Anne Perry - Dark Assassin

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.