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
'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
