Dark Assassin - Anne Perry [106]
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.
Rose turned to Jenny. “Isn’t it awful?” she said confidentially, pulling her mouth down at the corners.
Jenny appeared startled. So far they had shared the artificial conversation of acquaintances who did not care for each other but were civil in their mutual interest.
Suddenly Rose giggled. It was a rich, absurdly happy sound. “Not the food! The music, if you can call it that. Why on earth can’t we be honest? Nobody feels like playing a dirge because the old fool is dead. Most of them couldn’t wait for him to go. Death is about the only thing that finally made him hold his tongue.”
Jenny pretended she was not taken aback. She took a deep breath and answered with a slightly shaky voice. “That may be true, but we would be wiser not to say so, Mrs. Applegate.”
Hester realized she had been holding her breath, almost till it hurt. What on earth was the matter with Rose? This was not part of their plan.
“To be wise all the time is the utmost foolishness!” Rose said rather loudly. “We are so careful being wise, we never commit any indiscretions, unless they are colossal and catastrophic!” She swung her arms wide to show how very huge the indiscretions were,