She stared at him as if mesmerized, her eyes dark with pain and some other profound emotion he thought was horror.
"Did he force you?" he went on.
"No!" she gasped. "You are quite wrong! It wasn't Audley! That's a dreadful thing to say-how dare you? He is my sister's husband!" But there was no conviction in her voice and it shook even as she tried to uphold her outrage.
"It is exactly because he is your sister's husband that I cannot believe you were willing," he persisted, but he felt a profound pity for her distress, and his own emotion was thick in his voice.
Her eyes filled with tears. "It wasn't Audley," she said again, but this time it was a whisper, and there was no anger in it, and no conviction. It was a protest for Julia's sake, and even she did not expect him to believe it.
"Yes it was," he said simply.
"I shall deny it." Again it was a statement of fact.
He had no doubt she would, but she seemed not to be certain he was convinced. "Please, Mr. Monk! Say nothing," she implored. "He would deny it, and I should look as if I were a wicked woman as well as immoral. Audley has given me a home and looked after me ever since he married Julia. No one would believe me, and they would think me totally without gratitude or duty." Now there was real fear in her voice, far sharper than the physical fear or revulsion of the assault. If she were branded with such a charge she would find herself not only homeless in the immediate future, but without prospects of marriage in the distance. No respectable man would marry a woman who first took a lover, whether reluctantly or not, and then made such a terrible charge against her sister's husband, a man who had been so generous to her.
"What do you want me to say to your sister?" he asked her.
"Nothing! Say you cannot find out. Say he was a stranger who came in somehow and has long ago escaped." She put out her hand and clasped his arm impulsively. "Please, Mr. Monk!" It was a cry of real anguish now. "Think what it would do to Julia! That would be the worst of all. I couldn't bear it. I had rather Audley said I was an immoral woman and put me out to fend for myself."
She had no idea what fending for herself would mean: the sleeping in brothels or doss houses, the hunger, the abuse, the disease and fear. She had no craft with which to earn her living honestly in a sweatshop working eighteen hours a day, even if her health and her nerve would stand it. But he easily believed she would accept it rather than allow Julia to know what had really happened.
"I shall not tell her it was Audley," he promised. "You need not fear."
The tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. She gulped and sniffed.
"Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Monk." She fished for a handkerchief a few niches square and mostly lace. It was useless.
He passed her his and she took it silently and wiped her eyes, hesitated, then blew her nose as well. Then she was confused, uncertain whether to offer it back to him or not.
He smiled in spite of himself. "Keep it," he offered.
"Thank you."
"Now I had better go and give your sister my final report."
She nodded and sniffed again. "She will be disappointed, but don't let her prevail upon you. However put out she is by not knowing, knowing would be infinitely worse."
"You had better stay here."
"I shall." She gulped. "And-thank you, Mr. Monk."
He found Julia in the morning room writing letters. She looked up as soon as he came in, her face quick with anticipation. He loathed the need to lie, and it cut his pride to have to admit defeat at all, and when he had actually solved the case it was acutely bitter.
"I am sorry, Mrs. Penrose, but I feel that I have pursued this case as far as I can, and to follow it any further would be a waste of your resources-"
"That is my concern, Mr. Monk," she interrupted quickly, laying her pen aside. "And I do not consider it a waste."
"What I am trying to say is that I shall learn nothing further." He said it with difficulty. Never