He smiled slightly, just an easing of the tiredness in him. "I went back to the Havilland house and spoke to the cook and one of the maids," he went on. "They said Havilland received a note that night, hand-delivered to the back door. As soon as he read it he burnt it, and then told the butler to go to bed and he would lock up himself."

"He was going to meet someone in the stable!" she said instantly, sitting upright and staring at him. "Whom?"

He looked rueful. "They had no idea. The envelope had only his name on it. The cook saw it briefly, and the maid who carried it doesn't read."

"Well, who could it be?" she said eagerly. At last there was something to grasp hold of. She felt a surge of hope, which was absurd. It should not matter to her so much. She had never known Mary Havilland. She might not have liked her in the least if she had. She was remembering her own grief, the feeling of having been bruised all over, stunned by confusion, when she had first stood on the dockside at Scutari and read the letter from her brother, telling her of her fathers suicide, and then her mother's death from what was termed a broken heart. She could not help imagining Mary Havilland feeling the same searing pain.

Except that Hester had believed it and Mary had not. Had Mary been wrong, making it harder for herself, and for her sister, by refusing to accept the inevitable? "Who could it be?" she repeated.

Monk was watching her, his eyes soft with knowledge of her pain.

"I don't know, except that since he immediately made arrangements to meet the person, it must have been either someone he knew or at the least someone he was not surprised to hear from. Nor did he seem to need to answer it, so whoever it was knew he would come."

"You must find out!" she said unhesitatingly.

It was unreasonable, and she knew it as she spoke, but he did not argue. Was that for her? Or was the anger at his loss, the sense of incompleteness, still raw inside him, too? Or worse, was it the challenge that he must be perfect at his new job, equal to his own vision of what Durban would have done?

"William ...," she started.

"I know." He smiled.

"Do you?" she asked doubtfully.

His eyes were gentle, amused. "Yes."

However, in the morning Hester set out on her own path towards learning what she hoped would be both more about Mary Havilland, and something to further the cause in which she had promised to help Sutton.

First she called at the clinic in Portpool Lane to complete the books and ledgers and pass them to Margaret.