Death Of A Stranger

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was a moment before Monk even registered what Rathbone had said.

“William!” Hester whispered anxiously.

Monk rose to his feet. He had to be aware of the enmity of the court. Hester could feel it in the air, see it in the eyes and the faces of those who turned to watch him make his slow, almost stumbling way forward across the open space of the court and up the steps of the witness stand.

Rathbone faced him without expression, as if he were controlling himself with such an intense effort not even ordinary contempt could escape it.

“I have little to ask you, Mr. Monk, simply for you to tell the court how Katrina Harcus was dressed when she met you on the several occasions you reported to her your progress regarding your search for evidence of fraud.”

“My lord!” Fowler said in an outburst of exasperation. “This is preposterous!”

Monk looked equally baffled. His face was as white as Dalgarno’s in the dock, and the jurors were staring at him as if they would as willingly have seen him there alongside the accused.

“If you please!” Rathbone said urgently, at last his own near-panic breaking through. “Were her clothes good or poor? Did she wear the same things each time?”

“No!” Monk said quickly, as if breaking out of his stupor at last. “She dressed very well indeed. I wish I could afford to dress my wife as well.”

Hester closed her eyes, wrenched inside with anger, pity, helplessness, fury with him for caring about something so trivial, and saying so in public. It was no one else’s business to know that.

“And she paid you appropriately for the work you did for her?” Rathbone went on.

Now Monk looked surprised. “Yes… she did.”

“Have you any idea where the money for this came from?”

“No… no, I haven’t.”

“Thank you. That is all. Mr. Fowler?”

“I am as lost as everybody else,” Fowler said with rising temper.

The judge regarded Rathbone grimly. “This raises several unanswered questions, Sir Oliver, but I do not see how they bear any relevance to the poor woman’s death.”

“It will become clear, my lord, with the evidence of my final witness. I call Hester Monk.”

She did not believe it. It made no sense. What on earth was Rathbone thinking of? Monk was staring at her. On her other side, Margaret was pale with fear, her lips red where she had bitten them. Her loyalties were tearing apart in front of her and she was helpless to control any of it.

Hester rose to her feet, her legs trembling. She walked unsteadily forward between the rows of people, feeling their eyes upon her, their loathing because she was Monk’s wife, and she was furious with them for their blind judgment. But she had no power to lash out, or to defend him.

She walked across the open space, telling herself over and over again to trust Rathbone. He would never betray friendship, not for Dalgarno, nor to win a case, nor for anything else.

But what if he truly believed Dalgarno was innocent and Monk was guilty? Honor came before any friendship. You do not let the innocent hang for anyone. Not anyone at all.

She climbed up the steps, holding the rail just as Rider had done. She reached the top gasping for breath, but it was not from the physical effort, which was nothing, it was from the tight suffocation in her lungs because her heart was beating too hard, too fast, and the room was swimming around her.

She heard Rathbone saying her name. She forced herself to concentrate and answer, to state who she was and where she lived, and to swear to tell the truth, all of it, and nothing else. She focused on Rathbone’s face in front and a little below her. He looked exactly as he always had, long nose, steady dark eyes, sensitive mouth full of subtle humor, a clever face, but without cruelty. He had loved her deeply not so long ago. As a friend, surely he still did?

He was speaking. She must listen.

“Is it true, Mrs. Monk, that you run a charitable house for the medical treatment of prostitutes who are ill or injured in the general area of Coldbath Square?”

“Yes…” Why on earth had he asked that?

“You have recently moved premises, but on the night of the death of Mr. Nolan Baltimore, was that house actually in Coldbath Square?”

“Yes…”

“Were you and Miss Margaret Ballinger in attendance there that night?”

“Yes, we were.”

Fowler was getting noticeably restless. Rathbone very deliberately ignored him-indeed, he kept his back towards him with some effort.

“Mrs. Monk,” he continued, “were there any women who came to your house injured on that night?”

She had no idea why he asked. Was it because he thought, after all, that Nolan Baltimore’s death had something to do with the railway fraud? Something Monk had missed?

Everyone was watching her, waiting.

“Yes,” she answered. “Yes, there were three women who came in together, and another two alone, later on.”

“Badly injured?” he asked.

“Not as badly as many. One had a broken wrist.” She tried to remember clearly. “The others were bruised, cut.”

“Do you know how they came by their injuries?”

“No. I never ask.”

“Do you know their names?”

Fowler could contain his impatience no longer. “My lord, this is all very worthy, but it is a total waste of the court’s time! I-”

“It is vital to the defense, my lord!” Rathbone cut across him. “I cannot move any faster and make sense of it.”

“Sense!” Fowler exploded. “This is the worst nonsense I have ever heard in twenty years in courtrooms-” He stopped abruptly.

