by Anne Perry
“What happened?” Monk said again.
She described it as accurately as she could remember, although she left out a good deal of what Rose had said and summarized the rest. “Argyll must have put alcohol in her lemonade,” she finished. “I don’t know how—I didn’t see anything more than his hand over it for a moment. After tonight’s performance she’ll have to disappear, and neither she nor her husband will be able to give evidence of anything. And we won’t force anything out of Jenny Argyll, either. I won’t have any way of getting back into society without Rose. In fact…” The heat rose in her face. “In fact, I may be remembered rather unkindly for my part in this. I’m sorry. I’m terribly sorry.”
He was startled. “You’re…why are you apologizing? What else is there that you haven’t told me, Hester?”
She stared at him. “Nothing! But they knew who I was, that I’m your wife. Aren’t policemen’s wives supposed to behave rather better than that?”
He gazed at her, wide-eyed, then he started to laugh. It was a deep, full-throated howl of incredulous hilarity.
“It’s not that funny!” she said indignantly.
But he laughed even more, and there was nothing she could do but lose her temper or join him. She chose the latter. They stood together in front of the fire, the tears running down their cheeks.
“I think you had better forget politics,” he said at last. “You aren’t any good at it.”
“I’m not usually as bad as this!” she defended herself, but without conviction. There was still defeat in her eyes.
“Yes, you are,” he replied, suddenly gentle again. “I think you should go back to nursing. At that you are superb.”
“No one will have me,” she told him ruefully.
“Yes, they will. In Portpool Lane, every one of them loves you—even Squeaky Robinson, in his own way.”
There was disbelief in her face, hesitation, then hope. “But you said—”
“I know. I was wrong.” He did not add anything because she threw her arms around his neck and clung to him, kissing him long and hard.
TEN
In spite of her personal joy, Hester woke in the morning with the utmost remorse over Rose. She packed up Rose’s borrowed clothes and returned them. Her army experiences had taught her something of the suffering incurred after overindulgence in alcohol, and she knew how to minister to those afflicted. She spent several hours doing what she could for Rose, to both her and her husband’s intense gratitude, then she wished them every possible happiness and took her leave.
She arrived at the Argyll house shortly after noon.
“Good morning, Mrs. Monk,” Jenny said with some uncertainty when Hester was shown into the withdrawing room.
“Good morning, Mrs. Argyll,” Hester replied with a slight smile. “I thought that after last night’s disaster you would naturally be concerned for Mrs. Applegate. I know that you and she were friends.” A fraction of a second later she realized she had already put it in the past. “And I owe you something of an apology. Had I been aware of her susceptibility, I might have been able to prevent it. There are some people to whom even a drop of alcohol is a kind of poison.”
Jenny cleared her throat. She was obviously profoundly uncomfortable. She was still wearing black, of course, but relieved at the neck and wrists with lavender. She was not handsome, as Monk had said Mary was, but the possibilities of life, passion, and laughter were still there in her face, masked by discretion.
“I suppose it must be.” She sounded acutely uncertain, but she could hardly ask Hester to leave, unless she was prepared to be inexplicably rude. “It is something of which I have no knowledge.”
“I hope you never have to,” Hester said warmly. “I learned when I was caring for injured soldiers, and those facing death on the battlefield.” She saw Jenny’s face pinch with momentary pity. “When one is facing decisions that are almost unbearable,” Hester went on, as if now there was some kind of bond between them, “some of us do not easily find the courage to do what is right, if it might cost us all we hold dear. I am sure you have the sensitivity to understand that, Mrs. Argyll.”
“I…er…” Jenny appeared to know that the conversation was leading somewhere she did not wish to go. There was a purpose in Hester’s bearing she could not have mistaken. This was no idle call.
Hester forced open the crack of opportunity. “I am sure you are looking for the kindest way to enquire how poor Rose is this morning,” she lied. “I have been to see her; she is in great discomfort, but it will pass. I don’t believe any physical damage has been done to her, but the injury to her reputation will never heal.”
