Anne Perry - Dark Assassin

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.

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."

"But Argyll will be charged?" Hester insisted. "So Mary Havilland can be buried properly and… and her father, too?"

"I'll make certain." He meant it as a promise. Seeing the warmth in her eyes, he knew that she understood.

"Did Sixsmith give evidence?" she asked. "Explain it all? He seemed like a decent man-a bit rough, perhaps, but it's a rough profession. He… he felt things deeply, I thought."

He smiled. "Oh, yes. It's always a risk putting an accused man into the dock, but he was excellent. He described exactly what happened, how Argyll gave him the money and what he told him it was for, which was to bribe the toshers who were making trouble. It made sense and you could see that the jury believed it."

He remembered Sixsmith's face in the witness box as he told it. "He said he had not known what the man looked like, and he sat waiting for him. The man recognized him immediately and came over. He was fairly tall, lean, with long black hair onto his collar, and…" He stopped. The room swayed around him, and his limbs suddenly felt far away and cold, as if they belonged to someone else. Sixsmith had described the assassin as he had been when he was killed! Not when Melisande Ewart had seen him on the night of Havilland's death, or two days before.

"What is it? William, what's wrong?" It was Hester's voice calling from a great distance, fuzzy at the edges. She sounded frightened. Scuff was pressed up next to her, his eyes wide, picking up her emotion.

When Monk spoke, his mouth was dry. "Sixsmith said his hair was long. He swore he saw him only once, two days before Havilland's death. But in fact his hair was shorter then, much shorter. Mrs. Ewart said only a little longer than most men's. But it was over his collar when I found him dead."

Hester stared at him, horror slowly filling his eyes. "You mean Sixsmith saw him… just before he was killed? Then…" She stopped, unable to finish the thought.

"He killed him." Monk said it for her. "Argyll was telling the truth. He probably gave Sixsmith the money to bribe the toshers, exactly as he told us. It was Sixsmith who gave the order to kill Havilland, and possibly Mary as well."

"But Argyll couldn't be innocent," Hester argued. "It was he who had Jenny write…" She tailed off. "Or perhaps it wasn't? Perhaps she lied, and it was Sixsmith who told her to. But why?"

Scuff was looking at her anxiously, his mouth twisted down at the corners. He might be only nine or ten, but he had lived on the streets. He had seen violence, beatings, revenge. "She 'ate 'im that much?" he asked wonderingly. "That's daft! Less 'e knocked 'er 'alf senseless."