Death Of A Stranger

CHAPTER SIX

Monk had considered very carefully all the information he possessed regarding the Baltimore and Sons railway, and he could see no obvious fraud in the purchase of land or any other part of the project. But even if there had been illegitimate profit made in either the buying or not buying of certain stretches of the track, he could think of no way in which it could be connected with a risk of accident. And that was what exercised his mind in ways Katrina Harcus could not imagine. Of course a present danger mattered, and he was acutely aware that if such existed he had a moral duty as well as a desire to do everything in his power to avoid it. But what hurt with a massive, drowning pain-because it was irretrievable-was the fear that in the past the fraud for which Arrol Dundas had died was in some way responsible for the crash Monk remembered with such awful guilt.

He strode across the grass of Regent’s Park toward the Royal Botanic Society Gardens, barely noticing the other people strolling by. His mind was torn between past and present. Each held the key to the other, and he might find both in the few snatches of information Katrina held, locked in and obscured by her emotions. They had at least that in common. She was terrified for Dalgarno and what she did not know about him, and dreaded could be true. Monk was terrified in exactly the same way, but for himself.

It was bright sunshine with all the aching silver-and-gold clarity of spring, and the gardens were busy with people. Having nerved himself to meet her, he felt a sharp disappointment that he looked for her for several minutes in vain. There were dozens of women of all ages. He could see colored silk and lace, embroidered muslin, hats with flowers, parasols in a jungle of points above the spread domes of cloth. They walked in twos and threes, laughing together, or on the arms of admirers, heads high, a flounce of skirts.

He stood in the gateway with a sense of acute disappointment. He had steeled himself for the meeting, and now he would have to do it again tomorrow. He had no idea where she lived or how to find her, and no other avenue of investigation to pursue to fill in the time until she might be here again.

“Mr. Monk!”

He swung around. She was there behind him. He was so pleased to see her he did not notice what she was wearing, except that it was pale and faintly patterned. It was her face he watched, her amazing, dark-fringed eyes, and he knew he was smiling. It probably misled her, as if he had good news to tell, and even though that was a lie, he could not alter it. The sheer relief bubbled up inside him.

“Miss Harcus! I… I was afraid you would not come,” he said hastily. It was not really what he meant, but he could think of nothing more exact.

She searched his face. “Have you news?” she said almost breathlessly. He noticed only now how pale she was. He could feel the emotion in her as he could in himself, tight, curled like a spring ready to break.

“No.” He said the word more brusquely than he had intended to, because he was annoyed with himself for misleading her. “Except that I have found nothing out of order in Mr. Dalgarno’s conduct.” He stopped. There was no relief in her eyes, and he had expected it. It was as if she could not believe him. If anything, the tension in her increased. Under the fine fabric of her dress her shoulders were rigid, her breathing so intensely controlled that merely watching her he could feel it himself. She started to shake her head very slowly from side to side. “No… no…”

“I have searched everything!” he insisted. “There may be irregularity in the purchase of land…”

“Irregularity?” she said sharply. “What does that mean? Is it honest or not? I am not completely ignorant, Mr. Monk. People have gone to prison for ’irregularities,’ as you call them, if they were intentional and they have profited from them. Sometimes even if they were not intended but they were unable to prove that.”

An elderly gentleman hesitated in his step and glanced at Katrina as if uncertain what the tone of her voice might mean. Was it anger or distress? Should he intervene? He decided not, and walked on with considerable relief.

Two ladies smiled at each other and passed by a few feet away.

“Yes, I know,” Monk said very quietly, old, sickening memories coming back to him as he stood in the sunlit gardens. “But fraud has to be proved, and I can find nothing.” Katrina drew in her breath as if to interrupt again, but he hurried on. “The sort of thing I am thinking of is routing a railway line through one piece of land rather than another to oblige a farmer or the owner of an estate so as not to divide his land. There might have been bribery, but I would be very surprised if it is traceable. People are naturally discreet about such things.” He offered her his arm, aware that by standing in one place they were making themselves more noticeable.

She grasped at it till he could feel her fingers through the fabric of his jacket.

“But the crash!” she said with panic rising in her voice. “What about the dangers? That is not just a matter of”-she gulped-“of making personal profit that is questionable. It’s…” She whispered the word. “Murder! At least morally.” She pulled him to a stop again, glaring with a depth of horror in her eyes that frightened him.

“Yes, I know,” he agreed gently, turning to face her. “But I have walked the track myself, Miss Harcus, and I know about railways. There is nothing in land acquisition, even bad land, that endangers the lives of people on the train.”

“Isn’t there?” She allowed him to move on slowly and blend in with the others strolling between the flower beds. “Are you certain?”

“If land costs more than it should have done, or less,” he explained, “and the company owners put the difference in their own pockets instead of those of the shareholders, that is theft, but it does not affect the safety of the railway itself.”

She looked up at him earnestly. He could see the hurt and confusion in her face, the desperation mounting inside her. Why? What did she know about Dalgarno that she was still not telling him?

“What amounts of money could be involved?” she interrupted his thoughts. “A great deal, surely? Enough to keep an ordinary man in comfort for the rest of his life?”

Monk had a sudden start of memory of Arrol Dundas, so vivid he could see the lines in Dundas’s skin, the curve of his nose, and a gentleness in his eyes as he looked across at Monk. He was back at the trial again, seeing people’s faces drop in amazement as amounts of money were mentioned, sums that seemed unimaginable wealth to them but in railway terms were everyday. He could see the open mouths, hear the gasps of indrawn breath and the rustle of movement around the room, the scrape of fabric, the creak of whalebone stays.

