"Well, Monk, what is this about? Is this some further matter to do with Melville?" The absence of title suggested he still thought of Melville as a man. Over the shock of disclosure and all the loss that had followed, he remembered the friend he had known and cared for.
Monk felt a tightening inside himself. A daughter, even as pretty and as charming and as seemingly agreeable as Zillah, was a source for all kinds of fears. Illness and accident were only the worst. There were so many humanly made, unnecessary other traps and snares, even in a young life barely begun.
"What is it?" Lambert repeated, not yet offering Monk a seat.
Monk had been considering where to begin. Lambert was a blunt man. He would not appreciate prevarication.
"I have been looking into Keelin Melville's death," he said directly, watching Lambert's face. "For Rathbone's sake as much as anything. It seems so..."
He saw the look of pain in Lambert's eyes.
"So oddly timed," he went on. "According to the police surgeon, she must have taken the poison while she was actually in the court, and yet she was observed all the time, and she neither ate nor drank anything at all. And why then, rather than later at home? Why would anyone choose to take poison in public in order to die in private, when doing both at home would have been so much easier?"
Lambert stared at him, puzzled and now also troubled. It seemed that up until now his emotions had crowded out thought. This came to him as an ugly intrusion, but he did not evade it.
"What are you trying to say, Monk? You are not a man to come here to see me simply to say there are things you do not understand. You have no need to understand, unless you believe there is something wrong, something criminal, or at the very least, something profoundly immoral. What do you expect of me?" He walked back to one of the chairs, not the one behind the desk but one of those arranged in front of it, and sat on it.
Monk sat in one of the others, crossing his legs and leaning back.
"One possibility troubles me, and I would like to prove it wrong before I let go of it."
"Yes? What is that possibility, and how does it concern me or my family?"
"I am not sure that it does," Monk admitted. "The possibility is that she was murdered."
Lambert leaned forward. "What?" He seemed genuinely not to have understood.
Monk repeated what he 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