Excerpt of Funeral in Blue by Anne Perry

The operating room was silent except for the deep, regular
breathing of the gaunt young woman who lay on the table,
the immense bulge of her stomach laid bare.

Hester stared across at Kristian Beck. It was the first
operation of the day, and there was no blood on his white
shirt yet. The chloroform sponge had done its miraculous
work and was set aside. Kristian picked up the scalpel and
touched the point to the young woman’s flesh. She did not
flinch; her eyelids did not move. He pressed deeper, and a
thin, red line appeared.

Hester looked up and met his eyes, dark, luminous with
intelligence. They both knew the risk, even with
anesthesia, that they could do little to help. A growth
this size was probably fatal, but without surgery the woman
would die anyway.

Kristian lowered his eyes and continued cutting. The blood
spread. Hester swabbed it up. The woman lay motionless
except for her breathing, her face waxen pale, cheeks
sunken, shadows around the sockets of her eyes. Her wrists
were so thin the shape of the bones poked through the skin.
It was Hester who had walked beside her from the ward along
the corridor, half supporting her weight, trying to ease
the anxiety which had seemed to torment her every time she
had been to the hospital over the last two months. Her pain
seemed as much in her mind as in her body.

Kristian had insisted on surgery, against the wishes of
Fermin Thorpe, the chairman of the Hospital Governors.
Thorpe was a cautious man who enjoyed authority, but he had
no courage to step outside the known order of things he
could defend if anyone in power were to question him. He
loved rules; they were safe. If you followed the rules
youcould justify anything.

Kristian was from Bohemia, and in Thorpe’s mind he did not
belong in the Hampstead Hospital in London with his
imaginative ways and his foreign accent, however slight,
and his disregard for the way things should be done. He
should not risk the hospital’s reputation by performing an
operation whose chances of success were so slight. But
Kristian had an answer, an argument, for everything. And,
of course, Lady Callandra Daviot had taken his side; she
always did.

Kristian smiled at the memory, not looking up at Hester but
down at his hands as they explored the wound he had made,
looking for the thing that had caused the obstruction, the
wasting, the nausea and the huge swelling.

Hester mopped away more blood and glanced at the woman’s
face. It was still perfectly calm. Hester would have given
anything she could think of to have had chloroform on the
battlefield in the Crimea five years ago, or even at
Manassas, in America, three months back.

“Ah!” Kristian let out a grunt of satisfaction and pulled
back, gently easing out of the cavity something that looked
like a dark, semiporous sponge such as one might use to
scrub one’s back, or even a saucepan. It was about the size
of a large domestic cat.

Hester was too astounded to speak. She stared at it, then
at Kristian.

“Trichobezoar,” he said softly. Then he met her gaze of
incredulity. “Hair,” he explained. “Sometimes when people
have certain temperamental disorders, nervous anxiety and
depression, they feel compelled to pull out their own hair
and eat it. It is beyond their power to stop, without help.”

Hester stared at the stiff, repellent mass lying in the
dish and felt her own throat contract and her stomach gag
at the thought of such a thing inside anyone.

“Swab,” Kristian directed. “Needle.”

“Oh!” She moved to obey just as the door opened and
Callandra came in, closing it softly behind her. She looked
at Kristian first, a softness in her eyes she disguised
only as he turned to her. He gestured to the dish and
smiled.

Callandra looked startled, then she turned to Hester. “What
is it?”

“Hair,” Hester replied, swabbing the blood away again as
Kristian worked.

“Will she be all right?” Callandra asked.

“There’s a chance,” Kristian answered. Suddenly he smiled,
extraordinarily sweetly, but there was a sharp and profound
satisfaction in his eyes. “You can go and tell Thorpe it
was a trichobezoar, not a tumor, if you like.”

“Oh, yes, I’d like,” she answered, her face melting into
something almost like laughter, and without waiting she
turned and went off on the errand.

Hester glanced across at Kristian, then bent to the work
again, mopping blood and keeping the wound clean, as the
needle pierced the skin and drew the sides together, and
finally it was bandaged.

“She’ll feel a great deal of pain when she wakens,”
Kristian warned. “She mustn’t move too much.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Hester promised. “Laudanum?”

“Yes, but only for the first day,” he warned. “I’ll be here
if you need me. Are you going to stay? You’ve watched her
all through, haven’t you?”

“Yes.” Hester was not a nurse at the hospital. She came on
a voluntary basis, like Callandra, who was a military
surgeon’s widow, a generation older than Hester, but they
had been the closest of friends now for five years. Hester
was probably the only one who knew how deeply Callandra
loved Kristian, and that only this week she had finally
declined an offer of marriage from a dear friend because
she could not settle for honorable companionship and close
forever the door on dreams of immeasurably more. But they
were only dreams. Kristian was married, and that ended all
possibility of anything more than the loyalty and the
passion for healing and justice that held them now, and
perhaps the shared laughter now and then, the small
victories and the understanding.

