A Sudden Fearful Death

chapter 2
The following day about ten o'clock Monk walked along to Hastings Street again and called at number fourteen. This time Julia received him in a state of some concern.

"Good morning, Mr. Monk," she said, coming in and closing the door behind her. She was dressed in pale blue-gray and it became her delicate coloring, even though it was a very ordinary day dress with a high neck and the barest of trimmings. "You will be circumspect, won't you?" she said anxiously. "I don't know how you can possibly make inquiries without either telling people what you are seeking or arousing their suspicions. It would be disastrous if they were to learn the truth, or even to imagine it!" She stared up at him with puckered brows and a flush in her cheeks. "Even Audley, Mr. Penrose, was curious yesterday as to why you called. He is not especially fond of cousin Albert, and had not thought that I was either. Which is true, I am not; he was just the most suitable excuse that came to my mind."

"There is no need to be concerned, Mrs. Penrose," he said gravely. "I shall be very discreet."

"But how?" she pressed urgently, her voice sharpening. "What could you possibly say to explain away such questions? Servants talk, you know." She shook her head sharply. "Even the best of them. And what would my neighbors think? What imaginable reason does a respectable person have for employing a private inquiry agent?"

"Do you wish to cease the inquiry, ma'am?" he asked quite quietly. He would understand it very well if she did; indeed, he still did not know what use she would make of the information he sought, even if he found it for her, since no prosecution was planned.

"No," she said fiercely, gritting her teeth. "No I do not. It's just that I must think very clearly before I allow you to proceed. It would be reckless to go ahead and do more damage simply because I feel strongly about the matter."

"I had planned to say there had been a small unpleasantness of damage in the garden," Monk told her. "A few broken plants, and if you have them, glass frames. I will ask if the gardeners or servants have seen any boys playing who might have trespassed and done the harm. That will hardly be a cause for scandal or unseemly speculation."

Her face flickered with amazement, then relief. "Oh, what an excellent idea," she said eagerly. "I should never have thought of that. It sounds so simple and everyday a thing. Thank you, Mr. Monk, my mind is quite at ease."

He smiled in spite of himself. "I'm glad you are satisfied. But your own gardener will not be quite so easy."

"Why not?"

"Because he is perfectly aware that no one has broken your cold frames," he replied. "I had better make it someone else's, and hope they do not compare notes all along the road."

"Oh!" But she gave a little laugh, and the thought of it seemed to amuse her rather than trouble her. "Would you like to see Rodwell today? He is in the back garden now."

"Yes, thank you. This would seem a good opportunity." And without further discussion she led him to the side door into the arbor and left him to find the gardener, who was bent to his knees pulling weeds from the border.

"Good morning, Rodwell," Monk said pleasantly, stopping beside him.

"Mornin' sir," Rodwell answered without looking up.

"Mrs. Penrose gave me permission to speak to you about some breakages locally, in case you happened to have seen any strangers in the area," Monk continued.

"Oh?" Rodwell sat back on his haunches and regarded Monk curiously. "Breakages o' what, sir?"

"Cold frames, bedding plants, that sort of thing."

Rodwell pursed his lips. "No, I can't say as I've seen anyone strange 'round 'ere. Sounds like boys to me, that does-playing, like as not." He grunted. 'Throwin' balls, cricket, and that sort o' thing. Mischief, more'n like, not downright wickedness."

"Probably," Monk agreed, nodding. "But it is not a pleasant thought that some stranger might be hanging around, doing malicious damage, even if it's only slight."

"Mrs. Penrose never said nothing about it." Rodwell screwed up his face and peered at Monk doubtfully.

"She wouldn't." Monk shook his head. "Nothing broken in your garden, I daresay."

"No-nothing at all-well... no but a few flowers, like, against the west wall. But that could 'a bin anything."

"You haven't seen anyone you don't know hanging around in the last two weeks or so? You are sure?"

"No one at all," Rodwell said with absolute certainty. "I'd 'a chased them orf smart if I 'ad. Don't 'old wi' strangers in gardens. Things get broke, just like you said."

"Oh well, thank you for your time, Rodwell."

"You're welcome, sir." And with that the gardener adjusted his cap to a slightly different angle and resumed his weeding.

Next Monk called at number sixteen, explained his purpose, and asked if he might speak to the lady of the house. The maid took the message and returned within ten minutes to admit him to a small but extremely pleasant writing room where a very elderly lady with many ropes of pearls around her neck and across her bosom was sitting at a rosewood bureau. She turned and looked at Monk with curiosity, and then as she regarded his face more closely, with considerable interest. Monk guessed she must be at least ninety years old.

"Well," she said with satisfaction. "You are an odd-looking young man to be inquiring about broken glass in the garden." She looked him up and down, from his discreet polished boots up his immaculate trouser legs to his elegant jacket, and lastly to his hard, lean face with its penetrating eyes and sardonic mouth. "You don't look to me as if you would know a spade or a hoe if you tripped over one," she went on. "And you certainly don't earn your living with your hands."

His own interest was piqued. She had an amiable face, deeply lined, full of humor and curiosity, and there was nothing critical in her remarks. The anomaly appeared to please her.

"You had better explain yourself." She turned away from the bureau completely as if he interested her far more than the letters she had been writing.

He smiled. "Yes ma'am," he conceded. "I am not really concerned with the glass. It can very easily be replaced. But Mrs. Penrose is a little alarmed at the thought of strangers wandering around. Miss Gillespie, her sister, is given to spending time in the summerhouse, and it is not pleasant to think that one might be being watched when one is unaware of it. Perhaps the concern is unnecessary, but it is there nonetheless."

"A Peeping Tom. How very distasteful," the old lady said, grasping the point instantly. "Yes, I can understand her pursuing the matter. A girl of spirit, Mrs. Penrose, but a very delicate constitution, I think. These fair-skinned girls sometimes are. It must be very hard for them all."

Monk was puzzled; it seemed an overstatement. "Hard for them all?" he repeated.

"No children," the old lady said, looking at him with her head a trifle on one side. "But you must be aware of that, young man?"

"Yes, yes of course I am. I had not thought of it in connection with her health."

"Oh dear-isn't that a man all over." She made a little tut-tut noise. "Of course it is to do with her health. She has been married some eight or nine years. What else would it be? Poor Mr. Penrose puts a very good face on it, but he cannot help but feel it all the same. Another cross for her to bear, poor creature. Afflictions of health are among the worst." She let out her breath in a little sigh. She regarded him closely with a slight squint of concentration. "Not that you would know, by the look of you. Well, I haven't seen any Peeping Toms, but then I cannot see beyond the garden window anyway. My sight is going. Happens when you get to my age. Not that you'd know that either. Don't suppose you are more than forty-five."

Monk winced, but forbore from saying anything. He preferred to think he did not look anything like forty-five, but this was not the time for vanity, and this outspoken old lady was certainly not the person with whom to try anything so transparent.

