A Breach of Promise (30 page)

“You are very young,” Mrs. Hanning said patiently. “I think perhaps someone should advise you more suitably as to your reading material. It is obviously not sound. I am sure your intentions are good.” Her voice dropped in tone. “But your doctor will tell you that Lieutenant Sheldon needs peace and rest, and a quiet and loving home, a wife to read of pleasant things to him, or to play a little piano music, not lecture on the history of India. Allow me to guide you, my dear.”

“Thank you,” Perdita replied. “I am sure you mean well, and it is very kind of you to have come, but I want to learn about India so that if Gabriel wishes to talk to me I can listen with intelligence.”

“I think you will find that sweetness of nature is what is required, not intelligence,” Mrs. Hanning said with an assured smile. “A man does not wish to discuss serious subjects with his wife. He has any number of friends and colleagues with whom to do that—gentlemen like Mr. Monk.” She glanced at Monk briefly.

Monk looked across at Hester. Her eyes were bright with satisfaction. She cared fiercely for Perdita and Gabriel, and their victory was hers. He had not appreciated before how
much feeling she invested in her patients, how much emotion filled her. He felt at once thrilled by it and full of admiration for her; he also sensed a kind of envy because it was something wholehearted and generous. There was a warmth in it which was not in his feeling for his clients. He kept a reserve, a coolness, even sometimes an anger. He recognized this difference, a side of Hester which had almost certainly been there always but that he had not seen. He had not wanted to. It was more comfortable to criticize her arbitrariness, her autocratic ways, her too forcibly expressed opinions, her generally awkward manner.

All of which were still there.

This new mixture of emotions was disturbing, and yet too sweet to let go of just yet. It was an astonishing gentleness under the prickling exterior.

Mrs. Hanning had paid her duty visit. It had not been a success. She was preparing to leave—or rather more accurately, to beat a strategic retreat.

Perdita thanked her again for coming and prepared to accompany her downstairs. She walked very straight with her head high and her hands clenched by her sides, betraying her tenseness.

Monk looked back at Gabriel. He was still sitting upright, his shoulders stiff, but there was the beginning of a smile on the good side of his face. In spite of the fear in his eyes, there was also a flare of hope as he watched Perdita’s back disappear into the passageway.

Hester came into the room.

Monk wondered if she would refer to it or not. Perhaps it would be clumsy. Maybe it was still too delicate to be caught in words.

She looked at Gabriel, then at Monk, with anxiety in her eyes. Monk realized with a shock that she was not sure of what she had done. She had prompted the confrontation with hope but no certainty. He wanted to laugh because of the knowledge of her vulnerability it gave him. Without thinking about it he
stood up and put his hand on her shoulder. It was a gesture of companionship, a desire she should know he understood.

She stiffened, motionless for a moment, then relaxed as if he had often done such a thing.

“How is your case progressing?” she asked him. Her voice quivered almost undetectably.

“Disastrously,” he replied. “I came hoping you could offer some advice, although I am not sure anything will do any good now.”

“Why? What has happened?” Now she forgot his gesture and thought only of the case.

“Nothing,” he said. “That is the point. The case is going to come to a conclusion without Rathbone’s having offered a shred of defense.”

Hester glanced at Gabriel.

He smiled back, his eyes bright, his right hand closing tightly on the chair arm. They could hear Perdita’s feet going down the stairs and Mrs. Hanning’s heavier tread a moment after.

None of them spoke. Again the silence filled the room so overwhelmingly Monk could hear a horse’s hooves on the road beyond the garden wall and the echo of a dropped tray somewhere far below them in the house, presumably the kitchen. He even thought he heard the front door open and close. Footsteps returned up the stairs. They all faced the door.

Perdita appeared, looking first at Gabriel, then at Hester.

“I was terribly rude, wasn’t I?” she said shakily. “I should never have said that to her about being a good companion. Her husband is dead, isn’t he?” She gulped her breath and sniffed loudly. Now that Mrs. Hanning was gone she no longer had the courage or the anger to hold herself up.

“Well …” Gabriel started.

