A sudden, fearful death by Anne Perry Page A

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