What had happened to that money? Did Dundas’s widow have it? No, that was impossible. People did not keep the profit of crime. Had it disappeared? There must have been proof that he had had it at some time in order to convict him.

Monk refused even to consider the other possibility, that somehow he himself had had it. He knew enough of his own life in the police force to know such wealth would have been exposed.

Katrina was waiting for him to respond.

He jerked himself back to the present. “Yes, it would be a great deal of money,” he conceded.

Her mouth was a thin line, lips tight. “Enough to tempt men to great crime,” she said hoarsely. “For people to believe the worst of anyone… quite easily. Mr. Monk, this answer is not sufficient.” She looked down, away from his eyes and what they might read in hers. When she spoke again her voice was little more than a whisper. “I am so afraid for Michael I hardly know how to keep my head at all. Because I am afraid, I have taken risks I would never take in other circumstances. I have listened at doors, I have overheard conversations, I have even read papers on other people’s desks. I am ashamed to confess it.” She looked up suddenly. “But I am seeking with all my strength to prevent disaster to those I love, and to ordinary innocent men and women who only wish to travel from one town to another and who trust the railway to carry them safely.”

“What is it that you have not told me?” he demanded, now a little roughly.

Again passersby were staring at them, perhaps because they were standing rather than walking, more likely because they saw the passion and the urgency in Katrina’s face, and that she was still gripping Monk’s arm.

“I know that Jarvis Baltimore is planning to spend over two thousand pounds on an estate for himself,” she said breathlessly. “I saw the plans of it. He spoke of having the money in almost two months’ time, from the profits they expect out of the scheme he and Michael spoke of.” She was watching him intently, struggling to guess his judgment. “But both he and Michael have said it must be kept a most deadly secret or it will ruin them instead.”

“Are you quite certain you have not misunderstood?” he questioned. “Was this since Nolan Baltimore’s death?”

“No…” The word was hardly more than a breathing out.

So it was not an inheritance.

“The sale of railway stock to foreign railway companies?”

“Why should that be secret?” she asked. “Would someone not speak of it quite openly? Do not companies do it all the time?”

“Yes.” He said that with certainty.

“There is some secret you have not yet discovered, Mr. Monk,” she said huskily. “Something which is terrible and dangerous, and will drag Michael down to prison, if not death, if we do not find it before it is too late!”

Fear ran through him like a burning wave, but it was nameless and without sense. He reached for the only thing he knew which matched the violence and the enormity of what she was suggesting.

“Miss Harcus! Nolan Baltimore was murdered a short while ago. Most people assumed it was because he was frequenting a brothel in Leather Lane. But perhaps that is what they were intended to think.”

She jerked up her head, staring at him with terrified eyes, her face white. She was totally oblivious of the people around her, of their curiosity or alarm. “You think it was to do with the railway?” She breathed out the words in horror, putting her hand up to cover her mouth, as if that could stifle the truth.

He knew the worst fear that had to be in her mind, and he hurt for her pain, but it was senseless to evade it now. It would not drive it away.

“Yes,” he answered gently. “If you are correct, and there really is such a great deal of money involved, then if he knew of this scheme, he may have been murdered to assure his silence.”

Now she was so white he was afraid she was going to faint. Instinctively, he reached for her arms to stop her from falling.

She allowed him to hold her for no more than seconds, then she pulled away with a jerk so sharp he all but tore the fine muslin of her sleeves.

“No!” There was horror in her face, and she spoke with such pent-up, choking emotion that several people nearby actually turned and looked at them both, then in embarrassment at being caught staring, turned away again.

“Miss Harcus!” he urged. “Please!”

“No,” she repeated, but less fiercely. “I… I can’t think that…” She did not finish.

They both knew what it was that tormented her. The possibility was too clear. If the fraud were as great as she feared, the profit as high, then Nolan Baltimore could easily have been murdered to silence him. It could have been because he knew and he and his murderer quarreled. He wanted too large a share, or he threatened the plans in any other way, or because he had not known but had discovered, and had to be silenced before he betrayed them. Michael Dalgarno was the obvious man to suspect. As far as Katrina knew, only Dalgarno and Jarvis Baltimore were involved.

Monk ached for her. He knew with hideous familiarity what it was like to live with the dread of learning the truth, and yet be compelled to seek it. All the denial in the world changed nothing, and yet the knowledge, final and irrefutable, would destroy all that mattered most.

For her it would mean that the man she loved in a sense had never really existed. Even before he had gone to Leather Lane that night, before anything was irrevocable, he had had the seed of it within him, the cruelty and the greed, the arrogance that placed his own gain before another man’s life. He had betrayed himself long before he had betrayed Katrina, or his mentor and employer.

And if Monk had betrayed Arrol Dundas, and had even the slightest knowing or willing hand in the rail crash in the past, then he had never been the man Hester believed him to be, and everything he had so carefully built, with such difficult letting go of his pride, would come shattering down like a house of cards.

Suddenly this woman he barely knew was closer to him than anyone else, because they shared a fear which dominated their lives to the exclusion of everything else.

She was still staring at him in terrified silence.

“Miss Harcus,” he said with a tenderness that startled him, and this time he did not hesitate to touch her. It was only a small gesture, but of extraordinary understanding. “I will find out the truth,” he promised. “If there is a fraud, I’ll uncover it and prevent any further accidents. And I will do what I can to discover who murdered Nolan Baltimore.” He watched her gravely. “But unless there is fraud, and Michael Dalgarno is implicated, he would have no motive to have done such a thing. Baltimore was probably killed in some fight over money to do with prostitution, not a fortune but a few pounds some drunken pimp thought he owed. They may well have had no idea who he was. Had he a hot temper?”

