The Dark Assassin (4 page)

Argyll closed
the door behind them and waited until his wife was seated.

Monk expressed
his condolences again.

"Thank
you," Mrs. Argyll said briefly. "My husband says that Mary fell off
Westminster Bridge. Toby was with her. Perhaps he tried to stop her and failed.
Poor Toby. I think he still loved her, in spite of everything." The tears
filled her eyes again but she ignored them and her face remained under control.
It was impossible to tell what the effort cost her. She did not look at her
husband, nor did she reach to touch him.

Monk should have
accepted the answer implicit in her words, and yet in spite of all sense he
refused to. When Hester's father had shot himself because of the unanswerable
debt he had been cheated into, she had returned from the Crimea, where she had
been serving as a military nurse, and redoubled her efforts to strengthen her
family and to fight all the wrongs she encountered. It had been her resolve
that had strengthened Monk to struggle against the burden that had seemed
impossible to him. She was acid-tongued-at least he had thought so-opinionated
and unwise in her expression of it, hasty to judge and quick-tempered, but even
he, who had found her so irritating, had never doubted her courage or her iron
will.

Of course he had
seen the passion, the laughter, and the vulnerability in her since then. Was he
imagining in Mary Havilland something she had never possessed? Whatever the
cost to Mrs. Argyll, he wanted to know.

"I
understand that your father met his death recently," he said gravely.
"And that Miss Havilland found it very difficult to come to terms
with."

She looked at
him wearily. "She never did," she answered. "She couldn't accept
that he took his own life. She wouldn't accept it, in spite of all the
evidence. I'm afraid she became . . . obsessed." She blinked. "Mary
was very ... strong-willed, to put it at its kindest. She was close to Papa,
and she couldn't believe that something could be so wrong and he would not
confide in her. I'm afraid perhaps they were not as ... as close as she
imagined."

"Could she
have been distressed over the breaking of her betrothal to Mr. Argyll?"
Monk asked, trying to grasp on to some reason why a healthy young woman should
do something so desperate as plunge over the bridge. And had she meant to take
Argyll with her, or was he trying, even at the risk of his own life, to save
her? Did he still love her so much? Or was it out of guilt because he had
abandoned her, possibly for someone else? They really did need the surgeon to
ascertain if she had been with child. That might explain a great deal. It was a
hideous thought, but if he would not marry her, perhaps she had felt suicide
the only answer, and had determined to take him with her. He was, in a sense, the
cause of her sin. But that would be true only if she were with child and
certain of it.

"No,"
Mrs. Argyll said flatly. "She was the one who broke it. If anything, it
was Toby who was distressed. She . . . she became very strange, Mr. Monk. She
seemed to take against us all. She became fixed upon the idea of a dreadful
disaster that was going to happen in the new sewer tunnels that my husband's
company is constructing." She looked very tired, as if revisiting an old and
much-battled pain. "My father had a morbid fear of enclosed spaces, and he
was rather reactionary. He was afraid of the new machines that made the work
far faster. I imagine you are aware of the urgency of building a new system for
the city?"

"Yes, Mrs.
Argyll, I think we all are," he answered. He did not like the picture that
was emerging, and yet he could not deny it. It was only his own emotion that
drove him to fight it, a completely irrational link in his mind between Mary
Havilland and Hester. It was not even anything so definite as a thought, just
words used to describe her by a landlady who barely knew her, and the
protective grief over the suicide of a father.

"My father
allowed it to become an obsession with him," she went on. "He spent
his time gathering information, campaigning to have the company alter its
methods. My husband did everything to help him see reason and appreciate that
deaths in construction are unavoidable from time to time. Men can be careless.
Landslips happen; the London clay is dangerous by its nature. The Argyll
Company has fewer incidents than most others. That is a fact he could have
checked with ease, and he did. He could point to no mishaps at all on this job,
in fact, but it did not calm his fears."

"Reason
does not calm irrational fears," Argyll said quietly, his voice hoarse
with his own emotion, unable to reach towards hers. Perhaps he feared that if
he did, they might both lose what control they had. "Don't harrow yourself
up anymore," he went on. "There was nothing you could have done then,
or now. His terrors finally overtook him. Who knows what another man sees in
the dark hours of the night?"

"He took
his life at night?" Monk asked.

It was Argyll
who answered, his voice cold. "Yes, but I would be obliged if you did not press
the matter further. It was thoroughly investigated at the time. No one else was
in the least at fault. How could anyone have realized that his madness had
progressed so far? Now it appears that poor Mary was also far more unstable
than we knew, and it had preyed upon her to the point where she herself could
not exercise her human or Christian judgment anymore."

Jenny turned to
look at him, frowning. "Christian?" she challenged him. "If
anyone is so sunk in despair that they feel death is the only answer for them,
can't we have a little ... pity?" There was anger in her eyes.

"I'm
sorry!" Argyll said quickly, but without looking at her. "I did not
mean to imply blasphemy against your father. We shall never know what demons
drove him to such a resort. Even Mary I could forgive, if she had not taken
Toby with her! That. .. that is . .." He was unable to continue. The tears
spilled over his cheeks and he turned away, shadowing his face.

Jenny stood up,
stiff and unsteady. "Thank you for coming, Mr. Monk. I think there is
little of any use that we can tell you. Perhaps you would excuse us. Pendle
will see you to the door." She went to the bell rope and pulled it. The
butler appeared almost immediately and Monk and Orme took their leave, after
having given Mr. Argyll a card and requested that he formally identify the
bodies the following day, when he was a little more recovered.

