William Monk 03 - Defend and Betray

neat gloves. For several seconds she struggled for words.
    His patience broke.
    “What is it that concerns you, Mrs. Penrose? Unless you tell me, I cannot help.”
    “Yes, yes I know that,” she said very quietly. “It is noteasy for me, Mr. Monk. I realize I am wasting your time, and I apologize.…”
    “Not at all,” he said grudgingly.
    She looked up, her face pale but a flash of humor in her eyes. She made a tremendous effort. “My sister has been … molested, Mr. Monk. I wish to know who was responsible.”
    So it was not a petty matter after all.
    “I’m sorry,” he said gently, and he meant it. He did not need to ask why she had not called the police. The thought of making such a thing public would crush most people beyond bearing. Society’s judgment of a woman who had been sexually assaulted, to whatever degree, was anything from prurient curiosity to the conviction that in some way she must have warranted such a fate. Even the woman herself, regardless of the circumstances, frequently felt that in some unknown way she was to blame, and that such things did not happen to the innocent. Perhaps it was people’s way of coping with the horror it engendered, the fear that they might become similar victims. If it were in some way the woman’s own fault, then it could be avoided by the just and the careful. The answer was simple.
    “I wish you to find out who it was, Mr. Monk,” she said again, looking at him earnestly.
    “And if I do, Mrs. Penrose?” he asked. “Have you thought what you will do then? I assume from the fact that you have not called the police that you do not wish to prosecute?”
    The fair skin of her face became even paler. “No, of course not,” she said huskily. “You must be aware of what such a court case would be like. I think it might be even worse than the—the event, terrible as that must have been.” She shook her head. “No—absolutely not! Have you any idea how people can be about …”
    “Yes,” he said quickly. “And also the chances of a conviction are not very good, unless there is considerable injury. Was your sister injured, Mrs. Penrose?”
    Her eyes dropped and a faint flush crept up her cheeks.“No, no, she was not—not in any way that can now be proved.” Her voice sank even lower. “If you understand me? I prefer not to … discuss—it would be indelicate …”
    “I see.” And indeed he did. He was not sure whether he believed the young woman in question had been assaulted, or if she had told her sister that she had in order to explain a lapse in her own standards of morality. But already he felt a definite sympathy with the woman here in front of him. Whatever had happened, she now faced a budding tragedy.
    She looked at him with hope and uncertainty. “Can you help us, Mr. Monk? ’Least—at least as long as my money lasts? I have saved a little from my dress allowance, and I can pay you up to twenty pounds in total.” She did not wish to insult him, and embarrass herself, and she did not know how to avoid either.
    He felt an uncharacteristic lurch of pity. It was not a feeling which came to him easily. He had seen so much suffering, almost all of it more violent and physical than Julia Penrose’s, and he had long ago exhausted his emotions and built around himself a shell of anger which preserved his sanity. Anger drove him to action; it could be exorcised and leave him drained at the end of the day, and able to sleep.
    “Yes, that will be quite sufficient,” he said to her. “I should be able either to discover who it is or tell you that it is not possible. I assume you have asked your sister, and she has been unable to tell you?”
    “Yes indeed,” she responded. “And naturally she finds it difficult to recall the event—nature assists us in putting from our minds that which is too dreadful to bear.”
    “I know,” he said with a harsh, biting humor she would never comprehend. It was barely a year ago, in the summer of 1856, just at the close of the war in the Crimea, that he had been involved in a coaching accident and woken in the narrow gray cot of a hospital, cold with terror that it might be the workhouse and knowing nothing of himself at all, not even his name. Certainly it was the crack to his head which had brought it on, but as fragments of memory had returned, snatches here and there, there was still a blackhorror which held most of it from him, a dread of learning the unbearable. Piece by piece he had