William Monk 09 - A Breach of Promise

had said.
    “Why?” Lambert puckered his face, his eyes narrowed. “Why would anybody want to murder Melville? He was the most …” He swallowed. “She was the most likable person. Of course, she had professional rivals, but people don’t kill for that sort of reason.” He waved his hand. “That’s preposterous. And no one except Wolff knew she was a woman. You’re not suggesting Wolff killed her, are you? I don’t believe that for an instant!” Everything in his voice, his expression, emphasized what he said.
    “No I don’t,” Monk agreed. “If it was murder, then I think it was to stop the case from going any further.”
    “The only person who’d want to stop that was poor Killian … Keelin … herself.” A twinge of pain shot over Lambert’s face. “I’m sorry … I still find it hard to believe all this. I liked her, you know. I liked her very much, even after she—she … damn it! Even after the marriage with Zillah fell through, I still liked him—her!”
    Lambert stood up and began pacing restlessly back and forth across the room, seesawing his hands in the air.
    “I went ahead with the case because I had to!” He looked at Monk with a desperate urgency, willing him to believe. “I had to protect my daughter’s reputation. If I hadn’t, people would have said Melville had discovered something about her that made it impossible to marry her. They would assume she was without morals, a loose woman. No one would have had her.” His lips tightened. “Do you know what happens to a young woman whose reputation is gone, Mr. Monk? She has no place!” He chopped the air again. “No decent man will marry her. She is no longer invited to the decent houses. Young women with hopes no longer associate with her, in case the dirt rubs off. If she marries at all, it is to a man beneath her, and he treats her as what she is, one of society’s castoffs.”
    He looked at Monk intently, willing him to understand. “Or she stays single, dependent upon her father, while all her friends gain husbands, houses, status—in time, children. Would you want that for your daughter? Wouldn’t you fight any battle, any justified battle at all, rather than let that happen? Especially when you know she has done nothing to warrant it.”
    “I should probably do it whether she had warranted it or not,” Monk said frankly. He disliked what he was going to do. Only there was the remembrance that Keelin Melville had been a young woman too, also denied what she wanted most because of the beliefs and conventions of others. There had been no one to feel for her, now not even herself. “What about Hugh Gibbons?”
    Lambert’s face showed nothing. No man could be so complete a master of himself as to have hidden guilt behind such a bland exterior.
    “Who is Hugh Gibbons?”
    “A young man who was in love with Zillah some three years ago,” Monk replied. “He was unsuitable and the romance had gone too far. Mrs. Lambert took Zillah away, very suddenly, ona prolonged trip to the seaside—in North Wales. Crickieth, to be precise.”
    Lambert’s face paled suddenly. He remained motionless where he was by the window, the light behind him.
    “You remember now,” Monk said unnecessarily.
    The blood rushed back to Lambert’s cheeks. He came forward to the desk, leaning over it. “Are you saying my daughter has lost her virtue, sir?”
    “I have no idea,” Monk replied. “I am agreeing with you that malicious supposition, whether true or not, can ruin a young person, and it would be natural for those who care for them to go to great lengths to prevent that.”
    Lambert drew in a long, slow breath. “You are accusing me of murdering Melville to hide some damned indiscretion which was caught before it was anything! God Almighty, what kind of a man do you think I am?”
    Monk glanced down and saw that Lambert’s hands on the desk were shaking and his knuckles were white. He would have sworn that the idea genuinely horrified him.
    “I am not accusing you, Mr. Lambert,” Monk answered quietly. “I am trying to find out why Keelin Melville chose such an extraordinary time to kill herself, and how. She did not eat or drink anything during the time when the police surgeon says the poison entered her body … yet he says it was swallowed. It does not make sense, does it?”
    Lambert frowned. He sat down again, this time behind the desk. “No … not that I can see,” he agreed. “But if she did not