The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [302]
Hester returned to Queen Anne Street light-footed, but the leaden feeling was at the edge of her mind waiting to return now that she was forced to think of reality again.
She was surprised to learn from Mary, as soon as she was in the house, that Beatrice was still confining herself to her room and would take her evening meal upstairs. She had gone into the ironing room for a clean apron, and found Mary there folding the last of her own linen.
“Is she ill?” Hester said with some concern—and a pang of guilt, not only for what might be dereliction of her duty but because she had not believed the malady was now anything but a desire to be a trifle spoilt, and to draw from her family the attention she did not otherwise. And that in itself was something of a mystery. Beatrice was not only a lovely woman but vivid and individual, not made in the placid mold of Romola. She was also intelligent, imaginative and at times capable of considerable humor. Why should such a woman not be the very heartbeat of her home?
“She looked pale,” Mary replied, pulling a little face. “But then she always does. I think she’s in a temper, myself—although I shouldn’t say that.”
Hester smiled. The fact that Mary should not say something never stopped her, in fact it never even made her hesitate.
“With whom?” Hester asked curiously.
“Everyone in general, but Sir Basil in particular.”
“Do you know why?”
Mary shrugged; it was a graceful gesture. “I should think over what they said about Miss Octavia at the trial.” She scowled furiously. “Wasn’t that awful! They made out she was so tipsy she encouraged the footman to make advances—” She stopped and looked at Hester meaningfully. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Was that not true?”
“Not that I ever saw.” Mary was indignant. “She was tipsy, certainly, but Miss Octavia was a lady. She wouldn’t have let Percival touch her if he’d been the last man alive on a desert island. Actually it’s my belief she wouldn’t have let any man touch her after Captain Haslett died. Which is what made Mr. Myles so furious. Now if she’d stabbed him, I’d have believed it!”
“Did he really lust after her?” Hester asked, for the first time using the right word openly.
Mary’s dark eyes widened a fraction, but she did not equivocate.
“Oh yes. You should have seen it in his face. Mind, she was very pretty, you know, in a quite different way from Miss Araminta. You never saw her, but she was so alive—” Suddenly misery gripped hold of her again, and all the realization of loss flooded back, and the anger she had been trying to suppress. “That was wicked, what they said about her! Why do people say things like that?” Her chin came up and her eyes were blazing. “Fancy her saying all those wretched things about Dinah, and Mrs. Willis and all. They won’t ever forgive her for that, you know. Why did she do it?”
“Spite?” Hester suggested. “Or maybe just exhibitionism. She loves to be the center of attention. If anyone is looking at her she feels alive—important.”
Mary looked confused.
“There are some people like that.” Hester tried to explain what she had never put into words before. “They’re empty, insecure alone; they only feel real when other people listen to them and take notice.”
“Admiration.” Mary laughed bitterly. “It’s contempt. What she did was vicious. I can tell you, no one ’round here’ll forgive her for it.”
“I don’t suppose that’ll bother her,” Hester said dryly, thinking of Fenella’s opinion of servants.
Mary smiled. “Oh yes it will!” she said fiercely. “She won’t get a hot cup of tea in the morning anymore; it will be lukewarm. We will be ever so sorry, we won’t know how it happened, but it will go on happening. Her best clothes will be mislaid in the laundry, some will get torn, and no one will know who did it. Everyone will have found it like that. Her letters will be delivered to someone else, caught between the pages, messages for her or from her will be slow in delivery. The rooms she’s in will get