Hester, recently married herself, and knowing the depth and the sweep of love, ached for Callandra that she sacrificed so much. And yet loving her husband as she did, for all his faults and vulnerabilities, Hester, too, would rather have been alone than accept anyone else.
It was late afternoon when Hester left the hospital and took the public omnibus down Hampstead High Street to Haverstock Hill, and then to Euston Road. A newsboy shouted something about five hundred American soldiers surrendering in New Mexico. The papers carried the latest word on the Civil War, but the anxiety was far deeper over the looming cotton famine in Lancashire because of the blockading of the Confederate States.
She hurried past him and walked the last few yards to Fitzray Street. It was early September and still mild, but growing dark, and the lamplighter was well on his rounds. When she approached her front door she saw a tall, slender man waiting impatiently outside. He was immaculately dressed in high wing collar, black frock coat and striped trousers, as one would expect of a City gentleman, but his whole attitude betrayed agitation and deep unhappiness. It was not until he heard her footsteps and turned so the lamplight caught his face that she recognized her brother, Charles Latterly.
“Hester!” He moved towards her swiftly, then stopped. “How. . how are you?”
“I’m very well,” she answered truthfully. It was several months since she had seen him, and for someone as rigidly controlled and conventional as Charles, it was extraordinary to find him waiting in the street like this. Presumably, Monk was not there yet or he would have gone inside.
She opened the door and Charles followed her in. The gas lamp burned very low in the hall, and she turned it up and led the way to the front room, which was where Monk received prospective clients who came with their terrors and anxieties for him to attempt to solve. Since they had both been out all day, there was a fire laid but not lit. A bowl of tawny chrysanthemums and scarlet nasturtiums gave some light and an illusion of warmth.
She turned and looked at Charles. As always, he was meticulously polite. “I’m sorry to intrude. You must be tired. I suppose you have been nursing someone all day?”
?
??Yes, but I think she may get better. At least, the operation was a success.”
He made an attempt at a smile. “Good.”
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she offered. “I would.”
“Oh. . yes, yes, of course. Thank you.” He sat gingerly on one of the two armchairs, his back stiff and upright as if to relax were impossible. She had seen so many of Monk’s clients sit like that, terrified of putting their fears into words, and yet so burdened by them and so desperate for help that they had finally found the courage to seek a private agent of enquiry. It was as if Charles had come to see Monk, and not her. His face was pale and there was a sheen of sweat on it, and his hands were rigid in his lap. If she had touched him she would have felt locked muscles.
She had not seen him look so wretched since their parents had died five and a half years ago, when she was still in Scutari with Florence Nightingale. Their father had been ruined by a financial swindle, and had taken his own life because of the ensuing disgrace. Their mother had died within the month. Her heart had been weak, and the grief and distress so soon after the loss of her younger son in battle had been too much for her.
Looking at Charles now, Hester’s similar fears for him returned with a force that took her by surprise. They had seen each other very little since Hester’s marriage, which Charles had found difficult to approve-after all, Monk was a man without a past. A carriage accident six years ago had robbed him of his memory. Monk had deduced much about his past, but the vast majority of it remained unknown. Monk had been in the police force at the time of his meeting with Hester, and no one in the very respectable Latterly family had had any prior connections with the police. Beyond question, no one had married into that type of social background.
Charles looked up, expecting her to fetch the tea. Should she ask him what troubled him so profoundly, or would it be tactless, and perhaps put him off confiding in her?
“Of course,” she said briskly, and went to the small kitchen to riddle the stove, loosen the old ashes and put more coal on to boil the kettle. She set out biscuits on a plate. They were bought, not homemade. She was a superb nurse, a passionate but unsuccessful social reformer, and as even Monk would admit, a pretty good detective, but her domestic skills were still in the making.
When the tea was made she returned and set the tray down, poured both cups and waited while he took one and sipped from it. His embarrassment seemed to fill the air and made her feel awkward as well. She watched him fidget with the cup and gaze around the small, pleasant room, looking for something to pretend to be interested in.
If she was blunt and asked him outright, would she make it better or worse? “Charles. .” she began.
He turned to look at her. “Yes?”
She saw a profound unhappiness in his eyes. He was only a few years older than she, and yet there was a weariness in him, as if he no longer had any vitality and already felt himself past the best. It touched her with fear. She must be gentle. He was too complex, far too private for bluntness.
“It’s. . it’s rather a long time since I’ve seen you,” he began apologetically. “I didn’t realize. The weeks seem to. .” He looked away, fishing for words and losing them.
“How is Imogen?” she asked, and instantly knew from the way he avoided her eyes that the question hurt.
“Quite well,” he replied. The words were automatic, bright and meaningless, as he would answer a stranger. “And William?”
She could bear it no longer. She put down her cup. “Charles, something is terribly wrong. Please tell me what it is. Even if I cannot help, I would like you to trust me at least to share it.”
He was sitting forward, his elbows on his knees. For the first time since he had come into the room he met her gaze directly. His blue eyes were full of fear and absolute, total bewilderment.
She waited.
“I simply don’t know what to do.” His voice was quiet, but jagged with desperation. “It’s Imogen. She’s. . changed. .” He stopped, a wave of misery engulfing him.
Hester thought of her charming, graceful sister-in-law, who had always seemed so confident, so much more at ease with society and with herself than Hester was. “How has she changed?” she asked gently.
He shook his head. “I’m not really sure. I suppose it must have been over a while. I. . I didn’t notice it.” Now he kept his eyes down on his hands, which were knotted together, twisting slowly, knuckles white. “It seemed just weeks to me.”
Hester forced herself to be patient. He was in such obvious distress it would be unkind, and on a practical level pointless, to try to concentrate his mind. “In what way has she changed?” she asked him, keeping the emotion out of her voice. It was extraordinary to see her calm, rather pompous brother so obviously losing control of a situation which was so far merely domestic. It made her afraid that there was a dimension to it beyond anything she could yet see.