But no one is going to believe that of a man in your position.”

“Good God, don't you think I know that!” Monk said furiously. “If she were a young woman seeking a husband, and I were likely material, she wouldn't do it anyway. Think what it would do to her own reputation. What gentleman will look at her now? I'm not so damned ignorant I don't know what it will cost her. Nor is she. That's what makes it so terrifying. She hates me enough to destroy herself in order to destroy me.”

“Then whatever you did to cause it is profound,” Rathbone said. It was not meant in cruelty, but there was no time or space to deal in less than the truth, and he was aware of his desk just beyond the door, and his next ap- pointment. “I'm not sure how much it may protect you to know,” he went on, “but if you do search, I would begin by looking for someone who may have been unjustly convicted, or a person hanged, or jailed and perhaps died there. Don't begin with thefts or embezzlements, or the victims of petty crime. In other words, start with the result of the investigation, not the weight of the evidence or your own certainty that the prosecution was just.”

“Will it help if I find it?” Monk asked, pinned between hope and bitterness.

Rathbone toyed with a lie, but only for an instant. Monk was not a man to give another an easy sop. He did not deserve it himself.

“Possibly not,” he answered. “Only if it comes to trial, and you could prove she has a motive of revenge. But if she has as much intelligence as you suggest, I doubt she'll seek a prosecution. She'd be unlikely in that event to get one, certainly not a conviction, unless she had an extraordi- nary biased jury.” His face tightened and his eyes were steady. “She will do far more damage to you, and leave you less chance of escape, vindication, or counterattack, if she simply passes the word around. She will not land you in prison that way, but she will ruin your career. You will be reduced to-' I know!” Monk snapped, rising to his feet abruptly, and with a sharp intake of breath as his aching muscles and bruised body hurt him. “I shall have to scrape a living working for people in the fringes of trade or the under- world, looking for errant husbands, collecting bad debts and chasing petty thieves.” He turned his back on Rathbone and stared out of the window. “And I shall be lucky if they can afford to pay me enough for me to eat daily.