Funeral in Blue - Anne Perry [3]
Hester thought of her charming, graceful sister-in-law, who had always seemed so confident, so much more at ease with society and with herself than Hester was. “How has she changed?” she asked gently.
He shook his head. “I’m not really sure. I suppose it must have been over a while. I . . . I didn’t notice it.” Now he kept his eyes down on his hands, which were knotted together, twisting slowly, knuckles white. “It seemed just weeks to me.”
Hester forced herself to be patient. He was in such obvious distress it would be unkind, and on a practical level pointless, to try to concentrate his mind. “In what way has she changed?” she asked him, keeping the emotion out of her voice. It was extraordinary to see her calm, rather pompous brother so obviously losing control of a situation which was so far merely domestic. It made her afraid that there was a dimension to it beyond anything she could yet see.
“She’s . . . unreliable,” he said, after searching for the word. “Of course, everyone has changes of mood, I know that, days when they feel more cheerful than others, anxieties, just . . . just unpleasant things that make us feel hurt . . . but Imogen’s either so happy she’s excited, can’t keep still . . .” His face was puckered with confusion as he sought to understand something which was beyond him. “She’s either elated or in despair. Sometimes she looks as if she’s frantic with worry, then a day later, or even hours, she’ll be full of energy, her eyes bright, her face flushed, laughing at nothing. And . . . this sounds absurd . . . but I swear she keeps repeating silly little actions . . . like rituals . . .”
Hester was startled. “What sort of things?”
He looked embarrassed, apologetic. “Fastening her jacket with the middle button first, then from the bottom up, and the top down. I’ve seen her count them to make certain. And . . .” He took a breath. “And wear one pair of gloves and carry an odd one that doesn’t match.”
It made no apparent sense. She wondered if he could possibly be correct, or if in his own anxiety he was imagining it. “Did she say why?” she asked aloud.
“No. I asked her about the gloves, and she ignored me, just spoke about something else.”
Hester looked at Charles, sitting in front of her. He was tall and slender, perhaps a little too thin now. His fair hair was receding, but not much. His features were regular; he would have been handsome if there were more conviction in his face, more passion, even humor. His father’s suicide had wounded him in a way from which he had never recovered. He was marked with a pity he did not know how to express, and a shame he bore in silence. He would have felt it a betrayal to offer explanations of such a private grief. Hester had no idea what he had shared with Imogen. Perhaps he had tried to shelter her from it, or imagined it would be helpful to her to see him as invulnerable, always in control. Perhaps he was right!
On the other hand, Imogen might have wanted passionately to have shared his pain, to have known that he trusted her with it, that he needed her kindness and her strength to bear it with him. Perhaps she had felt excluded? Hester would have, she knew that absolutely.
“I suppose you have asked her directly what troubles her?” she said quietly.
“She says there is nothing wrong,” he replied. “She changes the subject, talks about anything else, mostly things that neither of us care about, just anything, a wall of words to keep me out.”
It was like probing a wound; you were afraid to strike the nerves, and yet knew you must find the bullet. She had done it too many times on the battlefield and in military hospitals. She could smell blood and fear in her imagination as the simile came to her mind. Only months ago she and Monk had been in America and had seen the first pitched battle of the Civil War.
“Do you really have no idea what is causing it, Charles?” she asked.
He looked up wretchedly. “I think she may