The faintest shadow of a smile touched her lips, and her whole body eased its stiffness. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, he was quick-tempered. Thank you more than I can say, Mr. Monk. You have at least given me hope. I shall cling onto that until you bring me news.” Her eyes flickered down, then up again. “I must owe you further, and you have expenses from all the traveling you have done on my behalf. Would another fifteen pounds be sufficient for the moment? It… it is all I can manage.” There was a faint flush of embarrassment on her cheeks now.

“It would be quite sufficient,” he answered, taking it from her hand and putting it into his inside pocket as discreetly as possible, pulling out a handkerchief as if that were what he had reached for. He saw her flash of understanding and acknowledgment and was sufficiently thanked in that.

It was time that Monk considered more seriously the possibility that Baltimore’s death was not the prostitution scandal that the police, and everyone else, assumed, but a very personal murder simply carried out in or near the brothel in Leather Lane. If Dalgarno, or even Jarvis Baltimore, had wished to kill the older man, to do it behind the mask of his private vices was the perfect crime.

There was nothing to be gained by asking the superintendent in charge of the investigation, who would resent Monk’s interference. The poor man was being pressured more than enough by the authorities and the outraged citizens who felt morally obliged to protest. No matter what he did he would not please them. The only solution they wanted was for the whole matter to disappear without trace, and that was not a possibility. If they did not complain, they appeared to condone prostitution and the murder of a prominent citizen; if they did, then they drew even more attention to practices they all wished to be free to indulge in and deny at the same time.

Nor was there much purpose in his speaking to the constables on the beat, who were being dragooned into protecting the Farringdon Road area against everybody’s interests. If they knew who had killed Nolan Baltimore, whoever it was would have been charged already and the matter put to rest.

What Monk wanted to know was the movements of Nolan Baltimore on the night of his death, and exactly what Michael Dalgarno had known of them, and where he had been. How had they parted? What was Jarvis Baltimore’s role?

Who could know these things? The Baltimore household, family and servants; possibly the constables on the beat near the house or the offices, if either man had not gone home that evening; or street peddlers, cabdrivers, people whose daily passage took them through that area.

He began with the easiest, and possibly the most likely to tell him something of worth. She sat on a rickety box propped up near the corner of the street, a shawl around her head and a clay pipe stuck firmly between her remaining teeth. An array of cough drops and brandy balls sat in bowls and tin dishes around her, and a heap of small squares of paper was held down by a stone.

“Arternoon, sir,” she said in a soft Irish accent. “Now what can I be gettin’ yer?”

He cleared his throat. “Cough drops, if you please,” he said with a smile. “Threepence worth, I think.” He fished a threepenny piece out of his pocket and offered it to her.

She took it and ladled out a portion of sticky sweets with a tin spoon. She dropped them onto one of the pieces of paper and twisted it into a screw, then handed it up to him. She drew deeply on the pipe, but it appeared to have gone out. She fished in her pocket, but he was there before her, a packet of matches in his hand. He held it out for her.

“It’s a gentleman ye are,” she said, taking it from him, picking out a match and striking it, holding the flame to the bowl of her pipe and drawing deeply. It caught and she inhaled with profound satisfaction. She offered the matches back to him.

“Keep them,” he replied generously.

She did not argue, but her bright eyes, half hidden by wrinkles of weathered skin, were sharp with amusement. “So what are ye wantin’ then?” she said bluntly.

He smiled widely at her. He had charm when he wanted it. “You’ll be knowing that Mr. Baltimore was murdered in Leather Lane a few days ago,” he said candidly. He knew the folly of insulting her wits. Anyone who served in the street to her age was nobody’s fool.

“Sure an’ doesn’t all London know it?” she replied. Her expression betrayed her contempt of him, probably not for his morals but for his hypocrisy.

“You’ll have seen him coming and going,” he went on, nodding his head toward the Baltimore house, thirty yards away.

“Of course I have, bad cess to him,” she responded. “Not a halfpenny on a cold day, that one!” Perhaps it was a warning to him that she had no interest in helping to find his killer. An honest expression or a ploy to be paid now for help, it did not matter; either way if she told him anything he was happy to reward her for it.

“I am interested in the possibility that he was killed by someone who knew him,” he admitted. “Did you see him that evening? Any idea what time he left home, and if he was alone or with anyone?”

She looked at him steadily, weighing him up.

He looked back, wondering whether she wanted money, or if poorly handled it would offend her pride.

“It would be very agreeable to find it was nothing to do with the women in Leather Lane,” he remarked.

Real interest flashed in her eyes. “It would an’ all,” she agreed. “But even if I saw him leave, an’ others follow after him, that doesn’t mean to say they went further than the end o’ the street, now does it?”

“No, it doesn’t,” he said, trying to keep the emotion out of his voice. He did not even know if he was excited or afraid. He did not want Dalgarno guilty! It was only the keenness of a scent which caught his eagerness, a thread of truth at last among all the knots and ends. “But if I knew which way they went then I might be able to find the cabbie who picked them up.”

“Josiah Wardrup,” she said without a flicker. “Saw him myself, I did. Almost like he was expectin’ the old bastard.”

“How very interesting,” Monk said sincerely. “Perhaps he was? In fact, perhaps Mr. Baltimore went that way, at that time, quite regularly?”

She made a low sound of appreciation in the back of her throat. “It’s clever you are, now isn’t it?”

“Oh, now and then,” he agreed. He fished in his pocket and brought out two shillings. “I think I’ll reward myself with a few pence worth of brandy balls.”

“Sure an’ how many pence worth would that be, now?” she asked, taking the two shillings from him.

“Four,” he said unhesitatingly.

