William Monk 12 - Funeral in Blue

irony.
    “No, thank you,” she said quickly. “I’m just worried, like all of us.” There was no point in being evasive. “I have a letter and I need to compare the handwriting in order to know who sent it, because there is no signature. I am hoping I am mistaken, but I must be certain. Have you anything that Elissa wrote? It doesn’t matter what it is; a laundry list would do.”
    A shadow of humor crossed his eyes, then vanished. “Elissa didn’t write laundry lists. I expect I can think of something, but it will be at home, not here. . . .”
    “Doesn’t matter, if you will give me permission to look for it.”
    “What is the other letter you wish to compare it with?”
    She avoided his eyes. “I would rather not say . . . please . . . unless I have to.”
    There was a minute’s silence. Not even any hospital noises intruded through the thick walls into the room.
    “There is a letter she wrote me, some time ago, in the top drawer of the chest in my bedroom. I . . . I would like it back . . .” His voice broke and he gulped in, trying to control it.
    “I don’t need to take it away,” she said quickly. “I don’t need to read it . . . just compare the handwriting. They may be quite different, and it will mean nothing at all.”
    “And if they are the same?” he said huskily. “Will that mean that Elissa did something . . . wrong?”
    “No,” she denied it, then knew it was a lie. To have an addiction is a grief, but intentionally to introduce someone else to it she regarded as a profound wrong. “I may be mistaken. It is only an idea.”
    He drew in breath as if to ask again, then changed his mind.
    “If it has anything to do with her death, I will tell you,” she promised, still looking down. She could not bear to intrude on the pain in his eyes. “Before I tell anyone else, except William.”
    “Thank you.” Again he seemed about to continue, and changed his mind.
    “The room is full of people,” she said, gesturing towards the door. “What is your cleaning woman’s name, so that she knows I have spoken to you?”
    “Mrs. Talbot.”
    “Thank you.” And before either of them could struggle for anything more to say, she turned and went out through the waiting room and down the corridor to the entrance, and the street, to look for an omnibus or a hansom back towards Haverstock Hill.
    She alighted within a few yards of Kristian’s house, and as soon as she knocked Mrs. Talbot opened the door. She had been working on the hall floor, and the mop and bucket stood a few feet inside.
    Hester bade her good morning by name and explained her errand. Rather doubtfully, Mrs. Talbot conducted her upstairs, after carefully closing the front door. She remained in the bedroom while Hester went to the chest. Feeling guilty for the intrusion into what was deeply private, Hester opened the top drawer and looked through the dozen or so papers that were there. Actually, there were two letters from Elissa, undated, but from the first line or two she could see that they were old, from when they were immeasurably close.
    With fumbling hands she opened her reticule and took out the letter Charles had given her, although she already knew the answer. It was more scrawled, a little larger, but the characteristic curls and generous capitals were the same.
    She placed them side by side on top of the dresser, and for a sick, dizzy moment fought off reality, searching for differences, anything that would tell her they were only similar, not the same. On the second one the tails were longer. A
b
had a loop; the
z
was different. And even as she was doing it, she knew it was not true. It was time and haste which gave an illusion of difference. It was Elissa who had drawn Imogen into gambling. Of course, she had not forced her, only invited her, but Charles might blame her as if it were a seduction. It is so easy, so instinctive, to bring the fault away from those we love.
    Would he have known it was Elissa? He had no other writing to compare. But he did not need it. On his own admission, he had followed Imogen. He needed only to have kept one of the appointments in the letters, and seen whom she met. Why the Drury Lane lie? For the same reason as any lie—to conceal the truth.
    “Thank you,” she said to Mrs. Talbot. Conspicuously, she folded up Kristian’s letter and replaced it, closed the drawer, then put Charles’s letter back in her reticule. “I won’t disturb you anymore.”
    “You look poorly,