"Good afternoon, Lady Moidore," Hester said gently. "I am sorry you are unwell. Can I do anything to help?"
Beatrice did not move her head.
"Can you turn the clock back?" she asked with a tiny self-mocking smile.
"If I could, I would have done it many times," Hester answered. "But do you suppose it would really make a difference?"
Beatrice did not reply for several moments, then she sighed and stood up. She was dressed in a peach-colored robe, and with her blazing hair she had all the warmth of dying summer in her.
"No-probably none at all," she said wearily. "We would still be the same people, and that is what is wrong. We would all still be pursuing comfort, looking to save our own reputations and just as willing to hurt others." She stood by the window watching the water running down the panes. "I never realized Fenella was so consumed with vanity, so ridiculously trying to hold on to the trappings of youth. If she were not so prepared to destroy other people simply to get attention, I should feel more pity for her. As it is I am embarrassed by her."
"Perhaps it is all she feels she has." Hester spoke equally softly. She too found Fenella repellent in her willingness to hurt, especially to expose the foibles of the servants-that was gratuitous. But she understood the fear behind the need for some quality that would earn her survival, some material possessions, however come by, that were independent of Basil and his conditional charity, if charity was the word.
Beatrice swung around to face her, her eyes level, very wide.
"You understand, don't you? You know why we do these grubby things-"
Hester did not know whether to equivocate; tact was not what Beatrice needed now.
"Yes, it isn't difficult."
Beatrice dropped her eyes. "I'd rather not have known. I guessed some of it, of course. I knew Septimus gambled, and I thought he took wine occasionally from the cellars." She smiled. "In feet it rather amused me. Basil is so pompous about his claret." Her face darkened again and the humor vanished. "I didn't know Septimus took it for Fenella, and even then I wouldn't have cared about it if it were sympathy for her-but it isn't. I think he hates her. She's everything in a woman that is different from Christabel-that is the woman he loved. That isn't a good reason for hating anyone, though, is it?"
She hesitated, but Hester did not interrupt.
"Strange how being dependent, and being reminded of it all the time, sours you," Beatrice went on. "Because you feel helpless and inferior, you try to get power again by doing just the same to someone else. God how I hate investigations! It will take us years to forget all we've learned about each other- maybe by then it will be too late."
"Maybe you can learn to forgive instead?" Hester knew she was being impertinent, but it was the only thing she could say with any truth, and Beatrice not only deserved truth, she needed it.
Beatrice turned away and traced her finger on the dry inside of the window, following the racing drops.
"How do you forgive someone for not being what you wanted them to be, or what you thought they were? Especially when they are not sorry-perhaps they don't even understand?"
“Or again, perhaps they do?'' Hester suggested.”And how do they forgive us for having expected too much of them, instead of looking to see what they really were, and loving that?"
Beatrice's finger stopped.
"You are very frank, aren't you!" It was not a question. "But it isn't as easy as that, Hester. You see, I am not even sure that Percival is guilty. Am I wicked still to have doubts in my mind when the court says he is, and he's been sentenced, and the world says it is all over? I dream, and wake up with my mind torn with suspicions. I look at people and wonder, and I hear double and triple meanings behind what they say.''
Again Hester was racked with indecision. It would seem so
much kinder to suggest that no one else could be guilty, that it was only the aftermath of all the fear still lingering on, and in time it would melt away. Daily life would comfort, and this extraordinary tragedy would ease until it became only the grief one feels for any loss.
But then she thought of Percival in Newgate prison, counting the few days left to him until one morning there was no more time at all.
"Well if Percival is not guilty, who else could it have been?" She heard the words spoken aloud and instantly regretted her judgment. It was brutal. She never for an instant thought Beatrice would believe it was Rose, and none of the other servants had even entered the field of possibility. But it could not be taken back. AD she could do was wait for Beatrice's answer.
“I don't know.'' Beatrice measured each word.”I have lain in the dark each night, thinking this is my own house, where I came when I was married. I have been happy here, and wretched. I have borne five children here, and lost two, and now Octavia. I've watched them grow up, and themselves marry. IVe watched their happiness and their misery. It is all as familiar as bread and butter, or the sound of carriage wheels. And yet perhaps I know only the skin of it all, and the flesh beneath is as strange to me as Japan.''
She moved to the dressing table and began to take the pins from her hair and let it down in a shining stream like bright copper.
"The police came here and were full of sympathy and respectfully polite. Then they proved that no one could have broken in from outside, so whoever killed Octavia was one of us. For weeks they asked questions and forced us to find the answers-ugly answers, most of them, things about ourselves that were shabby, or selfish, or cowardly." She put the pins in a neat little pile in one of the cut glass trays and picked up the silver-backed brush.
“I had forgotten about Myles and that poor maid. That may seem incredible, but I had. I suppose I never thought about it much at the time, because Araminta didn't know." She pulled at her hair with the brush in long, hard strokes. "I am a coward, aren't I," she said very quietly. It was a statement, not a question. "I saw what I wanted to, and hid from the rest. And Cyprian, my beloved Cyprian-doing the same: never standing up to his father, just living in a dream world, gambling and idling his time instead of doing what he really wanted.'' She tugged even harder with the brush. "He's bored with Romola, you know. It used not to matter, but now he's suddenly realized how interesting companionship can be, and conversation that's real, where people say what they think instead of playing polite games. And of course it's far too late."
Without any forewarning Hester realized fully what she had woken in indulging her own vanity and pleasure in Cyprian's attention. She was only partly guilty, because she had not intended hurt, but it was enough. Neither had she thought, or cared, and she had sufficient intelligence that she could have.
"And poor Romola," Beatrice went on, still brushing fiercely. "She has not the slightest idea what is wrong. She has done precisely what she was taught to do, and it has ceased to work.''
"It may again," Hester said feebly, and did not believe it.
But Beatrice was not listening for inflections of a voice. Her own thoughts clamored too loudly.
"And the police have arrested Percival and gone away, leaving us to wonder what really happened." She began to brush with long, even strokes. “Why did they do that, Hester? Monk didn't believe it was Percival, I'm sure of that." She swiveled around on the dresser seat and looked at Hester, the brush still in her hand. "You spoke to him. Did you think he believed it was Percival?"
Hester let out her breath slowly. "No-no, I thought not."
Beatrice turned back to the mirror again and regarded her hair critically. "Then why did the police arrest him? It wasn't Monk, you know. Annie told me it was someone else, not even the young sergeant either. Was it simply expediency, do you suppose? The newspapers were making a terrible fuss about it and blaming the police for not solving it, so Cyprian told me. And Basil wrote to the Home Secretary, I know." Her voice sank lower. "I imagine their superiors demanded they produce some result very quickly, but I did not think Monk would give in. I thought he was such a strong man-" She did not add that Percival was expendable when a senior officer's career was threatened, but Hester knew she was thinking it; the anger in her mouth and the misery in her eyes were sufficient.