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By ten o’clock the court was in session and Rathbone had asked permission to call Monk to the witness stand. Monk was startled by how stiff he was and how his legs ached as he climbed up. He had to grip the rail to steady himself. Even after a meal and a change of clothes he was exhausted. His shoulder ached, and the violence of the night invaded his mind.
Rathbone looked up at him anxiously. The barrister was as elegant as always—immaculately dressed, his fair hair smooth—but his eyes were shadowed and his lips pale and pulled a little tight. Because Monk knew him so well, he could see the tension in him. He knew how close he was to being beaten.
In the front row of the gallery Margaret Ballinger sat, white and unhappy. Her eyes seldom left Rathbone, even though most of the time it was only his back and profile that she could see.
“Mr. Monk,” Rathbone began, “will you please tell the court where you were last night?”
Dobie, who apparently had not heard the news, immediately objected.
“Very well, may I rephrase the question?” Rathbone said tightly, his voice scraping in his throat. “As some of the court may know, my lord, there was a catastrophic cave-in at the Argyll Company’s sewer construction tunnel last night.” He stopped while the public gallery gasped and one or two people cried out. The jurors looked at one another in horror. The clamor subsided only at the judge’s demand for order.
“Were you called to the scene, Mr. Monk?” Rathbone concluded.
“Yes.” Monk kept his answers as bare and as direct as possible. He glanced only once at Sixsmith up in the dock. The man’s powerful face was cast forward, his body rigid with tension and totally unmoving.
“Who called you?” Rathbone asked Monk.
“Sergeant Orme of the Thames River Police.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. I believe he assumed that I would want to be involved since I had been investigating the risk of just such a disaster, because of James Havilland’s fears and his subsequent death. Also, of course, we were doing all we could to help, as were the Metropolitan Police, the fire services, and various doctors, navvies, and any able-bodied men in the area.”
“Your point is taken, Sir Oliver,” the judge assured him. He turned to Monk. “I would like to know, Inspector, what you found. Was it of the nature that you had been led to fear?”
“Yes, my lord,” Monk replied. “That, and greater.”
“Please be more specific.”
It was the line that Rathbone had intended to take, so Monk was happy to respond. “James Havilland had intimated that he feared a disaster if there was not a great deal more time and care taken in the excavations. He did not record precisely what he feared—or if he did, I did not find it. There are risks of land movement—slippage, subsidence—in any major work. He seemed to fear something further. What seems to have occurred last night was that the diggings went too close to an underground river and the river burst the walls, carrying an enormous weight of earth and rubble with it, and flooding the tunnels.”
There was too much noise of horror and distress from the gallery and jurors for Monk to continue, and even the judge looked stricken. Obviously the news had not yet reached the daily papers, and few had heard it even by word of mouth.
“Silence!” the judge ordered, but there was no anger in his voice. He was calling his court to order, but without criticism. “I assume, Mr. Monk, that you are here, in spite of your appalling night, because there is some evidence Sir Oliver feels pertinent to the case, even at this late stage of events?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Very well. Sir Oliver, please ask your questions.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Rathbone acknowledged. “Mr. Monk, during the course of the night, did you bring to the surface any bodies of the dead or the still living?”
“Yes.”
“Were any of them people that you knew?”
“Yes.”
“Who were they?”
“Two navvies that I had spoken with, a tosher—a man who retrieves objects of value from the sewers—and one other man whom I had met once before.” He stopped abruptly, memories of the pistol shot and Scuff falling momentarily choking his breath.
He was so tired that the past and present collided with each other and the courtroom seemed to sway.
“Where did you meet him before, Mr. Monk?”
Monk realized that Rathbone had asked him twice. He stiffened his back and shoulders. “In the sewers,” he replied. “When I was looking for the man Mrs. Ewart saw coming out of the mews after James Havilland was shot.”
“You did not arrest him?” Rathbone sounded surprised.
