The Lily Hand and Other Stories by Ellis Peters Page B

cabinet full of very good china, the carpet was Persian, and the piano a magnificent grand. Jade and cut glass ornamented the shelf over the fireplace. No need to ask where the money had gone. I remembered, too, now that I had the clue, a coat which I’d taken for granted as a mere imitation of the fur it seemed to be. With tastes like that, she obviously had no funds to spare for her husband’s defence.
    It was I who got him a solicitor. He had wanted to plead guilty, but Grant tried to persuade him to change his plea. He was still inclined to go where he was pushed, past caring where our efforts landed him, since his world had already fallen to pieces; but when he understood that his wife meant to take the stand and give evidence if the case had to be heard in full, he made up his mind irrevocably on a plea of guilty. He was entirely ignorant of the obligations and exemptions of law, and thought he was sparing her a terrible ordeal, and we let him think it. There wasn’t much else we could do for him.
    The police had opposed bail, purely because they were afraid of what he might do to himself if they let him out of their care. I went to see him shortly before the assizes. He was still a very sick man, he was going to be that for a long time ahead, but in a stunned fashion he could talk coherently and reason sensibly by then. He talked about her; he always did.
    â€˜You know, I never really believed in my luck. Someone as beautiful and gay and bright as Eileen – what could she find in a man like me? She could have married whom she pleased, they were round her thick as bees, fellows with plenty of self-confidence, fellows with good prospects. And she took me and my twelve pounds a week, and no hope of getting any farther!
    â€˜I got to feeling how badly I was letting her down. She was meant to have beautiful things, they’re her proper setting, and she loves them so.
    â€˜Oh, you mustn’t think she complained! She admired them just like a child, wondering why she couldn’t have them, when she wanted them so much. She didn’t realize how costly nice things are. Money was something she didn’t understand. She just fell in love with things she saw. I couldn’t bear it. It was like letting a child starve in front of your eyes.’
    Through his labouring voice I could hear hers, that clear, constant, injured voice lamenting that other wives should have things which were out of her reach, reminding him eternally, in oblique ways, that she might have married so-and-so and been well off, that she’d condescended to his hopeless, helpless love, and he owed it to her to maintain her properly. I heard the endless, inescapable implication of his miserable betrayal of her, and her forsaken condition, until everything, even his honour, which meant more to him than to most men nowadays, became expendable in the cause of her happiness.
    What he had done was horrible to him, but in the same circumstances he would have done it again. In his own eyes he was damned in any case, and he embraced his damnation if it had given her a few gleams of pleasure.
    â€˜I asked her not to come and see me here,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t bear that. Not even to write, until the trial’s over and everything’s settled.’
    I thanked God for that, at any rate, since it saved him from wondering and grieving when she didn’t come; for, of course, she wouldn’t have dreamt of coming near him.
    Always, before I left him, he asked me breathlessly, as though the words burst out of his heart and tore their way to his throat without any will of his, ‘Have you seen her? How’s she looking?’
    I told him she was bearing up admirably. What else could I have done? I couldn’t tell him she’d already persuaded the landlord to transfer the tenancy of the house to her, and had been seen out with him in the town on several evenings lately; or that she was reputed to be about