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For the first time in their interview her uncertainty was sharp in her face.
He smiled bleakly. “My wife and I frequently disagree. Yet she would be loyal to me and love me through anything, good or bad. I know this because she has done so, without ever telling me I was right, if she thought otherwise.”
She stared at him, shaking her head. “Then you wouldn’t have liked Mr. Toby,” she said with conviction. “He expected obedience. He had the money, you see, and ambitions. And he was clever.”
“Cleverer than his brother?” he said quickly.
“I don’t know. But I’ve a fancy he was beginning to think so.” She suddenly realized how bold she was being in so speaking her mind; a flash of alarm crossed her face, then disappeared again. She was tasting a new and previously unimagined freedom.
In spite of the gravity of their discussion, Monk found himself smiling at her. Cardman would have been horrified. She was perhaps a year or two older than he. Monk wondered what the relationship had been between them. Superficial? Or had their station in life prevented what would have been a testing but rewarding love?
He thrust the notion from his mind. “Mr. Alan Argyll was different?” he asked. “And was Mrs. Argyll at all like her sister?”
Mrs. Kitching’s face hardened. “Mr. Alan’s a very clever man, a lot cleverer than Mr. Toby realized,” she answered without hesitation. “Mr. Toby might have thought he’d get the upper hand in time, but he wouldn’t. Miss Mary told me that. Not that I didn’t think so myself, just seeing them in the withdrawing room. Miss Jenny’s a realist, never was a dreamer like Miss Mary. Easier to get along with. Never asks for the impossible or fights battles she can’t win. Been a good wife to Mr. Alan. I suppose Mr. Toby thought Miss Mary’d be the same. Well, he thought wrong!” She said that last with considerable satisfaction. Then she remembered again that Mary was dead. The tears washed down her cheeks, and this time she was unable to control them.
Monk was embarrassed, and angry with himself for being so. Why should he? Mrs. Kitching’s was an honest grief; there was nothing in it to apologize for.
He thanked her with deep sincerity and then excused himself.
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By midday Monk was back across the city at the construction works again. This time he found Aston Sixsmith aboveground and able to speak more easily. There was no point in asking him about Mary. He would be unlikely to know anything of use, but he might know something of the relationship between the two brothers. He would have to be far more circumspect here. Sixsmith would be loyal out of the need to guard his job, even if not from personal regard.
“Was Mr. Toby Argyll aware of Havilland’s fear of tunnels?” he asked. They were standing on the bare clay at least a couple of hundred yards from the nearest machine, and the noise of it seemed distant in the brief winter sun.
Sixsmith pulled his wide mouth tight. “I’m afraid we all were. If you were watching the man, you couldn’t miss it. And to be honest, Mr. Monk, it’s part of your job to look for the man who’ll crack because he’s a danger to everyone else, especially if he’s in charge of anything. I’m sorry.” His highly expressive face was touched with sadness. “I liked Havilland, but liking’s got nothing to do with safety. If he’d gone barmy or started telling the men that there was a river going to break through the walls, or choke-damp in the air, or a cave-in coming, he’d have started a panic. God knows what could have happened.” He looked at Monk questioningly to see if he understood.
Monk understood completely. A man of Havilland’s seniority and experience losing his nerve would be enough to create hysteria that could bring about the precise disaster he was afraid of. At the very least it would disrupt work, perhaps for days, and consequently the next project would be sure to go to a rival.
“Did you suspect it could be deliberate?” he asked.
Sixsmith was momentarily puzzled. “Deliberate weakness? He’d make himself unemployable anywhere else, which would be stupid. Why would any man do that? And he and both the Argyll brothers were friends. Family, in fact.”
“I meant sabotage, for a suitable reward,” Monk explained, but it sounded ugly as he said it, and he saw the revulsion in Sixsmith’s face.
“From another company?” Sixsmith’s lips curled. “If you’d known Havilland, you wouldn’t even ask. He might have hid his weaknesses, and he might even have been something of a coward, but he was absolutely honest. He’d never have sold out. I’d lay my own life on that. And believe me, Mr. Monk, when you work with a man on things like that”—he jabbed his thumb downwards towards the tunnels beneath them—“you get to know who to trust, and who not to. Get it wrong and you don’t always live to talk about it.”
“So both of the Argyll brothers must have known of Havilland’s fears, and that he was possibly a danger?”
Sixsmith’s face tightened and he pushed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “I’m afraid so.”
“And was Mary a danger also?”
Sixsmith considered for a moment before answering. “Not really. She had very little idea of what she was talking about…. Can’t you call it an accident—Mary’s death, I mean?”
Monk noticed that he had not mentioned Toby’s death. “Both of them?” he asked. “Mary and Toby Argyll, too?”
A flash of understanding lit Sixsmith’s eyes. “Would have to be, wouldn’t it?”
“Well, if hers wasn’t suicide, then his wasn’t either,” Monk said reasonably. “The only alternative would be murder. Could he have meant to push her over? She went over backwards, hanging on to him.”
Sixsmith breathed out slowly. “Trying to save herself, or trying to pull him in with her, you mean?” His face brightened. “Changed her mind, and trying to save herself! There you are. Unfortunately she was too late. Already lost her balance, and his too. Tragedy. Simple.”
“You didn’t say ‘but Toby would never hurt her,’” Monk observed.
Sixsmith looked at him very steadily, and now his expression was unreadable. “Didn’t I? No, I suppose I didn’t. Got to get back to work now, Mr. Monk. Can’t afford delays. Costs money. Good day.” He walked away easily with a long, swinging stride.
Monk stood still for a moment, sharply aware again of the cold—and the noise of engines. The next thing he needed to ascertain was the exact time James Havilland had died, or as near as the police surgeon could tell him.
