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“Who asked Mrs. Argyll to write to her father and have him go out and wait in the stables at midnight?”
“You believe there really was a letter?” Sixsmith’s eyes widened. “Did anyone see it?”
“Yes, I believe there was,” Monk answered. “She admitted it, but we can’t force her to testify against her husband.”
Sixsmith dropped his head in his hands, as if someone had offered him hope, then dashed it from his lips.
“We can try to persuade her.” Monk wanted passionately to help him, to give him the strength to go on. “For your own sake,” he said urgently,
“tell the truth about the money! Tell Dobie everything.”
“He can’t help,” Sixsmith whispered. “He thinks he can, but he’s young and imagines he’ll always win. He won’t this time. Argyll’s surrounded himself with too many people who are innocent. There’s Jenny, poor Mary Havilland, the navvie
s who carried out his orders to fight the toshers now and then. The poor devils don’t have a choice! It’s work or starve. And we have to meet the deadline in the contract or we won’t get another.”
He looked at Monk as if trying to discern if he understood. “And there’s the M.P., Morgan Applegate, who gave us the contracts for those sites. He could be implicated in bribes and profit. Argyll knows all that; he arranged it that way. I haven’t a chance, Mr. Monk. I’d best go down for bribing someone to murder a man, and not take all those others with me. I’ll go anyway; he’s seen to that.” He faced Monk with haunted eyes, still clinging to a hope beyond reason, and on the edge of losing it.
Monk did something he had sworn he would not do. “Rathbone doesn’t want to convict you,” he said quietly. “It’s Argyll he’s after. He knows as well as you do that he’s the man behind it. Tell the truth, fight for your life, and he’ll help you.”
Sixsmith stared at him, aching to believe him. The struggle was naked in his eyes, in the bruised planes of his face and the twist of his mouth. At last, very slowly, he nodded.
Hester had been to see Rose Applegate more than once since developing their mutual plan to do what they could to clear Mary Havilland’s name from the stigma of suicide. Two days before the trial they had gone together to a charity afternoon reception organized to raise money for orphans to give them a decent education so that they might be of use both to themselves and to society. It was the sort of obviously worthy cause that even a woman in mourning, such as Jenny Argyll, might still feel free to attend.
“Are you sure she will be there?” Hester had asked anxiously.
“Certainly she will,” Rose had assured her. “Lady Dalrymple specifically invited the Argylls, and she is at just the level of society one dare not disappoint. She is sufficiently nouveau riche to notice and take offense if one declined, unless you positively had a contagious disease. Anyway, Mrs. Argyll has spent the entire winter season in mourning, so she is desperate to get out before she dies of boredom and everyone who is anyone has forgotten who she is!”
So Hester and Rose had set out to join the worthy women attending the event, and had contrived to spend quite a good amount of time in Jenny Argyll’s company. They had managed to fall with apparent ease into the subject of bereavement and the whole ghastliness of the upcoming trial of Aston Sixsmith.
“She knows something,” Rose said to Hester when they met the following day, on the eve of the trial.
They were alone in Rose’s withdrawing room, sitting beside the fire. Outside, the February rain lashed the windows, streaming down the glass until it was impossible to even see the traffic passing in the street beyond.
“I am quite sure she will refuse to see us again unless she has absolutely no alternative,” Rose said miserably. “And how would we possibly run into her? With Sixsmith on trial for arranging the murder of her father, and she herself in mourning for both her father and her sister, she is hardly going to attend any public functions! Lady Dalrymple’s ghastly affair for the betterment of orphans isn’t going to happen again for years.”
“Isn’t there any sort of other function she might go to?” Hester asked.
“Even if just to show a certain bravado. There must be something suitably somber, and—”
“Of course!” Rose said, her face alight with glee. “The perfect thing! They are holding a memorial service for Sir Edwin Roscastle the day after tomorrow.”
Hester was at a loss. “Who was he? And would she go?”
Rose’s expression was comical with distaste.
“A frightful old humbug, but very influential because he made such a parade of being good. Could flatter all the right people, and it got him no end of appreciation,” she replied. “Everybody likes to be seen praising the virtuous dead. Makes them feel good by association.” She sniffed. “Morgan doesn’t have anything to do with it because he couldn’t stand Roscastle and didn’t pretend his feelings were otherwise. But I know Lord Montague, who will be arranging it, and I can persuade him to ask Argyll for a donation, and to become a patron of the memorial fund. He’d never refuse that—it’s far too useful in business.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I am! It’s at eight o’clock tomorrow evening, and we can both go.”
Hester was alarmed. It was a superb idea, far too good to miss, but it was years since she had been to such a function, and she most certainly had nothing suitable to wear. “Rose, I…” It was embarrassing to admit, and it might even look as if she had lost her nerve and were making excuses.
Rose looked at her, then suddenly understood. “Short notice to get a gown,” she said tactfully. “Borrow one of mine. I’m taller than you are, but my maid can take it up this afternoon. We must make a plan of action.”
Thus it was that Hester accompanied Rose Applegate to the memorial service for the late Sir Edwin Roscastle. It was an extremely formal affair with a large number of people attending, including the cream of society. They arrived at the church and alighted from their carriages in magnificent blacks, purples, grays, and lavenders, according to the degree of mourning they wished to display and the color they believed most became them. Some were deeply mistaken as to the latter, as Rose observed to Hester in a whisper as she pointed out who they were. Rose herself was wearing lavender and dark gray. With her fair hair and pale skin, she cut an extremely elegant figure.
“There she is!” Hester interrupted as she saw Jenny Argyll walking up the steps, clothed in highly fashionable black. She moved with grace and a complete disregard for the biting easterly wind, although she did take care to keep to the leeward of her husband.
