Anne Perry - A Sudden, Fearful Death

"Some people have very little sense of proportion," Callandra agreed with answering candor. "On their favorite subject, they tend to bolt like a horse with a bit between its teeth."

Victoria laughed; it seemed the analogy amused her.

"Excuse me." A nice-looking young man of perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two came up apologetically, a small lace handkerchief in his hand. He looked at Victoria, almost ignoring Callandra and apparently not having seen Arthur at all. He held up the scrap of lawn and lace. "I think you may have dropped this, ma'am. Excuse my familiarity in returning it." He smiled. "But it gives me the opportunity of presenting myself. My name is Robert Oliver."

Victoria's cheeks paled, then flushed deep red. A dozen emotions chased themselves across her face: pleasure, a wild hope, and then the bitterness of memory and realization.

"Thank you," she said in a small tight voice. "But I regret, it is not mine. It must belong to some other-some other lady."

He stared at her, searching her eyes to see whether it was really the dismissal it sounded.

Callandra longed to intervene, but she knew she would only be prolonging the pain. Robert Oliver had been drawn to something in Victoria's face, an intelligence, an imagination, a vulnerability. Perhaps he even glimpsed what she would have been. He could not know the wound to the body which meant she could never give him what he would so naturally seek.

Without willing it, Callandra found herself speaking.

"How considerate of you, Mr. Oliver. I am sure Miss Stanhope is obliged, but so will be the handkerchief's true owner, I have no doubt" She was also quite convinced that Robert Oliver had no intention of seeking anyone further. He had found the scrap of fabric and used it as an excuse, a gracious and simple one. It had no further purpose.

He looked at her fully for the first time, trying to judge who she was and how much her view mattered. He caught something of the grief in her, and knew it was real, although of course he could not know the cause of it. His thin, earnest young face was full of confusion.

Callandra felt a scalding hot anger well up in her. She hated the abortionist who had done this. It was a vile thing to make money out of other people's fear and distress. For an honest operation to go wrong was a common enough tragedy. This was not honest. God knew if the practitioner was even a doctor, let alone a surgeon.

Please-please God it had not been Kristian. The thought was so dreadful it was like a blow to the stomach, driving the breath out of her.

Did she want to know, if it had been? Would she not rather cling to what she had, the gentleness, the laughter, even the pain of not being able to touch, of knowing she never could have more than this? But could she live with not knowing? Would not the sick, crawling fear inside her mar everything, guilty or not?

Robert Oliver was still staring at her.

She forced herself to smile at him, although she felt it was a hideous travesty of pleasure.

"Miss Stanhope and I were just about to take a little refreshment, and she was to show me some flowers her gardener has propagated. I am sure you will excuse us?" Gently she took Victoria by the arm, and after only a moment's hesitation, Victoria came with her, her face pale, her lip trembling. They walked in silence, close to each other. Victoria never asked why Callandra had done such a thing, or what she knew.

A memorial service was held for Prudence Barrymore in the village church at Hanwell, and Monk attended. He went as part of his duty to Callandra, but also because he felt a growing respect for the dead woman, and a profound sense of loss that someone so alive and so valuable should have gone. To attend a formal recognition of that loss was some way of, if not filling the void, at least bridging it.

It was a quiet service but the church was crowded with people. It seemed many had come from London to show their respect and offer their condolences to the family. Monk saw at least a score who must have been soldiers, some of them only too obviously amputees, leaning on crutches or with empty sleeves hanging by their sides. Many others had faces which should have looked young but showed signs of premature strain and indelible memory, whom he took also to be soldiers.

Mrs. Barrymore was dressed entirely in black, but her fair face glowed with a kind of energy as she supervised affairs, greeted people, accepted condolences from strangers with a kind of amiable confusion. It obviously amazed her that so many people should have held a deep and personal regard for the daughter she had always found such a trial, and ultimately a disappointment.

Her husband looked much closer to the edge of emotion he could not contain, but there was an immense dignity about him. He stood almost silently, merely nodding his head as people filed past him and spoke of their sorrow, their admiration, their debt to his daughter's courage and dedication. He was so proud of her that his head was high and his back ramrod straight, as if for this day at least he too were a soldier. But his grief was more than would allow his voice to come unchoked, and he did not embarrass himself by trying more than a few words as courtesy made it completely unavoidable.

There were flowers in tribute, wreaths and garlands of summer blossoms. Monk had brought one himself-fullblown summer roses-and laid it among the rest. He saw one of wildflowers, small and discreet among the others, and he thought of the flowers of the battlefield. He looked at the card. It said simply, 'To my comrade, with love, Hester."

For a moment he felt a ridiculous surge of emotion that forced him to raise his head away from the bouquets and sniff hard, blinking his eyes. He walked away, but not before he had noticed another wreath, of plain white daisies, and the card, "Rest in the Lord, Florence Nightingale."

Monk stood apart from the crowd, not wishing to be spoken to by anyone. He was not doing his duty. He was here to observe and not to mourn, and yet the emotion welled up inside him and would not be denied. It was not curiosity he felt, and just at that moment not anger; it was grief. The slow sad music of the organ, the ancient stone of the church arching over the small figures of the people, all in black, heads bared, spoke of unrelieved loss.

He saw Callandra, quiet and discreet, here for herself, not for the Board of Governors. Probably one of the solemn dignitaries at the far side of the aisle was serving that function. There had been a wreath from Sir Herbert and one from the hospital in general, white lilies soberly arranged and some suitable inscription.

After the service chance brought him inevitably to Mr. Barrymore, and it would have been ostentatiously rude to have avoided him. He could not bear to say anything trite. He met Barrymore's eyes and smiled very slightly.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Monk," Barrymore said with sincerity. "That was generous of you, since you never knew Prudence."

"I know a great deal about her," Monk replied. "And everything I have learned makes me feel the loss more deeply. I came because I wished to."

Barrymore's smile widened, but his eyes suddenly filled with tears and he was obliged to remain silent for a moment until he mastered himself.

Monk felt no embarrassment. The man's grief was genuine, and nothing which should shame or trouble the onlooker. Monk held out his hand. Barrymore took it firmly and clasped it in a hard warm grip, then let go.

It was only then that Monk noticed the young woman standing half behind him and a little to his left. She was of average height with a finely chiseled, intelligent face, which in different circumstances would have been filled with humor and made charming by vivacity. Even as somber as this, the lines of her normal character were plain. The resemblance to Mrs. Barrymore was marked. She must be Faith Barker, Prudence's sister. Since Barrymore had said she lived in Yorkshire and was presumably down only for the service, he would have no other opportunity to speak with her. However unsuitable or insensitive it seemed, he must force the issue now.