"Well, you had better ask the outdoor servants," she went on. "Mind you, that is only the gardener and sometimes the scullery maid, if she can escape the cook's eye. Made it sound like a whole retinue, didn't I? Ask them, by all means. Let me know if they tell you anything interesting. There's little enough of interest ever happens here nowadays."

He smiled. "The neighborhood is too quiet for you?"

She sighed. "I don't get about as much as I used to, and nobody brings me the gossip. Perhaps there isn't any." Her eyes widened. "We've all become so terribly respectable these days. It's the Queen. When I was a girl it was different." She shook her head sadly. "We had a king then, of course. Wonderful days. I remember when they brought the news of Trafalgar. It was the greatest naval victory in Europe, you know." She looked at Monk sharply to be sure he appreciated the import of what she was saying. "It was a matter of England's survival against the Emperor of the French, and yet the fleet came in with mourning flags flying, and in silence-because Nelson had fallen." She gazed beyond Monk into the garden, her eyes misty with remembrance. "My father came into the room and my mother saw his face and we all stopped smiling. 'What is it?' she said immediately. 'Are we defeated?' My father had tears on his cheeks. It was the only time I ever saw him weep."

Her face was alight with the wonder of it still, all the myriad lines subtly altered by the innocence and the emotions of youth.

" 'Nelson is dead,' my father said very gravely. 'Have we lost the war?' my mother asked. 'Shall we be invaded by Napoleon?' 'No,' my father answered. 'We won. The French fleet is all sunk. No one will land on England's shores again.' " She stopped and stared up at Monk, watching to see if he caught the magnitude of it.

He met her eyes and she perceived that he had caught her vision.

"I danced all night before Waterloo," she went on enthusiastically, and Monk imagined the colors, the music, and the swirling skirts she could still see in her mind. "I was in Brussels with my husband. I danced with the Iron Duke himself." All the laughter vanished from her expression. "And then, of course, the next day there was the battle." Her voice was suddenly husky and she blinked several times. "And all that night we heard news and more news of the dead. The war was over, the Emperor beaten forever. It was the greatest victory in Europe, but dear God, how many young men died! I don't think I knew anyone who had not lost somebody, either dead or so injured as never to be the same again."

Monk had seen the carnage left by the Crimean War and he knew what she meant; even though that conflict had been so much smaller, the spirit and the pain were the same. In a sense it was worse, because there was no perceivable purpose to it. England was under no threat, as it had been from Napoleon.

She saw the emotion and the anger in his face. Suddenly her own sorrow vanished. "And of course I knew Lord Byron," she went on with sudden animation. "What a man! There was a poet for you. So handsome." She gave a little laugh. "So beautifully romantic and dangerous. What wonderful scandal there was then. Such burning ideals, and men did something about them then." She gave a little gasp of fury, her ancient hands clenched into fists on her lap. "And what have we today? Tennyson."

She groaned and then looked at Monk with a sweet smile. "I suppose you want to see the gardener about your Peeping Tom? Well, you had better go and do so, with my blessing."

He smiled back at her with genuine regard. It would have been much pleasanter to remain and listen to her reminiscences, but he had undertaken a duty.

He rose to his feet. "Thank you, ma'am. Courtesy compels me, or I should not leave so readily."

"Ha! Very nicely said, young man." She nodded. "I think from your face there is more to you than chasing trivia, but that is your affair. Good day to you."

He bowed his head and took his leave of her. However, neither the gardener nor the scullery maid could tell him anything of use whatever. They had not seen any stranger in the area. There was no access to the garden of number fourteen except if someone chose to climb the wall, and the flower beds on either side had not been damaged or disturbed. A Peeping Tom, if indeed there had been such a person, must have come some other way.

The occupant of number twelve was of no assistance either. He was a fussy man with gray hair, which was sparse in front, and gold-rimmed eyeglasses. No, he had seen no one in the area who was not known to him and of excellent character. No, he had suffered no breakages in his cold frames. He was sorry, but he could be of no help, and since he was extremely busy, would Mr. Monk be so good as to excuse him.

The residents of the house whose garden abutted number fourteen at the end were considerably more lively. There were at least seven children whom Monk counted, three of them boys, so he abandoned the broken cold frames and returned to the Peeping Tom.

"Oh dear," Mrs. Hylton said with a frown. "What a foolish thing. Men with too little to occupy themselves, no doubt. Everyone ought to be busy." She poked a strand of hair back into its place and smoothed her skirts. "Keep themselves out of trouble. Miss Gillespie, you said? What a shame. Such a nice young lady. And her sister as well. Devoted, they are, which is so pleasant to see, don't you think?" She waved Monk toward the window where he could have a good view of their garden, the wall dividing it from the Penroses', but gave him no time to answer her rhetorical question. "And a very agreeable man, Mr. Penrose is too, I am sure."

"Do you have a gardener, Mrs. Hylton?"

"A gardener?" She was obviously surprised. "Dear me, no. I am afraid the garden is rather left to its own devices, apart from my husband cutting the grass every so often." She smiled happily. "Children, you know? I was afraid at first you were going to say someone had been too wild with the cricket ball and broken a window. You have no idea what a relief it was!"

"The action of a Peeping Tom does not frighten you, ma'am?"

"Oh dear no." She looked at him narrowly. "I doubt if there really was one, you know. Miss Gillespie is very young. Young girls are given to fancies at times, and to nerves." She smoothed her skirts again and rearranged the billowing fabric. "It comes of just sitting around waiting to meet a suitable young man, and hoping he will choose her above her fellows?' She took a deep breath. "Of course, she is very pretty, and that will help, but entirely dependent upon her brother-in-law to support her until then. And as I understand it, there is no dowry to mention. I shouldn't be too concerned, if I were you, Mr. Monk. I expect it was a cat in the bushes, or some such thing."

"I see," Monk said thoughtfully, not that his mind was on any kind of animal, or Marianne's possible imagination, but upon her financial dependence. "I daresay you are right," he added quickly. "Thank you, Mrs. Hylton. I think I shall take your advice and abandon the pursuit. I wish you good day, ma'am."

He had luncheon in a small, busy public house in the Euston Road, and then walked for some time in deep thought, hands in his pockets. The more he considered the evidence the more he disliked the conclusions it suggested. He had never thought it likely anyone came over the garden wall, now he considered it so improbable as to exclude it from his mind. Whoever had attacked Marianne had come through her own house, and therefore was known either to her or to her sister, almost certainly both.

Since they did not intend to prosecute, why had.they called Monk? Why had they mentioned the matter at all?

The answer to that was obvious. Julia did not know of it. Marianne had been forced to explain the bruises in some way, and her state of distress; probably her clothes were torn or stained with grass or even blood. And for her own reasons she had not been willing to tell Julia who it was. Perhaps she had encouraged him to begin with, and then become frightened, and since she was ashamed, had claimed it was a stranger, the only answer that would be morally acceptable. No one would believe she would yield to a complete stranger or give him the slightest encouragement.

