A Sudden, Fearful Death Page 3

  “Have you forgotten?” He made an effort to be gentle with her.

  “Yes.” She seized on it. “Yes—I’m sorry …”

  He waved his hand, closing the matter. Then he left the summerhouse and walked over the grass toward the border and the old stone wall which marked the boundary between this and the next garden. It was about four feet high and covered in places by dark green moss. He could see no mark on it, no scuff or scratch where anyone had climbed over. Nor were there any broken plants in the border, although there were places where one might have trodden on the earth and avoided them. There was no point in looking for footprints now; the crime had been ten days ago, and it had rained several times since then, apart from whatever repairs the gardener might have made with a rake.

  He heard the faint brush of her skirts over the grass and turned to find her standing just behind him.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her face puckered with anxiety.

  “Looking to see if there are any traces of someone having climbed in over the wall,” he replied.

  “Oh.” She drew in her breath as if about to continue speaking, then changed her mind.

  He wondered what she had been about to say, and what thought had prevented her. It was an ugly feeling, and yet he could not help wondering if she had, after all, known her attacker—or even whether it had truly been an attack and not a seduction. He could well understand how a young woman who had lost her most precious commodity, her virtue in the eyes of others, and who thus was ruined for the marriage market, might well claim an attack rather than a yielding on her own part, whatever the temptation. Not that being the victim of rape would be any more acceptable. Perhaps it was only to her own family that it might make any difference. They would do all they could to see that the rest of the world never knew.

  He walked over to the wall at the end of the garden where it abutted the opposite property. Here the stones were crumbling in one or two places, and an agile man might have climbed over without leaving a noticeable trace. She was still with him and she read his thoughts, her eyes wide and dark, but she said nothing. Silently he looked at the third wall separating them from the garden to the west.

  “He must have come over the end wall,” she said very quietly, looking down at the grass. “No one could have come through the herb garden to the side because Rodwell must have been there. And the door from the yard on the other side is locked.” She was referring to the paved area to the east side where the rubbish was kept and where the coal chute to the cellar and the servants’ entrance to the scullery and kitchen were located.

  “Did he hurt you, Miss Gillespie?” He asked it as respectfully as he could, but even so it sounded intrusive and disbelieving.

  She avoided his eyes, a dark rush of blood staining her cheeks.

  “It was most painful,” she said very quietly. “Most painful indeed.” There was undisguised surprise in her voice, as if the fact amazed her.

  He swallowed. “I mean did he injure you, your arms or your upper body? Did he restrain you violently?”

  “Oh—yes. I have bruises on my wrists and arms, but they are growing paler now.” Carefully she pushed up her long sleeves to show him ugly yellow-gray bruising on the fair skin of her wrists and forearms. This time she looked up at him.

  “I’m sorry.” It was an expression of sympathy for her hurt, not an apology.

  She flashed him a sudden smile; he saw a glimpse of the person she had been before this event had robbed her of her confidence, pleasure, and peace of mind. Suddenly he felt a furious anger toward whoever had done this to her, whether it had been seduction to begin with, or always a violation.

  “Thank you,” she said, then straightened her shoulders. “Is there anything else you would care to see out here?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “What will you do next?” she asked curiously.

  “About this? Speak to your gardener, and then your neighbors’ servants, to see if they saw anything unusual, anyone in the area not known to them.”

  “Oh. I see.” She turned away again. The scent of flowers was heavy around them, and somewhere close ne could hear bees.

  “But first I shall take my leave of your sister,” he said.

  She took a step toward him.

  “About Julia—Mr. Monk …”

  “Yes?”

  “You must forgive her being a little … overprotective of me.” She smiled fleetingly. “You see, our mother died a few days after I was born, when Julia was eleven.” She shook her head a little. “She might have hated me for it: it was my birth which caused Mama’s death. Instead she looked after me right from that moment. She has always been there to give me all the tenderness and the patience when I was small, and later to play with me when I was a child. Then as I grew older she taught me and shared in all my experiences. No one could have been sweeter or more generous.” She looked at him very candidly, an urgency in her face that he should do more than believe, that he should understand.

  “Sometimes I fear she gave me the devotion she might have given to a child of her own, had she one.” Now there was guilt in her. “I hope I have not been too demanding, taken from her too much time and emotion.”

  “You are quite able to care for yourself, and must have been for some time,” he replied reasonably. “Surely she would not still devote so much to you unless she wished to.”

  “I suppose not,” she agreed, still looking at him earnestly. The slight breeze stirred the muslin of her skirt. “But I shall never be able to repay her for all she has done for me. You must know that, Mr. Monk, so you will understand a little better, and not judge her.”

