Dark Assassin

by Anne Perry

  “I see,” Rathbone acknowledged. “And did this unfortunate creature, malevolent or not, meet his own death as a result of last night’s disastrous cave-in?”

  “No, he’d been shot in the back. He was already dead when the cave-in occurred.”

  Dobie shot to his feet. “Objection, my lord. How can Mr. Monk possibly know that? Was he there? Did he see him get shot?”

  Rathbone merely turned very slowly from Dobie to look at Monk, his eyebrows raised.

  In the dock Sixsmith leaned forward.

  “The man’s legs were broken by the timber and rubble that fell on him,” Monk replied. “There was no bleeding.”

  In the gallery a woman gasped. The jurors stared at Monk, frowning. Dobie shook his head as if Rathbone had taken leave of his wits.

  Rathbone waited.

  “The living bleed; the dead do not,” Monk explained. “When the heart stops, there is no more flow of blood. His coat around the gunshot wound was caked with dry blood, but his legs were clean. Rigor mortis had already set in. The police surgeon will give you time of death, I imagine.”

  Dobie flushed and said nothing.

  “Thank you.” Rathbone nodded at Monk graciously. “I have no further questions for you.”

  Dobie declined to add anything, and Monk was excused.

  He left the witness box but remained in the court while Rathbone called the surgeon, who corroborated all that Monk had said.

  Then Runcorn slipped into a seat in the row opposite Monk’s in the gallery just as Melisande Ewart took the stand. She walked up the steps of the witness box and faced the room. She was very composed, but even those who had not seen her before might have detected the effort it cost her. Her body was stiff, her shoulders rigid.

  Monk glanced at Runcorn and saw him leaning forward, his gaze intent upon Melisande, as if by strength of will he would support her. Monk wondered if she had the faintest idea how profound was his feeling, and how extraordinary that was for a man such as he. If she did, would it please her or frighten her? Or would she treat tenderly that enormous compliment and read its vulnerability as well?

  Rathbone moved into the center of the floor.

  The jury sat silent, like men carved of ivory.

  “Mrs. Ewart,” Rathbone began, “I believe Superintendent Runcorn of the Metropolitan Police has just taken you to identify the body of the man Mr. Monk brought up from the cave-in at the construction. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was clear but very quiet.

  There was a murmur of sympathy around the gallery. Some of the jurors nodded and their faces softened.

  Monk looked up at Sixsmith. His heavy face was motionless, crowded with an emotion impossible to read.

  “Have you ever seen him before?” Rathbone asked Melisande.

  “Yes,” she answered with a catch in her voice. “I saw him coming out of the mews that serves the home where I live at the moment, and also served that of Mr. James Havilland.”

  “When did you see this man?”

  “On the night of Mr. Havilland’s death.”

  “At any other times?”

  “No. Never.”

  “You have seen him just once before today, and yet you are certain it is the same man?”

  “Yes.” Now she did not waver at all.

  Rathbone could not afford to let it go so easily. “How is it that you are so sure?” he persisted.

  “Because of his face in general, but his teeth in particular,” she replied. She was now even paler, and she held tightly to the rail as if she needed its support. “Superintendent Runcorn moved the man’s lips so I could see his teeth. I am confident enough to swear under oath that it is the same man.”

  Runcorn relaxed and eased his body back into the seat, letting out his breath in a long sigh.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Ewart,” Rathbone said graciously. “I have nothing further to ask you. I appreciate your time and your courage in facing what must have been extremely unpleasant for you.”

  Dobie stood up and looked at Melisande, then at the jury. Straightening his gown on his shoulders, he sat down again.

  Rathbone then played a desperate card, but he had no choice, for he had to show purpose and connection. He called Jenny Argyll.

  She was dressed in full mourning and looked as if she were ready to be pronounced dead herself. Her movements were awkward. She looked neither to the right nor to the left, and it seemed as if she might falter and crumple to the ground before she made it all the way to the top of the steps. The usher watched her anxiously. Even Sixsmith jerked forward, his face suddenly alive with fear. The guards beside him pulled him back, but not before Jenny had looked up at him. Now her eyes were burning, and it seemed as if she might actually collapse.

  Alan Argyll had yet to testify, so he was not in the court. Had he any idea of the net closing around him?

  Rathbone spoke to Jenny, coaxing from her the agonizing testimony he had wanted so badly only a few days earlier.

  “You wrote the letter asking your father to go to his stable at midnight, in order to meet someone?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was barely audible.

  “Whom was he to meet?”

  She was ashen. “My husband.”

  There was a gasp around the entire room.

  “Why in the stable?” Rathbone was asking. “It was a November night. Why not in the house, where it was warm and dry and refreshment could be offered?”

  Jenny Argyll was ashen. She had to force her voice to make it audible. “To…to avoid an interruption by my sister. It was to be a secret meeting.”

  “Who asked you to write the letter, Mrs. Argyll?”

  She closed her eyes as if the terror and betrayal were washing over her like the black water that had burst through the sides of the tunnel and engulfed the navvies deep underground. “My husband.”

  In the dock something indefinable within Sixsmith appeared to ease, as if he smelled victory at last.

  Rathbone allowed a moment’s terrible silence, then he asked the last question. “Did you know that your father was to be killed in that stable, Mrs. Argyll?”

  “No!” Now her voice was strong and shrill. “My husband told me it was to be a meeting to try to persuade my father that he was wrong about the tunnels, and to stop the navvies and toshers from making any more trouble!”

  “As Mr. Sixsmith has told us,” Rathbone concluded, unable to resist making the point. “Thank you, Mrs. Argyll.”

  Dobie looked confused. Suddenly, at the moment when he expected to be swept off his feet, the tide had turned and retreated before him with no apparent explanation.

  He asked only one question. “It was your husband who asked this letter of you, Mrs. Argyll? Not Mr. Sixsmith?”

  “That is correct,” she whispered.

  He thanked her and excused her.

  Monk looked at the judge, whose face was furrowed with puzzlement. It seemed that the prosecution and the defense had changed places, arguing each other’s case. Possibly he had understood what was happening, and as long as the law was not flouted nor brought into disrespect, he would leave the drama to play itself out. He adjourned the court for luncheon.

  In the afternoon Monk and Runcorn were both there. Dobie called Alan Argyll to the stand, as Rathbone had fervently hoped he would. He had done all he could to make it virtually impossible for him not to.

  Argyll walked across the floor white-faced and composed. He glanced upwards once towards the dock, but it was impossible to tell if his eyes met those of Sixsmith or not. Sixsmith was leaning forward again. Surely he must see freedom almost in his grasp.

  But Argyll had not been in the court for his wife’s testimony. He did not know his grip over her was broken. He waited for Rathbone as if he thought he was still certain of victory. Perhaps he did not even see the open hostility on the jurors’ faces. He looked at Dobie without a tremor, and his voice was clear when he answered.

  “No. I did not ask my wife to write
such a letter.” He even managed to affect surprise.

  Dobie looked disbelieving. “There is no question that the letter existed, Mr. Argyll, or that your wife wrote it. She has admitted as much to this court. If not at your request, at whose would she do such a thing?”

  Argyll paled. Monk could see, from the angle of his head and the way his hands gripped the rail in front of him, that he was suddenly frightened. He started to look up at Sixsmith, then forced himself not to. Was he beginning at last to understand?

  “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 o
f 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.”