William Monk 13 - Death of a Stranger

inside the house within seconds, and retraced his steps up to Katrina’s rooms. It took him even less time to pick the lock on her door, and then he was in the room. The sense of tragedy closed around him, the silence, the very faint film of dust showing on the wooden surfaces in the sunlight through the bay windows. Perhaps to someone else it would simply have looked like the room of someone on holiday; to him the presence of death was as tangible as another person watching him, waiting.
    He jerked his attention back to the moment. There was no time to think about what had happened here, to try to picture Dalgarno, if it had been him, standing probably where Monk was now, charming her, quarreling, whatever it had been, then going out onto the balcony with her, the last furious words, the struggle, and her falling . . .
    He was looking for papers, letters, address books. Where would they be? In the desk where Runcorn had already looked, or in some other similar kind of place. He moved quickly to the desk, opened it and started with the pigeonholes, then the drawers. There was surprisingly little for a woman who conducted her own affairs, and nothing dating farther back than a few months. Presumably that was when she had come to London.
    There was nothing else to Emma, which was not surprising. They would naturally all have been posted. He was chilled inside at the thought of what Emma might have. And it seemed Katrina had not kept Emma’s other letters, at least not in the desk. Nor was there any note of her address. Was it one that she knew so well there was no need to note it down?
    He stood in the middle of the floor, staring around him. Where else might she keep anything on paper? Where did she cook? Did she have recipe books, kitchen accounts that were separate? A diary? Where did women keep diaries? Bedside table or cabinet? Under the mattress, if it were private enough.
    He searched more and more frantically, trying to steady his hands and be methodical, miss nothing, replace everything as he had found it. There were no other letters, no address book, only the cooking notes any woman might have, a book of recipes handed on from Eveline Mary M. Austin, and brief memos on how to launder certain difficult fabrics.
    He found the diary just as he was about to give up. He had actually sat down on the bed, sweat on his face, frustration making his hands stiff and clumsy, when he felt a hardness in the lace-covered decorative pillow at the head, over the coverlet. He fished inside the fold at the back and drew out the hardcovered little book. He knew instantly what it was, and opened it, gulping his breath at fear of what he would find. It could be anything, more doubts of himself, words that would prove Dalgarno’s guilt, or even someone else’s, or nothing of use at all. And he hated the intrusion. Diaries were often intimate and shatteringly private. He did not want to read it, and he had to.
    Inside the flyleaf was an inscription: “To my dearest Katrina, from your Aunt Eveline.” He only glanced at the pages. The first date was over ten years ago, and the entries were sporadic, sometimes merely the notation of a date, at others a page or more, even two for events of great importance to her. He had not time to read them all, and he concentrated on the more recent ones, particularly since meeting Dalgarno.
    He felt guilty reading what were in some cases the inner thoughts of a young woman on the people in her life and the emotions they caused in her, but often her words were so cryptic he could only guess, and he preferred not to. He imagined what he would have felt, had he ever committed his own thoughts to paper like this, and some mere stranger had read them.
    He found the letter from Emma almost at the end. It was in the same cramped backhand as the one he had destroyed. It was far less specific, only words of any general sympathy, as if in answer to a letter from Katrina which did not need repeating for her responding emotions to be understood.
    He read it twice, then folded it up again, put it in the diary and then put the diary carefully in his pocket. Apparently, Runcorn had not found it so he would not now miss it. He could read it later, and see if anything in it would lead to Emma.
    Within half an hour of going in, he was out in the street again, telling the constable that unfortunately he had found nothing, and then wishing him good day and walking rapidly back towards the main thoroughfare.

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