds of darkest gray muslin with a lilac fichu, dainty and intensely flattering, and yet still just acceptable for mourning. Her hair was the same bright flame as always, her face its delicate, lean asymmetry.
“Exactly the same, thank you,” Beatrice answered without real interest. She turn
ed slightly to look at Araminta, a pucker of confusion around her mouth. There was no sense of affection between them, and Hester was uncertain whether she should leave or not. She had a curious sense that in some way she was not intruding because the tension between the two women, the lack of knowing what to say to each other, already excluded her. She was a servant, someone whose opinion was of no importance whatever, indeed someone not really of existence.
“Well I suppose it is to be expected.” Araminta smiled, but the warmth did not reach her eyes. “I am afraid the police do not seem to be achieving anything. I have spoken to the sergeant—Evan, I think his name is—but he either knows nothing or he is determined not to tell me.” She glanced absently at the frill of the chair arm. “Will you speak to them, if they wish to ask you anything?”
Beatrice looked up at the chandelier above the center of the room. It was unlit this early in the afternoon, but the last rays of the lowering sun caught one or two of its crystals.
“I can hardly refuse. It would seem as if I did not wish to help them.”
“They would certainly think so,” Araminta agreed, watching her mother intently. “And they could not be criticized for it.” She hesitated, her voice hard-edged, slow and very quiet, every word distinct. “After all, we know it was someone in the house, and while it may be one of the servants—my own opinion is that it was probably Percival—”
“Percival?” Beatrice stiffened and turned to look at her daughter. “Why?”
Araminta did not meet her mother’s eyes but stared somewhere an inch or two to the left. “Mama, this is hardly the time for comfortable pretenses. It is too late.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Beatrice answered miserably, hunching up her knees.
“Of course you do.” Araminta was impatient. “Percival is an arrogant and presumptuous creature who has the normal appetites of a man and considerable delusions as to where he may exercise them. And you may choose not to see it, but Octavia was flattered by his admiration of her—and not above encouraging him now and then—”
Beatrice winced with revulsion. “Really, Minta.”
“I know it is sordid,” Araminta said more gently, assurance gathering in her voice. “But it seems that someone in this house killed her—which is very hard, Mama, but we won’t alter it by pretending. It will only get worse, until the police find whoever it is.”
Beatrice narrowed her shoulders and leaned forward, hugging her legs, staring straight ahead of her.
“Mama?” Araminta said very carefully. “Mama—do you know something?”
Beatrice said nothing, but held herself even more tightly. It was an attitude of absorption with inner pain which Hester had seen often before.
Araminta leaned closer. “Mama—are you trying to protect me … because of Myles?”
Slowly Beatrice looked up, stiff, silent, the back of her bright head towards Hester, so similar in color to her daughter’s.
Araminta was ashen, her features set, her eyes bright and hard.
“Mama, I know he found Tavie attractive, and that he was not above”—she drew in her breath and let it out slowly—“above going to her room. I like to believe that because I am her sister, she refused him. But I don’t know. It is possible he went again—and she rebuffed him. He doesn’t take refusal well—as I know.”
Beatrice stared at her daughter, slowly stretched out her hand in a gesture of shared pain. But Araminta moved no closer, and she let her hand fall. She said nothing. Perhaps there were no words for what she either knew or dreaded.
“Is that what you are hiding from, Mama?” Araminta asked relentlessly. “Are you afraid someone will ask you if that is what happened?”
Beatrice lay back and straightened the covers around herself before replying. Araminta made no move to help her. “It would be a waste of time to ask me. I don’t know, and I certainly should not say anything of that sort.” She looked up. “Please, Minta, surely you know that?”
At last Araminta leaned forward and touched her mother, putting her thin, strong hand over hers. “Mama, if it were Myles, then we cannot hide the truth. Please God it was not—and they will find it was someone else … soon—” She stopped, her face full of concern, hope struggling with fear, and a desperate concentration.
Beatrice tried to say something comforting, something to dismiss the horror on the edge of both their minds, but in the face of Araminta’s courage and unyielding desire for truth, she failed, and remained wordless.