It was after three when he returned to Hastings Street and again sought admittance. He found Julia in the withdrawing room with Marianne and Audley, who had apparently come home early yet again.

"Mr. Monk?" he said with quite open surprise. "I had not realized cousin Albert had spoken of us so exceedingly well!"

"Audley!" Julia rose to her feet, her cheeks hot pink. "Please come in, Mr. Monk. I am sure my husband did not mean to make you feel less than welcome." Her eyes searched Monk's face with an anxiety she could not conceal, but she studiously avoided looking at Marianne. "It is a little early for tea, but may we offer you some cold lemonade? It is really a very hot day.J›

"Thank you." Monk accepted both because he was thirsty and because he wished to observe them all a little more closely, especially the two women. How deep was the trust between them, and how much was Julia really misled? Did she suspect her sister of an unwise dalliance? Was it all perhaps to protect her from Audley's moral outrage if he thought she were less than a victim? "That is very kind of you," he added, sitting in the chair she indicated.

She rang the bell and dispatched the maid to fetch the refreshments.

Monk felt he owed Julia some explanation for Audley, and racked his brain to think of an acceptable lie. To say he had left something behind would be too transparent. Audley would be suspicious immediately, so would Monk in his place. Dare he suggest an errand? Would Julia be quick enough?

But she preempted him.

"I am afraid I have not got it ready yet," she said, swallowing hard.

"What ready?" Audley asked, frowning at her.

She turned to him with a guileless smile. "Mr. Monk said he would be kind enough to take a small parcel back to cousin Albert for me, but I have been remiss and it is not yet ready."

"What are you sending to Albert?" Audley demanded, frowning. "I didn't know you were so fond of him. You did not give me that impression."

"I suppose I am not, really." She was elaborately casual, but Monk saw that her hands were clenched tight. "It is a relationship I feel I should keep. After all, he is family." She forced a smile. "I thought a small gift would be a good beginning. Besides, he has several family records I should be most obliged to share."

"You have not mentioned this before," he argued. "What records?"

"Of our grandparents," Marianne put in quickly, her voice sharp. "They are his also, and since he is older than we, he has memories which are far more vivid. I should like to know more. After all, I never knew my mother. Julia was kind enough to suggest cousin Albert might help."

Audley drew breath to say something further, then changed his mind. For a young woman utterly dependent upon him, Marianne had a forthright manner and appeared to have little awe of him. Or perhaps she was sufficiently devoted to Julia that she would have charged to her defense regardless, and only thought of her own peril afterwards.

"Very civil of you." Audley disregarded her and nodded to Monk. "Are you from Halifax also?"

"No, Northumberland," Monk replied. "But I shall pass through on my way north." He was getting deeper and deeper in the lie. He would have to post the parcel and hope cousin Albert replied with the necessary information. Presumably if he did not, they would use the excuse that he was obdurate.

"Indeed." Audley apparently had no further interest, and they were spared the necessity of small talk by the arrival of the maid to announce that Mrs. Hylton had called and wish to see Mrs. Penrose.

She was shown in and arrived looking flustered and full of curiosity. Both Monk and Audley rose to greet her, but before they could speak she rushed into words, turning from one to another of them.

"Oh, Mr. Monk! I am so glad you have not yet left. My dear Mrs. Penrose, how very pleasant to see you. Miss Gillespie. I am so sorry about your experience, but I am quite sure it will prove to have been no more than a stray cat or something of the sort. Mr. Penrose. How are you?'

"In good health, thank you, Mrs. Hylton," Audley replied coolly. He turned to his sister-in-law. "What experience is this? I have heard nothing!" He was very pale, with two spots of color in his cheeks. His hands were clenched by his sides and his knuckles showed white from the pressure.

"Oh dear!" Mrs. Hylton said hastily. "Perhaps I should not have spoken of it. I'm so sony. I hate indiscretion, and here I am committing it"

"What experience?" Audley demanded again, his voice catching. "Julia?"

"Oh..." Julia was lost, foundering. She dared not turn to Monk, or Audley would know she had confided in him, if he did not guess already.

"Only something in the bushes in the garden," Monk said quickly. "Miss Gillespie feared it might be some tramp or stray person who was peeping. But I am sure Mrs. Hylton is correct and it was simply a cat. It can be startling, but no more. I am certain there is no danger, Miss Gillespie."

"No." Marianne swallowed. "No, of course not. I fear I was foolish. I-I have been... hasty."

"If you sent Mr. Monk looking for a tramp you most certainly were," Audley agreed testily, his breath harsh in his throat. "You should have mentioned it to me! To have troubled a guest was quite unnecessary and unfortunate."

"Miss Gillespie did not ask me," Monk said defensively. "I was in the garden in her company at the time. It was the most natural thing in the world to offer to see if there were anyone trespassing."

Audley fell silent with the best grace he could muster, but it was less than comfortable.

"I was afraid one of my children might have thrown a ball too far and came to retrieve it," Mrs. Hylton said apologetically, looking from one to the other of them, curiosity alight in her face, and a taste for drama. "Most inconsiderate, I know, but children tend to be like that I am sure you will find it so, when you have your own..."

Audley's face was white, his eyes glittering, but his hard glance was not directed at Mrs. Hylton, nor at Julia, but out the window into the trees. Julia's cheeks were scarlet, but she too was mute.

It was Marianne who spoke, her voice quivering with pain and indignation.

"That may be so, Mrs. Hylton, but we do not all wish to have the same patterns of life. And for some of us the choices are different. I am sure you have sufficient sensitivity to appreciate that..."

Mrs. Hylton realized she had made an appalling blunder and blushed deeply, although from the confusion in her face, she still did not fully understand what it had been.

"Yes," she said hastily. "Of course. I see, yes. Naturally. Well, I am sure you have done the right thing, Mr. Monk. I-I just wished to-well-good day to you." And she turned around and retreated in disorder.

Monk had seen more than sufficient to confirm his fears. He would have to speak to Marianne alone, but he would not do it with Audley in the house. He would return tomorrow morning, when he could be almost certain he would find the women alone.

"I don't wish to intrude," he said aloud, looking first at Julia, then at Audley. "If it is acceptable, ma'am, I shall call again in the near future to pick up your gift for Mr. Finnister?"

"Oh. Thank you," Julia accepted quickly, relief flooding her face. "That would be most kind."

Audley said nothing, and with a few more words, Monk excused himself and left, walking out rapidly into the heat of Hastings Street and the noise and clatter of passing carriages and the trouble of his thoughts.

* * * * *

In the morning he stood in the summerhouse with Marianne. A dozen yards away there were birds singing in the lilac tree and a faint breeze blew a few fallen leaves across the grass. It was Rodwell's day off.

