Defend and Betray - Anne Perry [51]
“Yes, Major. I am about to go.” And without adding anything further except a farewell, she left him alone to think and imagine until she should return.
* * *
Edith met her with a quick, anxious interest, rising from the chair where she had been sitting awkwardly, one leg folded under her. She looked tired and too pale for her dark mourning dress to flatter her. Her long fair hair was already pulled untidy, as if she had been running her hand over her head and had caught the strands of it absentmindedly.
“Ah, Hester. I am so glad you could come. The major did not mind? How good of him. Have you learned anything? What has Mr. Rathbone discovered? Oh, please, do come and sit down—here.” She indicated the place opposite where she had been, and resumed her own seat.
Hester obeyed, not bothering to arrange her skirts.
“I am afraid very little so far,” she answered, responding to the last question, knowing it was the only one which mattered. “And of course there will be limits to what he could tell me anyway, since I have no standing in the case.”
Edith looked momentarily confused, then quite suddenly she understood.
“Oh yes—of course.” Her face was bleak, as if the different nature of things lent a grimmer reality to it. “But he is working on it?”
“Of course. Mr. Monk is investigating. I expect he will come here in due course.”
“They won’t tell him anything.” Edith’s brows rose in surprise.
Hester smiled. “Not intentionally, I know. But he is already engaged with the possibility that it was not Alexandra who killed the general, and certainly not for the reason she said. Edith …”
Edith stared at her, waiting, her eyes intent.
“Edith, it may be that it was Sabella after all—but is that going to be an answer that Alexandra will want? Should we be doing her any service to prove it? She has chosen to give her life to save Sabella—if indeed Sabella is guilty.” She leaned forward earnestly. “But what if it was neither of them? If Alexandra simply thinks it is Sabella and she is confessing to protect her …”
“Yes,” Edith said eagerly. “That would be marvelous! Hester, do you think it could be true?”
“Perhaps—but then who? Louisa? Maxim Furnival?”
“Ah.” The light died out of Edith’s eyes. “Honestly, I wish it could be Louisa, but I doubt it. Why should she?”
“Might she really have been having an affair with the general, and he threw her over—told her it was all finished? You said she was not a woman to take rejection lightly.”
Edith’s face reflected a curious mixture of emotions: amusement in her eyes, sadness in her mouth, even a shadow of guilt.
“You never knew Thaddeus, or you wouldn’t seriously think of such a thing. He was …” She hesitated, her mind reaching for ideas and framing them into words. “He was … remote. Whatever passion there was in him was private, and chilly, not something to be shared. I never saw him deeply moved by anything.”
A quick smile touched her mouth, imagination, pity and regret in it. “Except stories of heroism, loyalty and sacrifice. I remember him reading ‘Sohrab and Rustum’ when it was first published four years ago.” She glanced at Hester and saw her incomprehension. “It’s a tragic poem by Arnold.” The smile returned, bleak and sad. “It’s a complicated story; the point is they are father and son, both great military heroes, and they kill each other without knowing who they are, because they have wound up on opposite sides in a war. It’s very moving.”
“And Thaddeus liked it?”
“And the stories of the great heroes of the past—ours and other people’s. The Spartans combing their hair before Thermopylae—they all died, you know, three hundred of them, but they saved Greece. And Horatius on the bridge …”
“I know,” Hester said quickly. “Macaulay’s ‘Lays of Ancient Rome.’ I begin to understand. There were the passions he could identify with: honor, duty, courage, loyalty—not bad things. I’m sorry …”
Edith gave her a look of sudden warmth. It was the first time they had spoken of Thaddeus as a person they