William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

moment, then she turned away. What was it Monk saw in Sixsmith’s face? Pity for what she was about to lose? Forgiveness that she had not had the courage to do it before? Or anger that she had let him suffer right to the brink, and spoken up only when she had been forced to? His look was steady and unreadable.
    Argyll swallowed. “Yes. As Sixsmith said, I wanted to hire someone to prevent the unrest among navvies regarding safety, and stop the toshers, whose territories were disappearing, from becoming violent and disrupting the excavations.” He drew in his breath. “We have to finish the new sewers as soon as possible. The threat of disease is appalling.”
    There was a rustle of movement in the room.
    Monk stared at the jury. There was unease among them, but no sympathy. Did they believe him?
    “We are aware of this, Mr. Argyll,” Dobie answered, beginning to regain his composure. “It is not what you are doing that we question, only the methods you are willing to employ in order to accomplish them. You admit that you met this man, and that you gave Mr. Sixsmith the money to pay him for his work?”
    The answer seemed torn from Argyll. “Yes! But to quell violence, not to kill Havilland!”
    “But Havilland was a nuisance, wasn’t he?” Dobie raised his voice, challenging him now. He took a couple of steps toward the stand. “He believed you were moving too quickly, didn’t he, Mr. Argyll? He feared you might disturb the land, cause a subsidence, and possibly even break through into an old, uncharted underground river, didn’t he?”
    Argyll was now so white he looked as if he might collapse. “I don’t know what he thought!” he shouted back, his voice ragged.
    “Don’t you?” Dobie said sarcastically. He turned away, then spun around and faced the witness stand again. “But he
was
a nuisance, wasn’t he? And even after he was dead, shot in his own stable at midnight and buried in a suicide’s grave, his daughter Mary pressed his cause and took it up herself, didn’t she?” He was pointing his finger now. “And where is she? Also in a suicide’s grave! Along with your ally and younger brother.” His smile was triumphant. “Thank you, Mr. Argyll. The court needs no more from you, at least not yet!” He waved his arm to invite Rathbone to question Argyll if he should wish to.
    Rathbone declined. Victory was almost within his grasp.
    The judge blinked and looked at Rathbone curiously, but he made no remark.
    Dobie called Aston Sixsmith. Rathbone’s ploy was hardly a gamble anymore.
    Sixsmith mounted the stand. The man exuded intelligence and animal power, exhausted as he was. There was a rustle of sympathy from the crowd now. Even the jurors smiled at him. He ignored them all, hoarding his emotion to himself, not yet able to betray his awareness of how close he had been to prison, or even the rope. He looked once again at Jenny Argyll. For an instant there was a softening in his face, gone again almost before it was seen. A sense of decency? His gaze barely touched Alan Argyll. His erstwhile employer was finished, worthless. From the gallery Monk watched Sixsmith with an increasing sense of incredulity.
    Rathbone had won. Monk looked across at Margaret Bellinger and saw her eagerness for the moment, her pride in Rathbone’s extraordinary achievement for justice.
    Dobie was questioning Sixsmith, ramming home the victory. “Did you ever meet this extraordinary assassin before the night you paid him the money Mr. Argyll gave you?” he asked.
    “No, sir, I did not,” Sixsmith replied quietly.
    “Or after that?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Have you any idea who shot him, or why?”
    “I know no more than you do, sir.”
    “Why did you give him the money? For what purpose? Was it to kill James Havilland because he was causing you trouble, and possibly expensive delays?”
    “No, sir. Mr. Argyll told me it was to hire men to keep the toshers and navvies from disrupting the work.”
    “And what about Mr. Havilland?”
    “I understood that Mr. Argyll was going to deal with that himself.”
    “How?”
    Sixsmith’s gaze was intense. “Show him that he was mistaken. Mr. Havilland was his father-in-law, and I believed that relations were cordial between them.”
    “Could this man, this assassin, have misunderstood you?”
    Sixsmith stared at him. “No, sir. I was quite specific.”
    Dobie could not resist making the very most of it. He looked at the jury, then at the gallery. “Describe