"I think I have made all the inquiries I can," Monk began.

"I cannot blame you if you can discover very little," Marianne answered with a tiny smile. She was leaning against the window, the pale sprigged muslin of her dress billowing around her. She looked very young, but oddly less vulnerable than Julia, even though Monk was aware of the fear in her.

"I discovered several tilings," he went on, watching her carefully. "For instance, no one came over the wall into the garden, from any direction."

"Oh?" She was very still, almost holding her breath, staring away from him across the grass.

"And you are sure it was not Rodwell?"

Now she was incredulous, swinging around to look at him with wide eyes. "Rodwell? You mean the gardener? Of course it was not him! Do you think I wouldn't recognize our own gardener? Oh-oh no! You can't think..." She stopped, her face scarlet.

"No I don't," he said quickly. "I simply had to be sure. No, I don't think it was Rodwell, Miss Gillespie. But I do think you know who it was."

Now her face was very pale except for the splashes of color high in her cheeks. She looked at him in hot, furious accusation.

"You think I was willing! Oh dear heaven, how could you! How could you?" She jerked away and her voice was filled with such horror his last vestiges of doubt vanished.

"No I don't," he answered, aware of how facile that sounded. "But I think you are afraid that people will believe it, so you are trying to protect yourself." He avoided using the word lying.

"You are wrong," she said simply, but she did not turn back to face him. She still stood with shoulders hunched and staring toward the shrubbery and the end wall of the garden beyond which came the intermittent shouts of the Hylton children playing.

"How did he get in?" he asked gently. "No stranger could come through the house."

"Then he must have come through the herb garden," she replied.

"Past Rodwell? He said he saw no one."

"He must have been somewhere else." Her voice was flat, brooking no argument. "Maybe he went 'round to the kitchen for a few minutes. Perhaps he went for a drink of water, or a piece of cake or something, and didn't like to admit it."

"And this fellow seized his chance and came through into the back garden?" He did not try to keep the disbelief from his voice.

"Yes."

"What for? There's nothing here to steal. And what a risk! He couldn't know Rodwell would leave again. He could have been caught here for hours."

"I don't know!" Her voice rose desperately.

"Unless he knew you were here?"

Finally she swung around, her eyes brilliant. "I don't know!" she shouted. "I don't know what he thought! Why don't you just admit you can't find him and go away? I never thought you would. It's only Julia who even wants to, because she's so angry for me. I told you you would never find anyone. It's ridiculous. There's no way to know." Her voice caught in her throat huskily. "There cannot be. If you don't want to explain to her, then I will."

"And honor will be satisfied?" he said dryly.

"If you like." She was still furious.

"Do you love him?" he asked her softly.

The anger vanished from her face, leaving it totally shocked.

"What?"

"Do you love him?" he repeated.

"Who? What are you talking about? Love whom?"

"Audley."

She stared at him as if mesmerized, her eyes dark with pain and some other profound emotion he thought was horror.

"Did he force you?" he went on.

"No!" she gasped. "You are quite wrong! It wasn't Audley! That's a dreadful thing to say-how dare you? He is my sister's husband!" But there was no conviction in her voice and it shook even as she tried to uphold her outrage.

"It is exactly because he is your sister's husband that I cannot believe you were willing," he persisted, but he felt a profound pity for her distress, and his own emotion was thick in his voice.

Her eyes filled with tears. "It wasn't Audley," she said again, but this time it was a whisper, and there was no anger in it, and no conviction. It was a protest for Julia's sake, and even she did not expect him to believe it.

"Yes it was," he said simply.

"I shall deny it." Again it was a statement of fact.

He had no doubt she would, but she seemed not to be certain he was convinced. "Please, Mr. Monk! Say nothing," she implored. "He would deny it, and I should look as if I were a wicked woman as well as immoral. Audley has given me a home and looked after me ever since he married Julia. No one would believe me, and they would think me totally without gratitude or duty." Now there was real fear in her voice, far sharper than the physical fear or revulsion of the assault. If she were branded with such a charge she would find herself not only homeless in the immediate future, but without prospects of marriage in the distance. No respectable man would marry a woman who first took a lover, whether reluctantly or not, and then made such a terrible charge against her sister's husband, a man who had been so generous to her.

"What do you want me to say to your sister?" he asked her.

"Nothing! Say you cannot find out. Say he was a stranger who came in somehow and has long ago escaped." She put out her hand and clasped his arm impulsively. "Please, Mr. Monk!" It was a cry of real anguish now. "Think what it would do to Julia! That would be the worst of all. I couldn't bear it. I had rather Audley said I was an immoral woman and put me out to fend for myself."

She had no idea what fending for herself would mean: the sleeping in brothels or doss houses, the hunger, the abuse, the disease and fear. She had no craft with which to earn her living honestly in a sweatshop working eighteen hours a day, even if her health and her nerve would stand it. But he easily believed she would accept it rather than allow Julia to know what had really happened.

"I shall not tell her it was Audley," he promised. "You need not fear."

The tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. She gulped and sniffed.

"Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Monk." She fished for a handkerchief a few niches square and mostly lace. It was useless.

He passed her his and she took it silently and wiped her eyes, hesitated, then blew her nose as well. Then she was confused, uncertain whether to offer it back to him or not.

He smiled in spite of himself. "Keep it," he offered.

"Thank you."

"Now I had better go and give your sister my final report."

She nodded and sniffed again. "She will be disappointed, but don't let her prevail upon you. However put out she is by not knowing, knowing would be infinitely worse."

"You had better stay here."

"I shall." She gulped. "And-thank you, Mr. Monk."

He found Julia in the morning room writing letters. She looked up as soon as he came in, her face quick with anticipation. He loathed the need to lie, and it cut his pride to have to admit defeat at all, and when he had actually solved the case it was acutely bitter.

"I am sorry, Mrs. Penrose, but I feel that I have pursued this case as far as I can, and to follow it any further would be a waste of your resources-"

"That is my concern, Mr. Monk," she interrupted quickly, laying her pen aside. "And I do not consider it a waste."

"What I am trying to say is that I shall learn nothing further." He said it with difficulty. Never previously that he could recall had he flinched from telling someone a truth, regardless of its ugliness. Perhaps he should have. It was another side of his character it would probably be painful to look into.

"You cannot know that," she argued, her face already beginning to set in lines of stubbornness. "Or are you saying that you do not believe that Marianne was assaulted at all?"

"No, I was not saying that," he said sharply. "I believe without question that she was, but whoever did it was a stranger to her, and we have no way of finding him now, since none of your neighbors saw him or any evidence that might lead to his identity."

"Someone may have seen him," she insisted. "He did not materialize from nowhere. Maybe he was not a tramp of any sort, but a guest of someone in the neighborhood. Have you thought of that?" Now there was challenge in her voice and in her eyes.