  “I do not judge, Miss Gillespie,” he lied. He was very prone to judge, and frequently harshly. However in this particular case he saw no fault in Julia Penrose’s care for her sister, and perhaps that redeemed the untruth.

  As they reached the side door to the house, they were met by a man in his mid-thirties. He was slender, of average height, with a face whose features and coloring were ordinary enough, but their expression gave him an air of crumpled vulnerability overlying a volatile temper and a huge capacity to be hurt.

  Marianne moved a little closer to Monk and he could feel the warmth of her body as her skirts brushed around his ankles.

  “Good afternoon, Audley,” she said with a slight huskiness in her voice, as though speaking had come unexpectedly. “You are home early. Have you had an agreeable day?”

  His eyes moved from her to Monk, and back again.

  “Quite commonplace, thank you. Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

  “Oh—this is Mr. Monk,” she explained easily. “He is a friend of cousin Albert’s, from Halifax, you know.”

  “Good afternoon, sir.” Audley Penrose’s manner was polite, but without pleasure. “How is cousin Albert?”

  “He was in good spirits the last time I saw him,” Monk replied without a flicker. “But that was some little time ago. I was passing in this area, and since he spoke so kindly of you, I took the liberty of calling.”

  “No doubt my wife has offered you tea? I saw it set out in the withdrawing room.”

  “Thank you.” Monk accepted because it would have called for considerable explanation to leave without it now, and half an hour or so in their company might give him a better feel for the family and its relationships.

  However, when he did leave some forty-five minutes later he had neither altered nor added to his original impression, nor his misgivings.

  “What troubles you?” Callandra Daviot asked over supper in her cool green dining room. She sat back in her chair regarding Monk curiously. She was middle-aged, and not even her dearest friend would have called her beautiful. Her face was full of character; her nose was too long, her hair obviously beyond the ability of her maid to dress satisfactorily, let alone fashionably, but her eyes were wide, clear, and of remarkable intelligence. Her gown was a most pleasing shade of dark green, though of a cut neither one thin
g nor another, as though an unskilled dressmaker had tried to update it.

  Monk regarded her with total affection. She was candid, courageous, inquisitive, and opinionated in the best possible way. Her sense of humor never failed her. She was everything he liked in a friend, and she was also generous enough to have engaged him as a business partner, sustaining him during those times when his cases were too few or too paltry to provide an adequate income. In return she required to know all he was able to tell her of each affair in which he involved himself. Which was what he was doing this evening in the dining room, over an excellent supper of cold pickled eel and fresh summer vegetables. He knew, because she had told him, that there was plum pie and cream to follow, and a fine Stilton cheese.

  “It is totally unprovable,” he answered her question. “There is nothing whatever except Marianne’s word for it that the whole event ever took place at all, let alone that it took place as she described it.”

  “Do you doubt her?” she said curiously, but there was no offense in her voice.

  He hesitated several moments, unsure, now that she asked, whether he did or not. She did not interrupt his silence, nor draw the obvious conclusion, but went on eating her fish.

  “Some of what she says is the truth,” he said finally. “But I think she is also concealing something of importance.”

  “That she was willing?” She looked up at him, watching his face.

  “No—no I don’t think so.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And what do they intend to do if you should discover who it is?” she asked with raised eyebrows. “After all, who could it be? Total strangers do not vault over suburban garden walls in the hope of finding some maiden alone in the summerhouse whom they can ravish, sufficiently quietly not to rouse the gardener or servants, and then leap back again and disappear.”

  “You make it sound absurd,” he said dryly, taking a little more of the eel. It really was excellent.

  “Life is often absurd,” she replied, passing him the sauce. “But this is also unlikely, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes I do.” He spooned sauce onto his plate liberally. “What is most unlikely is that it is really someone who was a complete stranger to her. If it was someone she knew, who came through the house, and therefore was aware that there was no one within earshot, and that his mere presence would not alarm her, as a stranger would, then it becomes much less unlikely.”

  “What concerns me far more,” Callandra went on thoughtfully, “is what they intend to do when you tell them who it is—if you do.”

  It was something which had troubled him also.

  Callandra grunted. “Sounds like a private revenge. I think perhaps you should consider very carefully what you tell them. And William …”

  “Yes?”

  “You had better be absolutely sure you are right!”

  Monk sighed. It was getting uglier and more complicated with each new thought that came to him.

  “What impression did you form of the sister and her husband?” Callandra pursued.

  “Of them?” He was surprised. “Very sympathetic to her. I can’t believe she has anything to fear from them, even if she did not resist as thoroughly as she might.”

  Callandra said nothing. They finished their course in companionable silence and the plum pie was brought in and served. It was so delicious that they both ate without speaking for several minutes, then finally Callandra set her spoon down.

  “Have you seen Hester lately?”

  “No.”

