earlier.
'You wrote the letter asking your father to go to his stable at midnight, in order to meet someone?'
'Yes.' Her voice was barely audible.
'Whom was he to meet?'
She was ashen. 'My husband.'
There was a gasp around the entire room.
'Why in the stable?' Rathbone was asking. 'It was a November night. Why not in the house, where it was warm and dry and refreshment could be offered?'
Jenny Argyll was ashen. She had to force her voice to make it audible. 'To… to avoid an interruption by my sister. It was to be a secret meeting.
'Who asked you to write the letter, Mrs. Argyll?'
She closed her eyes as if the terror and betrayal were washing over her like the black water that had burst through the sides of the tunnel and engulfed the navvies deep underground. 'My husband.'
In the dock something indefinable within Sixsmith appeared to ease, as if he smelled victory at last.
Rathbone allowed a moment's terrible silence, then he asked the last question. 'Did you know that your father was to be killed in that stable, Mrs. Argyll?'
'No!' Now her voice was strong and shrill. 'My husband told me it was to be a meeting to try to persuade my father that he was wrong about the tunnels, and to stop the navvies and toshers from making any more trouble!'
'As Mr. Sixsmith has told us,' Rathbone concluded, unable to resist making the point. 'Thank you, Mrs. Argyll.'
Dobie looked confused. Suddenly, at the moment when he expected to be swept off his feet, the tide had turned and retreated before him with no apparent explanation.
He asked only one question. 'It was your husband who asked this letter of you, Mrs. Argyll? Not Mr. Sixsmith?'
'That is correct,' she whispered.
He thanked her and excused her.
Monk looked at the judge, whose face was furrowed with puzzlement. It seemed that the prosecution and the defense had changed places, arguing each other's case. Possibly he had understood what was happening, and as long as the law was not flouted nor brought into disrespect, he would leave the drama to play itself out. He adjourned the court for luncheon.
In the afternoon Monk and Runcorn were both there. Dobie called Alan Argyll to the stand, as Rathbone had fervently hoped he would. He had done all he could to make it virtually impossible for him not to.
Argyll walked across the floor white-faced and composed. He glanced upwards once towards the dock, but it was impossible to tell if his eyes met those of Sixsmith or not. Sixsmith was leaning forward again. Surely he must see freedom almost in his grasp.
But Argyll had not been in the court for his wife's testimony. He did not know his grip over her was broken. He waited for Rathbone as if he thought he was still certain of victory. Perhaps he did not even see the open hostility on the jurors' faces. He looked at Dobie without a tremor, and his voice was clear when he answered.
'No. I did not ask my wife to write such a letter.' He even managed to affect surprise.
Dobie looked disbelieving. 'There is no question that the letter existed, Mr. Argyll, or that your wife wrote it. She has admitted as much to this court. If not at your request, at whose would she do such a thing?'
Argyll paled. Monk could see, from the angle of his head and the way his hands gripped the rail in front of him, that he was suddenly frightened. He started to look up at Sixsmith, then forced himself not to. Was he beginning at last to understand?
'I have no idea,' he said with difficulty.
Dobie grew sarcastic. 'One of your children, perhaps? Your sister-in-law? Or your brother?'
Argyll's face flamed and his hands clenched on the rail. He swayed as if he might fall over. 'My brother is dead, sir! Because Mary Havilland dragged him down with her! And you stand there and accuse him of… of what? How much courage does it take to accuse a murdered man? You disgrace the office you hold, and are a blemish to your profession!'
Dobie blanched, clearly embarrassed and momentarily at a loss to defend himself.
The judge looked from one to the other of them, then up at Aston Sixsmith, whose face was now expressionless. Lastly he looked at Jenny Argyll, who was ashen. Her gaze was fixed in the distance, as if she were held against her will by some inner vision, unable to tear herself from it.
Rathbone said nothing.
The judge looked at Dobie again. 'Mr. Dobie, do you wish to rephrase your question? It seems inadequate as it is.'
'I will move on, with your lordship's permission,' Dobie said, clearing his throat and looking again at Argyll. 'James Havilland was in the stables alone at midnight. For whom else would he keep such an extraordinary appointment?'
'I don't know!' Argyll protested.
'Have you ever seen this man they describe, whose teeth are apparently so uniquely recognizable? The man who, it is suggested, actually murdered your father-in-law?'
Argyll hesitated.
There was a faint cough in the gallery, a creak of whalebone stays, then silence.
Jenny Argyll looked up at Sixsmith. Their eyes met and lingered for a 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
