Defend and Betray Read online

  Hester sat opposite her in the armchair.

  “There were only a very few people there, and no one broke in,” Edith explained. “It had to have been one of them. Apart from Mr. and Mrs. Furnival, who gave the party, the only ones there who were not my family were Dr. Hargrave and his wife.” She swallowed hard and attempted to smile. It was ghastly. “Otherwise it was Thaddeus and Alexandra; their daughter Sabella and her husband, Fenton Pole; and my sister, Damaris, and my brother-in-law, Peverell Erskine. There was no one else there.”

  “What about the servants?” Hester said desperately. “I suppose there is no chance it could have been one of them.”

  “What for? Why on earth would one of the servants kill Thaddeus?”

  Hester’s mind raced. “Perhaps he caught them stealing?”

  “Stealing what—on the first landing? He fell off the balcony of the first landing. The servants would all be downstairs at that time in the evening, except maybe a ladies’ maid.”

  “Jewelry?”

  “How would he know they had been stealing? If they were in a bedroom he wouldn’t know it. And if he saw them coming out, he would only presume they were about their duties.”

  That was totally logical. Hester had no argument. She searched her mind and could think of nothing comforting to say.

  “What about the doctor?” she tried.

  Edith flashed a weak smile at her, appreciating what she was attempting.

  “Dr. Hargrave? I don’t know if it’s possible. Damaris did tell me what happened that evening, but she didn’t seem very clear. In fact she was pretty devastated, and hardly coherent at all.”

  “Well, where were they?” Hester had already been involved in two murders, the first because of the deaths of her own parents, the second through her acquaintance with the policeman William Monk, who was now working privately for anyone who required relatives traced, thefts solved discreetly, and other such matters dealt with in a private capacity, where they preferred not to engage the law or where no crime had been committed. Surely if she used her intelligence and a little logic she ought to be of some assistance.

  “Since they assumed at first that it was an accident,” she said aloud, “surely he must have been alone. Where was everyone else? At a dinner party people are not wandering around the house individually.”

  “That’s just it,” Edith said with increasing unhappiness. “Damaris made hardly any sense. I’ve never seen her so … so completely … out of control. Even Peverell couldn’t calm or comfort her—she would scarcely speak to him.”

  “Perhaps they had a …” Hester sought for some polite way of phrasing it. “Some difference of opinion? A misunderstanding?”

  Edith’s mouth twitched with amusement. “How euphemistic of you. You mean a quarrel? I doubt it. Peverell really isn’t that kind of person. He is rather sweet, and very fond of her.” She swallowed, and smiled with a sudden edge of sadness, as of other things briefly remembered, perhaps other people. “He isn’t weak at all,” she went on. “I used to think he was. But he just has a way of dealing with her, and she usually comes ’round—in the end. Really much more satisfactory than ordering people. I admit he may not be an instant great passion, but I like him. In fact, the longer I know him the more I like him. And I rather think she feels the same.” She shook her head minutely. “No, I remember the way she was when she came home that evening. I don’t think Peverell had anything to do with it.”

  “What did she say about where people were? Thaddeus—I beg your pardon, General Carlyon—fell, or was pushed, over the banister from the first landing. Where was everyone else at the time?”

  “Coming and going,” Edith said hopelessly. “I haven’t managed to make any sense of it. Perhaps you can. I asked Damaris to come and join us, if she remembers. But she doesn’t seem to know what she’s doing since that evening.”

  Hester had not met Edith’s sister, but she had heard frequent reference to her, and it seemed that either she was emotionally volatile and somewhat undisciplined or she had been judged unkindly.

  At that moment, as if to prove her a liar, the door opened and one of the most striking women Hester had ever seen stood framed by the lintel. For that first moment she seemed heroically beautiful, tall, even taller than Hester or Edith, and very lean. Her hair was dark and soft with natural curl, unlike the present severe style in which a woman’s hair was worn scraped back from the face with ringlets over the ears, and she seemed to have no regard for fashion. Indeed her skirt was serviceable, designed for work, without the crinoline hoops, and yet her blouse was gorgeously embroidered and woven with white ribbon. She had a boyish air about her, neither coquettish nor demure, simply blazingly candid. Her face was long, her features so mobile and sensitive they reflected her every thought.

