William Monk 02 - A Dangerous Mourning

jewels. Then it would seem murder, appalling, grieving, but not shameful. There would be acute sympathy, no ostracism, no blame. It could happen to anyone.
    “Then I seemed about to ruin it all by proving that no one had broken into the house, so a murderer must be found among the residents.”
    “So that is the crime—not the stabbing of Octavia, but the slow, judicial murder of Percival. How hideous, how immeasurably worse,” she said slowly. “But how can we possiblyprove it? They will go undiscovered and unpunished. They will get away with it! Whoever it is—”
    “What a nightmare. But who? I still don’t know. The scandal would harm them all. It could have been Cyprian and Romola, or even Cyprian alone. He is a big man, quite strong enough to carry Octavia from the study, if that was where it happened, up to her room and lay her on the bed. He would not even run much risk of disturbing anyone, since his room was next to hers.”
    It was a startlingly distressing thought. Cyprian’s face with its imagination and capacity for humor and pain came sharply to her mind. It would be like him to want to conceal his sister’s act, to save her name and see that she might be grieved for, and buried in holy ground.
    But Percival had been hanged for it.
    “Was Cyprian so weak he would have permitted that, knowing Percival could not be guilty?” she said aloud. She wished profoundly she could dismiss that as impossible, but Cyprian yielding to Romola’s emotional pressure was too clear in her mind, as was the momentary desperation she had seen in his face when she had watched him unobserved. And he of all of them seemed to grieve most deeply for Octavia, with the most wounding pity.
    “Septimus?” Monk asked.
    It was the kind of reckless, compassionate act Septimus might perform.
    “No,” she denied vehemently. “No—he would never permit Percival to hang.”
    “Myles would.” Monk was looking at her with intense emotion now, his face bleak and strained. “He would have done it to save the family name. His own status is tied inextricably with the Moidores’—in fact it is totally dependent on it. Araminta might have helped him—and might not.”
    A sharp memory returned to Hester of Araminta in the library, and of the charged emotion between her and Myles. Surely she knew he had not killed Octavia—and yet she was prepared to let Monk think he had, and watch Myles sweat with fear. That was a very peculiar kind of hatred—and power. Was it fueled by the horror of her own wedding night and its violence, or by his rape of the maid Martha—or by the factthat they were conspirators in concealing the manner of Octavia’s death, and then of allowing Percival to hang for it?
    “Or Basil himself?” she suggested.
    “Or even Basil for reputation—and Lady Moidore for love?” he said. “In fact Fenella is the only one for whom I can find no reason and no means.” His face was white, and there was a look of such grief and guilt in his eyes she felt the most intense admiration for his inner honesty, and a warmth towards the pity he was capable of but so rarely showed.
    “Of course it is all only speculation,” she said much more gently. “I know of no proof for any of it. Even if we had learned this before Percival was ever charged, I cannot even imagine how we might prove it. That is why I have come to you—and of course I wished to share the knowledge with you.”
    There was a look of profound concentration on his face. She waited, hearing the sounds of Mrs. Worley working in the kitchen and the rattle of hansoms and a dray cart passing in the street outside.
    “If she killed herself,” he said at last, “then someone removed the knife at the time they discovered her body, and presumably replaced it in the kitchen—or possibly kept it, but that seems unlikely. It does not seem, so far as we can see, the act of someone in panic. If they put the knife back … no.” His face screwed up in impatience. “They certainly did not put the peignoir back. They must have hidden them both in some place we did not search. And yet we found no trace of anyone having left the house between the time of her death and the time the police constable and the doctor were called.” He stared at her, as if seeking her thoughts, and yet he continued to speak. “In a house with as many staff as that, and maids up at five, it would be difficult to leave unseen—and to be sure of being unseen.”
    “But surely