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Margaret abandoned decorum and met Rathbone halfway across the floor as he walked towards her. Her face was shining, but whatever she said to him was lost in the uproar.
Monk also was on his feet. He would speak a word or two to Runcorn, thank him for his courage in being willing to reexamine a case. Then he would go home to tell Hester—and Scuff.
TWELVE
The trial had finished promptly, so Monk was home comparatively early. The weather was bright and clear, and the February evening stretched out with no clouds—only trails of chimney smoke across the waning sky. It was going to freeze, and as he alighted from the omnibus the stones beneath his feet were already filmed with ice. But the air tasted fresh and the sweetness of victory was in it. The sun was low, and its reflection on the pale stretches of the river hurt his eyes. The masts of the ships were a black fretwork like wrought iron against the rich colors of the horizon beyond the rooftops.
He turned and walked smartly up Union Road to Paradise Place and then up the short path to his front door. As soon as he was inside he called out Hester’s name.
She must have heard the triumph in his voice. Her face eager, she appeared at the top of the stairs from the bedroom, where she had been sitting with Scuff.
“We won!” he said, starting up the steps two at a time. He caught hold of her and swung her around, kissing her lips, neck, cheek, and lips again. “We won it all! Sixsmith was convicted of no more than attempted bribery, and fined. Everyone knew that Argyll was guilty, and he’s probably been arrested already. I didn’t wait to see. Rathbone was brilliant, superb. Margaret was so proud of him, she absolutely glowed.”
The bedroom door was open, and Scuff was sitting up staring at them. He looked unnaturally pink. His hair was actually much fairer than Monk had supposed. He seemed to have forgotten about the lace on his nightgown, or even that it was Hester’s. His shoulder must hurt him, but he was making little of that, too. Now his eyes were bright with expectation, longing to be told all there was to hear.
Hester led Monk into the room and sat on the bed herself so that he could recount it to them both.
“Yer won!” Scuff said excitedly. “They gonna get Argyll fer killin’ poor ’Avilland, an’ Miss Mary as well? Yer gonna bury ’em proper?”
“Yes,” Monk said simply.
Scuff’s eyes were shining. He was sitting close to Hester, quite naturally. Both of them seemed to be unaware of it. “ ’Ow d’yer do it?” he said, hungry for any piece of information. He had sorely missed being there to see it himself.
“Would you like a cup of tea before we begin?” Hester asked.
Scuff looked at her with total incomprehension.
Monk rolled his eyes.
She smiled. “Right! Then you get nothing until it’s all told, every last word!”
He began with the day’s proceedings, recounting it as a story of adventure with all the details, looking at their faces, and enjoying himself. He described the courtroom, the judge, the jurors, the men and women in the gallery, and every witness. Scuff barely breathed; he could hardly bring himself even to blink.
Monk told them how he had climbed the steps to the witness box and stared at the court below him, how Sixsmith had craned forward in the dock, and how Rathbone had asked the questions on which it all turned.
“I described him exactly,” he said, remembering it with aching clarity.
“There wasn’t a sound in the whole room.”
“Did they know ’e was the man wot killed Mr. ’Avilland?” Scuff whispered. “D’yer tell ’em wot the sewer were like?”
“Oh, yes. I told them how we met him the first time, and how he turned around and shot you. That horrified them,” Monk answered honestly. “I described the dark and the water and the rats.”
Scuff gave an involuntary little shiver at the memory of the terror. Without realizing it, he moved a fraction closer to Hester, so that he was actually touching her. She appeared to take no notice, except that there was a slight softening of her lips, as if she wanted to smile but knew she should not let him see it.
“Did Jenny Argyll give evidence?” she asked.
“Yes.” Monk met her eyes for a moment of appreciation, and an acknowledgment of what it had cost Rose Applegate. “She told it all. Argyll denied it, of course, but no one believed him. If he’d looked at the jurors’ faces, he could have seen his own condemnation then.” He realized suddenly what a final thing he had said. They had accomplished it, the seemingly impossible. Sixsmith was free and the law knew that Alan Argyll was guilty. It would be only a matter of time before he was on trial himself.
“Funny,” Hester said aloud. “We’ll never know his name.”
“The man who actually shot James Havilland? No,” he agreed. “But he was only a means to an end, and he’s dead, anyway. The thing that matters is that the man behind it will be punished justly, and perhaps there will even be more care taken in the routing of new tunnels, or at least in the speed with which they’re done.”
“But Argyll will be charged?” Hester insisted. “So Mary Havilland can be buried properly and…and her father, too?”
“I’ll make certain.” He meant it as a promise. Seeing the warmth in her eyes, he knew that she understood.
“Did Sixsmith give evidence?” she asked. “Explain it all? He seemed like a decent man—a bit rough, perhaps, but it’s a rough profession. He…he felt things deeply, I thought.”