  She came in and closed the door, leaning against it for a moment with both hands behind her and regarding Hester with a frankly interested stare.

  “You are Hester Latterly?” she asked, although the question was obviously rhetorical. “Edith said you were coming this afternoon. I’m so glad. Ever since she told me you went to the Crimea with Miss Nightingale, I have been longing to meet you. You must come again, when we are more ourselves, and tell us about it.” She flashed a sudden illuminating smile. “Or tell me, anyway. I’m not at all sure Papa would approve, and I’m quite certain Mama would not. Far too independent. Rocks the foundations of society when women don’t know their proper place—which, of course, is at home, keeping civilization safe for the rest of us.”

  She walked over to a neo-rococo love seat and threw herself on it utterly casually. “Seeing we learn to clean our teeth every day,” she went on. “Eat our rice pudding, speak correctly, never split infinitives, wear our gloves at all the appropriate times, keep a stiff upper lip whatever vicissitudes we may find ourselves placed in, and generally set a good example to the lower classes—who depend upon us for precisely this.” She was sitting sideways over the seat. For anyone else it would have been awkward, but for her it had a kind of grace because it was so wholehearted. She did not care greatly what others thought of her. Yet even in this careless attitude there was an ill-concealed tension in her, and Hester could easily imagine the frenzied distress Edith had spoken of.

  Now Damaris’s face darkened again as she looked at Hester.

  “I suppose Edith has told you about our tragedy—Thaddeus’s death—and that they are now saying it was murder?” Her brow furrowed even more deeply. “Although I can’t imagine why anyone should want to kill Thaddeus.” She turned to Edith. “Can you? I mean, he was a terrible bore at times, but most men are. They think all the wrong things are important. Oh—I’m sorry—I do mean most men, not all!” Suddenly she had realized she might have offended Hester and her contrition was real.

  “That is quite all right.” Hester smiled. “I agree with you. And I daresay they feel the same about us.”

  Damaris winced. “Touché. Did Edith tell you about it?”

  “The dinner party? No—she said it would be better if you did, since you were there.” She hoped she sounded concerned and not unbecomingly inquisitive.

  Damaris closed her eyes and slid a little farther down on her unorthodox seat.

  “It was ghastly. A fiasco almost from the beginning.” She opened her eyes again and stared at Hester. “Do you really want to know about it?”

  “Unless you find it too painful.” That was not the truth. She wanted to know about it regardless, but decency, and compassion, prevented her from pressing too hard.

  Damaris shrugged, but she did not meet Hester’s eyes. “I don’t mind talking about it—it is all going on inside my head anyway, repeating over and over again. Some parts of it don’t even seem real anymore.”

  “Begin at the beginning,” Edith prompted, curling her feet up under her. “That is the only way we have a hope of making any sense of it. Apparently someone did kill Thaddeus, and it is going to be extremely unpleasant until we find out who.”


  Damaris shivered and shot her a sour glance, then addressed Hester.

  “Peverell and I were the first to arrive. You haven’t met him, but you will like him when you do.” She said it unselfconsciously and without desire for effect, simply as a comment of fact. “At that time we were both in good spirits and looking forward to the evening.” She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Can you imagine that? Do you know Maxim and Louisa Furnival? No, I don’t suppose you do. Edith says you don’t waste time in Society.”

  Hester smiled and looked down at her hands in her lap to avoid meeting Edith’s eyes. That was a charmingly euphemistic way of putting it. Hester was too old to be strictly marriageable, well over twenty-five, and even twenty-five was optimistic. And since her father had lost his money before his death, she had no dowry, nor any social background worth anyone’s while to pursue. Also she was of an unbecomingly direct character and both held and expressed too many opinions.

  “I have no time I can afford to waste,” she answered aloud.

  “And I have too much,” Edith added.

  Hester brought them back to the subject. “Please tell me something of the Furnivals.”

