The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [340]
Edith closed her eyes and then opened them wide.
“Thaddeus’s death is immeasurably worse than we first supposed,” she said quietly.
“Oh?” Hester was confused. How could it be worse than death?
“You don’t understand.” Edith was very still. “Of course you don’t. I was not explaining myself at all.” She took a sudden sharp breath. “They are saying it was not an accident.”
“They?” Hester was stunned. “Who is saying it?”
“The police, of course.” Edith blinked, her face white. “They say Thaddeus was murdered!”
Hester felt momentarily a little dizzy, as though the room with its gentle comfort had receded very far away and her vision was foggy at the edges, Edith’s face sharp in the center and indelible in her mind.
“Oh my dear—how terrible! Have they any idea who it was?”
“That is the worst part,” Edith confessed, for the first time moving away and sitting down on the fat pink settee.
Hester sat opposite her in the armchair.
“There were only a very few people there, and no one broke in,” Edith explained. “It had to have been one of them. Apart from Mr. and Mrs. Furnival, who gave the party, the only ones there who were not my family were Dr. Hargrave and his wife.” She swallowed hard and attempted to smile. It was ghastly. “Otherwise it was Thaddeus and Alexandra; their daughter Sabella and her husband, Fenton Pole; and my sister, Damaris, and my brother-in-law, Peverell Erskine. There was no one else there.”
“What about the servants?” Hester said desperately. “I suppose there is no chance it could have been one of them.”
“What for? Why on earth would one of the servants kill Thaddeus?”
Hester’s mind raced. “Perhaps he caught them stealing?”
“Stealing what—on the first landing? He fell off the balcony of the first landing. The servants would all be downstairs at that time in the evening, except maybe a ladies’ maid.”
“Jewelry?”
“How would he know they had been stealing? If they were in a bedroom he wouldn’t know it. And if he saw them coming out, he would only presume they were about their duties.”
That was totally logical. Hester had no argument. She searched her mind and could think of nothing comforting to say.
“What about the doctor?” she tried.
Edith flashed a weak smile at her, appreciating what she was attempting.
“Dr. Hargrave? I don’t know if it’s possible. Damans did tell me what happened that evening, but she didn’t seem very clear. In fact she was pretty devastated, and hardly coherent at all.”
“Well, where were they?” Hester had already been involved in two murders, the first because of the deaths of her own parents, the second through her acquaintance with the policeman William Monk, who was now working privately for anyone who required relatives traced, thefts solved discreetly, and other such matters dealt with in a private capacity, where they preferred not to engage the law or where no crime had been committed. Surely if she used her intelligence and a little logic she ought to be of some assistance.
“Since they assumed at first that it was an accident,” she said aloud, “surely he must have been alone. Where was everyone else? At a dinner party people are not wandering around the house individually.”
“That’s just it,” Edith said with increasing unhappiness. “Damaris made hardly any sense. I’ve never seen her so … so completely … out of control. Even Peverell couldn’t calm or comfort her—she would scarcely speak to him.”
“Perhaps they had a …” Hester sought for some polite way of phrasing it. “Some difference of opinion? A misunderstanding?”
Edith’s mouth twitched with amusement. “How euphemistic of you. You mean a quarrel? I doubt it. Peverell really isn’t that kind of person. He is rather sweet, and very fond of her.” She swallowed, and smiled with a sudden edge of sadness, as of other things briefly remembered, perhaps other people. “He isn’t weak at all,” she went on. “I used to think he was. But he just has a way of dealing with her,