Dark Assassin

by Anne Perry

  She hesitated, her eyes going to Rathbone as if for help.

  Runcorn half rose in his seat and then subsided, his face tight with anger.

  Hester grasped Monk’s arm, her fingers digging into him.

  “You are not incorrect, sir, so much as incomplete,” Melisande replied to Dobie. “The man was a stranger in the area and he had no legitimate business in the mews. There was a large, dark stain on the shoulder of his jacket. I did not ask about it, but he saw that I had noticed it, and he told me that it was manure. He had tripped and fallen in the mews. But it was a lie. I was close enough to him to have smelled manure. It smelled more like blood.”

  “Even if it was blood, that does not mean he was guilty of murder,” Dobie argued.

  Melisande’s eyes widened. “You mean he might have been in Mr. Havilland’s stable and fallen over his dead body innocently, without thinking he should mention it?”

  Dobie’s face flamed, and there was a titter of embarrassed laughter around the courtroom.

  “Bravo,” Hester whispered to Monk.

  Runcorn was smiling, his eyes bright, his cheeks red.

  Dobie returned to the attack, but he was losing and he knew it. Moments later he retreated. Rathbone thanked Melisande again and then called the first of his nervous, uninteresting, but very necessary witnesses who were going to prove the trail of the money Aston Sixsmith had paid to the assassin. They detailed every move from Argyll’s bank to its final destination. This line of enquiry was tedious but essential. It would continue for the rest of the day—and if Dobie wanted to contest any of it, it would go on probably longer than that.

  When the court adjourned, there was no time for private conversation. Monk excused himself from Hester and caught up with Rathbone in the corridor outside. “I need to speak with Sixsmith,” he said urgently. “Can you manage it? Persuade him to see me.”

  “How?” Rathbone looked tired, in spite of the victory with Melisande Ewart, such as it was. “I’ve already gone over every argument I can think of with Sixsmith. The man is desperate and numb with what has happened to him. He has worked for Argyll for years and feels totally betrayed.”

  “So he should,” Monk answered, matching his stride with Rathbone’s. “And if we prove it was murder, but not that Argyll’s the one who hired the assassin, then Sixsmith will pay for it on the end of a rope!”

  “All right,” Rathbone said quickly. “You don’t need to labor the point. But don’t give him false hope, Monk.” There was warning in his eyes, even fear.

  “I don’t intend to,” Monk replied, hoping he could keep his promise.

  “Exactly the opposite.”

  It took Rathbone half an hour to arrange the meeting in a room off the corridor leading away from the court itself. Sixsmith looked somehow smaller than he had in the tunnel when Monk had seen him before. Dressed in an ordinary suit, he was broad-shouldered and solid, but not so tall. His hair was neatly barbered, his shirt white, his hands clean. His nails were unbroken—remarkably so, considering the surroundings in which he usually worked.

  He sat in the chair opposite Monk, putting his hands on the table between them. His skin was pale, and he had cut himself shaving. A tiny muscle twitched in his temple on the left side. “What is it?” he said bluntly. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  There was no time for Monk to soften any of what he must say, however harsh it sounded. “Sir Oliver Rathbone can tie every detail of the money all the way from Argyll’s bank to you passing it to the man who murdered Havilland.”

  “If you think I’m going to plead guilty, you are wasting your time,” Sixsmith said angrily. “And more to the point, you’re wasting mine as well. I never denied that I paid the money! I thought it was to bribe a bunch of ruffians to see off some of the toshers who were giving us a hard time and spreading rumors about uncharted underground rivers and scaring the hell out of some of the navvies.”

  “Then say so!” Monk challenged him.

  Sixsmith’s heavy lip curled. “Admit to bribing thugs to knock around a few men who are no more than a nuisance? They’ll have me in jail so fast, I’ll barely see the ground. Are you a fool?”

  “No, but you are!” Monk responded. “Rathbone will prove it anyway. If you want to come out of this alive, you’ll admit to the attempt to bribe. It didn’t work, so there was no crime actually committed—”

  “There was murder!” Sixsmith said savagely, his face dark with emotion. “If that’s not a crime, what in God’s name is?”