“I imagine not,” Jenny agreed. At last she was on more familiar ground. “Society could hardly forget or overlook what she did. I…I hope you are not considering asking my help.” Jenny swallowed. “I have no influence in such matters.”
“I wouldn’t think of it!” Hester said quickly. “I have no idea what anyone could do that would help, or the faintest reason why you should compromise your own standing by attempting it.”
Jenny relaxed visibly, something of the natural color returning to her cheeks. She unbent far enough to invite Hester to sit down, and did so herself. “I think her best course would be to retire from society,” she added.
“I agree entirely,” Hester concurred. “I knew you would have the compassion and the delicacy to understand.”
Jenny looked pleased but confused.
“I am so sorry,” Hester added.
“Sorry?”
“Rose did not drink alcohol intentionally,” Hester explained. “Or even knowingly. It was given to her by someone who wished to discredit her to a degree where she would not be able to appear in public in the foreseeable future.” She had already decided that to blame Argyll immediately would be very bad strategy. She must adopt the line taken by the prosecution, the newspapers, and public opinion in general.
Jenny paled. “Why on earth do you think that? Surely…surely if she has such a…weakness…” She left the rest unsaid.
Hester frowned, as if concentrating. “She must have been aware of her trouble,” she replied. “It can hardly have happened in public recently, or we would all know of it; therefore it took her by surprise also. Someone else caused it. She drank only lemonade.”
Jenny stared at her. She took several long breaths, steadying herself. “There is always the pastries,” she suggested, her voice a little husky. “Some cooks mix the dried fruits with brandy, or the creams with liqueur.”
Hester had not eaten them, but she should have thought of that. So should have Rose! “Would…would it be enough?” she said, to fill the growing silence. She was playing a game of wits, and she had no time to spin it out. The trial was drawing closer to its verdict, which would be issued any day. Rathbone’s time was short, and once the defense started he might not be able to introduce new evidence. She hated having to be so brutal.
Jenny shook her head. “I have no idea. It would seem so. What we saw was…irrefutable. I’m afraid the poor woman was very intoxicated indeed.” She thought for a moment. “I’m so sorry.”
Hester’s mind raced. She must be able to use Jenny’s pity, turn it into a feeling of guilt. She had no doubt it was Alan Argyll who had killed Havilland, morally if not physically, and with great skill caused Sixsmith to be blamed.
“Of course,” she agreed aloud. “Sometimes the results of our actions are not even remotely as we have imagined they would be.” She was moving towards the subject of Jenny’s letter to her father, approaching it softly.
Jenny paled. Her hands moved on the black fabric of her skirt, not quite clutching it, then deliberately relaxing again. There was effort in it, control. “I am sure she can have no idea that a few pastries would do such a thing.”
“It was after her lemonade, before the pastry,” Hester corrected her, not certain if that was true.
“How could anyone…?” Jenny started. Her face was very white.
Hester shrugged. “A little bottle, such as one uses for medicines. A distraction of attention, not so very difficult.”
Jenny was forced to fill the silence. “Who on earth would do that?”
“Someone who wished to discredit her,” Hester repeated. “Rose had been looking into the matters your late father was investigating, just to make certain that there was no danger of serious accident, and—”
“My father was disturbed in his mind!” Jenny said abruptly. “There was no danger at all. The machines my husband’s company uses are the best there are. It is skill that has improved them, which is why they are faster, not that they are taking less care.” The color was high in her face, her eyes brilliant. “This whole terrible charge has arisen only because of my father’s…I don’t like to use the word, but it was hysteria.”
Hester could almost believe her, but for the man Melisande Ewart had seen leaving the mews. “And that is why you wrote to your father asking him to meet your husband in the stables?” she said, allowing doubt into her voice. “And poor Mr. Sixsmith is facing a charge of murder?”
