The Dark Assassin (43 page)

"I have no
idea," he said with difficulty.

Dobie grew
sarcastic. "One of your children, perhaps? Your sister-in-law? Or your
brother?"

Argyll's face
flamed and his hands clenched on the rail. He swayed as if he might fall over.
"My brother is dead, sir! Because Mary Havilland dragged him down with
her! And you stand there and accuse him of... of what? How much courage does it
take to accuse a murdered man? You disgrace the office you hold, and are a
blemish to your profession!"

Dobie blanched,
clearly embarrassed and momentarily at a loss to defend himself.

The judge looked
from one to the other of them, then up at Aston Sixsmith, whose face was now
expressionless. Lastly he looked at Jenny Argyll, who was ashen. Her gaze was
fixed in the distance, as if she were held against her will by some inner
vision, unable to tear herself from it.

Rathbone said
nothing.

The judge looked
at Dobie again. "Mr. Dobie, do you wish to rephrase your question? It
seems inadequate as it is."

"I will
move on, with your lordship's permission," Dobie said, clearing his throat
and looking again at Argyll. "James Havilland was in the stables alone at
midnight. For whom else would he keep such an extraordinary appointment?"

"I don't
know!" Argyll protested.

"Have you
ever seen this man they describe, whose teeth are apparently so uniquely
recognizable? The man who, it is suggested, actually murdered your
father-in-law?"

Argyll
hesitated.

There was a
faint cough in the gallery, a creak of whalebone stays, then silence.

Jenny Argyll
looked up at Sixsmith. Their eyes met and lingered for a moment, then she
turned away. What was it Monk saw in Sixsmith s face? Pity for what she was
about to lose? Forgiveness that she had not had the courage to do it before? Or
anger that she had let him suffer right to the brink, and spoken up only when
she had been forced to? His look was steady and unreadable.

Argyll
swallowed. "Yes. As Sixsmith said, I wanted to hire someone to prevent the
unrest among navvies regarding safety, and stop the toshers, whose territories
were disappearing, from becoming violent and disrupting the excavations."
He drew in his breath. "We have to finish the new sewers as soon as
possible. The threat of disease is appalling."

There was a
rustle of movement in the room.

Monk stared at
the jury. There was unease among them, but no sympathy. Did they believe him?

"We are
aware of this, Mr. Argyll," Dobie answered, beginning to regain his
composure. "It is not what you are doing that we question, only the
methods you are willing to employ in order to accomplish them. You admit that
you met this man, and that you gave Mr. Sixsmith the money to pay him for his
work?"

The answer
seemed torn from Argyll. "Yes! But to quell violence, not to kill
Havilland!"

"But
Havilland was a nuisance, wasn't he?" Dobie raised his voice, challenging
him now. He took a couple of steps toward the stand. "He believed you were
moving too quickly, didn't he, Mr. Argyll? He feared you might disturb the
land, cause a subsidence, and possibly even break through into an old,
uncharted underground river, didn't he?"

Argyll was now
so white he looked as if he might collapse. "I don't know what he
thought!" he shouted back, his voice ragged.

"Don't
you?" Dobie said sarcastically. He turned away, then spun around and faced
the witness stand again. "But he was a nuisance, wasn't he? And even after
he was dead, shot in his own stable at midnight and buried in a suicide's
grave, his daughter Mary pressed his cause and took it up herself, didn't
she?" He was pointing his finger now. "And where is she? Also in a
suicide's grave! Along with your ally and younger brother." His smile was
triumphant. "Thank you, Mr. Argyll. The court needs no more from you, at
least not yet!" He waved his arm to invite Rathbone to question Argyll if
he should wish to.

Rathbone
declined. Victory was almost within his grasp.

The judge
blinked and looked at Rathbone curiously, but he made no remark.

Dobie called
Aston Sixsmith. Rathbone's ploy was hardly a gamble anymore.

