AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Were you surprised that Mr. Havilland took his life?” Monk asked.
“Yes, sir. Especially…” Cardman took a moment to master himself. He sat perfectly still, his knuckles white. “Especially in his own house, where Miss Mary was bound to know about it. A man can make such things look like an accident.” He breathed in and out slowly. “It broke her heart. She was never the same afterwards.” There was anger in his face now. A man he admired had inexplicably let him down; more than that, he had let them all down, most of all the daughter who had trusted him.
“But you did believe it nonetheless?” Monk asked. He felt like a surgeon cutting open a man still conscious and feeling every movement of the knife. He thought of Hester’s battlefield surgery. She had steeled herself to do it, knowing the alternative was to let the men die.
“I had no choice,” Cardman said quietly. “The stable boy found him out there in the mews in the morning, a bullet through his brain and the gun by his hand. The police proved he’d bought it himself, from a pawn shop just a few days before.” There was obviously a great deal more he could have said—the feelings were naked in his eyes—but a lifetime’s discre
tion governed him.
“Did he leave a note as to why he had done such a thing?” Monk asked.
“No, sir.”
“And he said nothing to you or any of the other servants?”
“No, sir, simply that he wanted to wait up that night, and we should not concern ourselves, but retire as usual.”
“And you detected nothing out of the ordinary in his manner? Even with the wisdom of knowing now what happened?”
“I have considered it, naturally, wondering if there was something I should have seen,” Cardman admitted. He had the air of a man who has lived through a nightmare. “He seemed preoccupied, as if he was expecting something to happen, but in all honesty, I thought then that it was an irritation that plagued him, not a despair.”
“Irritation?” Monk pressed. “Anger?”
Cardman frowned. “I would not have put it as strongly as that, sir. Rather more as if an old friend had disappointed him, or something was wearisome. I formed the opinion it was a familiar problem rather than a new one. He certainly did not seem afraid or desperate.”
“So you were shocked the next morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Miss Mary?”
Cardman’s face was pinched and his eyes were bright with tears he could not allow himself to shed. “I’ve never seen anyone more deeply hurt, sir. Mrs. Kittredge, the housekeeper, feared Miss Mary might meet her own death, she was so beside herself with grief. She refused to believe that he could have done it himself.”
Monk refused to picture Mary Havilland’s face. What in heaven’s name had driven Havilland to do this to his daughter? At least with Hester’s father it was the only way for him to answer the shame that had been placed upon him, through his own goodness of heart. He had been deceived, like so many others. He had considered death the only act left to an honorable man. What had Havilland feared or despaired of that had driven him to such an act?
“Why did she find it so hard to believe?” he said, more sharply than he had meant to.
Cardman started with surprise at the emotion in Monk’s voice. “There was no reason,” he said gravely. “That is why Miss Mary believed he had been murdered. More and more she became convinced that either he had found something in the tunneling works or he was about to, and for that he had been killed.”
“What made her more convinced?” Monk said quickly. “Did something happen, or was it simply her need to clear her father of suicide?”
“If I knew, sir, I’d tell you,” Cardman replied, looking directly into Monk’s eyes. There was a kind of desperation in him, as if he was clinging to a last thread of hope too delicate to name. “Miss Mary read all through her father’s papers, sat all day and up half the night. Over and over she searched them. Many’s the time I’d go to his study and find her there at his desk, or fallen asleep in the big chair, one of his books open in her hands.”
“What kind of book?” Monk did not know what he was looking for, but Cardman’s emotion caught him also.
“Engineering,” Cardman said, as if Monk should have understood.
Monk was puzzled. “Engineering, did you say?”
“Mr. Havilland was a senior engineer and surveyor for Mr. Argyll’s company, until the day of his death. That’s why they quarrelled. Mr. Argyll’s company has never had a bad accident—in fact, they’re better than most for safety—but Mr. Havilland believed it would happen.”
“And he told Mr. Argyll?”
Cardman shifted position slightly.
“Yes, of course. But Mr. Argyll said it was just his feelings about being underground, closed in, as it were. Mr. Havilland was embarrassed to admit to them. Argyll as much as called him a coward, albeit politely. Of course he never used that word.”
“Was that what Miss Havilland was doing also, enquiring into engineering, as regards the tunnels?”