Jenny’s voice was half strangled in her throat. “It isn’t murder! It’s…it’s just bribery. And even that is nonsense. My husband will see that he is cleared of that. Mr. Dobie is a marvelous lawyer.” Her hands were now clenched hard in her lap, knuckles shining.
“Will he?” Hester asked. “Do you believe that, Mrs. Argyll? Why on earth would he? Who else could have hired the man who shot your father?”
A succession of wild emotions crossed Jenny’s face: confusion, terror, hatred.
Hester leaned towards her, hating the fact that she had to be the one to do this. “Someone hired that man to kill your father, and so in a way your sister, too. Can you live with not telling the court that your husband made you write a letter asking your father to be in his stables that night? Can you go forward into the future looking at your husband across the dinner table every evening, across the bed, knowing that both of you allowed Aston Sixsmith to hang, when you of all people could have proved his innocence?”
The tears were running down Jenny’s face. “You have no idea what you’re asking!” she gasped. “No idea!”
“Perhaps not,” Hester admitted. “But you do. And if you are honest, you know what it will cost—not only yourself and your children but Mr. Sixsmith as well—if you do not. Do you wish to explain that to your children, or live with it yourself?”
“You are ruthless!” Jenny choked on the words.
“I’m honest,” Hester replied. “Sometimes they seem like the same thing. But I take no pleasure in it. You can still see at least that your father is buried with honor and his name cleared.”
Jenny sat motionless, her hands locked together. The lamplight, necessary even at midday, bleached her skin of all color.
“The truth can be very sharp,” Hester added. “But it makes a cleaner wound than lies. It will not fester.”
Jenny nodded very slowly. “Please do not come back,” she whispered. “I will do as you say, but I cannot bear to see you again. You have forced me to look at a horror I believed I could avoid. Allow me to do it alone.”
“Of course.” Hester rose to her feet and walked slowly to the door. She knew that the servants would let her out into the street, where Morgan Applegate’s carriage would be waiting to take her home.
That same morning Monk went across the river as the light was dawning in the drifting rain. He went first to Wapping station simply to ascertain that no crisis had arisen demanding his attention, then he took a hansom westwards to the Old Bailey to see Rathbone.
“Drunk!” Rathbone said incredulously. “Rose Applegate?”
“And unforgivably frank,” Monk added.
Rathbone swore, which was an extremely rare occurrence. “We are losing this case, Monk,” he said miserably. “If I’m not extremely careful, I shall end up convicting Sixsmith whether I wish to or not, and Argyll will walk away free. The thought makes me seethe, but even if I destroy half the decent men around Argyll—the navvies, the foremen, and the bankers, as well as Sixsmith himself—I still can’t be sure of getting him. If Rose Applegate could have persuaded Argyll’s wife to testify to anything that would have made her father’s story more believable, we might shake him.”
He sighed and looked at Monk, the dread of failure burning visibly inside him. It was in the nature of his profession to gamble on his own skill, and he could not always win. But when it was another man who was going to pay, it clearly cut to the bone of his self-belief. It was a pain he was evidently not used to, and his confusion was naked for a moment in his eyes.
Monk wished he could help Rathbone, and knew it could not be done. There are places each man walks alone, where even friendship cannot reach. All he could do was wait, and be there before and after.
“I’ll go back to looking for the assassin,” he said, turning to go.
“If you don’t find him in the next couple of days, it won’t matter,” Rathbone told him. “I’d rather let Sixsmith go and drop the case altogether than convict an innocent man.” He smiled thinly. “My foray into prosecution is not conspicuously successful, it seems!”
Monk could think of nothing to say that was not a lie. He gave a very slight smile and went out, closing the door softly.
He was within half a mile of the Wapping station when Scuff appeared out of the gloom. The boy was soaking wet and looking inordinately pleased with himself. He ran a couple of steps to keep up with Monk. “I done it!” he said without the usual preamble of greeting.
Monk looked at him. His small face was glowing with triumph under its outsize cap. Monk had still not managed to tell him it needed a lining. “What did you do?” he asked.
