The Dark Assassin (21 page)

"Where in
hell have you been?" he said abruptly, alarm making his voice sharper than
he had meant. He was very close to her, almost touching her. "What's
happened?"

She did not even
try to prevaricate. "I've been in the tunnels, with Sutton. I'm perfectly
all right, but there's something terribly wrong there," she said, looking
directly at him. "It isn't as easy as I thought. The engines are enormous,
and they're shaking the ground. It's nothing to do with what James Havilland or
Mary discovered. They all know it's dangerous; it's part of the job." Her
eyes were searching his face now, looking for help, explanations to make sense
of it. "They all know about the fact that there are streams underground,
and wells, and that the clay slips. Hundreds of people live down there! But
Mary was going from one person to another asking questions. What could she have
been looking for, and why did it matter?"

Monk forced
himself to be gentle as he accompanied Hester into the warmth of the kitchen.
He was not in the least domestic by nature, but he had nonetheless cleaned out
the stove and relit it. With Hester's absences in the clinic caring for the
desperately ill and dying, he had been obliged to learn.

He took her coat
from her and hung it up on the peg, where it could dry. She made no attempt to
be evasive, which in itself alarmed him. She must be very badly frightened. He
could see it in her eyes in the brightness of the kitchen gaslight. "Where
did you learn all this?" he asked.

"The Thames
Tunnel," she answered. "Not alone!" she added hastily. "I
was perfectly safe." Involuntarily she shuddered, her body in a spasm of
uncontrollable memory. She pushed a shaking hand through her hair.
"William, there are people who live down there, all the time! Like ...
rats. They never come up to the wind or the light."

"I know.
But it's probably no more a root of crime than the waterside slums or the
docks, places like Jacob's Island." He put his arms around her and held
her close. "You're not setting up any clinic for them!"

She laughed in
spite of herself, and ended up coughing. "I hadn't even thought of it. But
now that-"

"Hester!"

She smiled
brightly at him.

He breathed out
slowly, forcing himself to be calmer. Then he put more water in the kettle and
slid it onto the hob. There was fresh bread and butter and cheese, and a slice
of decent cake in the pantry.

"William..."

He stopped and
faced her, waiting.

At last she
spoke. "Mary went to all sorts of places and asked questions about rivers
and clay, and how many people had been hurt, but she asked about engineers as
well. And apparently she knew something about them-knew one sort from another.
She took terrible risks. Either she didn't realize, or . . ." Her eyes
suddenly filled with tears. She was so tired her skin was white, and in spite
of his holding her, she had not stopped shivering.

"Do you
think she was foolish enough to be unaware of the dangers?" he asked.

"No,"
she said in a soft, unhappy voice, but she did not pull away from him. "I
think she cared about the truth so passionately that she preferred to take the
risk rather than run away. I think she was afraid of a real disaster, worse
than the Fleet."

"Because
it's in a tunnel?"

"Fire,"
she told him. "Gas pipes go up into houses aboveground as well."

He understood.
The possibilities were terrifying. "And they know?"

She nodded and
moved back a step at last as the shivering eased. "It looks like it. She
just couldn't prove it yet. Or maybe she could. Do you think that's why she was
killed?"

"It could
be," he said gently. "And it also might be why her father was killed,
so don't imagine they would give a moment's thought as to whether or not they
should kill you if they see you as a threat! So-"

"I know
that! I have no intention of going back there again, I promise."

He looked at her
closely, steadily, and saw the fear in her eyes. She would keep her word; he
did not need to ask her for a promise. "Not only your life," he said,
his voice softer. "The lives of others, too."

"I know.
What are you going to do?"

"Make the
tea," he said ruefully. "Then I'm going to consider who had the
opportunity to kill James Havilland. As for Mary's death-we'll never prove that
Toby meant to kill her, and since he died as well, the matter of justice has
been rather well settled."

"Do you
think she held on to him and took him with her on purpose?" she asked.

"Yes,"
he said. "I think she could do that."

"It isn't
enough, though, is it?"

He could never
lie to her. She could see right inside him, whether she meant to or not.

"No. It
doesn't make sense that Alan Argyll would take a risk like that. It would ruin
him. There's something else that we don't know. We haven't got all of it."

She put her arms
around him again, holding him more tightly.

In the morning
the situation seemed less clear-cut. If it had been Toby Argyll, young and
ambitious, who was behind it all, then he was beyond anyone's reach now, and
blackening his name would be seen as pointlessly cruel. Alan Argyll would do
everything possible to prevent that, and Monk would earn for the River Police a
bitter enemy. His proof would have to be absolute. No one would care about
rescuing the reputation of James Havilland, and even less about Mary's.
Naturally Farnham would see no purpose in it at all.

Monk's
accountability to Farnham was one of the prices to pay for the authority and
regular income his uniform gave him. He did not fear financial insecurity this
winter as he had last. Thinking of ways to skirt around Farnham s prejudices
was a small enough price to pay.

He needed to
know a lot more about both Toby and Alan Argyll. It was difficult to form an
opinion of someone who was dead, especially if he had died young and tragically.
No one liked to speak of such individuals except in hushed and careful tones,
as if death removed all weaknesses from them, not to mention actual sins.

Perhaps a good
place to begin would be with those who had cared for the other dead people,
James and Mary Havilland. This time he would see the housekeeper, Mrs.
Kitching. He might even ask Cardman again, and persuade him to be rather less
stiffly discreet.

Cardman greeted
Monk with courtesy. He stood in the morning room to answer Monk's questions,
and if his mask slipped, it was only to show a swift anger that Mary Havilland
was regarded by the church as a sinner who, by the finality of death, had
forfeited her chance of repentance.