  “Did you know it was going to be murder?”

  “No, of course I didn’t!” Sixsmith’s voice was harsh, desperate. “I know beating the toshers was illegal, though. But what the hell do the men in Parliament know about the real world? Would they bend their backs to a day’s labor hacking and piling earth and rocks, winching them up to the surface? Or living all the daylight hours in some stinking, dripping, ratinfested hole, burrowing like a damn rat yourself, so the sewers can run clean?” He took a deep breath, his chest heaving. “We’ve got to get rid of the toshers who are spreading fear just to keep their old beats in the sewers that are left. Do you know what a tosher’s beat is worth?”

  “Yes,” Monk said tartly. “And I know they hate change. So tell the court that! Tell them that Argyll knew it, too, and couldn’t afford to let it go on.”

  Sixsmith looked exhausted, as if he had been battling the same arguments in his head for weeks.

  Monk felt an intense pity for him. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “To be betrayed by someone you trusted is one of the worst pains a man can know. But you have no time now to dwell on it. You must save yourself by telling not just the truth, but all of it.”

  Sixsmith raised his head and gave him a smile that was more a baring of the teeth. “Argyll will simply say that he gave me the money to buy off the toshers so they would leave the navvies alone, and I am the one who used it to have Havilland killed.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  Sixsmith hesitated a moment.

  “Why?” Monk repeated. “It’s Argyll’s company, not yours. Your reputation is excellent. If he went under, you could find a new position in days.”

  “You know my reputation?” Sixsmith sounded surprised.

  “Of course. Argyll couldn’t afford to have Havilland sabotage his tunnel. He must have contacted the assassin, but got you to hand the money to him. Why would he do that, except to incriminate you if anyone ever discovered Havilland’s death was murder? It was deliberate!”

  Sixsmith blinked rapidly, his face a mask of pain, still fighting not to believe it.

  “Were you the first to speak to the assassin?” Monk pressed. He hated forcing Sixsmith to see it, but his life could depend on it. “Or did Argyll set up the meeting, give you the money, and tell you to pass it over?”

  “Of course he did,” Sixsmith said in a whisper.

  “Do you know who the assassin was? Do you know where to find him now? Or anything about him at all?” Monk asked.

  “No.” Sixsmith stared at him. “No…I don’t.”

  “Who asked Mrs. Argyll to write to her father and have him go out and wait in the stables at midnight?”

  “You believe there really was a letter?” Sixsmith’s eyes widened. “Did anyone see it?”

  “Yes, I believe there was,” Monk answered. “She admitted it, but we can’t force her to testify against her husband.”

  Sixsmith dropped his head in his hands, as if someone had offered him hope, then dashed it from his lips.

  “We can try to persuade her.” Monk wanted passionately to help him, to give him the strength to go on. “For your own sake,” he said urgently,

  “tell the truth about the money! Tell Dobie everything.”

  “He can’t help,” Sixsmith whispered. “He thinks he can, but he’s young and imagines he’ll always win. He won’t this time. Argyll’s surrounded himself with too many people who are innocent. There’s Jenny, poor Mary Havilland, the navvie
s who carried out his orders to fight the toshers now and then. The poor devils don’t have a choice! It’s work or starve. And we have to meet the deadline in the contract or we won’t get another.”

  He looked at Monk as if trying to discern if he understood. “And there’s the M.P., Morgan Applegate, who gave us the contracts for those sites. He could be implicated in bribes and profit. Argyll knows all that; he arranged it that way. I haven’t a chance, Mr. Monk. I’d best go down for bribing someone to murder a man, and not take all those others with me. I’ll go anyway; he’s seen to that.” He faced Monk with haunted eyes, still clinging to a hope beyond reason, and on the edge of losing it.

