"That's all right, sir. 'Ow's the boy?" Orme replied, dashing cold water on his face to wake himself up. They were standing in the kitchen of his small home, where Monk had never before been. He was uncomfortably aware that not only had he intruded, uninvited, on the one place where Orme had privacy, mastery, but also he had brought others who were strangers in all but name.

"Recovering well," he replied. "Can I make you a cup of tea while you dress?"

Orme stared at him. "I'll make it, sir. If you just like-"

"I'll do it," Monk insisted. "I'm not asking for instructions, just permission."

"Yes ... sir. The tea's in the caddy up there." He pointed to an Indian-style tin at the back of the tidy kitchen shelf. "The kettles beside the stove, and there's milk in the pantry cupboard. Water's already pumped for the morning. But-"

"Thank you," Monk interrupted him again. "Just dress. There's no need to shave. We're going down into the sewers."

Orme obeyed. Monk moved around the small, immaculately tidy kitchen while Runcorn riddled the last ash from the stove and piled it delicately with new coal to make it burn up again, warm the kitchen, and boil the water in the kettle. Rathbone merely sat and watched, as his skills would be required later.

Seven minutes later Orme was back down, dressed for going onto the river. Then over hot, strong tea, they discussed the exact tactics of how they would hunt down the evidence they needed to hang Aston Sixsmith.

"What do we need, sir?" Orme looked at Rathbone.

Rathbone had obviously been considering it. "We have on Sixsmith's own admission that he knew this assassin." He frowned. "I wish we could find a name for the man! We need unarguable evidence that Sixsmith knew him, with the credible assumption that he also knew his occupation. It seems obvious enough that Sixsmith told Argyll of the trouble toshers and other men were causing, and that they needed to be bought off. You might see if that's actually true. How much trouble were the toshers? Because the money went to the assassin, and yet the work is still apparently going on." He looked at them in turn.

"What about the cave-in?" Runcorn asked. "Do we knew exactly what caused that, and if it was foreseeable? Was it what James Havilland was afraid of? Has it anything to do with Sixsmith?"

"And what about Mary?" Monk added.

"And what connection was there between Sixsmith and Toby Argyll?" Rathbone asked. "In short, Alan Argyll may be technically innocent of having hired the assassin, but is he innocent of everything? Is this one man, or a conspiracy?"