"Wot d'yer mean?" she demanded. "Yer sayin' as they was fightin', or summink?"

This was worse than he had expected. What had they been doing? What had he seen, exactly? He tried to clear his mind of all the ideas since then, the attempts to understand and interpret, and recall exactly what had happened. The two figures had been on the bridge, the woman closer to the railing. Or had she? Yes, she had. The wind had been behind them and Monk had seen the billowing skirts poking between the uprights of the balustrade. The woman had waved her arms and then put her hands on the man's shoulders. A caress? Or pushing him away? He had moved his arm, back and up. Pulling away from her? Or making a motion to strike her? He had grasped hold of her. To save her, or to push her?

Mrs. Porter was waiting, hugging herself, still shivering in the warm kitchen with its dinnertime smells.

"I don't know," he said slowly. "They were above us, outlined against the light, and almost two hundred feet away."

She turned to Orme. "Was you there too, sir?"

"Yes, ma'am," Orme replied, standing upright in the middle of the scrubbed floor. "An Mr. Monk's right. The more I think on it, the less certain I am as to what I saw, exact. It was in that sort of darkening time just before the lamps are lit. You think you can see, but you make mistakes."

" 'Oo were she?" she asked. "The woman wot went over with 'im."

"Was there someone you might expect it to be?" Monk parried. "If they were quarrelling?"

She was clearly unhappy. "Well… I don't like ter say…" Her voice trailed off.

"We know who it was, Mrs. Porter," Monk told her. "We need to know what happened, so we don't allow anyone to be blamed for something they didn't do."