The William Monk Mysteries_ The First Three Novels - Anne Perry [475]
“No,” he agreed grimly. “No, there isn’t. Damn, but it’s cold. June shouldn’t be this cold.”
She managed to smile. “Shouldn’t it? It frequently is.”
He glared at her wordlessly.
“It’ll get better.” She shrugged and pulled her cloak higher. “Thank you for saving me a seat. I’ll be here tomorrow.”
She parted from him and set off into the chill air. She took a hansom, in spite of the expense, to Callandra Daviot’s house.
“What has happened?” Callandra asked immediately, rising from her chair, her face anxious as she regarded Hester, seeing her tiredness, the droop of her shoulders and the fear in her eyes. “Come sit down—tell me.”
Hester sat obediently. “Only what we expected, I suppose. But they all seem so very rational and set in their ideas. They know she did it—Lovat-Smith has proved that already. I just feel as if no matter what we say, they’ll never believe he was anything but a fine man, a soldier and a hero. How can we prove he sodomized his own son?” Deliberately she used the hardest word she could find, and was perversely annoyed when Callandra did not flinch. “They’ll only hate her the more fiercely that we could say such a thing about such a fine man.” She spoke with heavy sarcasm. “They’ll hang her higher for the insult.”
“Find the others.” Callandra said levelly, her gray eyes sad and hard. “The alternative is giving up. Are you prepared to do that?”
“No, of course not. But I’m trying to think, if we are realistic, we should be prepared to be beaten.”
Callandra stared at her, waiting, refusing to speak.
Hester met her look silently, then gradually began to think.
“The general’s father abused him.” She was fumbling towards something, a thread to begin pulling. “I don’t suppose he started doing it himself suddenly, do you?”
“I have no idea—but sense would suggest not.”
“There must be something to find in the past, if only we knew where to look,” she went on, trying to make herself believe. “We’ve got to find the others; the other people who do this abysmal thing. But where? It’s no use saying the old colonel did—we’ll never prove that. He’ll deny it, so will everyone else, and the general is dead.”
She leaned back slowly. “Anyway, what would be the use? Even if we proved someone else did, that would not prove it of the general, or that Alexandra knew. I don’t know where to begin. And time is so short.” She stared at Callandra miserably. “Oliver has to start the defense in a couple of days, at the outside. Lovat-Smith is proving his case to the hilt. We haven’t said a single thing worth anything yet—only that there was no evidence Alexandra was jealous.”
“Not the others who abuse,” Callandra said quietly. “The other victims. We must search the military records again.”
“There’s no time,” Hester said desperately. “It would take months. And there might be nothing anyway.”
“If he did that in the army, there will be something to find.” Callandra’s voice had no uncertainty in it, no quaver of doubt. “You stay at the trial. I’ll search for some slip he’s made, some drummer boy or cadet who’s been hurt enough for it to show.”
“Do you think … ?” Hester felt a quick leap of hope, foolish, quite unreasonable.
“Calm down, order your mind,” Callandra commanded. “Tell me again everything that we know about the whole affair!”
Hester obeyed.
When the court was adjourned Oliver Rathbone was on his way out when Lovat-Smith caught up with him, his dark face sharp with curiosity. There was no avoiding him, and Rathbone was only half certain he wanted to. He had a need to speak with him, as one is sometimes compelled to probe a wound to see just how deep or how painful it is.
“What in the devil’s name made you take this one?” Lovat-Smith demanded, his eyes meeting Rathbone’s, brilliant with intelligence. There was a light in the back of them which might have been a wry kind of pity, or any of a dozen other things, all equally uncomfortable. “What are you playing at?