A Breach of Promise

Hester came into the room.

Monk wondered if she would refer to it or not. Perhaps it would be clumsy. Maybe it was still too delicate to be caught in words.

She looked at Gabriel, then at Monk, with anxiety in her eyes. Monk realized with a shock that she was not sure of what she had done. She had prompted the confrontation with hope but no certainty. He wanted to laugh because of the knowledge of her vulnerability it gave him. Without thinking about it he stood up and put his hand on her shoulder. It was a gesture of companionship, a desire she should know he understood.

She stiffened, motionless for a moment, then relaxed as if he had often done such a thing.

"How is your case progressing?" she asked him. Her voice quivered almost undetectably.

"Disastrously," he replied. "I came hoping you could offer some advice, although I am not sure anything will do any good now."

"Why? What has happened?" Now she forgot his gesture and thought only of the case.

"Nothing," he said. "That is the point. The case is going to come to a conclusion without Rathbone's having offered a shred of defense."

Hester glanced at Gabriel.

He smiled back, his eyes bright, his right hand closing tightly on the chair arm. They could hear Perdita's feet going down the stairs and Mrs. Ha

None of them spoke. Again the silence filled the room so overwhelmingly Monk could hear a horse's hooves on the road beyond the garden wall and the echo of a dropped tray somewhere far below them in the house, presumably the kitchen. He even thought he heard the front door open and close. Footsteps returned up the stairs. They all faced the door.

Perdita appeared, looking first at Gabriel, then at Hester.

"I was terribly rude, wasn't I?" she said shakily. "I should never have said that to her about being a good companion. Her husband is dead, isn't he?" She gulped her breath and sniffed loudly. Now that Mrs. Harming was gone she no longer had the courage or the anger to hold herself up.

"Well…" Gabriel started.

"Yes, you were rude," Hester agreed with a smile. "I daresay that is the first time a lieutenant's wife has ever insulted her with impunity. It will do her the world of good." She swung around. "Won't it, Gabriel?"

He was uncertain whether to relax, as if it might be too soon-now that the moment of effort was past and quite different control was called for, a different self-mastery. He looked from Hester to Perdita as if he was seeing some aspect of his wife for the first time. Their relationship had altered. They had to begin again, discover, find the measure of things they used to take for granted.

"Yes…" Gabriel said tentatively. "Yes-I…" He laughed a little huskily. "Meeting her gives me a new feeling for John Ha

"What was he like?" Perdita asked quickly. "Tell me about him."

"Well-well, he was…"

Hester took Monk by the arm and led him out of the room, leaving Gabriel to tell Perdita about John Ha

Outside on the landing Hester looked at Monk, searching his eyes.

He looked back at her, long and steadily. It was not uncomfortable; neither was daring the other to look away. For once there was no challenge between them, no sense of battle. There was no need for any kind of explanation.

She smiled slowly.

He put his arm around her shoulders, feeling the warmth of her through the thick gray-blue stuff dress. She was stiff and too thin, but then that was how she was. She had been thin the very first time he had seen her in the church with her sister-in-law. He had thought Josephine so much the more beautiful then. She probably still was, and until this moment he had forgotten her.

"How can I help with your case?" she asked, moving away and opening the door to the sitting room.

"I don't suppose you can," he answered, following her in. "Zillah Lambert seems to be a perfectly normal pretty young woman who flirts a little but whose reputation is blemishless. I don't even know what to look for."

Hester sat down on one of the chintz-covered chairs and concentrated.

He remained standing, staring at the window and the budding branches moving in the wind, and the chimneys beyond.

"You still think Melville discovered something about her?" she asked.

"No, I don't think so at all. I think he just decided he couldn't face the prospect of marriage, the intimacy of it, the loss of his privacy, the responsibility for another human being, the-the sense of being crowded, watched, depended upon… just the"-he spread his hands-"the sheer… oppression of it!"

"Some people quite enjoy being married," she said.

He heard the warning tone in her voice. For an instant, staring at her, he hovered between anger and laughter. Laughter won.

She stared at him. "What is so fu

"Don't force me to explain!" he retorted. "You don't need it, Hester. You understand me perfectly-just as I understand you. None of it needs saying. I want to find something for Rathbone to use to help Melville out of this idiotic mess. I don't say Melville deserves it. That isn't the point anymore. He won't marry Zillah Lambert. He probably won't marry anyone. He has behaved like a fool; he doesn't deserve to be ruined for it. Rathbone won't use anything I find in court, simply to make Lambert negotiate before it is all too late."

She took a deep breath. She was sitting upright, still as if she had a ruler to her back. "Is it possible one of her flirtations went too far, overbalanced into something a trifle irresponsible?"

"How would I know?"

"Well, her parents wouldn't discuss it," she said with certainty. "Her father would probably have no idea, but her mother would. Mothers can read their daughters quite fright-eningly well. I don't know why it is, but we all tend to imagine our parents were never young or in love." She shrugged. "Which is probably stupid, when you come to think of it. If there is anybody at all one can be absolutely certain had some experience of intimacy, it is one's mother. Otherwise one would not be here. But at fifteen or sixteen we never see it. I thought my mother the most old-fashioned and tepid of creatures alive." She smiled to herself, her thoughts far away. "I wanted to wear a red dress. There was this young man I thought was marvelous. He had ginger hair and a wonderful mustache…"

Monk held his tongue with great difficulty. He tried to imagine her at sixteen, and resented the young man with the mustache simply for having been there.

“I wanted to impress him," she went on ruefully. "The dress was very daring. He admired Lavinia Wentworth. She had black hair which curled. I thought the red dress would make the difference." She laughed with a ripple of real humor, no pity or regret, her eyes bright. "I would have looked awful. I was so pale, and far too bony to wear red. Mama made me wear white and green. The young man with the mustache ignored me utterly. I don't think he even saw me."

"Lavinia Wentworth?" He had to ask.

"No-actually, Violet Grassmore." She said it as if it still surprised her. "She told me afterwards that he had sticky hands and was the greatest bore she had ever met. Lavinia Wentworth went off with a young man in some sort of uniform. They became very close, but he was unsuitable, I don't recall why. Lavinia's mother took her away to Brighton or Hove or somewhere."

She swung around to face him.

"That's what you should look for! An association her mother stopped. That will be the one to pursue."

"Thank you. I suppose it is better than nothing. But there is so little time."