She grinned and poured him a generous four pence worth.

“Thank you. Keep the change. I’m most obliged.”

She put the clay pipe back in her mouth and drew on it with profound satisfaction. She had had a pleasant conversation, gained one and eight pence for nothing, and perhaps helped the cause of justice to get the rozzers off the backs of the poor cows who worked down the Farringdon Road way. Not bad for less than half an hour’s work.

Monk took until the next day to find Josiah Wardrup, but with only a moderate amount of pressure the cabbie admitted that he had picked up Nolan Baltimore on that corner at least once a week for the last two or three years and taken him to the corner of Theobald’s Road and Gray’s Inn Road, which was a mere stone’s throw from Leather Lane.

Monk was not sure if it was what he wanted to hear. It looked extraordinarily like a regular indulgence, but then insofar as it was regular, it would have been simple enough for anyone wishing him harm to have learned his pattern and followed him.

But if Wardrup had seen anyone else he was not saying so. He looked at Monk with blank innocence and demanded his suitable appreciation. And no, he had no idea where Mr. Baltimore went from the corner. He always stood there and waited until Wardrup had left, which caused him some wry amusement. What did anyone imagine a gentleman did in such an area?

The only fact Monk would glean of any interest was that on every occasion it had been the same corner. The times varied, the nights of the week, but never the place.

And yet the brothel in Leather Lane where his body was found denied all knowledge of him. They said that not only had he not been there for business that night, he had never been.

Monk was alternately cajoling and threatening, but not one woman changed her words, and in spite of general opinion of their honesty, and the fact that Baltimore had undoubtedly been found there, he found to his surprise that he believed them. Of course he was also aware that he was far from the first person to have asked, and they had had more than enough time to compare stories with each other and determine a united front.

Still, Abel Smith’s dubious and far from attractive establishment was not the sort of place one expected a man of Baltimore’s wealth to frequent. But tastes were individual; some men liked dirt, others danger. Yet he knew of none who liked disease-except of course those already infected.

At the end of two days he was little wiser.

He turned his attention to Dalgarno, surprised how much he dreaded what he would find. And the search itself was not easy. Dalgarno was a man who seemed to do a great many things alone. It was not difficult to establish what time he had left the offices of Baltimore and Sons. A few enquiries of the desk elicited that information, but it was of little use. Dalgarno had left at six o’clock, five hours before Baltimore had been picked up by a hansom and taken to the corner of the Gray’s Inn Road.

A newsboy had seen someone who was almost certainly Dalgarno go into the Baltimore house, and half an hour later Jarvis Baltimore go in also, but he had left the street before eight, and no one that Monk could question knew anything further. The Baltimore servants would know, but he had no authority to speak to them and could think of no excuse. Even if he could have, Baltimore could have been killed at any time after midnight and before dawn. No enquiry showed one way or the other whether Dalgarno had been in his rooms all night. Exit and entry were easy, and there was no postman or other servant to see.

He spoke to the gingerbread seller on the corner fifty yards away, a small, spare man who looked as if he could profit from a thick slice of his own wares and a hot cup of tea. He had seen Dalgarno returning home at about half past nine in the evening of Baltimore’s death. Dalgarno had been walking rapidly, his face set in a mask of fury, his hat jammed hard on his head, and he had passed without a word. However, the gingerbread seller had packed up shortly after that and gone home, so he had no idea whether Dalgarno had gone out again or not.

The constable on night duty might know. He patrolled this way now and then. But he gave Monk a lopsided grin and half a wink. He did have a certain acquaintance who frequented these streets on less-open business; give him a few days and he would make enquiries.

Monk gave him half a crown, and promised him another seven to make up a sovereign, if he would do as he suggested. Only Monk would need more than a word secondhand; if there were anything, he must speak to the witness himself. What anybody else’s business was in the street would remain unknown, and unquestioned.

The constable thought for a moment or two, then agreed. Monk thanked him, said he would be back in three or four days, and took his leave.

It was about three in the afternoon, cold and gusty, gray with coming rain. He could do no more about Dalgarno and Baltimore’s death for now. It was probably exactly what it looked to be, and everyone assumed. He could no longer put off the search he had known from the beginning he would have to make. He must go back to Arrol Dundas’s trial and see if the details would shake loose his memory at last, and he could remember what he had known then, the fraud, how it was discovered, and above all his own part in it.

He did not know where the trial had been, but all deaths were recorded and the files held here in London. He knew sufficient details to find the file, and it would tell him the place. He would go back there tonight and face his own past, pry open the lid of his nightmares and let them loose.

First he must go home, wash, eat, change his clothes, and pack a case, ready to go wherever it proved to be.

He had expected Hester to be out, either working at the house in Coldbath Square or raising more money to pay the rent and keep it supplied with food and medicines. He presumed it because he wished it so, to avoid the confrontation of his own emotions. He was aware that it was a kind of cowardice, and was ashamed of it, but he imagined what her feelings would be if she were forced to face the truth that he was so much less than she believed, and that was a pain he was not ready for. It would be so violent as to disable the concentration and intelligence he must bring to bear if he was to keep his promise to Katrina Harcus and prevent any new rail disaster.

Even that was an evasion. It was for himself that he would do it. It was his own compulsion never to allow such a thing to happen again. He must do that before he could bear to face the original which lay somewhere in his memory, fragmented, imperfect, but undeniable.

He opened the door and went inside, ready to do no more than change clothing, pack, have a cup of tea and a slice of bread with whatever cold meat he could find. He would leave a note for her to explain his absence. Instead he almost ran into her as she came out of the kitchen, smiling, ready to walk into his arms. But he saw the uncertainty in her eyes that told of her sensitivity to his aloneness, the withdrawal of the old honesty between them. She was hurt, and hiding it for his sake.

