William Monk 03 - Defend and Betray

expressionless.
    “Yes ma’am?”
    “Miss Hester Latterly, to see Mrs. Sobell,” Hester replied. “I believe she is expecting me.”
    “Yes of course, Miss Latterly. Please come in.” The door opened all the way and the maid stepped aside to allow her past. She took Hester’s bonnet and cloak.
    The hallway was as impressive as she had expected it to be, paneled with oak to a height of nearly eight feet, hung with dark portraits framed in gilt with acanthus leaves and curlicues. It was gleaming in the light from the chandelier, lit so early because the oak made it dim in spite of the daylight outside.
    “If you please to come this way,” the maid requested, going ahead of her across the parquet. “Miss Edith is in the boudoir. Tea will be served in thirty minutes.” And so saying she led Hester up the broad stairs and across the first landing to the upper sitting room, reserved solely for the use of the ladies of the house, and hence known as the boudoir. She opened the door and announced Hester.
    Edith was inside staring out of the window that faced the square. She turned as soon as Hester was announced, her face lighting with pleasure. Today she was wearing a gown of purplish plum color, trimmed with black. The crinoline was very small, almost too insignificant to be termed a crinoline at all, and Hester thought instantly how much more becoming it was—and also how much more practical than having to swing around so much fabric and so many stiff hoops. She had little time to notice much of the room, except that it was predominantly pink and gold, and there was a very handsome rosewood escritoire against the far wall.
    “I’m so glad you came!” Edith said quickly. “Apart from any news you might have, I desperately need to talk of normal things to someone outside the family.”
    “Why? Whatever has happened?” Hester could see without asking that something had occurred. Edith looked even more tense than on their previous meeting. Her body was stiff and her movements jerky, with a greater awkwardness than usual, and she was not a graceful woman at the best oftimes. But more telling was the weariness in her and the total absence of her usual humor.
    Edith closed her eyes and then opened them wide.
    “Thaddeus’s death is immeasurably worse than we first supposed,” she said quietly.
    “Oh?” Hester was confused. How could it be worse than death?
    “You don’t understand.” Edith was very still. “Of course you don’t. I was not explaining myself at all.” She took a sudden sharp breath. “They are saying it was not an accident.”
    “They?” Hester was stunned. “Who is saying it?”
    “The police, of course.” Edith blinked, her face white. “They say Thaddeus was murdered!”
    Hester felt momentarily a little dizzy, as though the room with its gentle comfort had receded very far away and her vision was foggy at the edges, Edith’s face sharp in the center and indelible in her mind.
    “Oh my dear—how terrible! Have they any idea who it was?”
    “That is the worst part,” Edith confessed, for the first time moving away and sitting down on the fat pink settee.
    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 balconyof 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?”