Free A sudden, fearful death by Anne Perry Page B

slowly she backed away from the table
with its bright flowers and reached behind her for the arm of the settee. She
sank into it, still staring at him.
    "You had better tell me what
it is, Mr. Monk. I have to know. Do you know who raped my sister?"
    "Yes, I am afraid I do."
He took a deep breath. He tried one last thing, although he knew it would be
futile. "I still think it would be better if you did not pursue the
matter. You cannot prosecute. Perhaps if you were to find some other area for
your sister to live, where she could not encounter him again? Do you have a
relative, an aunt perhaps, with whom she could stay?"
    Her eyebrows rose. "Are you
suggesting that this man who did this thing should be allowed to go entirely
unpunished, Mr. Monk? I am aware that the law will not punish him, and that a
prosecution would in any case be as painful for Marianne as it would ever be
for him." She was sitting so tensely her body must ache with the rack of
her muscles. "But I will not countenance his escaping scot-free! It seems
you do not think it a crime after all. I confess I am disappointed. I had
thought better of you."
    Anger boiled up in him, and it cost
him dearly to suppress it. "Fewer people would be hurt."
    She stared at him.
    "That is unfortunate, but it
cannot be helped. Who was it? Please do not prevaricate any further. You will
not change my mind."
    "It was your husband, Mrs.
Penrose."
    She did not protest outrage or
disbelief. She sat totally motionless, her face ashen. Then at last she licked
her lips and tried to speak. Her throat convulsed and no sound came. Then she
tried again.
    "I assume you would not have
said this—if—if you were not totally sure?"
    "Of course not." He
longed to comfort her, and there was no possible comfort. "Even then I
would prefer not to have told you. Your sister begged me not to, but I felt I
had to, in part because you were determined to pursue the matter, if not
through me, then with another agent. And also because there is the danger of it
happening again, and there is the possibility she may become with child—"
    "Stop it!" This time the
cry was torn from her in a frenzy of pain. "Stop it! You have told me.
That is sufficient." With a terrible effort she mastered herself,
although her hands were shaking uncontrollably.
    "When I taxed her with it, she
denied it at first, to protect you." He went on relentlessly. It had to
be finished now. "Then when it was obviously true from her own testimony,
and that of your neighbors, she admitted it, but implored me not to say so. I
think the only reason she made any mention of the incident at all was to
account for her extreme distress after it, and for the bruising. Otherwise I
think she would have remained silent, for your sake."
    "Poor Marianne." Her
voice trembled violently. "She would endure that for me. What harm have I
done her?"
    He moved a step nearer to her,
undecided whether to sit without invitation or remain standing, towering over
her. He opted to sit.
    "You cannot blame
yourself," he said earnestly. "You of all people are the most
innocent in this."
    "No I am not, Mr. Monk."
She did not look at him but at some distance far beyond the green shadow of
leaves across the window. Her voice was now filled with self-loathing.
"Audley is a man with natural expectations, and I have denied him all the
years we have been married." She hunched into herself as if suddenly the
room were intolerably cold, her fingers gripping her arms painfully, driving
the blood out of the flesh.
    He wanted to interrupt her and tell
her the explanation was private and quite unnecessary, but he knew she needed
to tell him, to rid herself of a burden she could no longer bear.
    "I should not have, but I was
so afraid." She was shivering very slightly, as if her muscles were
locked. "You see, my mother had child after child between my birth and
Marianne's. All of them miscarried or died. I watched her in such