William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

time I got there. Didn’t know Havilland personally, but I knew him by repute. A very decent man. Hard to believe he’d taken his own life.” He looked up at Monk suddenly. “But one thing police work teaches you: You never know what goes on in somebody else’s mind. Loves and hates that their own families don’t ever dream about.”
    Monk nodded. For once he had no quibble at all. He tried to imagine Runcorn and the scene: the small stable, the straw, the sound and smell of horses, the leather harnesses, the gleam of lantern light on polished brass, the dead man lying on the floor, the sickly smell of blood.
    “Were the horses frightened?” he asked. “Any injuries?”
    Runcorn frowned. “No. Bit nervous. They’d smelled blood and they must have heard the shot, but nothing was disturbed as if there’d been a fight. No wounds, no wood kicked, no cuts, neither of ’em really spooked. And before you ask, there were no other marks on the body, no bruises, clothes as neat as you please. I’d lay my reputation no one struggled or fought with him before he was shot. And the way he was lying, either he shot himself, which everything pointed to, or whoever else did it stood within a couple of feet of him, because there was nowhere else to stand in a room that size.”
    “And nothing was taken, nothing missing?” Monk asked without hope now. He had outwitted Runcorn many times in the past, but that was years ago. They had both learned in the time between: Monk to be a little gentler, and more honest in his reasons for cleverness; Runcorn to think a little harder before coming to conclusions, perhaps also to keep his attention on the case more, and less on his own vanity.
    “Nothing to take in the stables,” Runcorn replied. “Unless you count the odd horse brass, but the stable boy said they were all there.”
    “Coachman agree?” Monk put in.
    “Seems a footman doubled as coachman,” Runcorn answered. “He was handy, and with a butler and junior footman who doubled as boot boy, that was all that was necessary.”
    “And the house?” Monk pressed. “Anyone intrude in the night? Or impossible to tell, if Havilland had left the door open. Had he?”
    “Yes. The butler says he sat up late. Told them he wanted to work in his study, and sent them all to bed. But a thorough search was made and both Miss Havilland herself and the housekeeper said nothing at all was missing, or even moved. And there were plenty of nice things, easy to carry, if a burglar’d wanted. Easy to sell.”
    “What time did he die?” Monk was not yet willing to give up, although it was beginning to look more and more as if Mary Havilland’s belief in her father’s murder was simply a desperate young woman’s refusal to accept the truth that he had killed himself.
    “Police surgeon reckoned between midnight and about three, close as he could tell. Pretty cold in the stables, late autumn. The thirteenth of November, to be exact. Frost was sharpish that night. I remember it was still white all around the edges of the leaves on the garden bushes we passed going in.” Runcorn was hunched up, as if the memory chilled him.
    “No one heard a shot?”
    “No.” Runcorn gave a tiny, bleak smile. “Which was unusual. You’d think someone would’ve. Tried shooting the thing myself, and it was loud enough. Could hear it clear a hundred yards off, on a still night like that. I followed that one all the way, but if anyone heard, they wouldn’t admit to it.” There was long experience in his face, and fighting against it a very faint quickening of hope.
    Monk realized with surprise that Runcorn wanted Mary Havilland to be right; he simply could not see the possibility.
    “Muffled by something?” Monk asked.
    Runcorn shook his head no more than an inch or two. “Nothing there. Powder burns on his skin. If he’d wrapped a towel or a cloth around it to deaden the sound, that’d account for why nobody heard it, or maybe didn’t recognize it for a shot, but then the cloth would still be there, and it wasn’t. Unless…somebody took it away!” He did not quite make it a question, but it was in his eyes.
    “No sign of anyone else there?” Monk asked, seeking the same hope.
    “Not a thing, and I looked myself.”
    Monk believed him. Not only was Runcorn not easily a liar, there was a painful hunger in him to believe better of Havilland than the circumstances justified. Even now, two months later, it was still there.
    Monk asked