"Who climbed over the wall in the chance of finding mischief?" he asked with as little sarcasm as was possible to the words.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said tartly. "He must have come in through the herb garden when Rodwell was not there. Maybe he mistook the house and thought it was that of someone he knew."

"And found Miss Gillespie in the summerhouse and assaulted her?"

"It would seem so. Yes," she agreed. "I daresay he indulged in some sort of conversation first, and she cannot remember it because the whole episode was so appalling she has cut it all from her mind. Such things happen."

He thought of his own snatches of memory and the cold sweat of horror, the fear, the rage, the smell of blood, confusion, and blindness again.

"I know that," he said bitterly.

"Then please continue to pursue it, Mr. Monk." She looked at him with challenge, too consumed in her own emotion to hear his. "Or if you are unable or unwilling to, then perhaps you can recommend me the name of another person of inquiry who will."

"I believe you have no chance of success, Mrs. Penrose," he said a little stiffly. "Not to tell you so would be less than honest."

"I commend your integrity," she said dryly. "Now you have told me, and I have heard what you say, and requested you to continue anyway."

He tried one more time. "You will learn nothing!"

She stood up from her desk and came toward him. "Mr. Monk, have you any idea how appalling a crime it is for a man to force himself upon a woman? Perhaps you imagine it is merely a matter of modesty and a little reluctance, and that really when a woman says no she does not truly mean it?"

He opened his mouth to argue, but she rushed on. "That is a piece of meretricious simplicity men use to justify to themselves an act of brutality that can never be excused. My sister is very young, and unmarried. It was a violation of the very worst nature. It has introduced her to-to bestiality-instead of to a-a ...." She blushed but did not avoid his eyes. "A sacred relationship which she-oh- really." She lost patience with herself. "No one has a right to behave toward anyone else in such a way, and if your nature is too insensitive to appreciate that, then there is no way for me to tell you."

Monk chose his words carefully. "I agree with you that it is a base offense, Mrs. Penrose. My reluctance to continue has no relation to the seriousness of the crime, only to the impossibility of finding the offender now."

"I suppose I should have come to you sooner," she conceded. "Is that what you are saying? Marianne did not tell me the true nature of the event until several days after it had happened, and then it took me some little while to make up my mind what was best to do. After that it took me another three days to locate you and inquire something of your reputation-which is excellent. I am surprised that you have given in so quickly. That is not what people say of you."

The anger hardened inside him and only Marianne's anguish stopped him retaliating.

"I shall return tomorrow and we shall discuss it further,"

he said grimly. "I will not continue to take your money for something I believe cannot be done."

"I will be obliged if you will come in the morning," she replied. "As you have observed, my husband is not aware of the situation, and explanations are becoming increasingly difficult"

. "Perhaps you should give me a letter to your cousin Mr. Finnister," he suggested. "In case anything is said, I shall post it, so there will be no unfortunate repercussions in the future."

"Thank you. That is most thoughtful of you. I will do so."

And still angry, and feeling disturbed and confused, he took his leave, walking briskly back toward Fitzroy Street and his rooms.

* * * * *

He could come to no satisfactory conclusion himself. He did not understand the events and the emotions profoundly enough to be confident in a decision. His anger toward Audley Penrose was monumental. He could have seen him punished with intense satisfaction; indeed, he longed to see it. And yet he could understand Marianne's need to protect not only herself but also Julia.

For once his own reputation as a detective was of secondary importance. Whatever the outcome of his entering the case, he could not even consider improving his professional standing at the expense of ruining either of the women.

Miserable, and in a very short temper, he went to see Callandra Daviot, and his ill humor was exacerbated immediately on finding Hester Latterly present. It was several weeks since he had last seen her, and their parting had been far from friendly. As so often happened, they had quarreled about something more of manner than of substance. In fact, he could not remember what it was now, only that she had been abrasive as usual and unwilling to listen or consider his view. Now she was sitting in Callandra's best chair, the one he most preferred, looking tired and far from the gently feminine creature Julia Penrose was. Hester's hair was thick and nearly straight and she had taken little trouble to dress it with curls or braids. Pulled as it was it showed the fine, strong bones of her face and the passionate features, the intelligence far too dominant to be attractive. Her gown was pale blue and the skirt, without hoops, a trifle crushed.

He ignored her and smiled at Callandra. "Good evening, Lady Callandra." He intended it to be warm, but his general unhappiness flavored it more than he wished.

"Good evening, William," Callandra replied, the tiniest smile touching the corners of her wide mouth.

Monk turned to Hester. "Good evening, Miss Latterly," he continued coolly, his disappointment undisguised.

"Good evening, Mr. Monk," Hester answered, turning around but not rising. "You look out of temper. Have you a disagreeable case?"

"Most criminal cases are disagreeable," he responded. "Like most illnesses."

"They both happen," Hester observed. "Very often to people we like and can help. That is immeasurably pleasing-at least it is to me. If it is not to you, then you should look for another form of employment."

Monk sat down. He was unexpectedly tired, which was ridiculous because he had done very little. "I have been dealing with tragedy all day, Hester. I am in no mind for trivial sophistry."

"It is not sophistry," she snapped. "You were being self-pitying about your work. I pointed out what is good about it."

"I am not self-pitying." His voice rose in spite of his resolution that it would not. "Good God! I pity everyone in the affair, except myself. I wish you would not make these slipshod judgments when you know nothing about the situation or the people."

She stared at him in fury for a moment, then her face lit up with appreciation and amusement. "You don't know what to do. You are confounded for the moment."

The only answer that came to his lips was in words he would not use in front of Callandra.

It was Callandra who replied, putting her hand on Hester's arm to restrain her.

"You should not feel badly about it, my dear," she said to Monk gently. "There was never much of a chance of learning who it was-if it was anyone. I mean, if it was really an assault."

Hester looked to Callandra, then to Monk, but she did not interrupt.

"It was an assault," Monk said more calmly. "And I know who it was, I just don't know what to do about it." He ignored Hester, but he was very aware of the change in her; the laughter was gone and suddenly her attention was total and serious.

"Because of what Mrs. Penrose will do with the knowledge?" Callandra asked.

"No-not really." He looked at her gravely, searching her curious, clever face. "Because of the ruin and the pain it will bring."

"To the offender?" Callandra asked. "To his family?"

Monk smiled. "No-and yes."

"Can you speak of it?" Hester asked him, all friction between them brushed aside as if it did not exist. "I assume you have to make a decision, and that is what troubles you?"

"Yes-by tomorrow."

"Can you tell us?"

He shrugged very slightly and sat back farther in his chair. She had the one he really wanted, but it hardly mattered now. His irritation was gone.

"Marianne lives with her married sister, Julia, and her sister's husband, Audley Penrose. Marianne says she was raped when she was in the summerhouse in the garden, but she did not know the man."

Neither Hester nor Callandra interrupted him, nor did their faces betray any disbelief.

