William Monk 02 - A Dangerous Mourning

him?”
    It was apparently the right mixture of supplication, good reasoning, feminine appeal, and the authority of a nurse which draws from most well-bred men an automatic obedience.
    “I will certainly have that message delivered to him, ma’am,” he agreed, standing a trifle straighter. “What name shall I give?”
    “Hester Latterly,” she answered. “I regret seeking him atsuch short notice, but I am still nursing a gentleman late of active service, and he is not well enough that I should leave him for above a few hours.” That was a very elastic version of the truth, but not quite a downright lie.
    “Of course.” His respect increased. He wrote down the name “Hester Latterly” and added a note as to her occupation and the urgency of her call, summoned an orderly and dispatched him with the message to Major Tallis.
    Hester was quite happy to wait in silence, but the doorman seemed disposed to converse, so she answered his questions on the battles she had witnessed and found they had both been present at the battle of Inkermann. They were deep in reminiscences when the orderly returned to say Major Tallis would receive Miss Latterly in ten minutes, if she would care to wait upon him in his office.
    She accepted with a trifle more haste than she had meant to; it was a definite subtraction from the dignity she had tried to establish, but she thanked the doorman for his courtesy. Then she walked very uprightly behind the orderly inside the entrance hall, up the wide staircase and into the endless corridors until she was shown into a waiting room with several chairs, and left.
    It was rather more than ten minutes before Major Tallis opened the inner door. A dapper lieutenant walked out past Hester, apparently without seeing her, and she was shown in.
    Geoffrey Tallis was a handsome man in his late thirties, an ex-cavalry officer who had been given an administrative post after a serious injury, from which he still walked with a limp. But without Hester’s care he might well have lost his leg altogether and been unable to continue a career of any sort. His face lit with pleasure when he saw her, and he held out his hand in welcome.
    She gave him hers and he grasped it hard.
    “My dear Miss Latterly, what a remarkable pleasure to see you again, and in so much more agreeable circumstances. I hope you are well, and that things prosper with you?”
    She was quite honest, not for any purpose but because the words were spoken before she thought otherwise.
    “I am very well, thank you, and things prosper only moderately. My parents died, and I am obliged to make my way, but I have the means, so I am fortunate. But I admit it is hardto adjust to England again, and to peace, where everyone’s preoccupations are so different—” She left the wealth of implication unsaid: the withdrawing room manners, the stiff skirts, the emphasis on social position and manners. She could see that he read it all in her face, and his own experiences had been sufficiently alike for more explanation to be redundant.
    “Oh indeed.” He sighed, letting go of her hand. “Please be seated and tell me what I may do to be of help to you.”
    She knew enough not to waste his time. The preliminaries had already been dealt with.
    “What can you tell me of Captain Harry Haslett, who was killed at Balaclava? I ask because his widow has recently met a most tragic death. I am acquainted with her mother; indeed I have been nursing her through her time of bereavement, and am presently nursing her uncle, a retired officer.” If he asked her Septimus’s name she would affect not to know the circumstances of his “retirement.”
    Major Tallis’s face clouded over immediately.
    “An excellent officer, and one of the nicest men I ever knew. He was a fine commander of men. It came to him naturally because he had courage and a sense of justice that men admired. There was humor in him, and some love of adventure, but not bravado. He never took unnecessary chances.” He smiled with great sadness. “I think more than most men, he wanted to live. He had a great love for his wife—in fact the army was not the career he would have chosen; he entered it only to earn himself the means to support his wife in the manner he wished and to make some peace with his father-in-law, Sir Basil Moidore—who paid for his commission as a wedding gift, I believe, and watched over his career with keen interest. What an ironic tragedy.”
    “Ironic?” she said