He hesitated, hating the lie and fearing the truth. It must only be seconds, less than that, or it was too long. He had to make the decision now! It was instinctive. He went forward and put his arms around her, holding her too closely, feeling her body yield and cling onto him in return. This at least was honest. He had never loved her more, all that she was, the courage, the generosity of spirit, the fierceness to protect, and her own vulnerability which she thought so hidden, and which was in reality so obvious.

He pressed his cheek into the softness of her hair, moving his lips gently, but he did not speak. At least without words he had not deliberately misled her. In a moment or two he would tell her he was going away again, and perhaps even why, but for a while let it simply be the truth of touch, without complication. He would remember that afterwards, keep it in his mind, and deeper than that-in the unspoken memory of the body.

It was late when he reached the public records office. All he knew was the year of Dundas’s death, not the date. It could take him some time to find the record, since he was not certain of the place either. But at least it was an uncommon name. If he had still been with the police he would have demanded that the office remain open for him to search for as long as he required. As a private person he could ask nothing.

He simply requested the records section he wanted, and when he was conducted to it, sat on a high stool, straining his eyes to read the pages and pages of spidery writing.

The attendant was at his elbow to tell him they were closing when he saw the name Dundas, and then the rest of it: He had died of pneumonia in prison in Liverpool, April 1846.

He closed the book and turned to the man. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely. “That’s all I need. I’m obliged to you.” Irrational how seeing it in cold writing like that made it so much more real. It took it out of imagination and memory and into the world of indelible fact that the world knew as well as he.

He strode out of the door, down the steps and along the street back to the station, where he bought a ham sandwich and a cup of tea while he waited for the last train north.

When the night train pulled into Liverpool Lime Street just before dawn, Monk got off shivering cold, his body stiff, and went to buy himself a hot drink and something to eat, then to look for some sort of lodgings where he could wash and shave and put on a clean shirt before he began to look for the facts of the past.

It was still far too early to find any records office open, but he knew without asking where the prison was. By seven o’clock it was gray daylight with a stiff wind coming up off the Mersey. All around him people were hurrying to work, steps swift, heads down. He heard the flat, nasal Liverpool voices with the lift at the end of each sentence, the dry humor, the cheerful complaints about the weather, the government, the prices of everything, and found it all oddly familiar. Even the slang he understood. He took a hansom and simply directed the driver, street by street, until the dark walls towered over them and memories came surging back like the flood tide of the sea, the smell of the wet stones, the sound of rain in the gutter, the unevenness of the cobbles and the chill wind around the corners.

He told the driver to wait, climbed out, and stood staring at the locked gates. He had been here before so many times in Dundas’s last days, even the pattern of light and shadow on the walls was familiar.

More powerful than the blackness of the stone around him, and the smell of ingrained dirt and misery, was the old feeling of helplessness come back with shattering force, as if the air were thin in his lungs, starving him of breath.

He stood motionless, fighting to grasp something tangible-words, facts, details of anything-but the harder he tried the more completely it all eluded him. There was only the suffocating emotion.

Behind him, the cab horse shifted its weight, iron shoes loud on the cobbles, harness creaking.

There was nothing to be gained here. Remembered pain did not help. He had not doubted the truth of it. He needed something he could follow.

He walked slowly back to the hansom and climbed in.

“I want to look at old newspapers,” he told the driver. “Sixteen years ago. Take me wherever they are.”

“Library,” the driver replied. “Less yer want the law courts?”

“No, thank you. The library will do.” If he had to ask for a transcript of the trial he would, but he was not ready for that yet. To see such a thing he would have to give his name and his reasons. The newspapers were an anonymous way of learning, and he despised himself even as the thought was in his mind. Still, he knew it was self-preservation to guard against all the hurt he could. Pain was disabling, and he had to keep his promise to Katrina Harcus.

There was no one else interested in old records so early in the day, and he had the newspaper files to himself. It took no more than fifteen minutes to locate the trial of Arrol Dundas. He already knew the date of Dundas’s death, so he worked backwards. There was the headline:FINANCIER ARROL DUNDAS ON TRIAL FOR FRAUD.

He turned to the beginning and read.

It was exactly as he had feared. The print swam before his eyes, but he could have recited the words as if they were in inch-high capitals. There was even a pen-and-ink sketch of Dundas in the dock. It was brilliant. Monk did not have to hesitate for an instant to wonder if it portrayed the man as he had been. It was so vivid; the charm, the dignity, the inner grace were all there, caught in a few lines, and the fear and weariness in the face, fine features become gaunt, nose too prominent, hair a fraction too long, folds in the skin too deep, making him look ten years older than the sixty-two the words proclaimed.

Monk stared at it and was back in the courtroom again, feeling the press of bodies around him, the noise, the smell of anger in the air, the harsh Liverpool voices with their unique rhythm and accent, the innate humor turned vicious against what they saw as betrayal.

All the time he felt the frustration again, the striving to do something he was prevented from at every turn. Hope seeped away like water poured into dry sand.

There was a picture of the prosecutor, a large man with a bland, placid face belying his appetite for success. He had educated himself out of his local dialect, but the nasal sounds of it were still there when he was excited, scenting the kill. Now and then he forgot and used a piece of idiom, and the crowd loved him for it. Monk had not realized then how much he was playing to the gallery, but now, with hindsight and memories of the scores of other trials he had attended, he could see that the prosecutor had been like a bad actor.

Did it all rest on the skill of lawyers? What if Dundas had had someone like Oliver Rathbone? Would it have made any real difference, in the end?