  Damaris’s face lost its momentary look of ease.

  “Maxim is really quite agreeable, in a brooding, dark sort of way. He’s fearfully decent, and he manages to do it without being stuffy. I often felt if I knew him better he might be quite interesting. I could easily imagine falling madly in love with him—just to know what lies underneath—if I didn’t already know Peverell. But whether it would stand a close acquaintance I have no idea.” She glanced at Hester to make sure she understood, then continued, staring up at the molded and painted ceiling. “Louisa is another matter altogether. She is very beautiful, in an unconventional way, like a large cat—of the jungle sort, not the domestic. She is no one’s tabby. I used to envy her.” She smiled ruefully. “She is very small. She can be feminine and look up at any man at all—where I look down on far more than I wish. And she is all curves in the most flattering places, which I am not. She has very high, wide cheekbones, but when I stopped being envious, and looked a little more closely, I did not care for her mouth.”

  “You are not saying much of what she is like, Ris,” Edith prompted.

  “She is like a cat,” Damaris said reasonably. “Sensuous, predatory, and taking great care of her own, but utterly charming when she wishes to be.”

  Edith looked across at Hester. “Which tells you at least that Damaris doesn’t like her very much. Or that she is more than a trifle envious.”

  “You are interrupting,” Damaris said with an aloof air. “The next to arrive were Thaddeus and Alexandra. He was just as usual, polite, pompous and rather preoccupied, but Alex looked pale and not so much preoccupied as distracted. I thought then that they must have had a disagreement over something, and of course Alex had lost.”

  Hester nearly asked why “of course,” then realized the question was foolish. A wife would always lose, particularly in public.

  “Then Sabella and Fenton came,” Damaris continued. “That’s Thaddeus’s younger daughter and her husband,” she explained to Hester. “Almost immediately Sabella was rude to Thaddeus. We all pretended we hadn’t noticed, which is about all you can do when you are forced to witness a family quarrel. It was rather embarrassing, and Alex looked very …” she searched for the word she wanted. “… very brittle, as though her self-control might snap if she were pressed too hard.” Her face changed swiftly, and a shadow passed over it. “The last ones to arrive were Dr. Hargrave and his wife.” She altered her position slightly in the chair, with the result that she was no longer facing Hester. “It was all very polite, and trivial, and totally artificial.”

  “You said it was ghastly.” Edith’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t mean you sat around through the entire evening being icily civil to each other. You told me Thaddeus and Sabella quarreled and Sabella behaved terribly, and Alex was white as a sheet, which Thaddeus either did not even notice—or else pretended not to. And that Maxim was hovering over Alex, and Louisa obviously resented it.”

  Damaris frowned, her shoulders tightening. “I thought so. But of course it may simply have been that it was Maxim’s house and he felt responsible, so he was trying to be kind to Alex and make her feel better, and Louisa misunderstood.” She glanced at Hester. “She likes to be the center of attention and wouldn’t appreciate anyone being so absorbed in someone else. She was very scratchy with Alex all evening.”

  “You all went in to dinner?” Hester prompted, still searching for the factual elements of the crime, if the police were correct and there had been one.

  “What?” Damaris knitted her brows, staring at the window. “Oh—yes, all on each other’s arms as we had been directed, according to the best etiquette. Do you know, I can’t even remember what we ate.” She lifted her shoulders a little under the gorgeous blouse. “It could have been bread pudding for all I tasted. After the desserts we went to the withdrawing room and talked nonsense while the men passed the port, or whatever men do in the dining room when the women have gone. I’ve often wondered if they say anything at all worth listening to.” She looked up at Hester quickly. “Haven’t you?”

  Hester smiled briefly. “Yes I have. But I think it may be one of those cases where the truth would be disappointing. The mystery is far better. Did the men rejoin you?”

  Damaris grimaced in a strange half smile, rueful and ironic. “You mean was Thaddeus still alive then? Yes he was. Sabella went upstairs to be alone, or I think more accurately to sulk, but I can’t remember when. It was before the men came in, because I thought she was avoiding Thaddeus.”

