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Jenny looked at her with loathing. “And what does it profit you, Mrs. Monk? Why do you care if I survive or not? I think you’re lying, and you need me to betray Aston, or he’ll still beat you and Alan.”
Hester forced herself to smile, but she knew it was a cold, uncertain gesture. “Are you prepared to wager your life on no one finding evidence, now that they know where to look? More than that, are you sure your own future is safe with a man who will kill when it suits him, who betrayed the man who employed him and trusted him by taking his wife and who set him up to hang for a murder he didn’t commit? Look who is dead! Are you sure you are not the next, when your usefulness to him is over, or he finds a younger, prettier woman who isn’t weighed down with another man’s children? Or could it be that your children are heirs to the whole Argyll inheritance? Could that be your value to him? And if you marry him, whose will it be then? Toby’s, dead, too! And Mary.”
Jenny’s face collapsed. Hester imagined the memories that might be racing through her mind, moments of intimacy, of passion. Hester would have pitied her had not so many others paid the price.
“Go to the police a
nd confess perjury,” she said more gently. “While you still have time. Make up some story that you were deceived and now you realize the truth. You might at least survive. You have a choice, today anyway. Live with Argyll, who may be a bore and a bully—or hang with Sixsmith, who is far worse.” She gave a very slight shrug. “There’s no profit in it for me, Mrs. Argyll, but there is for your children. I suppose I care about them.” And she turned on her heel and walked out. She would go back home and have lunch with Scuff, and perhaps tell him what she had done. She would write a letter to Rose Applegate and tell her too, when it was all over.
As Monk and all the others shared a brief lunch with a group of navvies, this time having the benefit of far more knowledge, they questioned them not about Argyll but about Sixsmith. They were deep underground, sitting on stones in the rubble away from the pounding of the engine. It was an old tunnel where debris had been dumped rather than carry it all the way to the surface. The constant dripping of water filled the air with damp and the smell of sewage. The scrabble of rats’ feet was closer than the clang and thump of the machine. The voices around them echoed until it was hard to tell from which direction they came. Darkness hemmed them in on all sides, crowding the frail heart of the lantern light. They could have been twenty feet below the surface of the earth, or hundreds. Monk tried to drive the thought from his mind and keep his stomach from knotting.
Rathbone drank some water but was reluctant to eat the coarse bread. He did manage to keep the look of distaste out of his expression.
“So Miss Havilland asked for Mr. Sixsmith’s help?” he said again.
“Yeah,” the navvy agreed. He was a big, bull-chested man with fair hair receding at the front and an agreeable, heavily weathered face.
“Course ’e did. Went out o’ ’is way ter give ’er wot she asked fer. Did fer ’er pa, too.”
“Same information?” Rathbone asked.
“I s’pose.” The navvy creased his face in thought. “ ’E ’elped a lot o’ them. Never ’id nuffink. ’E must ’a told Miss ’Avilland wot she asked ’im fer, ’cos it were arter she spoke wi’ ’im that she came ter know as ’er pa were murdered. Or leastways ter think as ’e were.”
Rathbone glanced at Monk, then looked back at the navvy. “I think I might begin to understand this, Mr….”
“Finger,” the navvy supplied. “ ’Cos I lost me finger, see?” He held up his left hand, the middle finger missing from the knuckle.
“Thank you,” Rathbone acknowledged. “Mr. Finger, did Mr. Toby Argyll work with Mr. Sixsmith also?”
The navvy grinned, showing several gaps among his teeth. “Jus’ Finger. Yeah, course ’e did. Mr. Toby were keen ter learn all ’e could about the machine, an’ no one knowed as much as Mr. Sixsmith. Mr. Toby were down ’ere ’alf the time.”
“Before Miss Havilland was killed on the river?” Rathbone pressed.
“Yeah, even the day before, as I ’member.”
Monk suddenly understood what Rathbone was thinking, and perhaps a step beyond it as well. “Finger,” he said quickly, “why did Mr. Toby ask Sixsmith about the machine, rather than asking his brother, Alan Argyll?”
“Perhaps his brother wouldn’t tell him?” Rathbone suggested, and looked questioningly at Finger.
“Nob’dy knows ’em machines like Mr. Sixsmith does,” Finger replied with certainty.
“But Mr. Alan was the one who invented the modifications that made Argyll Brothers’ machine better than anyone else’s,” Monk pointed out, cutting across Rathbone.
“ ’E owned it,” Finger said. “It were Mr. Sixsmith wot thought it up. ’E knew it better’n Mr. Argyll, that I’d swear on me ma’s grave, God rest ’er.”
“Ah!” Monk sat back, looking across at Rathbone. “So Mr. Sixsmith had the brains, but Mr. Argyll took the credit and the money. I imagine Mr. Sixsmith was more than a little unhappy about that.”
They thanked Finger, who told them where to find a navvy who could help them further.
They had gone only another mile when there was a tremor in the ground, so faint as to be almost indiscernible. A moment later, the rhythm of the machine altered slightly.
A wave of horror passed over Monk, bringing the sweat out on his skin, then desperate fear.
Rathbone froze.
“Can you smell something?” Sutton whispered.
“Smell something?” Rathbone said hoarsely. “The stench of the sewers, for heaven’s sake. How could anyone not smell it?”
