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Rose shivered convulsively. “We can go in now. Why on earth do they always seem to hold these things at the bitterest time of the year? Why can’t people die with some consideration, in the summer?”
“It will be warmer at the reception afterwards,” Hester replied. “I hope to heaven the Argylls stay for it!”
“Of course they will!” Rose assured her. “That is where one can curry favor, make useful acquaintances, and generally show off. Which, of course, is what everyone is here for.”
“Isn’t anyone here to remember Sir Edwin?”
Rose gave her a startled glance. “Certainly not!” she retorted. “He was awful! The sooner he can be forgotten, the better. Dying was the best thing he did, and he did that far too slowly.”
Hester thought the judgment rather harsh, but she liked Rose too much to say so. And by the time they had sat through the eulogies and she heard what kind of people admired the deceased and why, she was inclined to take a similar view.
The reception afterwards was a different matter. Everyone else seemed to be just as physically cold and emotionally bored as she and Rose were. They walked rapidly up the hundred yards or so of dark and windy street to the hall where sausages, pies, and delicate hot pastries awaited them, along with various wines. Hester accepted a mulled claret with gratitude. She was surprised when Rose took a lemonade instead, but she made no comment.
They began to move among the other guests, intent upon approaching Jenny Argyll as soon as it could be done without appearing too obvious, and of course when Argyll himself wasn’t too close to her.
“I’m so pleased you came,” Rose said warmly to Jenny as an opening gambit. “There are few things one can do while in mourning without someone making a cutting remark. One feels dreadfully isolated. At least I did! Perhaps I am imagining mistakenly?”
Jenny could hardly fail to reply without being discourteous—added to which Rose was the wife of the member of Parliament most important to her husband. She gathered her wits with an apparent effort. “Not at all. You are most sympathetic,” she responded.
Hester remained standing back a few steps, as if Rose was alone. Jenny Argyll looked composed, but Hester could see that the veneer was thin. Her movements were stiff, and her skin looked bruised around the eyes, as if from too many nights awake and too much tightly held emotion
she dared not let go of, in case she never grasped it again. Hester would have been sorry for her if she had not been convinced Jenny had placed her own safety and continued well-being ahead of that of her sister.
Suddenly Alan Argyll was at Hester’s elbow, a plate of savory pastries in his hand.
“Excuse me.” He brushed past her, his attention focused on his wife, his face tight and angry. It was almost as if he was frightened that she would in some way betray him. He spoke to Rose, but his words were lost to Hester in the general babble of conversation. He put his hand on Jenny’s arm protectively. She moved sideways, away from him. Was it because there was a large woman in black wishing to pass, or because his touch displeased her? Her head was high, her face half averted. The movement was discreet, a shrinking away more than an actual step.
Rose spoke again, her eyes wide and tense.
Hester moved closer. She wanted to catch the words, the inflection of the voices. Was Jenny Argyll protecting her husband because she wanted to or because she needed to? Had she any idea of what he had done? Was that why instinctively she found his touch repellent?
Rose turned and saw Hester and introduced them. She hesitated a moment over Hester’s name, knowing that Monk would produce powerful and conflicting emotions in both Jenny and Argyll.
“How do you do,” Hester said as calmly as she could, looking first at Jenny, then at her husband. He did not attract her, but neither did she find him ugly. She did not see the cruelty in him that she had expected. Even the power in him seemed blunted. Was he at last afraid, not of the police but of his wife’s ability to testify against him in court? It was her father and her sister whose deaths he had caused. What monumental arrogance in him had ever made him imagine she would endure that and do nothing? And was she still so terrified that even now she would shield him?
Was evil really masked by so ordinary a face? Or was Hester simply blind to it?
Rose was making some trivial conversation. They were waiting for Hester to play her part.
“Yes, of course,” she said, hoping it was a reasonably appropriate response.
Argyll was looking at her, his eyes cold and guarded.
Jenny’s voice sounded strained, too sharp and too high. The conversation was all trivial: a remembrance of the dead man and the causes he had supported. A footman passed by with a tray of glasses filled with mulled wine and lemonade.
They were a little crowded. There was no room for the footman to pass between them. Argyll took the tray from him and offered it to Hester. Considering the potency of the mulled wine she had drunk on entering, she decided that lemonade might be wiser this time.
“Thank you,” she said, accepting a glass.
Because of the way they were standing, Jenny next to her husband, it was natural to pass the tray to her next. Jenny hesitated a moment over the lemonade, then chose the wine.
Rose took the lemonade, as before. She lifted her glass. “To the brave men who pioneer social reform!” she said, and drank deeply.
The rest of them echoed the sentiment. More food was offered. This time it was sweet pastries filled with crushed dried fruit, or delicate custards with unusual flavors.
A portly man with heavy side whiskers took Argyll’s attention.
A three-piece musical ensemble began playing a slow, solemn tune.