  Monk did something he had sworn he would not do. “Rathbone doesn’t want to convict you,” he said quietly. “It’s Argyll he’s after. He knows as well as you do that he’s the man behind it. Tell the truth, fight for your life, and he’ll help you.”

  Sixsmith stared at him, aching to believe him. The struggle was naked in his eyes, in the bruised planes of his face and the twist of his mouth. At last, very slowly, he nodded.

  Hester had been to see Rose Applegate more than once since developing their mutual plan to do what they could to clear Mary Havilland’s name from the stigma of suicide. Two days before the trial they had gone together to a charity afternoon reception organized to raise money for orphans to give them a decent education so that they might be of use both to themselves and to society. It was the sort of obviously worthy cause that even a woman in mourning, such as Jenny Argyll, might still feel free to attend.

  “Are you sure she will be there?” Hester had asked anxiously.

  “Certainly she will,” Rose had assured her. “Lady Dalrymple specifically invited the Argylls, and she is at just the level of society one dare not disappoint. She is sufficiently nouveau riche to notice and take offense if one declined, unless you positively had a contagious disease. Anyway, Mrs. Argyll has spent the entire winter season in mourning, so she is desperate to get out before she dies of boredom and everyone who is anyone has forgotten who she is!”

  So Hester and Rose had set out to join the worthy women attending the event, and had contrived to spend quite a good amount of time in Jenny Argyll’s company. They had managed to fall with apparent ease into the subject of bereavement and the whole ghastliness of the upcoming trial of Aston Sixsmith.

  “She knows something,” Rose said to Hester when they met the following day, on the eve of the trial.

  They were alone in Rose’s withdrawing room, sitting beside the fire. Outside, the February rain lashed the windows, streaming down the glass until it was impossible to even see the traffic passing in the street beyond.

  “I am quite sure she will refuse to see us again unless she has absolutely no alternative,” Rose said miserably. “And how would we possibly run into her? With Sixsmith on trial for arranging the murder of her father, and she herself in mourning for both her father and her sister, she is hardly going to attend any public functions! Lady Dalrymple’s ghastly affair for the betterment of orphans isn’t going to happen again for years.”

  “Isn’t there any sort of other function she might go to?” Hester asked.

  “Even if just to show a certain bravado. There must be something suitably somber, and—”

  “Of course!” Rose said, her face alight with glee. “The perfect thing! They are holding a memorial service for Sir Edwin Roscastle the day after tomorrow.”

  Hester was at a loss. “Who was he? And would she go?”

  Rose’s expression was comical with distaste.

  “A frightful old humbug, but very influential because he made such a parade of being good. Could flatter all the right people, and it got him no end of appreciation,” she replied. “Everybody likes to be seen praising the virtuous dead. Makes them feel good by association.” She sniffed. “Morgan doesn’t have anything to do with it because he couldn’t stand Roscastle and didn’t pretend his feelings were otherwise. But I know Lord Montague, who will be arranging it, and I can persuade him to ask Argyll for a donation, and to become a patron of the memorial fund. He’d never refuse that—it’s far too useful in business.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I am! It’s at eight o’clock tomorrow evening, and we can both go.”

  Hester was alarmed. It was a superb idea, far too good to miss, but it was years since she had been to such a function, and she most certainly had nothing suitable to wear. “Rose, I…” It was embarrassing to admit, and it might even look as if she had lost her nerve and were making excuses.

  Rose looked at her, then suddenly understood. “Short notice to get a gown,” she said tactfully. “Borrow one of mine. I’m taller than you are, but my maid can take it up this afternoon. We must make a plan of action.”

  Thus it was that Hester accompanied Rose Applegate to the memorial service for the late Sir Edwin Roscastle. It was an extremely formal affair with a large number of people attending, including the cream of society. They arrived at the church and alighted from their carriages in magnificent blacks, purples, grays, and lavenders, according to the degree of mourning they wished to display and the color they believed most became them. Some were deeply mistaken as to the latter, as Rose observed to Hester in a whisper as she pointed out who they were. Rose herself was wearing lavender and dark gray. With her fair hair and pale skin, she cut an extremely elegant figure.

