She pulled away from him violently. He felt the button in her hand rip off his coat, but it hardly mattered. Her face was filled with emotion so intense her eyes blazed and her color was hectic. She stared at him for a long, desperate moment, then spun on her heel and all but ran back toward the gate.

Monk was aware that several people were staring at them, but he did not care. What did she know about Arrol Dundas? That question filled his mind to the exclusion of everything else. He strode after her, almost catching up with her at the gate out onto Inner Circle pathway, but she was moving rapidly. She crossed the path and followed it through the grass and trees past the Toxophilite Society grounds on the left, toward the bridge over an arm of the lake. He managed to stop her on the far side, again to the alarm and curiosity of passersby.

“How do you know that?” he repeated the demand. “What have you heard? From whom—Dalgarno?”

“Dalgarno?” she said incredulously, then she started to laugh, a wild sound, close to hysteria. But she did not answer. Instead, she turned away from him again and half ran along York Gate towards the Marylebone Road and the general traffic with carriages and hansoms going in both directions. “I’m going home!” she called at him over her shoulder.

He ran after her, catching up again and walking beside her as she reached the road and raised her parasol to hail a cab. One pulled up almost immediately and Monk helped her in, climbing in after her.

She made no protest, almost as if she had expected him to.

“If it was not Dalgarno, then from whom?” he insisted after she had given the driver instructions to take her to Cuthbert Street in Paddington.

She turned to face him. “You mean the fraud case, all those years ago?”

“Yes, of course I do!” He kept his temper only with the greatest difficulty. It mattered intensely. What did she know? How could she know anything, except from Baltimore’s records or something she had overheard him say?

She stared straight ahead, smiling, but there was a hollowness in her eyes. “Did you imagine I made no enquiries myself, Mr. Monk?” Her voice was hard-edged, grating. “Did you think I learned nothing about the past history of Baltimore and Sons when I knew how deeply Michael was involved in it, and expected to make his fortune through it?”

“You said that you knew an innocent man was convicted of fraud in that case,” he said grimly, horrified at how his own voice betrayed the emotion choking him. “How do you know that? No one knew it then.”

“Didn’t they?” she asked, staring ahead of her.

“Of course they didn’t, or he wouldn’t have died in jail!” He grasped her arm. “How do you know? What happened?”