Then, almost as if closing curtains within his mind, he looked just beyond him. His voice was a little high-pitched, as if he could not open his throat. “The next moment I felt a ringing blow, and I was forced back against the wall, and Caleb was on top of me.” He took a deep breath. “We struggled for several moments. I did all I could to free myself, but he had an extraordinary strength. He seemed determined to kill me, and it was all I could do to force the knife away from my throat. I made a tremendous effort, I suppose seeing the nearness of death in the blade. I don't know exactly how it occurred. He jerked back, slipped, and missed his footing somehow, and fell, pulling me on top of him.”

Rathbone tried to visualize it, the fear, the violence, the confusion. It was not difficult.

“When I freed myself and managed to rise to my feet,” Ravensbrook went on, “he was lying there with the knife in his throat and blood pouring from the wound. There was nothing I could do. God help him. At least he is at some sort of peace now. He'll be spared the . . .” He took another long, deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “The judicial . . . process.”

Rathbone glanced at Monk, and saw the same look of distress in his face, and also the knowledge that there was no retreat or evasion possible.

“Thank you,” Monk acknowledged Ravensbrook, then with Rathbone behind him, walked over and pushed the cell door wider and went inside. Caleb Stone was lying on the floor in a sheet of blood. It lay in a scarlet tide around his head and shoulders. The penknife, a beautiful silver engraved thing, was lying upside down against his neck, as if it had fallen out of the wound with its own weight. There was no question that he was dead. The beautiful green eyes were open, and quite blind. There was in his face a look of resignation, as if he had at last let go of something which was both a possession and a torture, and the ease of it had surprised him.

Monk looked for something to tell him some fact beyond that which Ravensbrook or the gaoler had said, and saw nothing. There were no contradictions, no suggestions of anything additional, anything unexplained by the account of a simple, stupid piece of violence. The only question was had he been impulsive, in a sudden overwhelming rage, perhaps like the rage that had killed Angus, or had it been a deliberately planned way of committing suicide before the hangman could take his life in the slow, exquisite mindtorture of conviction, sentence and hanging?

He turned to Rathbone, and saw an understanding of the same question in his face.