Monk felt
helpless to reach out to the man's hard, isolated grief. Cardman was intensely
private; perhaps it was his only armor. Monk had no wish to breach it. Instead
he asked if he might see the housekeeper, and was conducted along the corridor
and, after a brief enquiry, shown into her room.

"Good
morning, Mrs. Kitching," he began.

"Hmph,"
she replied, her back straight as a ruler as she sat opposite him in her small,
neat sitting room. She looked him up and down, noting his police uniform
jacket-a sartorial burden he bore with difficulty- and then his white shirt
collar and beautiful leather boots. "Police officer, is it? More of the
officer, and less of the police, maybe? And what is it you're wanting now? I'll
not say ill of Miss Havilland, so you can save your time. I'll go to my own grave
saying she was a good woman, and I'll tell the good Lord so to his face."

"I'm
investigating why she died, and who was the cause of it, Mrs. Kitching. I'd
like to know a little more about the other people concerned in her life. For
example, did you know Mr. Toby Argyll? I imagine he called here to see her
quite often, especially after her father's death?"

"And
before," she said quickly.

"Were they
very close?"

"Depends
what you mean." It was not a prevarication; she wished to be exact. Her
eyes were more direct than those of any servant he had questioned before, at
least as long as he could remember.

A thought
flashed across his mind. "Will you be looking for another position after
this, Mrs. Kitching?"

"I've no
need to. I've saved a bit. I'm going to live with my brother and his wife, in
Dorking. I'm just staying here till matters are settled."

He smiled. She
was exactly the witness he was looking for, and so he returned to his earlier
question. "What I mean, Mrs. Kitching, was he in love with her, and she
with him?"

She gave a
little sigh. "She certainly wasn't in love with him, but she started out
liking him well enough. He was very personable, and he had wit and
intelligence."

"And how
did he feel about her?"

"Oh, she
was handsome, Miss Mary." She blinked and took a deep breath. It was very
clearly difficult for her to govern her distress. She glared at him, as if
waking her grief were his fault. "That's what most gentlemen like, until
they know you a little better."

"And
then?" He kept his expression perfectly bland.

"Then
they'd rather you didn't have too many opinions of your own," she said
tartly, the tears standing out in her eyes. The thought flashed to him that
perhaps she was thinking not only of Mary Havilland, but perhaps of some grief
of her own now long in the past but still tender, still haunting her with loss.
Many cooks and housekeepers were given the honorary title of Mrs., even if they
had never married. It was a mark of adulthood rather than marriage, just as
when a man moves from being master to mister. It was a distinction that had not
occurred to him before. But then women were not legal entities in the same way
that men were.

Again he found
his sympathy for Mary clouding his judgment. He was imagining her as someone
with courage, honor, and wit-someone he would have liked. But it might not have
been so at all. In the beginning, he had loathed Hester. No, that was not
true-he had been fascinated by her, attracted to her, but afraid of his own
weakness. He had been certain that he wanted someone far more comfortable: a
soft woman who did not challenge him, did not force him to live up to the best
in himself, sometimes even beyond what he believed was in him. Hester's
gentleness was deeper than mere agreeability; it was a passion, a tenderness of
honesty, not of indifference or lack of the courage or interest to argue.
Never, ever was it the lack of an opinion of her own.

Before her, he
had fallen in love with quiet, discreet women who never argued, and then
realized he was desperately, soul-achingly lonely. Nothing within them touched
anything deeper than his skin.

What had
happened to Toby Argyll? Had he had the courage to love Mary? Or had he found
her too challenging, too thwarting of his vanity?

"You say he
did not like her opinions, Mrs. Kitching, but was he in love with her?"

For the first
time in their interview her uncertainty was sharp in her face.

He smiled
bleakly. "My wife and I frequently disagree. Yet she would be loyal to me
and love me through anything, good or bad. I know this because she has done so,
without ever telling me I was right, if she thought otherwise."

She stared at
him, shaking her head. "Then you wouldn't have liked Mr. Toby," she
said with conviction. "He expected obedience. He had the money, you see,
and ambitions. And he was clever."

"Cleverer
than his brother?" he said quickly.

"I don't
know. But I've a fancy he was beginning to think so." She suddenly
realized how bold she was being in so speaking her mind; a flash of alarm
crossed her face, then disappeared again. She was tasting a new and previously
unimagined freedom.

In spite of the
gravity of their discussion, Monk found himself smiling at her. Cardman would
have been horrified. She was perhaps a year or two older than he. Monk wondered
what the relationship had been between them. Superficial? Or had their station
in life prevented what would have been a testing but rewarding love?

He thrust the
notion from his mind. "Mr. Alan Argyll was different?" he asked.
"And was Mrs. Argyll at all like her sister?"

Mrs. Kitching's
face hardened. "Mr. Alan's a very clever man, a lot cleverer than Mr. Toby
realized," she answered without hesitation. "Mr. Toby might have
thought he'd get the upper hand in time, but he wouldn't. Miss Mary told me
that. Not that I didn't think so myself, just seeing them in the withdrawing
room. Miss Jenny's a realist, never was a dreamer like Miss Mary. Easier to get
along with. Never asks for the impossible or fights battles she can't win. Been
a good wife to Mr. Alan. I suppose Mr. Toby thought Miss Mary'd be the same.
Well, he thought wrong!" She said that last with considerable
satisfaction. Then she remembered again that Mary was dead. The tears washed
down her cheeks, and this time she was unable to control them.