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They stopped to pick up Crow. He was a sleepy and startled recruit, but willing enough when he heard the truth of the events. He sent a messenger to find Sutton and tell him where they were going, and that it was extremely urgent that he join them. They did not wait for the ratcatcher, but arranged a rendezvous.
The wind was gusting hard and carried the smell of rain as they made their way down the muddy slope to the bottom of the tunnel. The walls oozed water in the lantern light, and on the bottom it was running slowly in between the broken bricks and pebbles. The wooden planks were slimy underfoot. When Monk held his lantern up, the beam shone on the mist of fine rain, lighting the wet walls and the planks that held them back, but barely reaching the higher beams that forced them apart, crisscrossing upwards to an invisible sky. The air smelled of earth, water, and old wood.
Monk wrinkled his nose, not knowing if he really smelled the sour odor of sewers or if it was just conjured by memory and imagination. He had to make a greater effort than he had expected in order to force himself to walk calmly under the brick facing of the tunnel and the vast weight of earth on top of him. Their feet echoed on the boards and the water sloshed around the wood and up over the soles of his boots. It was bitterly cold.
He heard Rathbone gasp behind him, and wondered if the darkness suffocated him as much, if it brought out the sweat on his skin and made him strain his eyes and ears for anything that would give him a sense of proportion, direction, any of the things one takes for granted aboveground.
A thousand yards on they separated, in order to cover as much ground as possible. For safety’s sake they went in pairs: Runcorn and Orme, Rathbone and Crow, with Monk to wait at the appointed place for Sutton.
“Don’t go by yerself, sir!” Orme warned, his voice sharp with anxiety.
“One slip an’ yer finished. ’It yer ’ead an’ the rats’ll get yer. It in’t a nice way ter go.”
Monk saw Rathbone’s sensitive mouth twist in revulsion, and he smiled. “I won’t, Sergeant, I promise you.”
Orme nodded and disappeared into the darkness behind Runcorn, their lights swallowed up in moments.
Rathbone took a deep breath and, body rigid, followed after Crow without once looking backwards. Perhaps he was afraid that if he did he would lose his nerve to proceed.
Sutton arrived twenty-five minutes later, accompanied as always by the little dog. “It’s a bad business, Mr. Monk,” he said grimly. “W’ere d’ yer wanna start?”
The decision had already been made. “The other four are looking to find out if Sixsmith was ever seen with the assassin, and if so, when and by whom. I want to find out more about the dangers of cave-in that Havilland was so worried about, and how much Sixsmith actually knew of it.”
“Yer mean could ’e ’ave stopped it?” Sutton asked. He frowned.
“Don’t make no sense, Mr. Monk. Why couldn’t ’e ’ave gone careful, if ’e’d really understood? Cave-in don’t do ’im no good.”
“When I thought Sixsmith was innocent,” Monk explained, beginning to walk deeper into the tunnel, “I assumed Argyll was giving the orders and he had little choice. I took it for granted that whatever he feared, he would have told Argyll, and been ignored. But maybe that’s not true. Is he callous, a villain, or just incompetent?”
“Why’d ’e ’ave ’Avilland killed?” Sutton asked curiously, following on Monk’s heels. “It ’ad ter be ter keep ’im quiet about the dangers, ’adn’t it?”
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean he believed him. He might have thought Havilland was just scare-mongering.”
Sutton grunted. “Mebbe.”
The first thing they did was to find navvies at the excavation face and question them. They moved with speed. After the ordeal of the trial they did not expect Sixsmith back at the site that day, but it was not impossible that he would be there. He was a man accused wrongly, according to the law, and found innocent by his peers. If they seemed to others to be harassing him now, their position would be unpleasant, to say the least. He might even claim they were exceeding their office. Monk’s career could be jeopardized, and possibly Orme’s and Runcorn’s as well. Rathbone’s reputation would not profit from his expedition into the sewers to pursue a man he had prosecuted and failed to convict. He would appear to be losing with neither dignity nor honor.
The navvies told them nothing, and after an hour or so Monk realized he was wasting his time. Instead he took Sutton’s advice and sought out a couple of toshers. They were father and son, amazingly alike: both blunt-faced, with a cheerful and sarcastic disposition.
“Sixsmith?” the father said with a twist of his mouth. “Strong feller, not scared o’ nobody. Yeh, I knowed ’im. Why?”
/> Monk allowed Sutton to ask the question. They had already planned what to say. “ ’E din’t kill ’Avilland arter all,” Sutton replied casually. “ ’E really thought as the money were ter pay off toshers wot was makin’ trouble.”
“An’ I’m the queen o’ the fairies!” the father said witheringly.
“Yer sayin’ as yer never took no money?” Sutton asked, his voice almost expressionless.
“Weren’t nothin’ ter take!”
“Sixsmith’s a bleedin’ liar!” the son added angrily. “We weren’t makin’ no trouble, an’ wot’s more, Mr. Sutton, just ’cos yer catches rats fer the gentry, it don’t give yer no right ter say as we were. Yer know that, yer scurvy bastard!”
“I know yer din’t used ter,” Sutton agreed. “ ’Ow about others? Wot about Big Jem, or Lanky, or any o’ them?”
“We in’t stupid,” the father retorted. “Gettin’ meself in jail won’t ’elp no one.”
“Did Mr. Sixsmith know that?” Monk asked, speaking for the first time.
“Course ’e did!” The father looked at him, his face screwed up in disgust like a gargoyle in the lantern light. “ ’E’s a fly sod, an’ all.”