  “There she is!” Hester interrupted as she saw Jenny Argyll walking up the steps, clothed in highly fashionable black. She moved with grace and a complete disregard for the biting easterly wind, although she did take care to keep to the leeward of her husband.

  Rose shivered convulsively. “We can go in now. Why on earth do they always seem to hold these things at the bitterest time of the year? Why can’t people die with some consideration, in the summer?”

  “It will be warmer at the reception afterwards,” Hester replied. “I hope to heaven the Argylls stay for it!”

  “Of course they will!” Rose assured her. “That is where one can curry favor, make useful acquaintances, and generally show off. Which, of course, is what everyone is here for.”

  “Isn’t anyone here to remember Sir Edwin?”

  Rose gave her a startled glance. “Certainly not!” she retorted. “He was awful! The sooner he can be forgotten, the better. Dying was the best thing he did, and he did that far too slowly.”

  Hester thought the judgment rather harsh, but she liked Rose too much to say so. And by the time they had sat through the eulogies and she heard what kind of people admired the deceased and why, she was inclined to take a similar view.

  The reception afterwards was a different matter. Everyone else seemed to be just as physically cold and emotionally bored as she and Rose were. They walked rapidly up the hundred yards or so of dark and windy street to the hall where sausages, pies, and delicate hot pastries awaited them, along with various wines. Hester accepted a mulled claret with gratitude. She was surprised when Rose took a lemonade instead, but she made no comment.

  They began to move among the other guests, intent upon approaching Jenny Argyll as soon as it could be done without appearing too obvious, and of course when Argyll himself wasn’t too close to her.

  “I’m so pleased you came,” Rose said warmly to Jenny as an opening gambit. “There are few things one can do while in mourning without someone making a cutting remark. One feels dreadfully isolated. At least I did! Perhaps I am imagining mistakenly?”

  Jenny could hardly fail to reply without being discourteous—added to which Rose was the wife of the member of Parliament most important to her husband. She gathered her wits with an apparent effort. “Not at all. You are most sympathetic,” she responded.

  Hester remained standing back a few steps, as if Rose was alone. Jenny Argyll looked composed, but Hester could see that the veneer was thin. Her movements were stiff, and her skin looked bruised around the eyes, as if from too many nights awake and too much tightly held emotion
she dared not let go of, in case she never grasped it again. Hester would have been sorry for her if she had not been convinced Jenny had placed her own safety and continued well-being ahead of that of her sister.

  Suddenly Alan Argyll was at Hester’s elbow, a plate of savory pastries in his hand.

  “Excuse me.” He brushed past her, his attention focused on his wife, his face tight and angry. It was almost as if he was frightened that she would in some way betray him. He spoke to Rose, but his words were lost to Hester in the general babble of conversation. He put his hand on Jenny’s arm protectively. She moved sideways, away from him. Was it because there was a large woman in black wishing to pass, or because his touch displeased her? Her head was high, her face half averted. The movement was discreet, a shrinking away more than an actual step.

  Rose spoke again, her eyes wide and tense.

  Hester moved closer. She wanted to catch the words, the inflection of the voices. Was Jenny Argyll protecting her husband because she wanted to or because she needed to? Had she any idea of what he had done? Was that why instinctively she found his touch repellent?

  Rose turned and saw Hester and introduced them. She hesitated a moment over Hester’s name, knowing that Monk would produce powerful and conflicting emotions in both Jenny and Argyll.

  “How do you do,” Hester said as calmly as she could, looking first at Jenny, then at her husband. He did not attract her, but neither did she find him ugly. She did not see the cruelty in him that she had expected. Even the power in him seemed blunted. Was he at last afraid, not of the police but of his wife’s ability to testify against him in court? It was her father and her sister whose deaths he had caused. What monumental arrogance in him had ever made him imagine she would endure that and do nothing? And was she still so terrified that even now she would shield him?

  Was evil really masked by so ordinary a face? Or was Hester simply blind to it?