Stonefield might have made some enemy he had good reason to fear, or be the victim of blackmail for an indiscretion or even a crime. He might be fleeing the law for some misappropriation not yet uncovered, or any other offense, an accident or a sudden violence not so far traced to him. He might have suffered an accident and be lying in hospital or in a workhouse somewhere, too ill to have sent his family word.

It was even conceivable that, like Monk himself, he had been struck on the head with a blow which had obliterated his memory. He broke out in a prickle of sweat which a moment after was cold on his skin as he remembered waking up two years before in what he had taken to be a workhouse without the slightest idea who or where he was. His past had been an utter blank to him. Even his face in the glass had been unrecognizable.

Slowly he had pieced together fragments here and there, scenes of his youth, his journey south from Northumberland to London, probably when he was nineteen or twentyroughly about the time of the accession of Queen Victoria, although he could not remember it. The coronation he knew only from pictures and other people's descriptions.

Even this much was deduced, because he supposed himself to be now in his early forties, and it was January 1859.

Of course, it was absurd to suppose Angus Stonefield was in a similar situation. Such things must happen exceedingly rarely. But then murder was fortunately not so common either. It was far more probably some sad but ordinary domestic circumstance or a financial disaster.

He always disliked having to tell a woman such a thing. In this case it would be harder than usual because already he had formed a certain respect for her. There was a femininity to her which was charming, and yet a defiant courage, and in all she had told him, in spite of her grief and thinly concealed desperation, there was no self-pity. She had asked for his professional services, not begged his compassion. If Angus Stonefield had left her for another woman, he was a man whose taste Monk did not under- stand, or share.