Sixsmith mounted
the stand. The man exuded intelligence and animal power, exhausted as he was.
There was a rustle of sympathy from the crowd now. Even the jurors smiled at
him. He ignored them all, hoarding his emotion to himself, not yet able to
betray his awareness of how close he had been to prison, or even the rope. He
looked once again at Jenny Argyll. For an instant there was a softening in his
face, gone again almost before it was seen. A sense of decency? His gaze barely
touched Alan Argyll. His erstwhile employer was finished, worthless. From the
gallery Monk watched Sixsmith with an increasing sense of incredulity.

Rathbone had
won. Monk looked across at Margaret Bellinger and saw her eagerness for the
moment, her pride in Rathbone's extraordinary achievement for justice.

Dobie was
questioning Sixsmith, ramming home the victory. "Did you ever meet this
extraordinary assassin before the night you paid him the money Mr. Argyll gave
you?" he asked.

"No, sir, I
did not," Sixsmith replied quietly.

"Or after
that?"

"No,
sir."

"Have you
any idea who shot him, or why?"

"I know no
more than you do, sir."

"Why did
you give him the money? For what purpose? Was it to kill James Havilland
because he was causing you trouble, and possibly expensive delays?"

"No, sir.
Mr. Argyll told me it was to hire men to keep the toshers and navvies from
disrupting the work."

"And what
about Mr. Havilland?"

"I
understood that Mr. Argyll was going to deal with that himself."

"How?"

Sixsmith's gaze
was intense. "Show him that he was mistaken. Mr. Havilland was his
father-in-law, and I believed that relations were cordial between them."

"Could this
man, this assassin, have misunderstood you?"

Sixsmith stared
at him. "No, sir. I was quite specific."

Dobie could not
resist making the very most of it. He looked at the jury, then at the gallery.
"Describe the scene for us," he said at last to Sixsmith. "Let
the court see exactly how it was."

Sixsmith obeyed
him, speaking slowly and carefully, like a man emerging from a nightmare into
the daylight of sanity. He described the room in the public house: the noise,
the smell of ale, the straw on the floor, the press of men.

"He came in
at about ten o'clock, as near as I can tell" he went on in response to
Dobie's prompting. "I knew him straightaway. He was fairly tall, and thin,
especially his face. His hair was black and straight, rather long over his
collar. His nose was thin at the bridge. But most of all, he had these
extraordinary teeth, which I saw when he smiled. He bought a tankard of ale and
came straight over to me, as if he already knew who I was. Someone must have
described me very well. The man introduced himself, using Argyll's name so I
would know who he was. We discussed the problem of the toshers in particular,
and I told him a little more about it. I gave him the money. He accepted it,
folded it away, and then stood up. I remember he emptied the tankard in one
long draught, and then he left, without once looking backwards."

Dobie thanked
him and invited Rathbone to contest it if he wished.

Rathbone
conceded defeat with both dignity and grace. Not by so much as a glance did he
admit that it was actually the most elegant and perhaps the most difficult
victory of his career.

The jury
returned a verdict of guilty of attempted bribery, and the judge imposed a fine
that was no more than a week's pay.

The court
erupted in cheers, the gallery rising to its feet. The jury looked intensely
satisfied, turning to shake one another's hands and pass words of
congratulation.

Margaret
abandoned decorum and met Rathbone halfway across the floor as he walked
towards her. Her face was shining, but whatever she said to him was lost in the
uproar.

Monk also was on
his feet. He would speak a word or two to Runcorn, thank him for his courage in
being willing to reexamine a case. Then he would go home to tell Hester-and
Scuff.

TWELVE

The trial had
finished promptly, so Monk was home comparatively early. The weather was bright
and clear, and the February evening stretched out with no clouds-only trails of
chimney smoke across the waning sky. It was going to freeze, and as he alighted
from the omnibus the stones beneath his feet were already filmed with ice. But
the air tasted fresh and the sweetness of victory was in it. The sun was low,
and its reflection on the pale stretches of the river hurt his eyes. The masts
of the ships were a black fretwork like wrought iron against the rich colors of
the horizon beyond the rooftops.