"I questioned everyone in the neighborhood. No one saw any stranger."

Callandra sighed. "Audley Penrose?"

"Yes."

"Oh dear. Does she love him? Or think she does?"

"No. She is horrified-and apparently hurt," he said wearily. "She would rather be put out in the street as an immoral woman than have Julia know what happened."

Hester bit her lip. "Has she any conception what that would be like?"

"Probably not," he replied. "But that hardly matters. Julia won't allow that to happen-I don't think. But Marianne doesn't want me to tell anyone. She says she will deny it anyway, and I can understand that Audley will deny it, naturally. He has to. I have no idea what Julia will believe, or what she will have to say she believes."

"Poor creature," Hester said with sudden passion. "What a fearful dilemma. What have you told her?"

"That I cannot find out who assaulted Marianne and I wish to be released from the case."

Hester looked across at him, her face lit with warmth of admiration and respect.

He was caught unaware by how sweet it was to him. Without warning the bitterness vanished from the decision. His own pride slipped away.

"And you are content with that?" Callandra broke the moment.

"Not content," he replied. "But I can think of nothing better. There is no honorable alternative."

"And Audley Penrose?" she pressed.

"I'd like to break his neck," he said savagely. "But that is a luxury I can't afford."

"I am not thinking of you, William," Callandra said soberly. She was the only person who called him by his given name, and while it pleased him with its familiarity, it also brought her close enough that pretense was impossible.

"What?" he said somewhat abruptly.

"I was not thinking of your satisfaction in revenge," she elaborated. "Sweet as that would be. Or the demands of justice, as you see it. I was thinking of Marianne Gillespie. How can she continue to live in that house, with what has happened to her, and may well happen again if he believes he has got away with it?"

"That is her choice," Monk returned, but it was not a satisfying answer and he knew it. "She was extremely insistent on it," he went on, trying to justify himself. "She begged me to promise that I would not tell Julia, and I gave her my word."

"And what disturbs you now?" Callandra asked, her eyes wide.

Hester looked from one to the other of them, waiting, her concentration intense.

Monk hesitated.

"Is it purely vanity, because you do not like to appear to be defeated?" Callandra pursued. "Is that all it is, William, your own reputation?"

"No-no, I'm not sure what it is," he confessed, his anger temporarily abated.

"Have you considered what her life will be if he continues his behavior?" Callandra's voice was very quiet but the urgency in it filled the room. "She will feel terrified every time she is alone with him in case it happens again. She will be terrified in case Julia ever discovers them and is devastated with grief." She leaned farther forward in her chair. "Marianne will feel she has betrayed her sister, although it is none of her choosing, but will Julia know that? Will she not always have that gnawing fear that in her heart Marianne was willing, and that in some subtle way she encouraged him?"

"I don't believe that," he said fiercely. "She would rather be put out on the street than have Julia know it."

Callandra shook her head. "I am not speaking of now, William. I am speaking of what will happen if she says nothing and remains in the house. She may not have thought of it yet, but you must. You are the only one.who knows all the facts and is in a position to act."

Monk sat silent, the thoughts and fears crowding his mind.

It was Hester who spoke.

"There is something worse than that," she said quietly. "What if she became with child?"

Monk and Callandra both turned slowly toward her and it was only too apparent in their faces that such an idea had not occurred to them, and now that it had they were appalled.

"Whatever you promised, it is not enough," Callandra said grimly. "You cannot simply walk away and leave her to her fate."

"But no one has the right to override her choice," Hester argued, not out of obstructiveness but because it had to be said. Her own conflicting emotions were plain in her face. For once Monk felt no animosity toward her, only the old sense of total friendship, the bond that unites people who understand each other and care with equal passion in a single cause.

"If I don't give her an answer I think Julia may well seek another agent who will," Monk added miserably. "I didn't tell Marianne that because I didn't see her again after I spoke to Julia."

"But what will happen if you tell Julia?" Hester asked anxiously. "Will she believe you? She will be placed in an impossible situation between her husband and her sister."

"And there is worse," Monk went on. "They are both financially dependent upon Audley."

"He can't throw his wife out." Hester sat upright, her face hot with anger. "And surely she would not be so- oh, of course. You mean she may choose to leave. Oh dear." She bit her lip. "And even if his crime could be proved, which it almost certainly could not, and he were convicted, then there is not money for anyone and they would both be in the street. What a ridiculous situation." Her fists clenched in her lap and her voice was husky with fury and frustration.

Suddenly she rose to her feet. "If only women could earn a living as men can. If women could be doctors or architects and lawyers too." She paced to the window and turned. "Or even clerks and shopkeepers. Anything more than domestic servants, seamstresses, or whores! But what woman earns enough to live in anything better than one room in a lodging house if she's lucky, and in a tenement if she's not? And always hungry and always cold, and never sure next week will not be even worse."

"You are dreaming," Monk said, but not critically. He understood her feeling and the facts that, inspired it. "And even if it happens one day, which is unlikely because it is against the natural social order, it won't help Julia Penrose or her sister. Anything I tell her-or don't-will cause terrible harm."

They all remained in silence for several minutes, each wrestling with the problem in his or her own way, Hester by the window, Callandra leaning back in her chair, Monk on the edge of his. Finally it was Callandra who spoke.

"I think you should tell Julia," she said very quietly, her voice low and unhappy. "It is not a good solution, but I believe it is better than not telling her. If you do, then at least the decision what to do is hers, not yours. And as you say, she may well press the matter until she learns something, whatever you do. And please God that is the right decision. We can only hope."

Monk looked at Hester.

"I agree," she answered. "No solution is satisfactory, and you will ruin her peace whatever you say, but I think perhaps that is ruined anyway. If he continues, and Marianne is either seriously hurt or with child, it will be worse. And then Julia would blame herself-and you."

"What about my promise to Marianne?" he asked.

Her eyes were filled with unhappiness.

"Do you suppose she knows what dangers there are ahead? She is young, unmarried. She may not even be aware of what they are. Many girls have no idea of childbirth, or even what brings it about; they only discover in the marriage bed."

"I don't know." It was not enough of an answer. "I gave her my word."

'Than you will have to tell her that you cannot keep it," Callandra replied. "Which will be very hard. But what is your alternative?"

'To keep it."

"Will that not be even harder-if not at first, then later?"

He knew that was true. He would not be able to turn his back on the affair and forget it. Every tragic possibility would haunt his imagination, and he would have to accept at least part of the responsibility for all of them.

"Yes," he admitted. "Yes-I shall have to go back and tell Marianne."

"I'm sorry." Hester touched his arm briefly, then withdrew.

They did not discuss it further. There was nothing more to say, and they could not help him. Instead they spoke of things that had nothing to do with the work of any of them, of the latest novels to be published and what they had heard said of them, of politics, of affairs in India and the fearful news of the mutiny, and the war in China. When they parted late into the summer night and Monk and Hester shared a hansom back to their respective lodgings, even that was done in companionable conversation.