Hester, recently married herself, and knowing the depth and
the sweep of love, ached for Callandra that she sacrificed
so much. And yet loving her husband as she did, for all his
faults and vulnera- bilities, Hester, too, would rather
have been alone than accept anyone else.

It was late afternoon when Hester left the hospital and
took the public omnibus down Hampstead High Street to
Haverstock Hill, and then to Euston Road. A newsboy shouted
something about five hundred American soldiers surrendering
in New Mexico. The papers carried the latest word on the
Civil War, but the anxiety was far deeper over the looming
cotton famine in Lancashire because of the blockading of
the Confederate States.

She hurried past him and walked the last few yards to
Fitzray Street. It was early September and still mild, but
growing dark, and the lamplighter was well on his rounds.
When she approached her front door she saw a tall, slender
man waiting impatiently outside. He was immaculately
dressed in high wing collar, black frock coat and striped
trousers, as one would expect of a City gentleman, but his
whole attitude betrayed agitation and deep unhappiness. It
was not until he heard her footsteps and turned so the
lamplight caught his face that she recognized her brother,
Charles Latterly.

“Hester!” He moved towards her swiftly, then
stopped. “How . . . how are you?”

“I’m very well,” she answered truthfully. It was several
months since she had seen him, and for someone as rigidly
controlled and conventional as Charles, it was
extraordinary to find him waiting in the street like this.
Presumably, Monk was not there yet or he would have gone
inside.

She opened the door and Charles followed her in. The gas
lamp burned very low in the hall, and she turned it up and
led the way to the front room, which was where Monk
received prospective clients who came with their terrors
and anxieties for him to attempt to solve. Since they had
both been out all day, there was a fire laid but not lit. A
bowl of tawny chrysanthemums and scarlet nasturtiums gave
some light and an illusion of warmth.

She turned and looked at Charles. As always, he was
meticulously polite. “I’m sorry to intrude. You must be
tired. I suppose you have been nursing someone all day?”

“Yes, but I think she may get better. At least, the
operation was a success.”

He made an attempt at a smile. “Good.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she offered. “I would.”

“Oh . . . yes, yes, of course. Thank you.” He sat gingerly
on one of the two armchairs, his back stiff and upright as
if to relax were impossible. She had seen so many of Monk’s
clients sit like that, terrified of putting their fears
into words, and yet so burdened by them and so desperate
for help that they had finally found the courage to seek a
private agent of enquiry. It was as if Charles had come to
see Monk, and not her. His face was pale and there was a
sheen of sweat on it, and his hands were rigid in his lap.
If she had touched him she would have felt locked muscles.

She had not seen him look so wretched since their parents
had died five and a half years ago, when she was still in
Scutari with Flor- ence Nightingale. Their father had been
ruined by a financial swindle, and had taken his own life
because of the ensuing disgrace. Their mother had died
within the month. Her heart had been weak, and the grief
and distress so soon after the loss of her younger son in
battle had been too much for her.

Looking at Charles now, Hester’s similar fears for him
returned with a force that took her by surprise. They had
seen each other very little since Hester’s marriage, which
Charles had found difficult to approve—after all, Monk was
a man without a past. A carriage accident six years ago had
robbed him of his memory. Monk had deduced much about his
past, but the vast majority of it remained unknown. Monk
had been in the police force at the time of his meeting
with Hester, and no one in the very respectable Latterly
family had had any prior connections with the police.
Beyond question, no one had married into that type of
social background.

Charles looked up, expecting her to fetch the tea. Should
she ask him what troubled him so profoundly, or would it be
tactless, and perhaps put him off confiding in her?

“Of course,” she said briskly, and went to the small
kitchen to riddle the stove, loosen the old ashes and put
more coal on to boil the kettle. She set out biscuits on a
plate. They were bought, not homemade. She was a superb
nurse, a passionate but unsuccessful social reformer, and
as even Monk would admit, a pretty good detective, but her
domestic skills were still in the making.

When the tea was made she returned and set the tray down,
poured both cups and waited while he took one and sipped
from it. His embarrassment seemed to fill the air and made
her feel awkward as well. She watched him fidget with the
cup and gaze around the small, pleasant room, looking for
something to pretend to be interested in.

If she was blunt and asked him outright, would she make it
better or worse? “Charles . . .” she began.

He turned to look at her. “Yes?”

She saw a profound unhappiness in his eyes. He was only a
few years older than she, and yet there was a weariness in
him, as if he no longer had any vitality and already felt
himself past the best. It touched her with fear. She must
be gentle. He was too complex, far too private for
bluntness.

“It’s . . . it’s rather a long time since I’ve seen you,”
he began apologetically. “I didn’t realize. The weeks seem
to . . .” He looked away, fishing for words and losing them.