  “So you were all in the withdrawing room, apart from Sabella?”

  “Yes. The conversation was very artificial. I mean more so than usual. It’s always pretty futile. Louisa was making vicious little asides about Alex, all with a smooth smile on her face, of course. Then Louisa rose and invited Thaddeus to go up and visit Valentine—” She gave a quick little gasp as if she had choked on something, and then changed it into a cough. “Alex was furious. I can picture the look on her face as if I had only just seen it.”

  Hester knew Damaris was speaking of a subject about which she felt some deep emotion, but she had no idea why, or quite what emotion it was. But there was little point in pressing the matter at all if she stopped now.

  “Who is Valentine?”

  Damans’s voice was husky as she answered. “He is the Furnivals’ son. He is thirteen—nearly fourteen.”

  “And Thaddeus was fond of him?” Hester said quietly.

  “Yes—yes he was.” Her tone had a kind of finality and her face a bleakness that stopped Hester from asking any more. She knew from Edith that Damaris had no children of her own, and she had enough sensitivity to imagine the feelings that might lie behind those words. She changed the subject and brought it back to the immediate.

  “How long was he gone?”

  Damaris smiled with a strange, wounded humor.

  “Forever.”

  “Oh.” Hester was more disconcerted than she was prepared for. She felt dismay, and for a moment she was robbed of words.

  “I’m sorry,” Damaris said quickly, looking at Hester with wide, dark eyes. “Actually I don’t know. I was absorbed in my own thoughts. Some time. People were coming and going.” She smiled as if there were some punishing humor in that thought. “Maxim went off for something, and Louisa came back alone. Alex went off too, I suppose after Thaddeus, and she came back. Then Maxim went off again, this time into the front hall—I should have said they went up the back stairs to the wing where Valentine has his room, on the third floor. It is quicker that way.”

  “You’ve been up?”

  Damaris looked away. “Yes.”

  “Maxim went into the front hall?” Hester prompted.

  “Oh—yes. And he came back looking awful and saying there had been an accident. Thaddeus had fallen over the banister and been seriously hurt
—he was unconscious. Of course we know now he was dead.” She was still looking at Hester, watching her face. Now she looked away again. “Charles Hargrave got up immediately and went to see. We all sat there in silence. Alex was as white as a ghost, but she had been most of the evening. Louisa was very quiet; she turned and went, saying she was fetching Sabella down, she ought to know her father had been hurt. I can’t really remember what else happened till Charles—Dr. Hargrave—came back to say Thaddeus was dead, and of course we would have to report it. No one should touch anything.”

  “Just leave him there?” Edith said indignantly. “Lying on the floor in the hallway, tangled up with the suit of armor?”

  “Yes …”

  “They would have to.” Hester looked from one to the other of them. “And if he was dead it wouldn’t cause him any distress. It is only what we think …”

  Edith pulled a face, but said nothing more, curling her legs up a little higher.

  “It’s rather absurd, isn’t it?” Damaris said very quietly. “A cavalry general who fought all over the place being killed eventually by falling over the stairs onto a halberd held by an empty suit of armor. Poor Thaddeus—he never had any sense of humor. I doubt he would have seen the funny side of it.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t.” Edith’s voice broke for a moment, and she took a deep breath. “And neither would Papa. I wouldn’t mention it again, if I were you.”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Damaris snapped. “I’m not a complete fool. Of course I won’t. But if I don’t laugh I think I shall not be able to stop crying. Death is often absurd. People are absurd. I am!” She sat up properly and swiveled around straight in the seat, facing Hester.

  “Someone murdered Thaddeus, and it had to be one of us who were there that evening. That’s the awful thing about it all. The police say he couldn’t have fallen onto the point of the halberd like that. It would never have penetrated his body—it would just have gone over. He could have broken his neck, or his back, and died. But that was not what happened. He didn’t break any bones in the fall. He did knock his head, and almost certainly concuss himself, but it was the halberd through the chest that killed him—and that was driven in after he was lying on the ground.”