A Sudden, Fearful Death

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 thing 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.