He read on through the account of witnesses: first of all other bankers, disclaiming all knowledge of improper dealings, busy washing their hands of it, talking loudly of their innocence. He could remember their well-cut jackets and tight-collared shirts, faces scrubbed and pink, voices correct. They had looked frightened, as if guilt were contagious. Monk could feel his own anger clenching inside him, still urgent and real, not something finished sixteen years ago.

Next had come the investors who had lost money, or at least were beginning to realize they were not going to profit as they had expected. They had swung from professed ignorance to open anger when they saw that their financial competence was undermined. They had been foremost in damning Dundas with their sly, pejorative words, their judgment of his character, wise after the event. Monk could remember his fury as he had been forced to listen to them, helpless to argue, to defend, to speak of their own greed or repeat the eagerness with which they had been persuaded from one route to another, one purchase more or less, any cheaper way.

He had wanted to testify. He could feel his anger as if it had been yesterday, and all the pressure he had put to bear on the defense lawyer to let him speak. And every time it had been refused.

“Prejudice the jury,” he had been told. “Pillar of the community; can’t attack Baltimore or you’ll only make it worse. His family has money in every big undertaking in Lancashire. Make an enemy of him and you’ll turn half the county against you.” And so it had gone on, until his own evidence had been so anodyne as to be virtually useless. He entered the ring like a boxer with one arm behind him, bruised by blows he could not return.

The landowner had surprised him. He had expected outrage and self-interest from him, and instead he had heard bewilderment, careful recounting of haggling and sales, attempts at diversion so as to keep one estate or another whole. But there was no spite, no desperation to preserve a reputation.

Large sums of money had changed hands, but in spite of all the prosecutor’s attempts to make them seem dishonest or exorbitant, by and large they were exactly what everyone expected.

However, when all the amounts were entered into evidence, Monk heard the death knell of the defense in those meticulous records. He knew now as if it were all clear in his fragmented mind just what the final verdict would be, not because it was true but because there were too many of the negotiations conducted by Dundas, agreements with his signature on them, money in his accounts. He could deny, but he could not disprove. He had acted for others. That was his business.

But there were no other names written. He had trusted. They claimed they had trusted also. Who had betrayed whom?

Of course Monk knew the verdict-guilty.

But he had to know more of the detail, exactly how the fraud had been managed so that it had remained hidden until the last moment. How had Dundas expected to get away with it?

There was a sketch of Nolan Baltimore giving evidence. Monk stared at the few lines with fascination. It was an ugly face, but there was immense vitality in it, a power in the heavy bones and appetite in the curve of the mouth. It was intelligent, but portraying no sensitivity and little subtlety or humor. Monk was repulsed, yet it was only a sketch, one man’s view. He could not recall ever having seen the man alive. He was simply the owner of Dalgarno’s company, and the man whose murder had so inconvenienced Hester and the women she cared for. He had died in Leather Lane, in all probability pushed down the stairs by a prostitute, whom presumably he had refused to pay.

Or else railway fraud had at last caught up with him after all, and he had been killed as Katrina feared, either to prevent it from happening again or to keep it secret and allow it to go ahead. Had he been going to expose this one too, this all-but-duplicate of the old fraud which would have worked if… if what?

Monk laid the paper down on the flat tabletop and stared at the rows of folders and ledgers on the shelves in front of him. What had happened to expose Arrol Dundas? Why had the scheme not continued undetected? Had someone betrayed him, or had it been carelessness, a transfer not concealed well enough, an entry not followed through, something incomplete, a name mentioned that should not have been?

If anyone had ever told Monk he had known from a confidence or deduction, he could not bring it back now, however hard he tried.

His eyes ached from the endless writing and the lines jumped in front of him, but he went back to reading the account of evidence day by day. Fraud trials were always long; there was so much detail following the intricacies of land sale and purchase, surveying, negotiation of routes, consideration of methods, materials, alternatives.

He rubbed his eyes, blinking as if there were grit in them.

He had given evidence himself, but there was no sketch of him. He was not interesting enough to engage the reader, so whether the artist had drawn him or not, no likeness had been used. Was he disappointed? Had he really been so incidental then, so unimportant? It seemed so.

He read what was given of his own interrogation by the prosecutor. At first he was startled to see that from the tone of the questions he was obviously a suspect too. But then, as he looked at it more rationally, and without the instinctive self-defense, the man would have been derelict in his duty not to have taken very serious consideration of the possibility.

So if he had been suspected then, why was he later considered to be of insufficient interest to have his picture included? He must have been vindicated. By the time the newspaper went to press, he was effectively no longer involved. Why? Did it matter now? Probably not.

According to what was reported in the paper, Monk had conducted some of the negotiations for purchase. It seemed to have been pulled out of him with extraordinary reluctance that he had not hired the surveyor, which was the fact that exonerated him. He had been in the witness-box altogether less than half an hour. If he had said anything at all to help clear Dundas, it was not reported. He had been regarded as a hostile witness by the prosecution, but most of what he was asked concerned documents, and could hardly be denied.

He could not remember what he had said, only the feeling of being trapped, stared at by the crowd, frowned on by the judge, weighed and assessed by the jurors, fought over by the opposing counsel, and looked to for help he could not give by Dundas himself. That was what remained with him even now, the guilt because he had not been clever enough to make any difference.

Then another face was sharp in his mind, one not drawn by the artist, for whatever reason, perhaps compassion-that of Dundas’s wife. She had sat with a terrible calm throughout the trial. Her loyalty had been the one thing even the prosecution had felt obliged to praise. He had spoken of her with respect, certain that her faith in her husband was both honest and complete.