“Yes, you were rude,” Hester agreed with a smile. “I daresay that is the first time a lieutenant’s wife has ever insulted her with impunity. It will do her the world of good.” She swung around. “Won’t it, Gabriel?”

He was uncertain whether to relax, as if it might be too
soon—now that the moment of effort was past and quite different control was called for, a different self-mastery. He looked from Hester to Perdita as if he was seeing some aspect of his wife for the first time. Their relationship had altered. They had to begin again, discover, find the measure of things they used to take for granted.

“Yes …” Gabriel said tentatively. “Yes—I…” He laughed a little huskily. “Meeting her gives me a new feeling for John Hanning. I perceive things about him I didn’t before.”

“What was he like?” Perdita asked quickly. “Tell me about him.”

“Well—well, he was …”

Hester took Monk by the arm and led him out of the room, leaving Gabriel to tell Perdita about John Hanning: his nature, his weaknesses and strengths, how he fought, what he loved or hated, his memories of boyhood and home, and how he died in Gwalior during the Mutiny.

Outside on the landing Hester looked at Monk, searching his eyes.

He looked back at her, long and steadily. It was not uncomfortable; neither was daring the other to look away. For once there was no challenge between them, no sense of battle. There was no need for any kind of explanation.

She smiled slowly.

He put his arm around her shoulders, feeling the warmth of her through the thick gray-blue stuff dress. She was stiff and too thin, but then that was how she was. She had been thin the very first time he had seen her in the church with her sister-in-law. He had thought Josephine so much the more beautiful then. She probably still was, and until this moment he had forgotten her.

“How can I help with your case?” she asked, moving away and opening the door to the sitting room.

“I don’t suppose you can,” he answered, following her in. “Zillah Lambert seems to be a perfectly normal pretty young woman who flirts a little but whose reputation is blemishless. I don’t even know what to look for.”

Hester sat down on one of the chintz-covered chairs and concentrated.

He remained standing, staring at the window and the budding branches moving in the wind, and the chimneys beyond.

“You still think Melville discovered something about her?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think so at all. I think he just decided he couldn’t face the prospect of marriage, the intimacy of it, the loss of his privacy, the responsibility for another human being, the—the sense of being crowded, watched, depended upon … just the”—he spread his hands—“the sheer … oppression of it!”

“Some people quite enjoy being married,” she said.

He heard the warning tone in her voice. For an instant, staring at her, he hovered between anger and laughter. Laughter won.

She stared at him. “What is so funny?” she demanded, her eyes flashing.

“Don’t force me to explain!” he retorted. “You don’t need it, Hester. You understand me perfectly—just as I understand you. None of it needs saying. I want to find something for Rathbone to use to help Melville out of this idiotic mess. I don’t say Melville deserves it. That isn’t the point anymore. He won’t marry Zillah Lambert. He probably won’t marry anyone. He has behaved like a fool; he doesn’t deserve to be ruined for it. Rathbone won’t use anything I find in court, simply to make Lambert negotiate before it is all too late.”

She took a deep breath. She was sitting upright, still as if she had a ruler to her back. “Is it possible one of her flirtations went too far, overbalanced into something a trifle irresponsible?”

“How would I know?”

“Well, her parents wouldn’t discuss it,” she said with certainty. “Her father would probably have no idea, but her mother would. Mothers can read their daughters quite frighteningly well. I don’t know why it is, but we all tend to imagine our parents were never young or in love.” She shrugged. “Which is probably stupid, when you come to think of it. If
there is anybody at all one can be absolutely certain had some experience of intimacy, it is one’s mother. Otherwise one would not be here. But at fifteen or sixteen we never see it. I thought my mother the most old-fashioned and tepid of creatures alive.” She smiled to herself, her thoughts far away. “I wanted to wear a red dress. There was this young man I thought was marvelous. He had ginger hair and a wonderful mustache….”

Monk held his tongue with great difficulty. He tried to imagine her at sixteen, and resented the young man with the mustache simply for having been there.

