The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [420]
“Of course you are right,” she agreed. “It is self-indulgent for the sake of conscience, but actually achieves nothing at all, except ingratitude, as you say. I used to walk near the battlefields sometimes, in the Crimea, and knew what had happened so close by, and yet I needed the silence and the flowers, or I could not have gone on. If you don’t keep your strength, both physical and spiritual, you are of no help to those who need you. All my intelligence knows that.”
He took her elbow gently and they walked towards the herbaceous border, lupin spears just visible against the pale stones of the wall and the dusky outline of a climbing rose.
“Do you find hard cases affect you like that?” she asked presently. “Or are you more practical? I don’t know—do you often lose?”
“Certainly not.” There was laughter in his voice.
“You must lose sometimes!”
The laughter vanished. “Yes, of course I do. And yes—I find myself lying awake imagining how the prisoner must feel, tormenting myself in case I did not do everything I could have, and I was lying in my warm bed, and will do the next night, and the next … and that poor devil who depended on me will soon lie in the cold earth of an unhallowed grave.”
“Oliver!” She swung around and stared at him, without thinking, reaching for both his hands.
He clasped her gently, fingers closing over hers.
“Don’t your patients die sometimes, my dear?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And don’t you wonder if you were to blame? Even if you could not have saved them, could not have eased their pain, their fear?”
“Yes. But you have to let it go, or you would cripple yourself, and then be of no more use to the next patient.”
“Of course.” He raised her hands and touched his lips to them, first the left, and then the right. “And we shall both continue to do so, all we can. And we shall both also look at the moonlight on the apple trees, and be glad of it without guilt that no one else can see it precisely as we do. Promise me?”
“I promise,” she said softly. “And the stars and the honeysuckle as well.”
“Oh, don’t worry about the stars,” he said with laughter back in his voice. “They are universal. But the honeysuckle on the orchard fence and the lupins against the wall belong peculiarly to an English garden. This is ours.”
Together they walked back to where Henry was standing by the French doors of the sitting room just as the clear song of a nightingale trilled through the night once and vanished.
Half an hour later Hester left. It was remarkably late, and she had enjoyed the evening more than any other she could recall for a very long time indeed.
It was now May 28, and more than a month since the murder of Thaddeus Carlyon and since Edith had come to Hester asking her assistance in finding some occupation that would use her talents and fill her time more rewardingly than the endless round of domestic pleasantries which now occupied her. And so far Hester had achieved nothing in that direction.
And quite apart from Edith Sobell, Major Tiplady was progressing extremely well and in a very short time would have no need of her services, and she would have to look for another position herself. And while for Edith it was a matter of finding something to use her time to more purpose, for Hester it was necessary to earn her living.
“You are looking much concerned, Miss Latterly,” Major Tiplady said anxiously. “Is something wrong?”
“No—oh no. Not at all,” she said quickly. “Your leg is healing beautifully. There is no infection now, and in a week or two at the outside, I think you may begin putting your weight on it again.”
“And when is the unfortunate Carlyon woman coming to trial?”
“I’m not sure, precisely. Some time in the middle of June.”
“Then I doubt I shall be able to dispense with you in two weeks.” There was a faint flush in his cheeks as he said it, but his