Dark Assassin

by Anne Perry

  “Because he wants to disappear,” Monk replied. “I expect he changed again, maybe twice, before he got where he wanted to be.”

  “Exactly,” Runcorn agreed, taking another chestnut and smiling. “He wasn’t drunk, he wasn’t a beggar, he certainly wasn’t anyone’s groom…”

  “He could have been,” Monk started.

  Runcorn’s eyebrows rose. “With the price of a cab fare from Westminster Bridge Road to the East End?”

  Monk could have bitten his tongue. He looked away from Runcorn. “No, of course not. Whoever he was, he had money.”

  “Exactly!” Runcorn repeated. “I think Mrs. Ewart saw the man who shot James Havilland. She gave us quite a good description of him, and the cab driver added a bit. Seems he has black hair, rather long onto his collar, and at least at that time he was clean-shaven. The cabbie had the impression of a hollow sort of face and long nose, thin between the eyes.”

  “A very observant cab driver,” Monk remarked, a little skeptically.

  “You sure he wasn’t just trying to get on the good side of the police?”

  “No, that’s accurate,” Runcorn replied, looking down and concentrating on the few pieces of chestnut he had left in his hand. “What we have to do is find out who hired him. It’ll be the same person who wrote to Havilland to get him out of the house and into the stables in the middle of the night.”

  Havilland had not been afraid of whomever he expected to meet. And whoever it was had not taken advantage of his opportunity to rob the house. Either he had panicked—which did not seem to be the case—or he was compensated for what he did in some other way. Monk said as much to Runcorn.

  “Money,” Runcorn replied bitterly. “Someone paid him to kill Havilland.”

  “That sort of arrangement’s usually handed over in two halves,” Monk pointed out. “First before the deed, second after. We might be able to trace the money. It’s a risk to commit murder in an area like this. It can’t have come cheap.”

  “Who sent that letter, that’s what I want to know. That’s who’s guilty, who really betrayed him.” Runcorn looked at Monk, searching his face for agreement. “That’s whom he was expecting to meet!”

  Neither of them said it aloud, but Monk knew Runcorn was thinking of Alan Argyll, just as he was himself. Alan was married to one of Havilland’s daughters, and Toby was betrothed to the other. Havilland might disagree with them, distrust their engineering skills or business practices, but he would not fear personal violence from them.

  “Why midnight? And why the stables?” he asked.

  Runcorn’s eyebrows rose. “Could hardly shoot him much earlier! And obviously he wouldn’t want to do it in the house!”

  “I mean what reason would Argyll give for meeting in the stables at midnight? And why did Havilland agree?”

  Runcorn took the point immediately. “We need to find that letter! Or learn at the very least who sent it.”

  Monk took one of the chestnuts and ate it. It was sweet and hot. “The maid said Havilland burnt it.”

  “Maybe he didn’t burn the envelope.” Runcorn was still hopeful.

  Monk ate the last chestnut. “Come on.” He turned and started to walk.

  Cardman was surprised to see them again, but he invited them in. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  The hall had a bare look. The black crepe had been taken down along with the wreaths, but the clock was still stopped and there was no heating.

  It was Monk who spoke first this time. “I know the maid said that Mr. Havilland destroyed the note that took him to the stables the night he was killed, but it is extremely important that we learn everything about it that we can—even the envelope, if it still exists.”

  Cardman’s eyes widened. He had heard the one word that had mattered to him. His voice trembled a little. “You said he was killed, sir. Did you mean that someone else was responsible after all? Miss Mary was right?”

  “Yes, Mr. Cardman, it looks very like it,” Monk replied.

  Cardman’s face tightened. “And if you can’t find the envelope, sir, does that mean you won’t be able to prove who did it?”

  “Somebody lured him to the stable,” Monk told him gravely. “We are certain it was someone else who actually killed him. Whether we can catch the second person I don’t know, but it’s the first we want most.”

