A sudden, fearful death - Anne Perry [204]
“She can’t be gone,” she wailed. “She was going to tell me … I can’t bear this! She promised!”
Murdoch looked at her, his face filled with confusion, anger and helplessness. He seized on the refuge offered him.
“Come now, my dear. There is some truth in what the stationmaster says. It was extraordinarily sudden, but we must be grateful that she did not suffer. At least it appears so.”
Griselda looked at him with horror in her wide eyes. “But she didn’t—I mean, there wasn’t even a letter. It is vitally important. She would never have … Oh this is terrible.” She covered her face again and began to weep.
Murdoch looked at the stationmaster, ignoring Hester.
“You must understand, my wife was devoted to her mother. This has been a great shock to her.”
“Yes sir, only natural,” the stationmaster agreed. “ ’Course it is. Would to anyone, especially a young lady o’ sensibility.”
Griselda rose to her feet suddenly. “Let me see her!” she demanded, pushing her way forward.
“Now really, my dear,” Murdoch protested, grasping her shoulders. “That would do no good at all and you must rest. Think of your condition….”
“But I must!” She fought free of him and confronted Hester, her face so pale the dusting of freckles across her cheeks stood out like dirty marks. Her eyes were wild and staring. “What did she say to you?” she demanded. “She must have told you something! Something about her purpose in coming here—something about me! Didn’t she?”
“Only that she was coming to reassure you that you had no cause for anxiety,” Hester said gently. “She was quite definite about that. You need have no anxiety at all.”
“But why?” Griselda said furiously, her hands held up as if she would grasp Hester and shake her if she had dared. “Are you sure? She might not have meant it! She could have been simply—I don’t know—being kind.”
“I don’t think so,” Hester replied quite frankly. “From what I saw of Mrs. Farraline, she did not speak idly in order to set someone’s mind at rest; if what she had said was not completely true, she need not have mentioned it at all. Of course it is extremely difficult for you at such a dreadful time, but I should try to believe that you really do have no cause for concern.”
“Would you?” Griselda said eagerly. “Do you think so, Miss …”
“Latterly. Yes I do.”
“Come, my dear,” Connal said soothingly. “This is really not important now. We have arrangements to make. And you must write to your family in Edinburgh. There is a great deal to take care of.”
Griselda turned to him as if he had been speaking a foreign language.
“What?”
“Don’t worry yourself. I shall attend to it all. I shall write this morning, a full letter with all that we know. If I post it today, it will go on the night train, and they will receive it in Edinburgh tomorrow morning. I will assume then that it was very quiet and she almost certainly felt nothing.” He shook his head a little. “Now, my dear, this has been a terrible day for you. I shall take you home where Mama can care for you.” His voice held a sudden relief at having thought of the ideal way of releasing himself from a situation beyond his ability. “You really must consider your … health, my dear. You should rest. There is nothing you can do here, I assure you.”
“That’s right, ma’am,” the stationmaster said quickly. “You go with your husband. ’E is absolutely right, ma’am.”
Griselda hesitated, shot another anguished look at Hester, then succumbed to a superior force.
Hester watched her go with relief, and a sharp, sad memory of Mary saying how unnecessarily Griselda worried. She could almost hear Mary’s voice in her head, and the very humor in it. Perhaps she should have said more to comfort her. She had seemed more devastated by the lack of reassurance over her child than by her mother’s death. But perhaps that was the easier of the two emotions to face. Where some people retreated into anger, and she had seen that often enough, Griselda was grasping on to fear. Being with child, especially a first, could cause all kinds of strange turmoils in the