Dark Assassin

by Anne Perry

  Kelly, a soft-spoken Irishman, small-boned and neat, handed him the reports of crime overnight. “Nothin’ out o’ the usual, sorr,” he said, meeting Monk’s eyes, then looking away. “Barge ran aground at low tide, but they got it off.”

  “Run aground intentionally?” Monk asked.

  “Yes, sorr, I’d say so. No doubt the owners’ll be reportin’ some o’ their cargo missin’.” Kelly gave a bleak smile.

  “Dragging it up through the mud, at low tide?” Monk questioned. “If they worked as hard at something honest, they’d probably make more.”

  “Clever an’ wise was never the same thing, sorr,” Kelly said dryly, turning back to his work.

  Monk took reports from Jones and Clacton as well, and spoke briefly to Butterworth as he came in. Kelly made tea, hot and as dark as mahogany. It would take Monk a long time to drink it with pleasure, but it would set him apart to refuse. Additionally, tea had the virtue of warming the inside and lifting the spirits, even when it was not laced with the frequently added rum.

  When the last patrols had landed and reported, and the next were gone out, Monk told them of his decision.

  “The two people off Waterloo Bridge yesterday,” he began.

  “Suicides,” Clacton said with a pinched expression. “Lovers’ quarrel, I expect. Seems stupid for both of ’em to jump.” He was a slender, strong young man of more than average height, who took himself very seriously and was prone to take offense where it was not intended. He could be helpful or obstructive, depending upon his opinion, which he rarely changed, whatever the circumstances. Monk found him irritating and was aware of his own temper rising. He had caught the other men watching him to see how he would handle Clacton. It was another test.

  “Yes, it does,” he agreed aloud. “Which makes me wonder if that was what happened.”

  “Thought you saw it,” Clacton challenged, moving his weight a little to stand more aggressively. “Sir,” he added as an afterthought.

  “From the river,” Monk replied. “It could have been accidental during a quarrel, or she jumped and he tried to stop her. Or even that he pushed her.”

  Clacton stared at him. “Why would ’e do that? No one else said so!”

  “I thought it could be,” Orme contradicted him. He was visibly irritated by Clacton’s attitude as well. His blunt, weathered face showed a quiet anger.

  “If ’e was goin’ to push ’er in, why wouldn’t ’e wait ’alf an ’our, until dark?” Clacton demanded, his expression tightening. He moved a little closer to the stove, blocking it from Orme. “Don’ make sense. An’ with a police boat right in front of ’im! No, she jumped, and ’e tried to stop ’er and lost ’is own balance. Clear as day.”

  “Don’ suppose ’e saw us,” Jones answered him. “ ’E’d a’ bin lookin’ at ’er, not at us was on the water below.”

  “Still make more sense ter wait until dark,” Clacton retorted.

  “Wot if she weren’t goin’ ter stand there on the bridge waitin’ until it were dark?” Jones countered. “Mebbe she weren’t that obligin’.” He helped himself to more tea, deliberately taking the last of it.

  “If ’e planned to push ’er over, ’e’d ’ave planned to get there at the right time!” Clacton said angrily, looking at the teapot, then moving to block the fire from Jones rather than from Orme.

  “And o’ course plans always go exactly right,” Jones added sarcastically. “I seen ’at!”

  There was a guffaw of laughter, probably occasioned by some failure of Clacton’s in the past. Monk was still trying to learn not only the job itself but, at times even more important, the relationships between the men, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Lives could depend on it. The river was a more dangerous place than the city. Even the worst slums—with their creaking, dripping tenement houses, blind alleys, and occasional trapdoors—gave you ground to stand on and air to breathe. It had no tides to rise, to slime the steps, to carry things up- or downstream. It was not full of currents to pull you under and drifting wreckage just beneath the surface to catch you.

  “We don’t know,” Monk said to all of them. “Mary Havilland’s father died recently, and according to her sister, Mary was convinced that he was murdered. I have to investigate that possibility. If he was, then perhaps she was murdered also. Or her death and Toby Argyll’s may have been a quarrel that ended in a tragic accident, not suicide by either one of them.”

