Page 8 of A Sudden, Fearful Death (William Monk 4)

g 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.

“What impression did you form of the sister and her husband?” Callandra pursued.

“Of them?” He was surprised. “Very sympathetic to her. I can’t believe she has anything to fear from them, even if she did not resist as thoroughly as she might.”

Callandra said nothing. They finished their course in companionable silence and the plum pie was brought in and served. It was so delicious that they both ate without speaking for several minutes, then finally Callandra set her spoon down.

“Have you seen Hester lately?”

“No.”

She smiled with some inner amusement. He felt annoyed and then unaccountably foolish.

“I have not seen her,” he went on. “The last time we parted it was with less than amiability. She is the most opinionated and abrasive woman I have ever met, and dogmatic to the degree that she does not listen to anyone else. And she is absurdly complacent about it, which makes it insufferable.”

“Qualities you do not like?” she asked innocently.

“Good God no!” he exploded. “Does anyone?”

“You find firmly held opinions and spirited defense of them displeasing?”