The Dark Assassin by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online

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 fathers 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