Monk told them how he had climbed the steps to the witness box and stared at the court below him, how Sixsmith had craned forward in the dock, and how Rathbone had asked the questions on which it all turned.

"I described him exactly," he said, remembering it with aching clarity. "There wasn't a sound in the whole room."

"Did they know 'e was the man wot killed Mr. 'Avilland?" Scuff whispered. "D'yer tell 'em wot the sewer were like?"

"Oh, yes. I told them how we met him the first time, and how he turned around and shot you. That horrified them," Monk answered honestly. "I described the dark and the water and the rats."

Scuff gave an involuntary little shiver at the memory of the terror. Without realizing it, he moved a fraction closer to Hester, so that he was actually touching her. She appeared to take no notice, except that there was a slight softening of her lips, as if she wanted to smile but knew she should not let him see it.

"Did Jenny Argyll give evidence?" she asked.

"Yes." Monk met her eyes for a moment of appreciation, and an acknowledgment of what it had cost Rose Applegate. "She told it all. Argyll denied it, of course, but no one believed him. If he'd looked at the jurors' faces, he could have seen his own condemnation then." He realized suddenly what a final thing he had said. They had accomplished it, the seemingly impossible. Sixsmith was free and the law knew that Alan Argyll was guilty. It would be only a matter of time before he was on trial himself.

"Funny," Hester said aloud. "We'll never know his name."

"The man who actually shot James Havilland? No," he agreed. "But he was only a means to an end, and he's dead, anyway. The thing that matters is that the man behind it will be punished justly, and perhaps there will even be more care taken in the routing of new tunnels, or at least in the speed with which they're done."

"But Argyll will be charged?" Hester insisted. "So Mary Havilland can be buried properly and ... and her father, too?"

"I'll make certain." He meant it as a promise. Seeing the warmth in her eyes, he knew that she understood.

"Did Sixsmith give evidence?" she asked. "Explain it all? He seemed like a decent man-a bit rough, perhaps, but it's a rough profession. He ... he felt things deeply, I thought."

He smiled. "Oh, yes. It's always a risk putting an accused man into the dock, but he was excellent. He described exactly what happened, how Argyll gave him the money and what he told him it was for, which was to bribe the toshers who were making trouble. It made sense and you could see that the jury believed it."