He stopped at the window and stared out of it, seeing only the blur of the rain. Nobody else cared now, except Rathbone, of course, and that was for emotional reasons. He hated failure, and he was not used to guilt. Monk smiled to himself. He was much more used to it, but he liked it no better. The only difference was that for him it was a familiar pain, for Rathbone it had all the shock of the new.

At least Monk imagined it had!

Was that why Keelin Melville had killed herself? Guilt?

Over what? The injury she had done to Zillah Lambert could very easily be explained. It was error, private social clumsiness possibly. Certainly nothing that warranted suicide.

Anyway, wasn't genius rather more self-protective than that? He tried to think back on what he knew of the lives of the great creative people. Many of them had hurt others, been eccentric, selfish, single-minded, impossible to live with happily, sometimes even to live with at all. But it was those around them they injured, not themselves. They were too fired by their passion to make, to build, to create, paint, dance or whatever it was that formed their gift to the world. Sometimes they burned themselves out; sometimes illness or accident consumed them. Many died young.

But he could think of no example of one who had killed himself over guilt regarding his abuse of women. The very idea was almost a contradiction within itself.

Was Melville so different simply because she was a woman?

He doubted it.

Then what?

The rain was streaming down the window now, distorting the lamps of carriages passing in the street below, reflecting in the puddles.

The more he thought about the buildings full of light, the clean lines soaring into the air, the sense of comfort and peace he had felt inside them, the less could he believe Melville would have taken her own life.

Was it conceivable that somewhere, in some way he had yet even to imagine, somebody else had killed her?

Why? Why would anybody want to? What else had happened that day, or the day before, to make her dangerous to anyone? If she had known anything about Zillah that was not to her credit, surely she would have said so before this, long before Isaac Wolff was tarnished by the whole affair, even put in jeopardy of imprisonment, for a crime which now was ludicrous, in light of the truth.

He pushed his hands into his pockets. Below him in the street it was raining harder. The gutters were swirling over their edges. A footman standing at the side of a carriage was soaking wet. His figure in the riding lights was expressive of his utter dejection. A stray dog was splashing about happily.

A man strode by with an umbrella which was ineffectual.