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“Number fourteen, Hastings Street,” she replied.
“One more question. Since you are making these arrangements yourself, am I to assume that your husband is unaware of them?”
She bit her lip and the color in her cheeks heightened. “You are. I should be obliged if you would be as discreet as possible.”
“How shall I account for my presence, if he should ask?”
“Oh.” For a moment she was disconcerted. “Will it not be possible to call when he is out? He attends his business every weekday from nine in the morning until, at the earliest, half past four. He is an architect. Sometimes he is out considerably later.”
“It will be, I expect, but I would prefer to have a story ready in case we are caught out. We must at least agree on our explanations.”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “You make it sound s
o … deceitful, Mr. Monk. I have no wish to lie to Mr. Penrose. It is simply that the matter is so distressing, it would be so much pleasanter for Marianne if he did not know. She has to continue living in his house, you see?” She stared up at him suddenly with fierce intensity. “She has already suffered the attack. Her only chance of recovering her emotions, her peace of mind, and any happiness at all, will lie in putting it all behind her. How can she do that if every time she sits down at the table she knows that the man opposite her is fully aware of her shame? It would be intolerable for her!”
“But you know, Mrs. Penrose,” he pointed out, although even as he said it he knew that was entirely different.
A smile flickered across her mouth. “I am a woman, Mr. Monk. Need I explain to you that that brings us closer in a way you cannot know. Marianne will not mind me. With Audley it would be quite different, for all his gentleness. He is a man, and nothing can alter that.”
There was no possible comment to make on such a statement.
“What would you like to tell him to explain my presence?” he asked.
“I—I am not sure.” She was momentarily confused, but she gathered her wits rapidly. She looked him up and down: his lean, smooth-boned face with its penetrating eyes and wide mouth, his elegant and expensively dressed figure. He still had the fine clothes he had bought when he was a senior inspector in the Metropolitan Police with no one to support but himself, before his last and most dreadful quarrel with Runcorn.
He waited with a dry amusement.
Evidently she approved what she saw. “You may say we have a mutual friend and you are calling to pay your respects to us,” she replied decisively.
“And the friend?” He raised his eyebrows. “We should be agreed upon that.”
“My cousin Albert Finnister. He is short and fat and lives in Halifax where he owns a woolen mill. My husband has never met him, nor is ever likely to. That you may not know Yorkshire is beside the point. You may have met him anywhere you choose, except London. Audley would wonder why he had not visited us.”
“I have some knowledge of Yorkshire,” Monk replied, hiding his smile. “Halifax will do. I shall see you this afternoon, Mrs. Penrose.”
“Thank you. Good day, Mr. Monk.” And with a slight inflection of her head she waited while he opened the door for her, then took her leave, walking straight-backed, head high, out into Fitzroy Street and north toward the square, and in a hundred yards or so, the Euston Road.
Monk closed the door and went back to his office room. He had lately moved here from his old lodgings around the comer in Grafton Street. He had resented Hester’s interference in suggesting the move in her usual high-handed manner, but when she had explained her reasons, he was obliged to agree. In Grafton Street his rooms were up a flight of stairs and to the back. His landlady had been a motherly soul, but not used to the idea of his being in private practice and unwilling to show prospective clients up. Also they were obliged to pass the doors of other residents, and occasionally to meet them on the stairs or the hall or landing. This arrangement was much better. Here a maid answered the door without making her own inquiries as to people’s business and simply showed them in to Monk’s very agreeable ground-floor sitting room. Grudgingly at first, he conceded it was a marked improvement.
Now to prepare to investigate the rape of Miss Marianne Gillespie, a delicate and challenging matter, far more worthy of his mettle than petty theft or the reputation of an employee or suitor.
It was a beautiful day when he set out: a hot, high summer sun beating on the pavements, making the leafier squares pleasant refuges from the shimmering light hazy with the rising smoke of distant factory chimneys. Carriages clattered along the street past him, harnesses jingling, as people rode out to take the air or to pay early afternoon calls, drivers and footmen in livery, brasses gleaming. The smell of fresh horse droppings was pungent in the warmth and a twelve-year-old crossing sweeper mopped his brow under a floppy cap.
Monk walked to Hastings Street. It was little over a mile and the additional time would give him further opportunity to think. He welcomed the challenge of a more difficult case, one which would test his skills. Since the trial of Alexandra Carlyon he had had nothing but trivial matters, things that as a policeman he would have delegated to the most junior constable.
Of course the Carlyon case had been different. That had tested him to the utmost. He remembered it with a complexity of feelings, at once triumphant and painful. And with thought of it came memory of Hermione, and unconsciously he lengthened his pace on the hot pavement, his body tightened and his mouth clenched shut in a hard line. He had been afraid when her face first came fleetingly into his mind; a shred of the past returned, uncertain, haunting him with echoes of love, tenderness, and terrible anxiety. He knew he had cared for her, but not when or how, if she had loved him, what had happened between them that he had nothing left, no letters, no pictures, no reference to her in his possessions.
But regardless of memory, his skill was always there, dedicated and ruthless. He had found her again. Fragment by fragment he had pieced it together until he stood on the doorstep and at last he knew her, the whole gentle almost childlike face, the brown eyes, the halo of hair. The entire memory flooded back.
He swallowed hard. Why was he deliberately hurting himself? The disillusion burned over him in anger as if it had been only moments ago, the searing knowledge that she preferred the comfortable existence of half love; emotions that did not challenge; commitment of the mind and body, but not of the heart; always a reservation to avoid the possibility of real pain.
Her gentleness was accommodation, not compassion. She had not the courage to do more than sip at life; she would never drain the cup.
He was walking so blindly he bumped into an elderly man in a frock coat and apologized perfunctorily. The man stared after him with irritation, his whiskers bristling. An open landau passed with a group of young women huddled together and giggling as one of them waved to some acquaintance. The ribbons on their bonnets danced in the breeze and their huge skirts made them seem to be sitting on mounds of flowered cushions.
Monk had already resolved to look no further into the emotions of his past. He knew more than he wanted to about Hermione; and he had detected or deduced enough about the man who had been his benefactor and mentor, and who would have introduced him into successful commerce had he not been cheated into ruin himself—a fate from which Monk had tried so hard to rescue him, and failed. It was then, in outrage at the injustice, that he had abandoned commerce and joined the police, to fight against such crime; although as far as he could remember, he had never caught that particular fraud. Please God at least he had tried. He could remember nothing, and he felt sick at the thought of trying, in case his discovery shed even further ugly light on the man he had been.
But he had been brilliant. Nothing cast shadow or doubt on that. Even since the accident he had solved the Grey case, the Moidore case, and then the Carlyon case. Not even his worst enemy—and so far that seemed to be Runcorn, although one never knew who else he might discover—but not even Runcorn had said he lacked courage, honesty, or the will to dedicate himself totally to the pursuit of truth, and labor till he dropped, without counting the cost. Although it seemed he did not count the cost to others either.