  “I’m afraid we’ve long ago disposed of all the rubbish in the study,” Cardman said. “There are only Mr. Havilland’s papers there now, and of course household bills and receipts. Miss Mary took care of everything like that. No one has been here yet to…to see to…” He trailed off, swamped by the small realities of loss again.

  “I’m sure Mr. Argyll will appoint someone,” Monk said. Then the moment the words were spoken he realized the appalling urgency of searching the study.

  “Which is the study?” Runcorn asked.

  Cardman showed them. “Would you like a pot of tea, sir?” he offered.

  “I’m afraid the room is extremely cold.”

  They both accepted, speaking together.

  Two hours later they knew a great deal about both Havilland’s domestic arrangements and how efficiently Mary had continued with them. Everything had been precisely and carefully dealt with. The bills had been checked and paid on time. There were also no unnecessary papers kept, no unanswered letters, no notes made on envelopes or scraps of paper.

  “Perhaps it was always going to be a waste of time,” Runcorn said wearily. “Damn!” He swore with sudden fury. “I’d stake my life it was Argyll! How the hell do we catch him? Come on, Monk! You’re so clever you could tie an eel in knots. How do we get the bastard?”

  Monk’s mind was racing. “There’d have been a lot of blood on his clothes,” he began, thinking aloud.

  Runcorn did not see the point. The irritation flickered across his face. “So there would. What does it matter now?”

  “Probably too much to clean off. Anyway, who’d want the clothes a man was wearing when he committed suicide?”

  “No one—Oh! You mean they’re still somewhere! There might be something in the pockets!” Runcorn stood up as if suddenly regaining energy. He walked towards the door, then remembered that there was a bell in the room for summoning servants. Avoiding Monk’s eyes, he turned back, reached for it, and pulled.

  Cardman answered, and five minutes later they were in James Havilland’s dressing room. The clothes he had been wearing at his death were piled neatly on one of the shelves in the tallboy. It was obvious that Mary had never had the stomach to come into the room since that night, and had not permitted the servants to either. Perhaps she would have done so after she had proved that he was not a suicide. Everything seemed to be waiting.

  The trousers were marked only by dust and a few pieces of hay. The jacket was quite heavy—a natural enough choice for a man going out to the stables in the middle of a winter night, possibly to wait a little while until someone arrived.

  The question rose again: Why the stables? If Havilland wished to be private, it was easy enough to send the servants to bed and open the front door for the guest himself. Monk had a crowding sense that there was some major fact that had escaped him completely.

  Runcorn was waiting, watching him.

  He unrolled the jacket and laid it on the dresser. There was blood thick and dark on the left lapel and over the shoulder. It was completely dried now and stiff. A few spots had fallen on the sleeve, though not a great deal. After all, it had been a shot to the head, and Havilland must have died almost instantly.

  “Look,” Runcorn instructed.

  Without hope of finding anything, Monk pushed his hands into the inside pocket. His fingers closed on paper, and he pulled it out. It was folded up but unmarked. An envelope. On the back a word—Tyburn—was scrawled, and some figures, and then no name and some more figures in the same grouping. He turned it over. On the front was his name, Mr. James Havilland. There was no address. It had been hand-delivered. He looked up
at Runcorn.

  Runcorn’s eyes were bright. “That’s it!” he said, excitement making his voice tremble. “That’s the envelope from the note he got!” He held out his hand.

  Monk passed it to him.

  “Woman’s writing,” Runcorn said after only a second or two, disappointment so keen he could not mask it. He looked up at Monk, pain and confusion naked. “Was it an assignation after all? Who the devil shot him? A husband? Did the man in the two cabs have nothing to do with it?”

  Monk was unhappy, too, but for an entirely different reason. “Jenny Argyll,” he said. “If it was she who wrote, he would go out there to meet her. Don’t forget Mary was in the house. Maybe he wanted to speak with Jenny without Mary knowing, or Jenny with him.”

  Runcorn looked around for the bell. He found it and rang it, and Cardman answered a few moments later.

  Runcorn held out the envelope. “Do you know whose handwriting that is?” he asked.

