“Yes, Mrs. Stonefield,” he replied, moving from the desk into the middle of the room, which he had designed to make people feel at ease-or more accurately, Hester Latterly had persuaded him to do so. “Please sit down.”

He indicated one of the large, padded armchairs across the red-and-blue Turkey rug from his own. It was a bitter January, and there was a fire burning briskly in the hearth, not only for warmth but for the sense of comfort it produced. “Tell me what disturbs you, and how you believe I may help.” He sat in the other chair opposite her as soon as courtesy permitted.

She did not bother to rearrange her skirts; they billowed around her in exactly the way they had chanced to fall, hoops awry and showing one slender, high-booted ankle.

Having steeled herself to take the plunge, she had no need of further invitation, but began straightaway, leaning forward a little, staring at him gravely.

“Mr. Monk, in order for you to understand my anxiety, I must tell you something of my husband and his circumstances. I apologize for taking up your time in this manner, but without this knowledge, what I tell you will make little sense.”

Monk made an effort to appear as if he listened. It was tedious, and in all probability quite unnecessary, but he had learned, through error, to allow people to say what they wished before reaching the purpose of their visit.

If nothing else, it permitted them a certain element of self-respect in a circumstance where they found themselves obliged to ask for help in an acutely private matter, and of someone most of them regarded as socially inferior by dint of the very fact that he earned his living. Their reasons were usually painful, and they would have preferred to have kept the secret.

When he had been a policeman such delicacy would have been irrelevant, but now he had no authority, and he would be paid only according to his client's estimate of his success.