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“No. I know that meself. Not that I knew ’im, like, but I seed ’im on the works once or twice. Din’t look well. Sort o’ pale an’ sweatin’. Mind, I seen men like that when they ’as ter go down deep. Scared o’ bein’ closed in. An’ o’ the rats an’ the water.” He shuddered. “Don’t like ’em much meself.”
Monk pressed it a little further, noting down the details, then thanked the clerk and left.
The rest of the day yielded nothing new. Mary Havilland had followed in the footsteps of her father in half a dozen places. Obviously Havilland had believed that the steam engines were dangerous, but had he learned anything that proved it?
Monk turned it over in his mind as he walked back along the dockside towards the station. It was dark and there was a fine rain. The smell of the tide was harsh, but he was becoming used to it. Even the constant slurping of the water against the embankment and on the steps down to the ferryboats and barges assumed a kind of familiar rhythm. The foghorns were booming again because the rain blinded vision; lights loomed out of the darkness before there was time to change course.
He wondered about Scuff. Where was he on a night like this? Had he eaten? He had shelter, Monk knew that, but had he any warmth? Then he remembered that the chief booty of mudlarks was coal. Very often the lightermen would deliberately knock pieces off their barges into the shallow water for the small boys to get. Perhaps he had a fire. The riverside was full of children scraping by the best they could—like the rest of the city. It was irrational to worry about one.
He forced his mind back to the case.
Had Havilland found anything to make it necessary for someone to kill him? It seemed unlikely. What could it be? Argyll’s had had no serious accidents. But Havilland had been an engineer himself, and he knew exactly what their huge machines were capable of, what safeguards were taken, and that Alan Argyll, of all people, would not want injuries or time lost. An unforeseen incident might kill dozens of men, but it would ruin the company.
So what had Havilland imagined?
Had he really learned something so dangerous he had been murdered to hide it? And then Mary had followed in his footsteps and found it also, and in turn been murdered?
Or was Havilland simply a man who had lost his mental balance, become obsessed, and imagined danger where there was none? Were the diverted streams and the threat of slippage an excuse rather than a reason, in order to close that tunnel and avoid ever going down there again? Was it even possible he had some kind of a grudge against the Argylls personally? Mary, devoted to him, had believed his view, and then when she had finally been forced by the evidence to face the truth, had she been unable to bear it? Only for her it was worse! First her father’s error, his suicide, her own broken betrothal to Toby Argyll, then an estrangement from her sister, the shame of her false accusations, and nothing to look forward to in the future, not even financial security.
Had Toby told her some truth so bitter it had broken her at last? Could she even have lashed out at him because of it?
Hester would be hurt to know that. He winced and shuddered in the cold as he thought of having to tell her, perhaps tomorrow or the day after.
The next day he decided to go directly to the deepest tunnel, again using his authority to oblige them to allow him in.
It was a vast hive of labor—men wheeling, digging, hacking, and shoring up the entrance where load after load of earth, clay, stones, and shale came out in wagons. Each cart was hauled up the forty-foot cliff face to the level above. The tunnel itself was like the entrance to a mine, high enough for a man to walk in. But it would be far less when the brickwork was laid. It would become a hollow tube with occasional holes for storm drains to empty. Iron-ringed ladders would lead up to the street and daylight, so sewer men could go down and clean out any blockages that would impede the flow.
A huge steam engine pounded, shuddering the ground, drawing the chain that pulled up the loads of debris and carried them away to a pile where they were emptied. It hissed and belched steam, and the noise of it caused the men to shout to each other within twenty or thirty yards of it. The stokers shoveled more coal into the furnace, then returned to hauling and tipping.
Monk showed his police identification. Grudgingly they gave him access to the bottom down a steep cutting, but no one went with him. He found himself slipping and losing his balance several times, only just avoiding falling into the wet clay beneath him. Several times he banged against the loosely timbered sides.
Once at the bottom he could walk more easily on the boards laid on the rubble and clay. The swill of dirty water seeped from the sides and gathered in puddles, trickling slightly down towards the tunnel mouth. He looked upwards quickly. How deep was he? He felt a flutter of panic. The walls towered up to a narrow strip of sky, and the movement of clouds across it made him reel.
He was sharply aware of the smell of it all around him—wet, earthy, moldy, as if nothing was ever dry and the wind never cleansed it.
He faced the dark hole ahead of him with a reluctance that startled him. He had never before felt such a crowding sense of being enclosed. He had to force himself to keep walking and try to dull his imagination.
The shadow closed over him. The winter daylight did not penetrate far. Beyond a few yards it was lit by covered gaslight. A naked flame could ignite the fumes in the air. He had heard of mine explosions and men buried forever in collapsed shafts. Could that possibly happen here? No, of course not! This was one straight tunnel, which was going to be bricked around, held with steel. Sewers did not collapse.
The noise of hammering and shoveling was ahead of him. He kept on walking, the water slopping underneath the boards. Where were the nearest rivers? Did anybody even know for certain? How much did the rivers secretly change course because of subsidence, the great engines above the ground shaking the earth, compressing it down, or rattling it loose? He was sweating and his heart was pounding in his chest.
He was still walking at exactly the same speed along the boards. The steadiness of his pace gave him an illusion of being in control, at least of himself. Dripping water seemed to be everywhere, a sheen on the walls in the gaslight. A rat appeared from nowhere, making him start. It ran along beside him for a dozen yards, then the shadows swallowed it up.
Ahead there were brighter lights, shouts, and the noise of pick blades striking with a sharp clang against rock and a dull thud against clay. He saw it, a machine like a huge drum, almost the size of the tunnel itself, the power of it thrumming as if it were the heartbeat of the earth.
There were at least twenty men laboring at one task or another, and not one of them looked up or took the slightest notice of Monk. The air was stale and cold and had a strange taste to it.
A man trundled past him with a barrow load of debris. Another rat shot out of the shadows, and then back in again. The sides of the tunnel beyond the last of the boards gleamed wet, and here and there were dribbles of water running down to the sodden earth.
If the diggers broke into a small underground stream it would gush in here like an open tap, except there would be no way of turning it off. He must not allow himself to think of that, or he might panic. He could feel the sweat on his body now.
He strode forward and deliberately drew the attention of the best-dressed man present, one of the only two wearing jackets—presumably they supervised rather than performed the labor themselves.
The man was broad-shouldered and already spreading a little at the waist, although he looked no more than in his middle forties. His featur
es were regular, even handsome, except that his mouth was a trifle large. His hair was dark with a heavy wave and he had a thick, dark mustache. When he turned to face Monk, his eyes were blue.
“Yes?” he said with surprise. He spoke loudly, but that was necessary to be heard above the din of the machine and the crushing and grinding of earth and falling stones.