  Kelly put down the final pieces of paper. “And then we could have them buried properly. Their families’d want that.”

  “Very much,” Monk agreed.

  “But if she wasn’t murdered, it’s not our job.” Clacton looked at Kelly, then at Monk.

  Monk felt his temper rising. One day he was going to have to deal with Clacton.

  “It’s my job now,” he replied, an edge to his voice that should have been a warning to Clacton, and anyone else listening. “When I’ve done it, I’ll give the results to whomever needs them—family, church, or magistrate. In the meantime, attend to the theft on Horseferry Stairs, and then see if you can trace the lost barge from Watson and Sons.”

  “Yes, sir,” Clacton said unhesitatingly.

  With that, Monk departed on the long cab journey from Wapping to Mary Havilland’s address in Charles Street, just off Lambeth Walk.

  The house was not ostentatious, but it was handsome enough, and had an appearance of considerable comfort. There was a mews behind for the keeping of carriages and horses, so presumably the residents were accustomed to such luxuries. As he expected, the curtains were drawn and there was a wreath on the door. Someone had even laid sawdust in the street to muffle the sound of horses’ hooves.

  The door was opened by a footman of probably no more than eighteen years. His face was so white his freckles stood out, and his eyes were pink-rimmed. It took him a moment or two to collect his wits when he saw a stranger on the step. “Yes, sir?”

  Monk introduced himself and asked if he might speak to the butler. He already knew there was no other family resident. Jenny Argyll had said that Mary had been her only relative.

  Inside, the house was in traditional mourning. The mirrors were covered, the clocks stopped, lilies in vases giving off a faint hothouse perfume. Their very unnaturalness in January was a reminder that familiar life had ended.

  The butler came to Monk in the formal morning room. It was bitterly cold, no fire having been lit, and the glass fronts of the bookcases reflected the cold daylight that came under the half-drawn curtains like ice on a deep pond.

  The butler, Cardman, was a tall, spare man with thick iron-gray hair and a bony face that might have been handsome in his youth but was now too strong in the planes of his cheek and nose. His light blue eyes were intelligent, and—unlike the footman—he had mastered his emotions, so they barely showed.

  “Yes, sir?” he said, closing the door behind him. “How may I help you?”

  Monk began by expressing his sympathy. Not only did it seem appropriate, even to a butler, but it was natural.

  “Thank you, sir,” Cardman acknowledged. He seemed about to add something, then changed his mind.

  “We are not certain what happened,” Monk began. “For many reasons, we need to know a great deal more.”

  A shadow of pain crossed Cardman’s impassive face. “Mr. Argyll told us that Miss Havilland took her own life, sir. Is it necessary to intrude further into her unhappiness?”

  His delicacy was admirable, but this was an enquiry that could either define guilt or pronounce innocence, and even to the dead, that was important. Monk could not afford to leave anything unprobed or go about his questions in the least offensive way if it was also the least efficient.

  “You were aware of her unhappiness?” he asked as gently as he could.

  “Mr. Havilland died less than two months ago,” Cardman said stiffly. “Grief does not heal so soon.”

  It was a socially correct answer, giving away nothing and delivered with as much disapproval a
s a butler dared show.

  Monk was brutal. “Is your father still alive, Mr. Cardman?”

  Cardman’s face tightened, the light of understanding flaming in his eyes, bright and angry. “No, sir.”

  Monk smiled. “I’m sure you grieved for him, but you did not despair.” He thought briefly that part of the loss of his memory from the accident included complete obliteration of anything about his own father, or mother, for that matter. He knew only his sister, Beth, and that only because she had tried to keep in touch. He wrote seldom. The shame of that bit into him without warning, and he felt the heat in his face.

  “No, sir,” Cardman said stiffly.

