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“I’m sorry to tell you that Mr. Argyll fell off the Waterloo Bridge,” Monk told her. “Mrs….?”
She looked at him, face blanched, eyes wide. “Porter,” she supplied. “I looked after Mr. Argyll since ’e first come ’ere. ’Ow could ’e ’ave fallen orff the bridge? It don’t make no sense! There’s railings! Yer don’t fall orff! Are yer sayin’ ’e was the worse for wear an’ went climbin’, or summink daft?” She was shivering now, angry. “I don’t believe yer! ’E weren’t like that! Very sober, ’ard-workin’ young gentleman, ’e were! Yer in’t got the right person. Yer made a mistake, that’s wot yer done!” She lifted her chin and stared at him. “Yer oughter be more careful, scarin’ folks all wrong.”
“There’s no reason to suppose he was drunk, Mrs. Porter.” Monk did not prevaricate. “The young man we found had cards saying he was Toby Argyll, of this address. He was about my height, or perhaps a little less, fair-haired, clean-shaven except for a mustache.” He stopped. He could see by her wide, fixed eyes and the pinched look of her mouth that he had described Argyll. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
Her lips trembled. “Wot ’appened? If ’e weren’t drunk, ’ow’d ’e come ter fall in the river? Yer ain’t makin’ no sense!” It was still a challenge; she was clinging to the last shred of hope as if disbelieving could keep it from being true.
“He was with a young lady,” he told her. “They seemed to be having a rather heated discussion. They grasped hold of each other and swayed a little, then she fell back against the rail. They struggled a little more—”
“Wot d’yer mean?” she demanded. “Yer sayin’ as they was fightin’, or summink?”
This was worse than he had expected. What had they been doing? What had he seen, exactly? He tried to clear his mind of all the ideas since then, the attempts to understand and interpret, and recall exactly what had happened. The two figures had been on the bridge, the woman closer to the railing. Or had she? Yes, she had. The wind had been behind them and Monk had seen the billowing skirts poking between the uprights of the balustrade. The woman had waved her arms and then put her hands on the man’s shoulders. A caress? Or pushing him away? He had moved his arm, back and up. Pulling away from her? Or making a motion to strike her? He had grasped hold of her. To save her, or to push her?
Mrs. Porter was waiting, hugging herself, still shivering in the warm kitchen with its dinnertime smells.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “They were above us, outlined against the light, and almost two hundred feet away.”
She turned to Orme. “Was you there too, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Orme replied, standing upright in the middle of the scrubbed floor. “An’ Mr. Monk’s right. The more I think on it, the less certain I am as to what I saw, exact. It was in that sort of darkening time just before the lamps are lit. You think you can see, but you make mistakes.”
“ ’Oo were she?” she asked. “The woman wot went over with ’im.”
“Was there someone you might expect it to be?” Monk parried. “If they were quarrelling?”
She was clearly unhappy. “Well…I don’t like ter say….” Her voicetrailed off.
“We know who it was, Mrs. Porter,” Monk told her. “We need to know what happened, so we don’t allow anyone to be blamed for something they didn’t do.”
“Yer can’t ’urt ’em now,” she responded, the tears trickling unheeded down her cheeks. “They’re dead, poor souls.”
“But they’ll have family who care,” he pointed out. “And burial in hallowed ground, or not.”
She gasped and gave a convulsive shudder.
“Mrs. Porter?”
“Were it Miss ’Avilland?” she asked hoarsely.
“What can you tell me about her?”
“It were ’er? Course, it would be. ’E din’t never look at no one else, not ever since ’e met ’er.”
“He was in love with her?” Of course, that could mean many things, from the true giving of the heart, unselfishly, through generosity, need, all the way to domination and obsession. And rejection could mean anything from resignation through misery to anger or rage and the need for revenge, perhaps even destruction.
She hesitated.
“Mrs. Porter?”
“Yes,” she said quickly. “They was betrothed, at least ’e seemed to take it they was, then she broke it orff. Not that it were formal, like. There weren’t no announcement.”
“Do you know why?”
She was surprised.
“Me? Course I don’t.”
“Was there another person?”
