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“Monk has gone up to Edinburgh to find out what really happened,” she began.
“Monk? Oh, that policeman you were … acquainted with. Do you—” He stopped, changed his mind about what he had been going to say.
“Yes,” she finished for him. “I think he has as good a chance as anyone of learning the truth. In fact, better. He won’t accept lies, and he knows I did not kill her, so he will keep on asking and watching and thinking until he finds out who did.” She felt better for putting it into words. It had been said to convince Charles, but it had lifted her at least as much.
“Are you sure?” he said anxiously. “You couldn’t have made a mistake, could you? You were tired, unfamiliar with the patient….” He looked acutely apologetic, his face pink, his eyes desperately earnest.
She wanted to be furious with him, but her anger died in pity and long familiarity. What was the point in hurting him? He was going to suffer enough as it was.
“No,” she said quickly. “There was one vial of medicine for each dose. I gave her one vial. She wasn’t some vague little old lady who didn’t know what she was doing, Charles. She was interesting, funny, wise, and very much aware of everything. She wouldn’t have allowed me to make a mistake, even if I had been in a frame of mind to do so.”
He frowned. “Then you mean someone else killed her deliberately?”
It was a very ugly thought, but inescapable.
“Yes.”
“Could the apothecary have made up a wrong medicine altogether?” He struggled for a more acceptable answer.
“No—I don’t think so. That was not the first one to be taken. If the whole lot had been wrong, the first one would have killed her. And who put the bro
och in my bag? That certainly wasn’t the apothecary.”
“The lady’s maid?”
“That would be impossible to do by mistake. All her jewelry was together in her own traveling case, which was put in her bag for overnight. This one piece was loose in my bag, which was nothing like hers anyway, and the two were never together until we were on board the train.”
His face pinched with unhappiness. “Then I suppose someone meant to kill her … and to blame you.” He bit his lip, his eyes narrowing and his brows drawing down. “Hester, for God’s sake, why couldn’t you be content to work at some more respectable occupation? You are always getting involved in crimes and disasters of one sort or another. First the Grey case, then the Moidores, and the Carlyons, and that appalling business at the hospital. What is the matter with you? Is it that man Monk who is involving you in all this?”
The suggestion caught her on the raw, mostly her pride, and the idea that somehow Monk, or her affection for him, ruled her life.
“No it is not,” she said tartly. “Nursing is a vocation that is bound to be involved with death, now and again. People do die, Charles, most especially those who are ill to begin with.”
He looked confused. “But if Mrs. Farraline was so ill, why did they assume she was murdered? That seems most unreasonable to me.”
“She wasn’t ill!” Hester said furiously. She was caught in a trap of her own making, and she knew it. “She was just elderly, and had a slight condition of the heart. She could have lived for years.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Hester. Either her death was normal, and to be expected, or it wasn’t! Sometimes women are most illogical.” He smiled very slightly. It was not unkind, not even critical, merely patient.
It was like a spark to tinder.
“Rubbish!” she shouted. “Don’t you dare stand there and call me ‘most women.’ Anyway, most women are no more illogical than most men. We are just different, that’s all. We take less account of your so-called facts and more of people’s feelings. And we are more often right. And we are certainly a great deal more practical. You are all theories, half of which don’t work because there was something wrong in them, or something you didn’t know which makes nonsense of the rest.” She stopped abruptly, out of breath and conscious of the pitch and volume of her voice, and now suddenly aware that she was quarreling with the one person in the entire building, perhaps in the whole city, who was truly on her side, and who was finding nothing but grief from the whole affair. Perhaps she should apologize, pompous and quite mistaken as he was?
He preempted her by making the matter even worse.
“So who did kill Mrs. Farraline?” he asked with devastating practicality. “And why? Was it money? She was obviously far too old for any sort of romantic involvement.”
“People don’t stop being in love just because they are over thirty,” she snapped.
He stared at her. “I have never heard of a woman over sixty being the victim of a crime of passion,” he said, his voice rising slightly with disbelief.
“I didn’t say it was a crime of passion.”
“You are really being very trying, my dear. Why don’t you at least sit down, so we can talk a little more comfortably?” He indicated the cot, where they could sit side by side, and suited his own actions to his words. “Is there anything I may bring you to ease your situation at all? If they will allow it, I will certainly do so. I did bring some clean linen from your lodgings, but they took it from me on my way in. No doubt they will give it to you in due course.”
“Yes please. You could ask Imogen to find me some toilet soap. This carbolic takes the skin off my face. It’s fearful stuff.”
“Of course.” He winced in sympathy. “I am sure she will be pleased to. I shall bring it as soon as I am able.”
