Dark Assassin - Anne Perry [10]
“No,” Mrs. Argyll said flatly. “She was the one who broke it. If anything, it was Toby who was distressed. She…she became very strange, Mr. Monk. She seemed to take against us all. She became fixed upon the idea of a dreadful disaster that was going to happen in the new sewer tunnels that my husband’s company is constructing.” She looked very tired, as if revisiting an old and much-battled pain. “My father had a morbid fear of enclosed spaces, and he was rather reactionary. He was afraid of the new machines that made the work far faster. I imagine you are aware of the urgency of building a new system for the city?”
“Yes, Mrs. Argyll, I think we all are,” he answered. He did not like the picture that was emerging, and yet he could not deny it. It was only his own emotion that drove him to fight it, a completely irrational link in his mind between Mary Havilland and Hester. It was not even anything so definite as a thought, just words used to describe her by a landlady who barely knew her, and the protective grief over the suicide of a father.
“My father allowed it to become an obsession with him,” she went on. “He spent his time gathering information, campaigning to have the company alter its methods. My husband did everything to help him see reason and appreciate that deaths in construction are unavoidable from time to time. Men can be careless. Landslips happen; the London clay is dangerous by its nature. The Argyll Company has fewer incidents than most others. That is a fact he could have checked with ease, and he did. He could point to no mishaps at all on this job, in fact, but it did not calm his fears.”
“Reason does not calm irrational fears,” Argyll said quietly, his voice hoarse with his own emotion, unable to reach towards hers. Perhaps he feared that if he did, they might both lose what control they had. “Don’t harrow yourself up anymore,” he went on. “There was nothing you could have done then, or now. His terrors finally overtook him. Who knows what another man sees in the dark hours of the night?”
“He took his life at night?” Monk asked.
It was Argyll who answered, his voice cold. “Yes, but I would be obliged if you did not press the matter further. It was thoroughly investigated at the time. No one else was in the least at fault. How could anyone have realized that his madness had progressed so far? Now it appears that poor Mary was also far more unstable than we knew, and it had preyed upon her to the point where she herself could not exercise her human or Christian judgment anymore.”
Jenny turned to look at him, frowning. “Christian?” she challenged him. “If anyone is so sunk in despair that they feel death is the only answer for them, can’t we have a little…pity?” There was anger in her eyes.
“I’m sorry!” Argyll said quickly, but without looking at her. “I did not mean to imply blasphemy against your father. We shall never know what demons drove him to such a resort. Even Mary I could forgive, if she had not taken Toby with her! That…that is…” He was unable to continue. The tears spilled over his cheeks and he turned away, shadowing his face.
Jenny stood up, stiff and unsteady. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Monk. I think there is little of any use that we can tell you. Perhaps you would excuse us. Pendle will see you to the door.” She went to the bell rope and pulled it. The butler appeared almost immediately and Monk and Orme took their leave, after having given Mr. Argyll a card and requested that he formally identify the bodies the following day, when he was a little more recovered.
“Poor