Scuff’s expression filled with disgust. “I found where the killer lives, o’ course! In’t that wot we gotter do?”
Monk stopped, facing Scuff on the footpath. “You found out where the man who shot Mr. Havilland lives?” The thought was overwhelming. Then he was furious. “I told you not even to think about it!” His voice cut across the air, harsh with fear. A man who would shoot Havilland in his own stables would not think twice about strangling an urchin like Scuff. “Don’t you ever listen?” he demanded. “Or think?”
Scuff looked confused and deeply hurt. This was seemingly the last thing he had expected. Monk suddently realized that the boy must have clutched his achievement to himself all the way there, expecting Monk’s praise and happiness, only to find the prize dashed out of his hand.
Scuff took a deep breath and looked at Monk, blinking to keep back the tears. “Don’ yer wanna know, then?”
Monk felt a guilt so deep that for a moment he could not find the words to express it even to himself, far less to try to mend anything in the child staring at him, waiting.
“Yes, I do want it,” he said at last. He must not intrude on Scuff’s precious dignity, for the boy had little else. He must never allow him to know he had seen the tears. “But I don’t risk my men’s lives, even for that. That’s something you have to learn.”
“Oh.” Scuff swallowed. He thought about it for a moment or two while they both stood in the rain getting steadily wetter. “Not nob’dy’s?”
“Nobody’s at all,” Monk assured him. “Even those I don’t like much, such as Clacton, never mind those I do.”
“Oh,” Scuff said again.
“So don’t do it,” Monk added. “Or you’ll be in trouble. I’ll let you off this one time.”
Scuff grunted. “So yer wanna know w’ere ’e lives, then?”
“Yes, I do…please.”
“ ’E lives down the Blind Man’s Cuttin’, wot leads inter the old sewer an’ tunnel. There’s lots o’ folk live down there, but I can find ’im. I’ll take yer. ’E’s a bad ’un, mind. An’ ’e knows them sewers like a tosher, exspecial the old ones down near the Fleet.”
“Thank you. I think we had better take some men with us. We’ll go to the station and find them.” Monk starte
d to walk.
Scuff remained where he was.
Monk stopped and turned, waiting.
“I in’t goin’ there,” Scuff said stubbornly. “It’s all rozzers.”
“You’re with me,” Monk said quietly. “Nobody will hurt you.”
Scuff looked at him gravely, his eyes shadowed with doubt.
“Would you rather wait outside?” Monk asked. “It’s wet, and it’s cold. But it’ll be warm in there, and we’ll get a drink of hot tea. There might even be a piece of cake.”
“Cake?” Temptation ached in Scuff’s eyes.
“And hot tea, for sure.”
“An’ rozzers…”
“Yes. Do you want me to send them all out into the rain?”
Scuff smiled so widely it showed his lost teeth. “Yeah!”
“Imagine it!” Monk replied. “That’s as good as you’ll get. Come on!”
Hesitantly Scuff obeyed, walking beside Monk until they reached the steps, then hanging back. Monk held the door for him and waited while he took smaller and smaller steps, then stopped altogether just inside, staring around with enormous eyes.
Orme looked up from the table where he was writing a report. Clacton drew in his breath, caught Monk’s eye, and changed his mind.
“Mr. Scuff has information for us which may be of great value,” Monk told Orme. “He will give it to us, of course, but it would be pleasanter over a cup of tea, and cake, if there is any left.”
Orme looked at Scuff and saw a wet and shivering child. “Clacton,” he said sharply, fishing in his pocket and pulling out a few pence, “go and get us all a nice piece of cake. I’ll make the tea.”
Scuff took another step inside, then inched over towards the stove.
Two hours later Monk, Scuff, Orme, Kelly, and Jones, the men armed with pistols, descended down the open workings and along the sodden bottom between the high walls of Blind Man’s Cutting. As it closed overhead, they lit their lanterns.