  Cardman looked stiff and miserable, his eyes haunted, but he did not hesitate. “Yes, sir. That is Miss Jennifer’s handwriting—Mrs. Argyll, that is.”

  “Thank you,” Monk acknowledged. Then he realized what Cardman might think. Possibly Runcorn would disapprove, but he intended to tell Cardman anyway. “There was a man seen leaving the mews at about the time Mr. Havilland was shot. He passed two people returning from the theater who say he smelled of gunsmoke. We traced his movements. He took a cab as far as Piccadilly, then changed cabs and went east. It seems very possible it was he who actually killed Mr. Havilland.”

  Cardman’s voice was hoarse, barely a whisper. “Thank you, sir.” He blinked, gratitude showing in his eyes.

  Jenny Argyll greeted them far more coolly. At this time of the day her husband was either at his office or at one of the sites.

  “The matter is closed,” she said bluntly. She had received them in the withdrawing room because the morning room fire was not lit. After such a double bereavement they were still not receiving callers. Everything was draped in black. There were wreaths on the doors leading into the hall, the mirrors were covered, and the clocks were stopped. Presumably in this house the state of mourning was more for Toby Argyll than for Mary, although Jenny might well grieve privately for her sister. Monk had not forgotten Argyll’s rage on hearing the news of their deaths, and his instant blaming of Mary. If Toby had killed her, had it been at his brother’s command?

  This time Runcorn allowed Monk to take the lead.

  “I am afraid the matter is not closed, Mrs. Argyll,” Monk said firmly. She was wearing black. It was completely unrelieved, and it drained from her what little color she might have had. He judged that she would normally be an attractive woman, but she had not the strength or the passion he had seen in Mary’s face, even when it had been lifeless and wet from the river. There had been something in the bones, the curve of her mouth, that had been unique.

  “I cannot help you,” she said flatly. She was standing, staring away from them out of the window into the flat winter light. “And I cannot see what good turning our pain over and over can do. Please allow us to grieve in peace—and alone.”

  “We are not at the moment concerned with the deaths of Miss Havilland and Mr. Argyll,” Monk replied. “It is the events on the night your father died that we are investigating.”

  “There is nothing more to say.” Her voice was quiet, but the hurt and the anger were plain in her face. Her shoulders were stiff, straining the shiny black fabric. “It is our family’s tragedy. For pity’s sake, leave us alone! Haven’t we suffered enough?”

  Monk hated having to continue. He was aware of the same distress in Runcorn, standing near him. But he could not let it go.

  “You wrote a letter to your father and had it hand-delivered the night of his death, Mrs. Argyll.” He saw her start and draw in her breath with a little gasp. “Please don’t embarrass us all with a denial. The letter was seen, and your father kept the envelope. I have it.”

  She was ashen, and she turned to face him angrily. “Then what do you want from me?” Her voice was so stifled in her throat that it was barely audible. Her eyes burned hot with hatred of them for the shame they were inflicting on her.

  “I want to know what was in the letter, Mrs. Argyll. You arranged for your father to go to the stables—alone—after the middle of the night. He did so, and was killed.”

  “He killed himself!” she burst out, her tone rising dangerously. “For the love of heaven, why can’t you leave it alone? He was mad! He had delusions! He was terrified of closed spaces, and at last he couldn’t face it anymore. What else do you need to know? Do you hate us so much that you gain some kind of pleasure from seeing us suffer? Do you have to open the wounds again, and again, and again?” She was almost out of control, her voice shrill and loud.

  “Sit down, Mrs.—” Monk started.

  “I will not sit down!” she snapped back. “Do not patronize me in my own home, you…” She gasped in a breath again, lost for a word she might dare use.

  There was nothing for Monk to do but tell her the truth before she became hysterical and either fainted or left the room and refused to see them again. He had little enough authority to be here. Farnham would not back him up.

  “A man was seen leaving the mews just after your father was shot, Mrs. Argyll. He smelled of gunsmoke. He was a stranger in the area and left immediately, traveling in several cabs back to the East End. Do you know who that man was?”

