William Monk 15 - Dark Assassin

“We’ve got to get rid of the toshers who are spreading fear just to keep their old beats in the sewers that are left. Do you know what a tosher’s beat is worth?”
    “Yes,” Monk said tartly. “And I know they hate change. So tell the court that! Tell them that Argyll knew it, too, and couldn’t afford to let it go on.”
    Sixsmith looked exhausted, as if he had been battling the same arguments in his head for weeks.
    Monk felt an intense pity for him. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “To be betrayed by someone you trusted is one of the worst pains a man can know. But you have no time now to dwell on it. You must save yourself by telling not just the truth, but all of it.”
    Sixsmith raised his head and gave him a smile that was more a baring of the teeth. “Argyll will simply say that he gave me the money to buy off the toshers so they would leave the navvies alone, and I am the one who used it to have Havilland killed.”
    “Why would you do that?”
    Sixsmith hesitated a moment.
    “Why?” Monk repeated. “It’s Argyll’s company, not yours. Your reputation is excellent. If he went under, you could find a new position in days.”
    “You know my reputation?” Sixsmith sounded surprised.
    “Of course. Argyll couldn’t afford to have Havilland sabotage his tunnel. He must have contacted the assassin, but got you to hand the money to him. Why would he do that, except to incriminate you if anyone ever discovered Havilland’s death was murder? It was deliberate!”
    Sixsmith blinked rapidly, his face a mask of pain, still fighting not to believe it.
    “Were you the first to speak to the assassin?” Monk pressed. He hated forcing Sixsmith to see it, but his life could depend on it. “Or did Argyll set up the meeting, give you the money, and tell you to pass it over?”
    “Of course he did,” Sixsmith said in a whisper.
    “Do you know who the assassin was? Do you know where to find him now? Or anything about him at all?” Monk asked.
    “No.” Sixsmith stared at him. “No…I don’t.”
    “Who asked Mrs. Argyll to write to her father and have him go out and wait in the stables at midnight?”
    “You believe there really was a letter?” Sixsmith’s eyes widened. “Did anyone see it?”
    “Yes, I believe there was,” Monk answered. “She admitted it, but we can’t force her to testify against her husband.”
    Sixsmith dropped his head in his hands, as if someone had offered him hope, then dashed it from his lips.
    “We can try to persuade her.” Monk wanted passionately to help him, to give him the strength to go on. “For your own sake,” he said urgently,
    “tell the truth about the money! Tell Dobie everything.”
    “He can’t help,” Sixsmith whispered. “He thinks he can, but he’s young and imagines he’ll always win. He won’t this time. Argyll’s surrounded himself with too many people who are innocent. There’s Jenny, poor Mary Havilland, the navvies who carried out his orders to fight the toshers now and then. The poor devils don’t have a choice! It’s work or starve. And we have to meet the deadline in the contract or we won’t get another.”
    He looked at Monk as if trying to discern if he understood. “And there’s the M.P., Morgan Applegate, who gave us the contracts for those sites. He could be implicated in bribes and profit. Argyll knows all that; he arranged it that way. I haven’t a chance, Mr. Monk. I’d best go down for bribing someone to murder a man, and not take all those others with me. I’ll go anyway; he’s seen to that.” He faced Monk with haunted eyes, still clinging to a hope beyond reason, and on the edge of losing it.
    Monk did something he had sworn he would not do. “Rathbone doesn’t want to convict you,” he said quietly. “It’s Argyll he’s after. He knows as well as you do that he’s the man behind it. Tell the truth, fight for your life, and he’ll help you.”
    Sixsmith stared at him, aching to believe him. The struggle was naked in his eyes, in the bruised planes of his face and the twist of his mouth. At last, very slowly, he nodded.
     
    Hester had been to see Rose Applegate more than once since developing their mutual plan to do what they could to clear Mary Havilland’s name from the stigma of suicide. Two days before the trial they had gone together to a charity afternoon reception organized to raise money for orphans to give them a decent education so that they might be of use both to themselves