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“Could it have belonged to another letter sent at an earlier time?”
“There were notes on it relating to events that happened that evening,” Monk replied with satisfaction.
“Good. So Mrs. Argyll sent him a note. If she swears it was an invitation to dinner in a week’s time, and she is willing to, what have we?”
“A woman prepared to lie to two police officers, under oath.”
“To save her husband, her home, her source of income, and her position in society—and thus also her children.” Rathbone puckered his mouth into a tight, bleak smile. “Not an unusual phenomenon, Monk. And not one you would find it easy, or popular, to destroy. You would not win the jury’s favor with that.”
“I want their belief, not their favor!” Monk snapped.
“Juries are driven by emotion as well as reason,” Rathbone pointed out. “You’re playing a dangerous game. I can see about charging Sixsmith as an accessory, possibly an unknowing one as far as murder is concerned, and hope to draw out enough to implicate Argyll, but you’d have to come up with a lot more than you have so far.” His face pinched a little. “It happens sometimes. You can catch everyone but the real culprit. It looks as if Argyll’s protected himself pretty well. To reach him you’ll have to destroy this man Sixsmith, who may be completely innocent of anything except a fairly usual business bribe. You’ll also destroy Argyll’s wife, who is doing what any woman would do to protect her children, perhaps even to protect her belief in her husband as a decent man. And she may need that to survive with any kind of sanity.”
Monk hesitated. Was it worth it? Should he destroy the slightly tarnished, those culpable only of ordinary human weakness, in order to reach the truly guilty? For what—vengeance? Or to protect future victims?
“You don’t have a choice now,” Rathbone said quietly. “At least not as far as Sixsmith is concerned. I’ll prosecute, by all means, and uncover everything I can. Meanwhile, you find out more about this mysterious assassin. Show who contacted him, if he ever took the second payment, if he knows who employed him. Above all, you need to show what Havilland was going to do that was sufficient to make Argyll want to kill him. So far all you have is an engineer who lost his nerve and became a nuisance. Sane men don’t commit murder for that. Give me chapter and verse of what Argyll would lose, and connect it to him, not just to Sixsmith.”
Monk stood up. “I’ll find it! How long have I?”
“Till it comes to trial? Three weeks.”
“Then I’d better start.” He moved towards the door.
“Monk!”
He turned back. “Yes?”
“If you’re right and it is Argyll, be careful. He’s a very powerful man and you work in a dangerous job.”
Monk stared at Rathbone with sudden surprise. There was a gentleness in his face he had not expected to see. “I will,” he promised. “I have good men around me.”
Monk began by going back to speak with Runcorn. The superintendent was probably as aware as Rathbone of the thinness of the case; nevertheless, Monk outlined it in legal terms while Runcorn sat behind his desk and listened grimly.
“Need to know more about this man in the mews,” he said when Monk had finished. “Might get a better description of him if we ask the cabbie again. And we’ll have to ask Mrs. Ewart to see if she can say anything more.”
She was surprised to see them again, but it was apparent that she was not displeased. She was wearing a woollen dress of a dark, rich wine color, and she looked less tense than she had the previous time. Monk wondered if that was in any part related to the fact that her brother was not at home at this hour.
She received them in the withdrawing room, where there was a bright fire sending its heat into the air. The room was not what Monk would have expected. There was a pretentiousness about it that took away something of the comfort. The paintings on the walls were big and heavily framed, the kind of art one chooses to impress rather than because one likes it. There was an impersonal feel to them, as there was to the carved ivory ornaments on the mantelpiece and the few leather-bound books in a case against the wall. The volumes sat together uniform in size and color, immaculate, as though no one ever read them. Then he remembered that Mrs. Ewart was a widow and this was Barclay’s house, not hers. He wondered for a moment what her own choice would have been.
She was looking at Runcorn. Her face in the morning light was less tired than the first time they had seen her, but it still held the same sadness at the edge of her smile and behind the intelligence in her eyes.
“I’m sorry to bother you again, ma’am,” Runcorn apologized, looking back at her steadily. “But we’ve looked into the matter further, and it seems very much like the man you saw could have shot Mr. Havilland. There’s a man arrested for hiring him coming to trial soon, but if we don’t find a good deal more information, he might get off.”
“Of course,” she said quickly. “You must catch the man who did it, for every reason. I have no idea where he went, except towards the main road. I imagine he would find a hansom and leave the area as fast as he could.”
“Oh, he did, ma’am. We traced him as far as Piccadilly, and the East End after that,” Runcorn agreed. Not once did he glance at Monk. “It’s just that the cabbie didn’t look at him except for an instant, and
he isn’t all that good at description. If you could remember anything else at all about him, it could help.”
She thought for several moments, withdrawing into herself. She gave a little shiver, as if thinking not only of the cold of that night but now also of what had taken place less than a hundred yards from where she had stood. Runcorn’s admiration of her was clear in his eyes, but it was the vulnerability in her, the sadness, that held him. Monk knew that because he had seen a flash of it before, and knew Runcorn better than he realized. There was a softness in Runcorn he had never before allowed, a capacity for pity he was only now daring to acknowledge.
Or was it Monk who had only just developed the generosity of spirit to see it?
Mrs. Ewart was answering the question as carefully and with as much detail as she could. “He had a long face,” she began. “A narrow bridge to his nose, but his eyes were not small, and they were heavy-lidded.” Suddenly she opened her own eyes very wide, as if startled. “They were light! His skin was sallow and his hair was black, at least it looked black in the streetlights. And his brows, too. But his eyes were light—blue, or gray. Blue, I think. And…his teeth…” Then she shivered, and there was a look of apology in her face, as if what she was going to say was foolish. “His eyeteeth were unusually pointed. He smiled when he explained the…the stain. I…” She gulped. “I suppose that was poor Mr. Havilland’s blood?” She looked at Runcorn, waiting for his reaction, although it was inconceivable that it should matter to her. Yet Monk could not help but believe that it did. Had she seen that gentleness in Runcorn? Or was it just that she needed someone to understand the horror she felt?
Runcorn continued to probe. What about the man’s clothes? Had he worn gloves? No. Had she noticed his hands? Strong and thin. Boots? She had no idea.
If she thought of anything else, he told her, she should send for him, and he gave her his card. Then they thanked her and left. Monk had barely spoken a word.