“I wanted to impress him,” she went on ruefully. “The dress was very daring. He admired Lavinia Wentworth. She had black hair which curled. I thought the red dress would make the difference.” She laughed with a ripple of real humor, no pity or regret, her eyes bright. “I would have looked awful. I was so pale, and far too bony to wear red. Mama made me wear white and green. The young man with the mustache ignored me utterly. I don’t think he even saw me.”

“Lavinia Wentworth?” He had to ask.

“No—actually, Violet Grassmore.” She said it as if it still surprised her. “She told me afterwards that he had sticky hands and was the greatest bore she had ever met. Lavinia Wentworth went off with a young man in some sort of uniform. They became very close, but he was unsuitable, I don’t recall why. Lavinia’s mother took her away to Brighton or Hove or somewhere.”

She swung around to face him.

“That’s what you should look for! An association her mother stopped. That will be the one to pursue.”

“Thank you. I suppose it is better than nothing. But there is so little time.”

“Then you had better not waste any more of it,” she replied, but she did not stand up. “Would you like a cup of tea, and perhaps something to eat, before you begin to search?”

“Yes,” he accepted immediately. Actually, he was very
hungry, and not in the least looking forward to what would almost certainly be a fruitless enquiry.

In any event, he joined Hester and Martha Jackson for cold game pie and pickle and a pot of fresh tea, and then a slice each of plum duff. They talked of several things of very general interest. Monk was acutely aware of his promise to Martha to search for her two nieces. He had not even begun, because he had no thought that it would produce anything but further sadness. But sitting at the wooden table in the housekeeper’s room with the two women, both so earnest, upright, square-shouldered, a trifle thin, both trusting him, he was trapped into doing it, whatever the result. Martha Jackson was far too honest to lie to. Rathbone’s case would not stretch on much longer. There was no defense, and he could not spin it out beyond another day or two. Then Monk could begin to look for the girls.

He smiled at Martha across the table, his conscience eased.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Hester’s lips curve upward. She had read his expression and knew exactly what it meant. He grunted and took more plum duff. If it proved too difficult, or if he found the answer and it was too harrowing, then he would not tell her. What good would it do for her to know if they had died alone, ill, unwanted? Better it remain a mystery, and leave her with her imagination and her hope.

He would not tell Hester either. She was no good at concealing anything.

He had another cup of tea, then thanked them and took his leave. He had perhaps two more days in which to find something useful about Zillah Lambert. Then Rathbone would have to concede defeat. There was nothing more Monk could do to help him. After that he would begin seriously to look for the two deformed children of Samuel Jackson.

At first he had not known where to begin with Zillah. Considering the time he had left, the whole idea was ludicrous. Then he remembered Mr. Burnham’s account of Barton Lambert and the aristocrat who had wanted to build the hall and
dedicate it to Prince Albert. Apparently, milord’s son was enamored of Zillah, and at least for a while, she of him. If such a slip in discretion had ever taken place, this could be it.

It was not so easy to find records of the proposed building, nor of the collapse of the idea; perhaps its ignominy was the reason. He was several times rebuffed, and when he finally learned what he needed to know, he was perfectly sure he had spoken to sufficiently many people that word of his enquiries would be bound to leak back to Lambert himself. He would certainly know the reason for it, and what Monk hoped to find.

What he did find was rumor, gossip, and a little fact. Zillah had certainly flaunted her beauty, encouraged by Delphine, who seemed to get as much pleasure from it vicariously as did Zillah herself. She enjoyed all the usual pastimes: dancing, riding in carriages, swapping tales with other girls, and inventing stories, listening to music, walking, or rather parading, in the park. But she was a trifle more self-conscious than others and never lost her awareness of exactly how to dress to flatter her looks. She was never careless or ill groomed; her glorious hair was always beautifully done or undone. She watched scrupulously what she ate. Perhaps that was the sternest test of vanity. She did not ever allow herself to indulge in sweets or chocolates, rich pastries or cream cakes. If her mother guided her, it was so discreet it remained unobserved.

Yes, she had certainly flirted outrageously with Lord Tainbridge’s eldest son. It had very possibly gone beyond what could be regarded as innocent, although if it had been sufficient to sacrifice her virtue, no one was prepared to say.