He turned and
walked smartly up Union Road to Paradise Place and then up the short path to
his front door. As soon as he was inside he called out Hester's name.

She must have
heard the triumph in his voice. Her face eager, she appeared at the top of the
stairs from the bedroom, where she had been sitting with Scuff.

"We
won!" he said, starting up the steps two at a time. He caught hold of her
and swung her around, kissing her lips, neck, cheek, and lips again. "We
won it all! Sixsmith was convicted of no more than attempted bribery, and
fined. Everyone knew that Argyll was guilty, and he's probably been arrested
already. I didn't wait to see. Rathbone was brilliant, superb. Margaret was so
proud of him, she absolutely glowed."

The bedroom door
was open, and Scuff was sitting up staring at them. He looked unnaturally pink.
His hair was actually much fairer than Monk had supposed. He seemed to have
forgotten about the lace on his nightgown, or even that it was Hester's. His
shoulder must hurt him, but he was making little of that, too. Now his eyes
were bright with expectation, longing to be told all there was to hear.

Hester led Monk
into the room and sat on the bed herself so that he could recount it to them
both.

"Yer
won!" Scuff said excitedly. "They gonna get Argyll fer killin' poor
'Avilland, an' Miss Mary as well? Yer gonna bury 'em proper?"

"Yes,"
Monk said simply.

Scuffs eyes were
shining. He was sitting close to Hester, quite naturally. Both of them seemed
to be unaware of it. " 'Ow d'yer do it?" he said, hungry for any
piece of information. He had sorely missed being there to see it himself.

"Would you
like a cup of tea before we begin?" Hester asked.

Scuff looked at
her with total incomprehension.

Monk rolled his
eyes.

She smiled.
"Right! Then you get nothing until it's all told, every last word!"

He began with
the day's proceedings, recounting it as a story of adventure with all the
details, looking at their faces, and enjoying himself. He described the
courtroom, the judge, the jurors, the men and women in the gallery, and every
witness. Scuff barely breathed; he could hardly bring himself even to blink.

Monk told them
how he had climbed the steps to the witness box and stared at the court below
him, how Sixsmith had craned forward in the dock, and how Rathbone had asked
the questions on which it all turned.

"I described
him exactly," he said, remembering it with aching clarity. "There
wasn't a sound in the whole room."

"Did they
know 'e was the man wot killed Mr. 'Avilland?" Scuff whispered.
"D'yer tell 'em wot the sewer were like?"

"Oh, yes. I
told them how we met him the first time, and how he turned around and shot you.
That horrified them," Monk answered honestly. "I described the dark
and the water and the rats."

Scuff gave an
involuntary little shiver at the memory of the terror. Without realizing it, he
moved a fraction closer to Hester, so that he was actually touching her. She
appeared to take no notice, except that there was a slight softening of her
lips, as if she wanted to smile but knew she should not let him see it.

"Did Jenny
Argyll give evidence?" she asked.

"Yes."
Monk met her eyes for a moment of appreciation, and an acknowledgment of what
it had cost Rose Applegate. "She told it all. Argyll denied it, of course,
but no one believed him. If he'd looked at the jurors' faces, he could have seen
his own condemnation then." He realized suddenly what a final thing he had
said. They had accomplished it, the seemingly impossible. Sixsmith was free and
the law knew that Alan Argyll was guilty. It would be only a matter of time
before he was on trial himself.

"Funny,"
Hester said aloud. "We'll never know his name."

"The man
who actually shot James Havilland? No," he agreed. "But he was only a
means to an end, and he's dead, anyway. The thing that matters is that the man
behind it will be punished justly, and perhaps there will even be more care
taken in the routing of new tunnels, or at least in the speed with which
they're done."