A Sudden, Fearful Death Read online

  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 h
er 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.