Naturally they stopped at Hester's rooms first, the very sparsest of places because so frequently she was living in the house of her current patient. She was the only resident in her rooms at the moment because her patient was so nearly recovered she required attention only every other day, and did not see why she should house and feed a nurse from whom she now had so little service.

Monk alighted and opened the door for her, handing her down to the pavement. It came to his lips to say how pleasant it had been to see her, then he swallowed the words. There was no need of them. Small compliments, however true, belonged to a more trivial relationship, one that sailed on the surface of things.

"Good night," he said simply, walking across the stones with her to the front door.

"Good night, Monk," she answered with a smile. "I shall think of you tomorrow."

He smiled back, ruefully, knowing she meant it and feeling a kind of comfort in the thought that he would not be alone.

Behind him in the street the horse stamped and shifted position. There was nothing else to say. Hester let herself in with her key, and Monk returned to the hansom and climbed up as it moved off along the lamplit street.

* * * * *

He was at Hastings Street at quarter to ten in the morning. It was mild and raining very slightly. The flowers in the gardens were beaded with moisture and somewhere a bird was singing with startling clarity.

Monk would have given a great deal to have been able to turn and go back again to the Euston Road and not call at number fourteen. However, he did not hesitate on the step or wait before pulling the bell. He had already done all the thinking he could. There was no more debate left, no more arguments to put for either action.

The maid welcomed him in with some familiarity now, but she was slightly taken aback when he asked to see not Mrs. Penrose but Miss Gillespie. Presumably Julia had said she was expecting him.

He was alone in the morning room, pacing in restless anxiety, when Marianne came in. As soon as she saw him her face paled.

"What is it?" she asked quickly. "Has something happened?"

"Before I left here yesterday," he replied, "I spoke to your sister and told her that I would not be able to learn who assaulted you, and it would be pointless to continue seeking. She would not accept that. If I do not tell her then she will employ someone else who will."

"But how could anyone else know?" she said desperately. "I wouldn't tell them. No one saw, no one heard."

"They will deduce it from the evidence, as I did." This was every bit as hard as his worst fears. She looked so crushed. "Miss Gillespie-I am sorry, but I am going to have to take back the pledge I gave you and tell Mrs. Penrose the truth."

"You can't!" She was aghast. "You promised you would not do that!" But even as she spoke the innocent indignation was dying in her face and being replaced by understanding-and defeat.

He felt wretched. He had no alternative, and yet he was betraying her and he could not argue himself out of it.

"There are other things that have to be considered also..."

"Of course there are." Her voice was harsh with anger and misery. "The worst of this is how Julia will feel about it. She will be destroyed. How can she ever feel the same about me, even if she truly believes it was the farthest thing from my wishes? I did nothing whatsoever to lead him to think I would ever be willing, and that is true, Mr. Monk! I swear it by all I hold dear-"

"I know that," he said, interrupting her. "That is not what I mean."

"Then what?" she demanded abruptly. "What else could be of importance beside that?'

"Why do you believe that it will never happen again?"

Her face was white. She swallowed with difficulty. She started to speak, and then stopped.

"Have you any protection against it happening again?" he insisted quietly.

"I-but..." She looked down. "Surely that was just one terrible lapse in-in an otherwise exemplary man? I am sure he loves Julia..."

"What would you have said about the possibility of it ever happening a week before it did? Did you know or expect him to do such a thing?"

Now her eyes were blazing.

"Of course not. That is a dreadful thing to say. No! No, I had no idea! Never!" She turned away abruptly, violently, as if he had offered her some physical attack.

"Then you cannot say that it will not happen again," he reasoned. "I'm sorry." He hovered on the edge of adding the possibility of becoming with child, and then remembered what Hester and Callandra had said. Marianne might not even be aware of how children were begotten, and he said nothing. Helplessness and inadequacy choked him.

"It must have cost you to tell me that." She looked back at him slowly, her face drained. "There are many men who would not have found the courage. Thank you at least for that."

"Now I must see Mrs. Penrose. I wish I could think of another way, but I cannot."

"She is in the withdrawing room. I shall wait in my bedroom. I expect Audley will ask me to leave and Julia will wish me to." And with quivering lips she turned and walked to the door too rapidly for him to reach it ahead of her. She fumbled with the knob, then flung it open and went out across the hall to the stairway, head high, her step clumsy.

He stood still for a moment, tempted to try one more time to think of another way. Then intelligence reasserted itself over emotion, and he went the now familiar way to knock on the withdrawing room door.

He was bidden to enter. Julia was standing at the central table before a vase of flowers, a long, bright stem of delphinium in her hand. Apparently she had not liked the position of it and had chosen to rearrange it herself. When she saw who it was she poked the flower in the back lopsidedly and without bothering to adjust it.

"Good morning, Mr. Monk." Her voice shook a little. She searched his face and saw something in its expression that frightened her. "What is it?'

He closed the door behind him. This was going to be acutely painful. There was no escape, no way even to mitigate it.

"I am afraid that what I told you yesterday was not the truth, Mrs. Penrose."

She stared at him without speaking. The shadow of surprise and anger across her eyes did not outweigh the fear.

This was like looking at something and deliberately killing it. Once he had told her it would be irretrievable. He had already made the decision, and yet he found himself hesitating even now.

"You had better explain yourself, Mr. Monk," she said at last, her voice catching. She swallowed to clear her throat. "Merely to say that is not sufficient. In what respect have you lied to me, and why?"

He answered the second question first. "Because the truth is so unpleasant that I wished to spare you from it, ma'am. And it was Miss Gillespie's wish also. Indeed, she denied it at first, until the weight of evidence made that no longer possible. Then she implored me not to tell you. She was prepared to accept any consequence of it herself rather than have you know. That was why it was necessary for me to speak to her this morning to tell her I could no longer keep my word to her."

Julia was so white he was afraid she would faint from lack of blood. Very slowly she backed away from the table with its bright flowers and reached behind her for the arm of the settee. She sank into it, still staring at him.

"You had better tell me what it is, Mr. Monk. I have to know. Do you know who raped my sister?"

"Yes, I am afraid I do." He took a deep breath. He tried one last thing, although he knew it would be futile. "I still think it would be better if you did not pursue the matter. You cannot prosecute. Perhaps if you were to find some other area for your sister to live, where she could not encounter him again? Do you have a relative, an aunt perhaps, with whom she could stay?"

Her eyebrows rose. "Are you suggesting that this man who did this thing should be allowed to go entirely unpunished, Mr. Monk? I am aware that the law will not punish him, and that a prosecution would in any case be as painful for Marianne as it would ever be for him." She was sitting so tensely her body must ache with the rack of her muscles. "But I will not countenance his escaping scot-free! It seems you do not think it a crime after all. I confess I am disappointed. I had thought better of you."