  Monk sat down in one of the big leather armchairs and crossed his legs. “Mr. Cardman, I mean to find out whether this was suicide or something else,” he said levelly. “I have investigated deaths of many kinds, and I do not give up until I have what I seek. You will assist me, willingly or not. You can remain standing if you wish, but I prefer that you sit. I don’t like staring up at you.”

  Cardman obeyed. Monk noticed a rigidity in his movement, as if he were unused to sitting in the presence of a guest, and certainly not in this room. He had probably been a servant all his life, perhaps starting as a boot boy forty years ago, or more. Yet he could have spent time in the army. There was a ramrod stiffness to him, a sense of dignity as well as self-discipline.

  “Were you surprised?” Monk asked suddenly.

  Cardman’s eyes widened. “Surprised?”

  “That Miss Havilland should throw herself off Waterloo Bridge?”

  “Yes, sir. We all were.”

  “What was she like? Retiring or opinionated? Intelligent or not?” Monk was determined to get a meaningful answer from the man, not the bland words of praise a servant would normally give his employer, or anyone would accord to the dead. “Was she pretty? Did she flirt? Was she in love with Mr. Argyll, or did she perhaps prefer someone else? Might she have felt trapped in a marriage to him?”

  “Trapped?” Cardman was startled.

  “Oh, come now,” Monk retorted. “You know as well as I do that not all young women marry for love! They marry suitably, or as opportunity is offered them.” He knew this from Hester, and from some of the cases he had taken in his private capacity. The pressure and the humiliation of it barely touched the edges of his experience, but he had seen the marriage market at work, young women paraded like bloodstock for farmers to bid on.

  Cardman was caught in an impossible situation. His expression registered his embarrassment and his understanding. Perhaps grief, and the knowledge that he no longer had a mistress to serve, broke down his resistance.

  “Yes, sir,” he admitted uncomfortably. “I think Miss Havilland did feel rather that she was taking the best offer that she had, and it would be the right thing to do in accepting Mr. Toby.”

  Monk had expected that answer, and yet it grieved him. The young woman with the passionate face whom he had pulled from the river deserved better than that, and would have hungered for it more than some. “And she broke the agreement after her father’s death?”

  “Yes, sir.” Cardman’s voice dropped and there was a huskiness that once again betrayed his emotion. “She was very distressed by his death indeed. We all were.”

  “How did it happen?”

  Cardman hesitated again, but he seemed to know that Monk would not allow him to go without first answering the question. Like Monk, Cardman was a leader in a tightly knit, hierarchical community with some of the most rigid rules on earth. And perhaps there was something in him that wanted to share his bewilderment and his pain with at least one other person.

  “Mr. Havilland was a gentleman in the old sense of the term, sir,” he began. “Not titled, you understand, and not with great wealth. He was fair to everybody, and he never carried a grudge. If any man wronged him and apologized, Mr. Havilland forgot the thing entirely. He was a good friend, but he never put friendship above what he thought was right, and he respected a poor man as much as a rich one, if that man was good to his word.”

  Monk was aware that Cardman was watching him, to see if he caught the unspoken thread bright between the words.

  “I see,” Monk acknowledged. “Much to be admired, but not one to take the way of many in society, or in business, either.” He did not remember his days in merchant banking—they were gone with all the rest of his memory—but he had learned, piece by piece, much about the cost and the dishonor of some of his own acts, and those of people he had loved who had been ruined.

  “No, sir, I’m afraid not,” Cardman agreed. “He had many friends, but I think perhaps he had enemies as well. He was much worried before his death that the rebuilding of the sewers to Mr. Bazalgette’s plans was going ahead rather too hastily, and the use of the big machines was going to cause a bad accident. He became most concerned about it and spent all this time looking into matters, trying to prove he was right.”

  “And did he prove it?” Monk asked.

  “Not so far as I know, sir. It caused some unpleasantness with Mr. Alan Argyll, and Mr. Toby as well, but Mr. Havilland wouldn’t stop. He felt he was right.”

  “That must have been very difficult for him, with both his daughters concerned with the Argyll brothers,” Monk observed.