Monk recalled her afterwards, the totality of her silent grief when she had told him of Dundas’s death. He could picture the room, the sunlight, her face pale, the tears on her cheeks, as if it were then too late for anything but the hidden, inmost pain which never leaves. It was she he thought of more than Dundas, she whose grief outweighed his own, and which tore still at the deep well of emotion within him, unhealed even now.

And there was something more, but he could not bring it back. He sat staring at the old papers, yellowed at the edges, and struggled to recapture what it was. Time and time again it was almost there, and then it splintered into fragments and meant nothing.

He gave up and went back to the next stage of the trial. More witnesses, this time for the defense. Clerks were called, people who had written entries in ledgers, kept books, filed orders for money, purchases of land, title deeds, surveys. But it was all too complicated, and half of them had become uncertain under cross-examination. The main thrust of the defense had been not that there was no fraud but that Nolan Baltimore could equally be suspected of it.

But Nolan Baltimore was in the witness-box. Arrol Dundas was in the dock-and that perception made all the difference. It depended upon whom you believed, and then in that light all the evidence fell one way or the other. Monk could see how it had been, and he could find no loose thread to unravel a greater truth.

There seemed no question that Dundas had purchased land in his own name, farmland of poor quality, which he had paid market value for, little enough when you need it for running sheep. But when the railway was diverted from its original track, around a hill and through that farmland, which it was obliged to buy at a considerably larger amount, then Dundas’s very rapidly turned profit was huge.

That in itself would be regarded as no more than exceptionally fortunate speculation, to be envied but not blamed. One might well resent not having done the same oneself, but only a small-minded man hates another for such advantage.

It only looked fraudulent when it emerged that the rerouting of the track from its original passage was not only unnecessary but brought about at all only by forged papers and lies told by Dundas. The original route would have been used, in spite of the fact that a certain owner of a huge estate was actually campaigning against it because it spoiled the path of his local hunt and the magnificent landscaped view from his house. The hill that had been the pretext for the rerouting was real, and certainly lay across the proposed path of the track, but it was less high in reality than on the survey they had used, which was actually of another hill of remarkably similar outlines, but higher, and of granite. The grid references had been changed in an imaginative forgery. The actual hill across the track could probably have been blasted into a simple cutting with a manageable gradient. If not, even tunneling for a short distance would have been possible. The cost of that had been wildly overestimated in Dundas’s calculations, too much to have been incompetence.

All Dundas’s past plans were reviewed, and no errors were found of more than a foot here or there. This miscalculation was over a hundred feet. When it was put together with his profit on the sale of the land, the assumption of intentional fraud was inescapable.

A defense of incompetence, misjudgment and coincidental profit might have succeeded, but it was Dundas’s name on the purchase and on the survey, and the money was in Dundas’s bank, not Baltimore’s.

In the face of the evidence, the jury returned the only verdict it could. Arrol Dundas was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. He died within months.

Monk was cold where he sat, drenched with memory. He could feel again the overwhelming defeat. It hurt with a pain so intense it was physical. It was for Dundas, white-faced, crumpled as if age had caught up with him and shrunken him inside and in a day he had been struck by twenty years. It was for his wife as well. She had hoped until the very end, she had kept a strength that had sustained them all, but there was nothing left to hope for now. It was over.

And it was for himself also. It was the first bitter and terrible loneliness he could recall. It was a knowledge of loss, a real and personal sweetness gone from his life.

How much of the truth had he known at the time? He had been far younger then, a good banker, but naÏve in the ways of crime. It was before he had become a policeman. He was accustomed to making judgments of men’s character, but not with the view to dishonesty he had developed later, not with the knowledge of every kind of fraud, embezzlement, and theft-and the suspicion carved deep into every avenue of his mind.

He had wanted to believe Dundas. All his emotions and loyalty were vested in his honesty and his friendship. It was like being asked to accept that your own father had deliberately deceived you over the years, and everything you had learned from him was tainted with lies, not just to the world, but specifically to you.

Was that why he had believed Dundas? And the rest of the world had not? All the proof had been pieces of paper. Anyone can produce paper, whoever else had been in the company, even Baltimore himself. But Dundas had fought so little! He had seemed to at first, and then to crumple, as if he knew defeat even before he really attempted to struggle.

But Monk had felt so certain of Dundas’s innocence!

Had he known something which he had not said in court, something which would have shown that there was no deceit, or if there had been, that it was Baltimore’s? After all, there was no proof here that it had been Dundas’s idea to divert the track. Neither had there been anything to prove that he had met the landowner or accepted any favor from him, financial or otherwise. The police had not examined the landowner’s records to trace any exchange of monies. Nothing was found in Dundas’s bank beyond the profit from the sale of his own land. The worst that could be said of that was that it had been sharp practice, but that happened all the time. It was what speculation was. Half the families in Europe had made their fortune in ways they would not care to acknowledge now.

What could he have known? Where more money was? Why had he kept silent? To conceal Dundas’s act? To keep the money from being taken back? For whom-Mrs. Dundas or himself?

He moved in the seat and felt his locked muscles stab, he was so stiff. He winced, and rubbed his hands over his eyes.

He had to know his own part in it-it was the core of who he had been then.

Then? He even used the word as if it could separate him from who he was now and rid himself of responsibility for it.

At last he faced the thing that was woven into the story and that in pursuing the evidence of money he had ignored-the crash. It was not mentioned in reports about the trial, even obliquely. Obviously it was either irrelevant or it had not happened yet. There was only one way to find out.

He turned the pages, looking at headlines only. It would be in the heaviest, blackest print when it came.