  She stared at him incredulously. “Of course I don’t! What are you saying—that he shot my father?”

  “I believe so.”

  She put her hands up to her mouth and sank rather too quickly into the chair, as if she had lost her power to remain standing. She stared at Monk as if he had risen out of the carpet in a cloud of sulfur.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it more than he had thought he could.

  “What did you write in your letter that sent your father out into the stable at midnight, Mrs. Argyll?”

  “I…I…”

  He waited.

  She mastered herself with intense difficulty. The struggle was naked and painful in her face. “I asked him to meet my husband to allow a proper discussion of the tunnels they were building, without Mary knowing and interrupting. She was very excitable.”

  “At midnight?” Monk said with surprise. “Why not in the offices in the morning?”

  “Because Papa was concerned there was going to be an accident, and he would not come into the offices to discuss it anymore,” she said immediately. “He was going to speak to the authorities. They would have had to close down the works until they had investigated, and of course discovered that it was completely untrue. But they could not afford to take my husband’s word for it, when men’s lives are at risk. My father was mad, Mr. Monk! He had lost all sense of proportion.”

  “So you arranged this meeting?”

  “Yes.”

  “But your husband didn’t go!” Monk pointed out. “He was at a party until long after midnight. You told the police that you attended it with him. Was that not true?”

  “Yes, it was true. I…I thought my father must have refused to meet Alan. He was…stubborn.” Her gaze did not waver from his.

  “Is that what Mr. Argyll said?” he asked.

  She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes.”

  “I see.” He did see. He had never supposed that Alan Argyll intended to shoot Havilland himself. He had paid the assassin with the black hair and the narrow-bridged nose to do that. “Thank you, Mrs. Argyll.”

  “Do you suppose he paid the money himself, or had someone else whom he trusted do it?” Monk asked when they were outside, matching his step to Runcorn’s on the icy pavement.

  “Toby?”

  “Probably, but not necessarily. Who would even know where to find an assassin for money?”

  Runcorn thought for a while, walking in silence. “Whom else would he trust?” he said at last.

  “Can you trac
e the funds?” Monk asked him.

  “Unless he’s been saving it up penny by penny over the years, certainly I can. Havilland found something and Alan Argyll couldn’t wait. He had to have got the money out of the bank, or wherever he kept it, and paid the assassin within a day or two of the actual murder. It’s my case, Monk. I’ve got the men to put on it, and the authority to look at bank accounts or whatever it takes. I’ll find out where Argyll was every minute of the week before Havilland was shot. And after. Unless he’s a fool, he won’t have paid all of it until the deed was done.”

  “What do you want me to do?” The words were not easy for Monk to say, but Runcorn’s plan made sense. He could deploy his men to search, to question, to force out answers that Monk could not. And Monk needed to return to Wapping and start earning some of the loyalty he was going to need from his own men. Havilland’s death was nothing to do with them.

  Runcorn smiled. “Go back to your river,” he replied. “I’ll send you a message.”

  After two days the letter came, written in Runcorn’s careful, overly neat hand. It was brought by a messenger and given to Monk personally.

  Dear Monk,

  Traced the money. Came from Alan Argyll’s bank, but he gave it to Sixsmith for expenses. Argyll can account for all his time, both before and after the event. Clever devil. No second sum paid. Could be lots of reasons for that—but if Sixsmith cheated him, then he’s a fool!

  I am sure Argyll is the man behind it, but it was Sixsmith who actually handed it over, whatever he believed he was paying for. Followed his movements, found where he did it. I have no choice but to arrest him straightaway. I am not happy. We have the servant, not the master, but I have to charge him. We still have work to do.

  Runcorn

  Monk thanked the messenger and scribbled a note of acknowledgment back.

  Dear Runcorn,

  I understand, but we damned well do have work to do! Everything I can do, I will. Count on me.

  Monk

  He gave it to the messenger. Then when the door was closed, he swore with a pent-up fury that shocked him.