Anger boiled up in him, and it cost him dearly to suppress it. "Fewer people would be hurt."

She stared at him.

"That is unfortunate, but it cannot be helped. Who was it? Please do not prevaricate any further. You will not change my mind."

"It was your husband, Mrs. Penrose."

She did not protest outrage or disbelief. She sat totally motionless, her face ashen. Then at last she licked her lips and tried to speak. Her throat convulsed and no sound came. Then she tried again.

"I assume you would not have said this-if-if you were not totally sure?"

"Of course not." He longed to comfort her, and there was no possible comfort. "Even then I would prefer not to have told you. Your sister begged me not to, but I felt I had to, in part because you were determined to pursue the matter, if not through me, then with another agent. And also because there is the danger of it happening again, and there is the possibility she may become with child-"

"Stop it!" This time the cry was torn from her in a frenzy of pain. "Stop it! You have told me. That is sufficient." With a terrible effort she mastered herself, although her hands were shaking uncontrollably.

"When I taxed her with it, she denied it at first, to protect you." He went on relentlessly. It had to be finished now. "Then when it was obviously true from her own testimony, and that of your neighbors, she admitted it, but implored me not to say so. I think the only reason she made any mention of the incident at all was to account for her extreme distress after it, and for the bruising. Otherwise I think she would have remained silent, for your sake."

"Poor Marianne." Her voice trembled violently. "She would endure that for me. What harm have I done her?"

He moved a step nearer to her, undecided whether to sit without invitation or remain standing, towering over her. He opted to sit.

"You cannot blame yourself," he said earnestly. "You of all people are the most innocent in this."

"No I am not, Mr. Monk." She did not look at him but at some distance far beyond the green shadow of leaves across the window. Her voice was now filled with self-loathing. "Audley is a man with natural expectations, and I have denied him all the years we have been married." She hunched into herself as if suddenly the room were intolerably cold, her fingers gripping her arms painfully, driving the blood out of the flesh.

He wanted to interrupt her and tell her the explanation was private and quite unnecessary, but he knew she needed to tell him, to rid herself of a burden she could no longer bear.

"I should not have, but I was so afraid." She was shivering very slightly, as if her muscles were locked. "You see, my mother had child after child between my birth and Marianne's. All of them miscarried or died. I watched her in such pain." Very slowly she began rocking herself back and forth as if in some way the movement eased her as the words poured out. "I remember her looking so white, and the blood on the sheets. Lots of it, great dark red stains as though her life were pouring out of her. They tried to hide them from me, and keep me in my own room. But I heard her crying with the pain of it, and I saw the maids hurrying about with bundles of linen, and trying to fold it so no one saw." The tears were running down her own face now and she made no pretense of concealing them. "And then when I was allowed in to see her, she would look so tired, with dark rings 'round her eyes, and her lips white. I knew she had been crying for the baby that was lost, and I couldn't bear it!"

Without thinking Monk put out his hands and held hers.

Unconsciously she clung to him, her fingers strong, grip ping him like a lifeline.

"I knew she had dreaded it, every time she was with child. I felt the terror in her, even though I didn't know then what caused it. And when Marianne was born she was so pleased." She smiled as she remembered, and for a moment her eyes were tender and brilliant with gentleness. "She held her up and showed her to me, as if we had done it together. The midwife wanted to send me away, but Mama wouldn't let her. I think she knew then she was dying. She made me promise to look after Marianne as if I were in her place, to do for her what Mama could not."

Julia was weeping quite openly now. Monk ached for her, and for his own helplessness, and for all the terrified, lost, and grieving women.

"I stayed with her all that night," she went on, still rocking herself. "In the morning the bleeding started again, and they took me out, but I can remember the doctor being sent for. He went up the stairs with his face very grave and his black bag in his hand. There were more sheets carried out, and all the maids were frightened and the butler stood around looking sad. Mama died in the morning. I don't remember what time, but I knew it. It was as if suddenly I was alone in a way I never had been before. I have never been quite as warm or as safe since then."

There was nothing to say. He felt furious, helpless, stupidly close to weeping himself, and drenched with the same irredeemable sense of loneliness. He tightened his grasp a little closer around her hands. For several moments they remained in silence.

At last she looked up and straightened her back, fishing for a handkerchief. Monk gave her his, and she accepted it without speaking.

"I have never been able to think of getting with child myself. I could not bear it. It frightens me so much I should rather simply die with a gunshot than go through the agony that Mama did. I know it is wrong, probably wicked. All women are supposed to yield to their husbands and bear children. It is our duty. But I am so terrified I cannot This is a judgment on me. Now Marianne has been raped because of me."

"No! That's nonsense," he said furiously. "Whatever is between you and your husband, that is no excuse for what he did to Marianne. If he could not maintain continence, mere are women whose trade it is to cater to appetites and he could perfectly easily have paid one of them." He wanted to shake her to force her to understand. "You must not blame yourself," he insisted. "It is wrong and foolish, and will be of no service to you or to Marianne. Do you hear me?" His voice was rougher than he had intended, but it was what he meant and it could not be withdrawn.

She looked up at him slowly, her eyes still swimming in tears.

To blame yourself would be self-indulgent and debilitating," he said again. "You have to be strong. You have a fearful situation to deal with. Don't look back-look forward, only forward. If you cannot bring yourself to consummate your marriage, then your husband must look elsewhere, not to Marianne. Never to Marianne."

"I know," she whispered. "But I am still guilty. He has a right to expect it of me-and I have not given it him. I am deceitful, I cannot escape that."

"Yes-that is true." He would not evade it either. It would not serve either of them. "But your deceit does not excuse his offense. You must think what you are going to do next, not what you should have done before."

"What can I do?" Her eyes searched his desperately.

"This is a decision no one else can make for you," he answered. "But you must protect Marianne from it ever happening again. If she were to bear a child it would ruin her." He did not need to explain what he meant. They both knew no respectable man would marry a woman with an illegitimate child. Indeed, no man at all would regard her as anything but a whore, no matter how untrue that was.

"I will," she promised, and for the first time there was steel in her voice again. "There is no other answer for it.

I will have to swallow my fear." Again for a moment her eyes overflowed and there was a choking in her voice. Then with a superlative effort she mastered herself. "Thank you, Mr. Monk. You have discharged your duty honorably. I thank you for it. You may present your account, and I shall see that it is met. If you will be so kind as to show yourself out. I do not wish to appear before the servants looking in a state of distress."

"Of course." He stood up. "I am truly sorry. I wish there had been any other answer I could have given you." He did not wait for a reply which could only be meaningless. "Good-bye, Mrs. Penrose."

He went out into the hazy sun of Hastings Street feeling physically numb, and so crowded with emotion he was barely aware of the passersby, the clatter, the heat, or the people who stared at him as he strode on.