  She smiled with some inner amusement. He felt annoyed and then unaccountably foolish.

  “I have not seen her,” he went on. “The last time we parted it was with less than amiability. She is the most opinionated and abrasive woman I have ever met, and dogmatic to the degree that she does not listen to anyone else. And she is absurdly complacent about it, which makes it insufferable.”

  “Qualities you do not like?” she asked innocently.

  “Good God no!” he exploded. “Does anyone?”

  “You find firmly held opinions and spirited defense of them displeasing?”

  “Yes!” he said vehemently, setting down his spoon momentarily. “It is unbecoming, irritating in manner, and makes all intelligent and open conversation impossible. Not that most men would be seeking an intelligent conversation with a woman of her age,” he added.

  “Especially when her views are mistaken,” she said with her eyes bright.

  “That adds to it, of course,” he conceded, quite sure now that she was laughing.

  “You know she said something very similar about you when she was here about three weeks ago. She is nursing an elderly lady with a broken leg, but at that point the woman was almost recovered, and I don’t think she has a further position offered her yet.”

  “Perhaps if she were to guard her tongue a little and make herself more obliging—and modest?” he suggested.

  “I am sure you are right,” Callandra agreed. “With your own experience of the value of such qualities, perhaps you might give her some excellent advice.” She made the suggestion with a face almost wiped of humor.

  He looked at her more closely. There was the slightest curl of a smile on her mouth and her eyes avoided his.

  “After all,” she continued, keeping a sober expression with an effort, “intelligent conversation with the open-minded is so agreeable, don’t you think?”

  “You are twisting my words,” he said between his teeth.

  “No I am not,” she denied, looking up at him with quite open affection and amusement. “You mean that when Hester has an opinion and will not move from it, it is dogmatic and unbecoming and it annoys you incredibly. When you have one it is courageous and committed, and the only path for anyone with integrity. That is what you said, one way or another, and I am quite sure it is what you mean.”

  “You think I am wrong.” He leaned forward on the table.

  “Oh frequently. But I should never dare to say so. Would you care for more cream with your pie? I suppose you have not heard from Oliver Rathbone lately either?”

  He helped himself to the cream.

  “I looked into a minor case for him ten days ago.” Rathbone was the highly successful barrister with whom Monk had worked on all his outstanding cases since the accident. He admired Rathbone’s professional ability profoundly and found the man himself both attractive and irritating. There was a suaveness and a self-confidence in him which caught a nerve in Monk’s nature. They were too alike in some aspects, and too unalike in others. “He seemed in excellent health,” he finished with a tight smile, meeting Callandra’s eyes. “And how are you? We have spoken of everything else….”

  She looked down at her plate for a moment, then up again at him.

  “I am very well, thank you. Do I not look it?”

  “Indeed, you look exceptionally well,” he replied truthfully, although he had actually just noticed it for the first time. “You have found an interest?”

  “How perceptive of you.”

  “I am a detective.”

  She looked at him very steadily and for that moment there was honest and equal friendship between them, without barrier of words.

  “What is it?” he said quietly.

  “I am on the Board of Governors in the Royal Free Hospital.”

  “I am delighted.” He knew her late husband had been an army surgeon. It was a position which would suit her experience and her natural abilities and inclinations admirably. He was genuinely pleased for her. “How long?”

  “Only a month, but already I feel I have been of some service.” Her face was quickened with excitement and her eyes brilliant. “There is so much to be done.” She leaned forward across the table. “I know a little about the new methods, Miss Nightingale’s beliefs about air and cleanliness. It will take time, but we can accomplish what will seem like miracles if we work hard enough.” Unconsciously she was beating her forefinger on the tab
lecloth. “There are so many progressive doctors, as well as the die-hards. And the difference it makes to have anesthetic! You have no idea how things have changed in the last ten or twelve years.”

  She pushed the sugar scuttle away, her eyes intent upon his. “Do you know they can make a person completely senseless, oblivious of pain, and then recover him without harm!” Again her finger beat on the cloth. “That means all manner of surgery can be performed. There is no longer any need to tie a person down and hope to complete everything in a matter of two minutes or so. Now speed is not the primary consideration: one may take time—and care. I never imagined I would see such things—it is absolutely marvelous.”

  Her face darkened and she leaned back again. “Of course, the trouble is we still lose at least half the patients to infection afterwards. That is where we must improve things.” Again she leaned forward. “But I am sure it can be done—there are brilliant and dedicated men here. I really feel I may make some difference.” Suddenly the earnestness vanished and she smiled with total candor. “Finish your pie and have some more.”

  He laughed, happy for her enthusiasm, even though he knew so much of it would end in defeat. Still, any victory was precious. “Thank you,” he accepted. “It is really exceedingly good.”

  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.”