  “Indeed, sir. There was some unpleasantness. I’m afraid feelings ran rather high. Miss Mary sided with her father, and that was when matters between her and Mr. Toby became strained.”

  “And she broke off her arrangement?”

  “No, sir, not then.” Cardman was obviously wretched speaking about it, and yet Monk could feel the weight of it inside like a dam needing release before the pressure of it burst the walls.

  “Mr. Havilland was very concerned,” Monk prompted. “You must have seen him frequently, even every day. Did he seem to you on the edge of losing his grip on self-control?”

  “No, sir, not in the slightest!” Cardman said vehemently, his lean face alive with sudden, undisguised emotion. “He was not in a mood anything like despair! He was elated, if anything. He believed he was on the brink of finding proof of what he feared. There had been no accident, you see. Rather, he felt one might occur—something appalling, costing scores of lives—and he wanted above all things to prevent it.” Admiration shone in his eyes, admiration that was deeper than mere loyalty.

  “Have you always been in service, Cardman?” Monk said impulsively.

  “I beg your pardon?” Cardman was taken by surprise.

  Monk repeated the question.

  “No, sir. I served for six years in the army. I don’t see what that has to do with Mr. Havilland’s death.”

  “Only your judgment of men under pressure.”

  Cardman was embarrassed and did not know how to accept what he realized was a compliment. He colored faintly and looked away.

  “Were you surprised that Mr. Havilland took his life?” Monk asked.

  “Yes, sir. Especially…” Cardman took a moment to master himself. He sat perfectly still, his knuckles white. “Especially in his own house, where Miss Mary was bound to know about it. A man can make such things look like an accident.” He breathed in and out slowly. “It broke her heart. She was never the same afterwards.” There was anger in his face now. A man he admired had inexplicably let him down; more than that, he had let them all down, most of all the daughter who had trusted him.

  “But you did believe it nonetheless?” Monk asked. He felt like a surgeon cutting open a man still conscious and feeling every movement of the knife. He thought of Hester’s battlefield surgery. She had steeled herself to do it, knowing the alternative was to let the men die.

  “I had no choice,” Cardman said quietly. “The stable boy found him out there in the mews in the morning, a bullet through his brain and the gun by his hand. The police proved he’d bought it himself, from a pawn shop just a few days before.” There was obviously a great deal more he could have said—the feelings were naked in his eyes—but a lifetime’s discre
tion governed him.

  “Did he leave a note as to why he had done such a thing?” Monk asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “And he said nothing to you or any of the other servants?”

  “No, sir, simply that he wanted to wait up that night, and we should not concern ourselves, but retire as usual.”

  “And you detected nothing out of the ordinary in his manner? Even with the wisdom of knowing now what happened?”

  “I have considered it, naturally, wondering if there was something I should have seen,” Cardman admitted. He had the air of a man who has lived through a nightmare. “He seemed preoccupied, as if he was expecting something to happen, but in all honesty, I thought then that it was an irritation that plagued him, not a despair.”

  “Irritation?” Monk pressed. “Anger?”

  Cardman frowned. “I would not have put it as strongly as that, sir. Rather more as if an old friend had disappointed him, or something was wearisome. I formed the opinion it was a familiar problem rather than a new one. He certainly did not seem afraid or desperate.”

  “So you were shocked the next morning?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Miss Mary?”

  Cardman’s face was pinched and his eyes were bright with tears he could not allow himself to shed. “I’ve never seen anyone more deeply hurt, sir. Mrs. Kittredge, the housekeeper, feared Miss Mary might meet her own death, she was so beside herself with grief. She refused to believe that he could have done it himself.”

  Monk refused to picture Mary Havilland’s face. What in heaven’s name had driven Havilland to do this to his daughter? At least with Hester’s father it was the only way for him to answer the shame that had been placed upon him, through his own goodness of heart. He had been deceived, like so many others. He had considered death the only act left to an honorable man. What had Havilland feared or despaired of that had driven him to such an act?