Dark Assassin - Anne Perry [9]
The butler came in and stood like a black shadow just inside the door. “Mrs. Argyll asked me to see if there is anything I could bring for you gentlemen. Perhaps a glass of”—he considered—“ale?” He was not going to offer them a glass of good sherry they would not appreciate, and certainly not the best brandy.
Monk realized how achingly hungry he was. Orme must be also. Perhaps that was at least in part why he was still cold.
“Thank you,” he accepted. “We’ve come straight from the river. A sandwich and a glass of ale would be very gracious of you.”
The butler looked faintly uncomfortable, as if realizing he should have thought of it himself. “Immediately, sir,” he acknowledged. “Would cold roast beef and a spot of mustard be right?”
“It would be perfect,” Monk answered.
Orme thanked him warmly as soon as the door was closed. “ ’Ope it comes afore Mr. Argyll gets back,” he added. “Wouldn’t be decent to eat it in front of ’im, specially if Mrs. Argyll comes too. Don’t reckon as she will, though. Most ladies take bad news ’ard.”
The sandwiches arrived and were consumed ravenously, just before Argyll returned. But Orme was mistaken in his second guess: Jenny Argyll chose to see them. She came in ahead of her husband, a handsome woman with eyes and mouth startlingly like those of her dead sister, but darker hair and not the same high cheekbones. Now she too was bleached of color and her eyelids were puffy from weeping, but she was remarkably well composed, given the circumstances. She was wearing a dark red woollen dress with a wide skirt and her hair was elaborately coiffed in a style that must have taken her lady’s maid at least half an hour to accomplish. She regarded Monk with civility but no interest at all.
Argyll closed the door behind them and waited until his wife was seated.
Monk expressed his condolences again.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Argyll said briefly. “My husband says that Mary fell off Westminster Bridge. Toby was with her. Perhaps he tried to stop her and failed. Poor Toby. I think he still loved her, in spite of everything.” The tears filled her eyes again but she ignored them and her face remained under control. It was impossible to tell what the effort cost her. She did not look at her husband, nor did she reach to touch him.
Monk should have accepted the answer implicit in her words, and yet in spite of all sense he refused to. When Hester’s father had shot himself because of the unanswerable debt he had been cheated into, she had returned from the Crimea, where she had been serving as a military nurse, and redoubled her efforts to strengthen her family and to fight all the wrongs she encountered. It had been her resolve that had strengthened Monk to struggle against the burden that had seemed impossible to him. She was acid-tongued—at least he had thought so—opinionated and unwise in her expression of it, hasty to judge and quick-tempered, but even he, who had found her so irritating, had never doubted her courage or her iron will.
Of course he had seen the passion, the laughter, and the vulnerability in her since then. Was he imagining in Mary Havilland something she had never possessed? Whatever the cost to Mrs. Argyll, he wanted to know.
“I understand that your father met his death recently,” he said gravely. “And that Miss Havilland found it very difficult to come to terms with.”
She looked at him wearily. “She never did,” she answered. “She couldn’t accept that he took his own life. She wouldn’t accept it, in spite of all the evidence. I’m afraid she became…obsessed.” She blinked. “Mary was very…strong-willed, to put it at its kindest. She was close to Papa, and she couldn’t believe that something could be so wrong and he would not confide in her. I’m afraid perhaps they were not as…as close as she imagined.”
“Could she have been distressed over the breaking of her betrothal to Mr. Argyll?” Monk asked, trying to grasp on to some reason why a healthy young woman should do something so desperate as plunge over the bridge. And had she meant to take Argyll with her, or was he trying, even