And it was-nearly a month later, at the top of the front page:RAIL CRASH KILLS OVER FORTY CHILDREN AS COAL TRAIN PLOWS INTO EXCURSION TRIP FROM LIVERPOOL.

The words seemed unfamiliar, although he must have read this before. But he had to have known about it anyway. Seeing this would have meant nothing. It would have been only someone else’s report of a horror beyond words to re-create. Now as he stared at it, it was everything, the reality he had been torn between finding and leaving buried, the compulsion to know and the dread of confirming it at last, making it no longer nightmare but reality, never again to be evaded or denied.

An excursion train carrying nearly two hundred children on a trip into the country was crashed and thrown off the rails last night as it returned to the city along the new line recently opened by Baltimore and Sons. The accident happened on the curve beyond the old St. Thomas’s Church where the line goes into single track for a distance of just under a mile through two cuttings. A goods train heavily loaded with coal failed to stop as it was coming down the incline before the tracks joined. It crashed into the passenger cars, hurling them down the slope to the shallow valley below. Many carriages caught fire from the gas used to provide lights, and screaming children were trapped inside to be burned to death. Other children were thrown clear as the fabric of the carriages was torn and burst open, some to escape with shock and bruises, many to be crippled, maimed, trapped and crushed under the wreckage.

Both drivers were killed by the impact, as were the firemen, stokers and brakemen on both trains.

Monk skipped over the next paragraphs, which were accounts of the attempts at rescue and the transport of the injured and dead to the nearest places of help. After that there followed the grief and horror of relatives, and promises of the fullest possible investigation.

But even searching with stiff fingers and dazed mind through all the succeeding weeks, into months, he found no satisfactory explanation as to what had caused the crash. In the end it was attributed to human error on the part of the goods train driver. He was not alive to defend himself, and no one had discovered any other cause. Certainly the torn and twisted track appeared to have been damaged by the crash itself, and there was no suggestion by anyone that it had been at fault previously to that. The earlier goods train along it carrying timber had had no difficulty at all and arrived at its destination safely and on time.

As he had already heard from the clerk days ago, there was nothing wrong with the track-there was no connection whatever with the fraud, or with Arrol Dundas, or therefore with Monk.

With overwhelming relief he kept telling himself that over and over again. He would go back to London and assure Katrina Harcus that there was no reason whatever to fear a crash on the new line. Baltimore and Sons had never been implicated in the Liverpool crash, and Baltimore himself had been exonerated of fraud in the trial of Dundas.

Which did not mean he had been innocent.

But if land fraud was what was happening now, on the same scale as before, then it was not unreasonable to believe it was Nolan Baltimore who was involved this time as well, rather than Michael Dalgarno. Monk could at least tell that to Katrina.

Although even as he said that to himself, he knew she would want more than hope, she would need proof-just as he did.

He went back to the station and caught the evening train to London. Perhaps because he had been reading most of the day, and had slept little and poorly on the previous night, in spite of the wooden seats and the awkward, upright position, the rhythmic movement of the train and the sound of the wheels over the track lulled him to sleep. He drifted into a darkness in which he was even more conscious of the noise; it seemed to fill the air and to be all around him, growing louder. His body was tense, his face tingling as if cold air were streaming past him, and yet he could see sparks red in the night, like chips of fire.

There was something he needed to do: it mattered more than anything else, even the risk of his own life. It dominated everything, mind and body, obliterating all thought of his safety, of physical pain, exhaustion, and carrying him beyond even fear-and there was everything to be afraid of! It roared and surged around him in the darkness, buffeting him until he was bruised and aching, clinging on desperately, fighting to… what? He did not know! There was something he must do. The fate of everybody who mattered depended on it… but what was it?

He racked his brain… and found only the driving compulsion to succeed. The wind was streaming past him like liquid ice. He strained against a force, hurling his weight against it, but it was immovable.

There was indescribable noise, impact, and then he was running, scrambling, blind with terror. All around him the sound of screaming ripped through him like physical pain, and he could do nothing! He was closed in by confusion, thrashing around pointlessly, bumping into objects in the darkness one moment, blinded by flames the next, the heat in his face and the cold behind him. His feet were leaden, holding him back, while the rest of his body ran with sweat.

He saw the face again above the clerical collar, the same as before, this time gray with horror, scrambling in the wreckage, all the time calling out.

He woke with a violent start, his head throbbing, his lungs aching, starved of air, his mouth dry. As soon as he moved he realized the sweat was real, sticking his clothes to him, but the carriage was bitterly cold and his feet were numb.

He was alone in his compartment. The smell of smoke was in his imagination, but the fear was real, the guilt was real. Knowledge of failure weighed on him as if it were woven into every part of his life, staining everything, seeping into every corner and marring all other joy.

But what failure? He had not saved Dundas, but he had known that for years. And now he was no longer rationally sure that Dundas had been innocent. He felt it, but what were his feelings worth? They could have been simply born of the loyalty and ignorance of a young man who owed a great deal to someone who had been as a father to him. He had seen Dundas as he wished him to be, like millions before him, and millions to come.

The dream was a crash-that was obvious. But was it from reality, or imagination read into the accounts of those who were there, or even a visit to the scene afterwards, as part of the enquiry into what had happened?

It was not the rail line which had caused it. It was not the land fraud, which could make no difference to anything but money.

So why did he feel this terrible responsibility, this guilt? What was there in himself so fearful he still could not bear to look at it? Was it Dundas-or himself?

Could he find out? Was he just like Katrina Harcus, driven to discover a truth which might destroy everything that mattered to him?

He sat hunched in the seat, rattling through the darkness towards London, shivering and icy cold, thoughts racing off the rails into tunnels-and another, different kind of crash.