But Marianne surprised him.

"No-that is quite all right, Julia," she said firmly. "I will take Mr. Monk and show him. Perhaps tea will come while we are out, and we shall be able to return to it." And without waiting for Julia's reply, she led the way out into the hall and to the side door into the garden.

After a glance at Julia, Monk followed her and found himself outside in a small but extremely pleasant paved yard under the shade of a laburnum tree and a birch of some sort. Ahead of them stretched a long, narrow lawn and he could see a wooden summerhouse about fifteen yards away.

He, walked behind Marianne over the grass under the trees and into the sun. The summerhouse was a small building with glassed windows and a seat inside. There was no easel there now, but plenty of room where one might have stood.

Marianne turned around on the step.

"It was here," she said simply.

He regarded his surroundings with care, absorbing the details. There was at least a twenty-foot distance of grass in every direction, to the herbaceous border and the garden walls on three sides, to the arbor and the house on the fourth. She must have been concentrating very profoundly on her painting not to have noticed the man approach, and the gardener must have been at the front of the house or in the small kitchen herb garden at the side.

"Did you cry out?" he asked, turning to her.

Her face tightened. "I-I don't think so. I don't remember." She shuddered violently and stared at him in silence. "I-I might have. It is all…" She stared at him in silence again.

"Never mind," he dismissed it. There was no use in making her so distressed that she could recall nothing clearly. "Where did you first see him?"

"I don't understand."

"Did you see him coming toward you across the grass?" he asked.

She looked at him in total confusion.