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“You’ve got enemies, Mr. Monk. You’ve upset somebody with a lot of power.”
“Obviously!” Monk snapped. He clenched his fist, then wished he hadn’t.
Crow gave him a sudden, dazzling smile. “But you’ve got friends as well. Mr. Orme made sure you all stood together.”
“Crow…,” Monk began.
Crow blinked, and the smile remained. “You look after Mr. Orme; he’s a good one. Loyal. Worth a lot, loyalty. I’ll get a cab to take you home. You’ll only fall on your face, and you don’t want to have to explain that—you a hero an’ all.”
Monk glared at him, but actually he was grateful—for the ministration, for the cab, but above all for knowing of Orme’s loyalty. He made up his mind that from now on he would try harder to deserve it.
But who had spread the word that he was corrupt personally? Argyll again?
NINE
It was well into February when Aston Sixsmith came to trial. He had been free on bail since shortly after his arrest, having been charged only with bribery.
“But you are going to be able to prove Argyll’s complicity, aren’t you?” Monk said to Rathbone the evening before testimony began. Monk’s wound was healing well, and they were comfortable before a brisk fire in Rathbone’s house. Rain was beating against the windows, and the gutters were awash. They still had not found the actual assassin, in spite of every effort, and River Police duties had consumed most of Monk’s time since the death of the Fat Man. It had been a hideous job catching grapples into the corpse and hauling it up through the jagged hole in the pier. But the carving had been retrieved—to Monk’s intense relief, and to mixed emotions in Farnham’s case. If it had been lost, Farnham would have blamed Monk, not himself.
As it was, Monk was now more firmly entrenched in his new position than was entirely comfortable for him, and Clacton was inexplicably subdued. He obviously loathed Monk, but something compelled him to treat his new commander with respect. Monk had yet to learn what this new element was.
“Argyll’s guilty of murder,” Monk insisted to Rathbone. “And more important than that, there is still the danger of the disaster in the tunnels that Havilland feared.”
“But you can’t tell me what it is!” Rathbone pointed out. “They are using the same engines as before, and nothing has happened.”
“I know,” Monk admitted. “I’ve searched everything I can find, but no one will talk to me. All the navvies are afraid for their jobs. They’d rather face a possible cave-in sometime in the future than certain starvation now.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Rathbone promised. “But I have no idea yet how to disentangle the guilty Argyll from the relatively innocent Sixsmith. Not to mention Argyll’s wife, who is no doubt afraid to face the truth about him, not to mention public disgrace and the loss of her home. Plus there’s the M.P., Applegate, who gave Argyll the contract, and the totally innocent navvies who operate the machines. And there’s also Superintendent Runcorn who conducted the original enquiry into Havilland’s death. He will be blamed for having called it suicide and closing the case. Are you prepared for all of them to go down as well, tarred with the same brush? Guilty by association!”
“No,” Monk said flatly. “No, I’m not.” The thought was so ugly it twisted inside him.
“Well, it might be a choice between having them all, to be sure of getting the guilty one, or letting them all go, to be sure of saving the innocent,” Rathbone told him.
“If it comes to that, then I’ll let them go,” Monk said harshly. “But not without damn well trying!”
Rathbone looked at him sadly. “Accusation without proof will damn the innocent and let the guilty go free.”
Monk had no argument. What Rathbone said was true, and he understood it. “We’re too late to back out now.”
“I could drop the charge against Sixsmith.”
Driven by something more than anger at Argyll or the need to win, Monk said aloud, “We have to do everything we can to find out if Havilland was afraid of a real disaster, or just of tunneling in the dark. And if Mary learned it, too, and was killed for it, then we can’t walk away.” He knew as he said it that that was not entirely what was impelling him. It was Mary Havilland’s white face smeared with river water that haunted his mind. Even if all those other elements were solved, it would never be enough until her name was cleared and she and her father were buried as they would have wished. But Rathbone did not need to know that. It was a private wound, deep inside him, inextricably wound into his love for Hester.
Rathbone was looking at him. “I’ve investigated the Argylls’ engines. They’re pretty much the same as everyone else’s. Better, because they’ve been modified with great skill and considerable invention, but no more dangerous.”
“There’s something!” Monk insisted.
“Then bring it to me,” Rathbone said simply.
In the Old Bailey the next morning, after the jury was appointed and the opening addresses were delivered, Oliver Rathbone began the case for the prosecution. His first witness was Runcorn.
Monk sat in the public gallery, with Hester beside him. Neither of them was a witness, so it was permissible for them to attend. He glanced at her grave face. It was pale, and he knew she was thinking of Mary Havilland. He imagined what she must be remembering of her own grief, and the sense of helplessness and guilt because she had not been there for her father and mother. With such events, Monk knew, there was always the belief, however foolish, that there was something one could have said or done that would have made a difference. But he had not seen anger in her, or heard her blame her brother, James, for not somehow preventing it. She had never lashed out at him that Monk knew of. How did she keep at bay the bitterness and the sense of futility?
Then a sudden thought struck him. How incredibly stupid he was not to have seen it before! Was her need to throw herself into fighting pain, injustice, and helplessness her way of making the past bearable? Was her readiness to forgive born of her own understanding of what it was to fail? She worked with all her strength at Portpool Lane not only to meet a fraction of the women’s needs but to answer her own as well. Anything short of her whole heart in the battle could never be enough for her. He was guarding her from the danger without because he was afraid for himself—afraid of what losing her would mean. He was thinking of his own sleepless nights, his imagination of her danger. All the time he was increasing the danger within.
Impulsively he reached across and put his hand over hers, holding her softly. After a moment her fingers responded. He knew what that moment meant. It was the loss of something inside her, which he had taken away. He would have to put it back as soon as he could, however afraid he was for her or for himself without her.
Right now Runcorn was climbing the tw
