Anne Perry - Defend and Betray

She wished to see Damaris alone, absolutely alone, without fear of interruption from anyone (least of all Felicia), so she could confront her with the terrible facts that Monk had found, and perhaps wring from her the truth about the night of the murder.

Without knowing why, Edith had agreed to distract Peverell and keep him from home, on whatever pretext came to her mind. Hester had told her only that she needed to see Damaris, and that it was delicate and likely to be painful, but that it concerned a truth they had to learn. Hester felt abominably guilty that she had not told Edith what it was, but knowledge would also bring the obligation to choose, and that was a burden she dared not place on Edith in case she chose the wrong way, and love for her sister outweighed pursuit of truth. And if the truth were as ugly as they feared, it would be easier for Edith afterwards if she had had no conscious hand in exposing it.

She repeated this over to herself as she sat in Damaris's elegant, luxurious sitting room waiting for her to come, and finding sparse comfort in it.

She looked around the room. It was typical of Damaris, the conventional and the outrageous side by side, the comfort of wealth and exquisite taste, the safety of the established order-and next to it the wildly rebellious, the excitement of indiscipline. Idealistic landscapes hung on one side of the room, on the other were reproductions of two of William Blake's wilder, more passionate drawings of the human figure. Religion, philosophy and daring voyages into new politics sat on the same bookshelf. Artifacts were romantic or blasphemous, expensive or tawdry, practical or useless, personal taste side by side with the desire to shock. It was the room of two totally different people, or one person seeking to have the best of opposing worlds, to make daring voyages of exploration and at the same time keep hold of comfort and the safety of the long known.

When Damaris came in she was dressed in a gown which was obviously new, but so old in style it harked back to lines of the French Empire. It was startling, but as soon as Hester got over the surprise of it, she realized it was also extremely becoming, the line so much more natural than all the current layers of stiff petticoats and hooped skirts. It was also certainly far more comfortable to wear. Although she thought Damaris almost certainly chose it for effect, not comfort.

“How nice to see you,” Damaris said warmly. Her face was pale and there were shadows of sleeplessness around her eyes. “Edith said you wanted to speak to me about the case. I don't know what I can tell you. It's a disaster, isn't it.” She flopped down on the sofa and without thinking tucked her feet up to be comfortable. She smiled at Hester rather wanly. “I'm afraid your Mr. Rathbone is out of his depth-he isn't clever enough to get Alexandra out of this.” She pulled a face. “But from what I have seen, he doesn't even appear to be trying. Anyone could do all that he has so far. What's that matter, Hester? Doesn't he believe it is worth it?”

“Oh yes,” Hester said quickly, stung for Rathbone as well as for the truth. She sat down opposite Damaris. “It isn't time yet-his turn comes next.”

“But it will be too late. The jury have already made up their minds. Couldn't you see that in their faces? I did.”

“No it isn't. There are facts to come out that will change everything, believe me.”

“Are there?” Damaris screwed up her face dubiously. “I can't imagine that.”

“Can't you?”

Damaris squinted at her. “You say that with extra meaning-as if you thought I could. I can't think of anything at all that would alter what the jury think now.”

There was no alternative, no matter how Hester hated it, and she did hate it. She felt brutal, worse than that, treacherous.

“You were at the Furnivals' house the night of the murder,” she began, although it was stating what they both knew and had never argued.

“I don't know anything,” Damaris said with absolute candor. “For heaven's sake, if I did I would have said so before now.”

“Would you? No matter how terrible it was?”

Damaris frowned. “Terrible? Alexandra pushed Thad-deus over the banister, then followed him down and picked up the halberd and drove it into his body as he lay unconscious at her feet! That's pretty terrible. What could be worse?”

Hester swallowed but did not look away from Damaris's eyes.

“Whatever you found out when you went upstairs to Valentine Furnival's room before dinner-long before Thaddeus was killed.”

The blood fled from Damaris's face, leaving her looking ill and vulnerable, and suddenly far younger than she was.

“That has nothing to do with what happened to Thaddeus,” she said very quietly. “Absolutely nothing. It was something else-something…” She hunched her shoulders and her voice trailed off. She pulled her feet a little higher.

“I think it has.” Hester could not afford to be lenient.

The ghost of a smile crossed Damaris's mouth and vanished. It was self-mockery and there was no shred of happiness in it.

“You are wrong. You will have to accept my word of honor for that.”

“I can't. I accept that you believe it. I don't accept you are right.”

Damaris's face pinched. “You don't know what it was, and I shall not tell you. I'm sorry, but it won't help Alexandra, and it is my-my grief, not hers.”

Hester felt knotted up inside with shame and pity.

“Do you know why Alexandra killed him?”

“No.”

“I do.”

Damaris's head jerked up, her eyes wide.

' “Why?” she said huskily.

Hester took a deep breath.

, “Because he was committing sodomy and incest with his own son,” she said very quietly. Her voice sounded obscenely matter-of-fact in the silent room, as if she had made some banal remark that would be forgotten in a few moments, instead of something so dreadful they would both remember it as long as they lived.

Damaris did not shriek or faint. She did not even look away, but her skin was whiter than before, and her eyes hol-lower.

Hester realized with an increasing sickness inside that, far from disbelieving her, Damaris was not even surprised. It was as if it were a long-expected blow, coming at last. So Monk had been right. She had discovered that evening that Peverell was involved. Hester could have wept for her, for the pain. She longed to touch her, to take her in her arms as she would a weeping child, but it was useless. Nothing could reach or fold that wound.

“You knew, didn't you?” she said aloud. “You knew it that night!”

“No I didn't.” Damaris's voice was fiat, almost without expression, as if something in her were already destroyed.

“Yes you did. You knew Peverell was doing it too, and to Valentine Furnival. That's why you came down almost beside yourself with horror. You were close to hysterical. I don't know how you kept any control at all. I wouldn't have- I don't think-”

“Oh God-no!” Damaris was moved to utter horror at last. “No!” She uncurled herself so violently she half-fell off the settee, landing awkwardly on the ground. “No. No, I didn't. Not Pev. How could you even think such a thing? It's-it's-wild-insane. Not Pev!”

“But you knew.” For the first time Hester doubted. “Wasn't that what you discovered when you went up to Valentine's room?”

“No.” Damaris was on the floor in front of her, splayed out like a colt, her long legs at angles, and yet she was absolutely natural. “No! Hester-dear heaven, please believe me, it wasn't.”

Hester struggled with herself. Could it be the truth?

“Then what was it?” She frowned, racking her mind. “You came down from Valentine's room looking as if you'd seen the wrath of heaven. Why? What else could you possibly have found out? It was nothing to do with Alexandra or Thaddeus-or Peverell, then what?”