"Poor
devil," Orme said with feeling when they were outside on the icy footpath
again. Mist was veiling the streetlamps as if in gauze. A frail sickle-shaped
moon sailed between the stars, high above the rooftops. "Both of 'em lost
family in the one night. Funny 'ow an instant can change everything. D'you
think she meant to?"

"Go over
herself, or take him?" Monk asked, beginning to walk down towards the
Westminster Bridge, where they would be more likely to find a hansom. He was
still hoping it had been an accident.

"Not sure
as I know," Orme replied, keeping step with him. "Din't look to me as
if she were trying to jump. Facing the wrong way, for a start. Jumpers usually
face the water."

Monk felt a rush
of warmth even though the slick of moisture on the footpath was turning to ice
under his feet. He was not going to let go of hope, not yet.

Monk reached
home before nine o'clock. His return was far later than it would have been on a
more usual day, but there was little that was routine in his new job. Even his
best effort might not be enough; second best certainly would not. Every day he
learned more of the skills, the knowledge, and the respect that Durban had had.
He admired the qualities that had earned that respect, and they awed him. He
felt continually a step behind Durban. No, that was absurd. He was yards behind
him.

He knew people
and crime; he knew how to smell fear, how to probe lies, when to be
confronting, and when to be oblique. However, he had never known how to inspire
the love and loyalty of men under his command. They'd admired his intelligence,
his knowledge, and his strength, and they'd been frightened of his tongue, but they
did not like him. There'd been none of the fierce honor and friendship he had
sensed from the beginning between Durban and his men.

He had crossed
the river by ferry-there were no bridges this far down-and he was on the south
bank now, where he and Hester had moved after accepting the new job. They could
hardly live in Grafton Street anymore. It was miles from police headquarters in
Wapping.

He walked up
Paradise Street. The lamps misted and he could smell the river and hear the
occasional foghorn as the mist drifted across the water. There was ice on the
thin puddles in the street. It was still strange to him, nothing familiar.

He put his key
into the lock in the door and pushed it open.

"Hester!"

She appeared
immediately, apron tied around her waist, her hair pinned hastily and
crookedly. She was carrying a broom in her hand but she dropped it as soon as
she saw him, and rushed forward. She drew in breath, perhaps to say that he was
late, then changed her mind. She studied his face and read the emotion in it.

"What
happened?" she asked.

He knew what she
was afraid of. She had understood why he had to accept the job in Durban's
place, both morally and financially. With Callandra gone to Vienna they could
not afford the freedom or the uncertainty of taking on only private cases.
Sometimes the rewards were excellent, but too often they were meager. Some
cases could not be solved, or if they were, then the clients had the means to
reward him only modestly. They could never plan ahead, and there was no one to
whom they could turn to in a bad month, as they had before. Nor, it must be
said honestly, at their ages should they need to. It was time to provide, not
be provided for.

"What is
it? What's wrong?" she asked when he did not answer.

"A suicide
off Waterloo Bridge," he replied. "In fact, two, in a way. A young
man and woman went off together, but we don't know if it was partly accidental
or not."

Relief flashed
across her face, then instantly pity. "I'm sorry. Were you called to
it?"

"No, we
were actually there. Saw it happen."

She smiled
gently and touched his face with the back of her fingers, perhaps aware her
hands were dusty. Had she been still occupied with housework this late in the
evening to keep her mind from worrying about him?

"That's
horrible," she said bleakly. "They must have been very desperate to
jump into the river at this time of the year."

"They'd die
whatever time it was," he replied. "The tide is very strong, and the
river's filthy." To another woman he would have moderated his answer, avoided
the facts of death, but she had seen more people dying and dead than he had.
Police work, no matter how grim at times, hardly compared with the battlefield
or the losses afterwards to gangrene and fever.

"Yes, I
know that," she answered him. "But do you suppose they knew before
they jumped?"

Suddenly it was
immediate and painfully, agonizingly real. Mary Havilland had been a woman like
Hester, warm and full of emotions, capable of laughter and pain; now she was
just an empty shell with the soul fled. Nobody anymore. He put his hands on
Hester's shoulders and pulled her towards him, holding her tightly, feeling her
slender body yield almost as if she could soften the awkward bones and shape
herself to him.

"I don't
know if she meant to jump and he tried to stop her," he whispered into her
hair, "or if he pushed her over and she clung on to him and took him with
her, or even if she meant to. I don't know how I'm going to find out, but I
will."

She held on to him
for a few minutes longer, silently, then she pulled back and looked at him.
"You're frozen," she said, suddenly practical. "And I don't
suppose you've eaten. The kitchen is still not really finished, but I have hot
soup and fresh bread, and apple pie, if you'd like it."

She was right:
He was still cold from the long ride and the even colder river crossing
afterwards. The butler's sandwich seemed a long time ago. He accepted. Between
mouthfuls, he asked her about her day, and her progress in redecorating the
house. Then he sat back, realizing how warm he was in all the ways that
mattered.

"Who was
she?" Hester asked.

"Mary
Havilland," he replied. "Her father took his own life a couple of
months ago." He saw the shadow of grief in Hester's eyes, and the tightening
of her mouth. "Her sister believes that she did not recover from it,"
he added. "I'm sorry."

She looked away.
"It's over," she said quietly. She was referring to her own father,
not Havilland's. "Why did he do it?" she asked. "Was it debt,
too?"

"Apparently
not," he replied. "He believed there was some danger of an accident
in the tunnels. They're building some of the new sewers."

"And not
before time!" she said fervently. "What sort of an accident?"

"I don't
know." He explained the family relationships briefly. "Argyll says
his father-in-law had a terror of landslips, cave-ins and so on. He became
obsessed, lost his senses a bit."

"And is
that true?" she pressed, clearly still forcing herself to think only of
the present case.