William Monk 04 - A Sudden Fearful Death

able to return to it.” And without waiting for Julia’s reply, she led the way out into the hall and to the side door into the garden.
    After a glance at Julia, Monk followed her and found himself outside in a small but extremely pleasant paved yard under the shade of a laburnum tree and a birch of some sort. Ahead of them stretched a long, narrow lawn and he could see a wooden summerhouse about fifteen yards away.
    He walked behind Marianne over the grass under the trees and into the sun. The summerhouse was a small building with glassed windows and a seat inside. There was no easel there now, but plenty of room where one might have stood.
    Marianne turned around on the step.
    “It was here,” she said simply.
    He regarded his surroundings with care, absorbing the details. There was at least a twenty-foot distance of grass in every direction, to the herbaceous border and the garden walls on three sides, to the arbor and the house on the fourth. She must have been concentrating very profoundly on her painting not to have noticed the man approach, and the gardener must have been at the front of the house or in the small kitchen herb garden at the side.
    “Did you cry out?” he asked, turning to her.
    Her face tightened. “I—I don’t think so. I don’t remember.” She shuddered violently and stared at him in silence. “I—I might have. It is all …” She stared at him in silence again.
    “Never mind,” he dismissed it. There was no use inmaking her so distressed that she could recall nothing clearly. “Where did you first see him?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Did you see him coming toward you across the grass?” he asked.
    She looked at him in total confusion.
    “Have you forgotten?” He made an effort to be gentle with her.
    “Yes.” She seized on it. “Yes—I’m sorry …”
    He waved his hand, closing the matter. Then he left the summerhouse and walked over the grass toward the border and the old stone wall which marked the boundary between this and the next garden. It was about four feet high and covered in places by dark green moss. He could see no mark on it, no scuff or scratch where anyone had climbed over. Nor were there any broken plants in the border, although there were places where one might have trodden on the earth and avoided them. There was no point in looking for footprints now; the crime had been ten days ago, and it had rained several times since then, apart from whatever repairs the gardener might have made with a rake.
    He heard the faint brush of her skirts over the grass and turned to find her standing just behind him.
    “What are you doing?” she asked, her face puckered with anxiety.
    “Looking to see if there are any traces of someone having climbed in over the wall,” he replied.
    “Oh.” She drew in her breath as if about to continue speaking, then changed her mind.
    He wondered what she had been about to say, and what thought had prevented her. It was an ugly feeling, and yet he could not help wondering if she had, after all, known her attacker—or even whether it had truly been an attack and not a seduction. He could well understand how a young woman who had lost her most precious commodity, her virtue in the eyes of others, and who thus was ruined for the marriage market, might well claim an attack rather than a yielding on her own part, whatever the temptation. Not thatbeing the victim of rape would be any more acceptable. Perhaps it was only to her own family that it might make any difference. They would do all they could to see that the rest of the world never knew.
    He walked over to the wall at the end of the garden where it abutted the opposite property. Here the stones were crumbling in one or two places, and an agile man might have climbed over without leaving a noticeable trace. She was still with him and she read his thoughts, her eyes wide and dark, but she said nothing. Silently he looked at the third wall separating them from the garden to the west.
    “He must have come over the end wall,” she said very quietly, looking down at the grass. “No one could have come through the herb garden to the side because Rodwell must have been there. And the door from the yard on the other side is locked.” She was referring to the paved area to the east side where the rubbish was kept and where the coal chute to the cellar and the servants’ entrance to the scullery and kitchen were located.
    “Did he hurt you, Miss Gillespie?” He asked