The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [418]
Now, unaccountably, with Henry Rathbone the best of it returned.
Henry interrupted her thoughts, jerking her back to the present and the Carlyon case. “But that all happened some time ago. The daughter is married already, from what you say?”
“Yes. They have a child,” she said hastily.
“So this may rankle still, but it will not be the motive for murder so long after?”
“No.”
“Let us suggest a hypothesis,” Henry said thoughtfully, his meal almost forgotten. “The crime seems to have been committed on the spur of the moment. Alexandra saw the opportunity and took it—rather clumsily, as it turns out. Which means, if we are correct, either that she learned something that evening which so distressed her that she lost all sense of reason or self-preservation, or that she already wished to kill him but had not previously found an opportunity to do it.” He looked at Hester. “Miss Latterly, in your judgment, what might shake a woman so? In other words, what would a woman hold so dear that she would kill to protect it?”
Oliver stopped eating, his fork in the air.
“We haven’t looked at it that way,” he said, turning to her. “Hester?”
She thought, wishing to give the most careful and intelligent answer she could.
“Well, I suppose the thing that would make me most likely to act without thinking, even of the risk to myself, would be some threat to the people I loved most—which in Alexandra’s case would surely be her children.” She allowed herself a half smile. “Regrettably it was obviously not her husband. To me it would have been my parents and brothers, but all of them except Charles are dead anyway.” She said it because it was high in her mind, not to seek sympathy, then immediately wished she had not. She went on before they could offer any. “But let us say family—and in the case where there are children, I imagine one’s home as well. There are some homes that go back for generations, even centuries. I would imagine one might care about them so extremely as to kill to preserve them, or to keep them from falling into the possession of others. But that does not apply here.”
“Not according to Monk,” Oliver agreed, watching with dark, intent eyes. “And anyway, the house is his, not hers—and not an ancestral home in any way. What else?”
Hester smiled wryly, very aware of him. “Well, if I were beautiful, I suppose my looks would also be precious to me. Is Alexandra beautiful?”
He thought for a moment, his face reflecting a curious mixture of humor and pain. “Not beautiful, strictly speaking. But she is most memorable, and perhaps that is better. She has a face of distinct character.”
“So far you have only mentioned one thing which she might care about sufficiently,” Henry Rathbone pointed out. “What about her reputation?”
“Oh yes,” Hester agreed quickly. “If one’s honor is sufficiently threatened, if one were to be accused of something wrongfully, that could make one lose one’s temper and control and every bit of good sense. It is one of the things I hate above all else. That is a distinct possibility. Or the honor of someone I loved—that would cut equally deeply.”
“Who threatened her honor?” Oliver asked with a frown. “We have heard nothing at all to suggest anyone did. And if it were so, why should she not tell us? Or could it have been someone else’s honor? Who? Not his, surely?”
“Blackmail,” Hester said immediately. “A person blackmailed would naturally not tell—or it would reveal the very subject she had killed to hide.”
“By her husband?” Oliver said skeptically. “That would be robbing one pocket to pay the other.”
“Not for money,” she said quickly, leaning forward over the table. “Of course that would make no sense. For something else—perhaps simply power over her.”
“But who would he