The judge’s eyebrows rose. “You may care to rephrase that observation, Mr. Fowler. As it stands it is somewhat unfortunate. On the other hand, you may wish to allow Sir Oliver to continue, in the hope that before tonight he may reach some conclusion.”

Fowler sat down.

“Do you know their names, Mrs. Monk?” Rathbone asked again.

“Nell, Lizzie, and Kitty,” Hester replied. “I don’t ask for more than some way to address them.”

“And do you tell them more than that about yourself?” he asked.

The judge frowned.

“Do you?” Rathbone insisted. “Would those women have known who you were or where you lived, for example? Please be very exact in answering, Mrs. Monk!”

She tried to think back, remembering Nell’s banter, her admiration for Monk. “Yes,” she said clearly. “Nell knew. She said something about my husband, his appearance, his character, and she called me by name.”

Relief flooded Rathbone’s face like sunlight. “Thank you. Did they by any chance also know, at least roughly, the area in which you live?”

“Yes… roughly.”

“Did anyone happen to mention Mr. Monk’s occupation?”

“Yes… yes, Nell did. She… finds him interesting.”

The judge looked at Rathbone. “Are you making any progress toward a point, Sir Oliver? I fail so far to see it. I shall not allow this indefinitely.”

“I am, my lord. I apologize for the time it takes, but if the whole story is not shown, then it will not make sense.”

The judge made a slight grimace and sat back.

Rathbone returned his attention to Hester. “Did you continue to receive injured women in your house in Coldbath Square, Mrs. Monk?”

“Yes.” Was he seeking to expose the fact that Baltimore had been the usurer in partnership with Squeaky Robinson? But why? His death had nothing to do with Dalgarno. Or Katrina Harcus.

“Were any particularly severely injured?” Rathbone pressed.

It must be what he was looking for. “Yes,” she answered. “There were two in particular, we were not certain if they would live. One was knifed in the stomach, the other was beaten so hard she had fourteen broken bones in her limbs and body. We thought she might die of internal bleeding.” She heard the fury in her own voice, and the pity.

There was a murmur of protest in the court, people shifting uncomfortably in their seats, embarrassed for a way of life they preferred not to know so much about, and yet stirred to emotion in spite of themselves.

The judge frowned at Rathbone. “This is appalling, but this court is not the place for a moral crusade, Sir Oliver, justified as it might be at another time.”

“It is not a moral crusade, my lord, it is part of the case of the death of Katrina Harcus, and how it came about,” Rathbone replied. “I have not a great deal further to go.” And without waiting he spoke to Hester again. “Mrs. Monk, did you learn how these women had been so badly injured?”

“Yes. They had been respectable women, one a governess who married a man who put her into debt and then abandoned her. They both borrowed money from a usurer in order to pay what they owed, and when the debt to him could not be settled by honest means of work, he forced them into the brothel in which he was a partner, where they catered to the more unusual tastes of certain men…” She could not continue for the increasing sound of outrage and disgust in the courtroom.

The judge banged his gavel, and then again. Slowly the sound subsided, but the fury was still prickling in the air.

“Respectable young women, with some education, some dignity and a desire to be honest?” Rathbone said, his own voice rough with emotion.

“Yes,” Hester replied. “It happens to many if they have been abandoned, put out of a job and have no reference to character-”

“Yes,” he cut her off. “Did this cause you to take any action, Mrs. Monk?”

“Yes.” She knew the judge’s tolerance would not last a great deal longer. “I was able to learn exactly where this brothel was, and by means of questioning, who the partner was who practiced the usury. I never learned exactly who carried out the beatings or the knifing.” She did not know if he wanted this part or not, but she added. “It does not continue any longer. We were able to put the brothel out of business and turn the house into better premises for the Coldbath refuge.”

He smiled very slightly. “Indeed. What happened to the usurer?”

“He was killed.” Did he want to know it was Baltimore? She stared at him, and could not tell.

“But his record of the debts?” he asked.

“We destroyed it.”

“Did you then know he was killed?”

“Yes… he was a client as well as the usurer. He took his own tastes too far, and one of the women, who was new to the trade, was so revolted by what he asked of her that she lashed out at him, and he fell backwards out of the window onto the pavement beneath, to his death.”

There was a rumble of profound emotion from the courtroom. Someone even cheered.

“Order!” the judge said loudly. “I will have order! I understand your outrage-indeed, I share it-but I will have respect for the law! Sir Oliver, this story is fearful, but I still see no connection to the death of Katrina Harcus, and Mr. Dalgarno’s guilt or innocence in the matter.”

Rathbone swiveled to face Hester again. “Mrs. Monk, among those records did you find those of the young woman, Kitty, who came to you with cuts and bruises on the night Nolan Baltimore’s body was discovered in Leather Lane, near Coldbath Square?”

“Yes.”

“Was she among the once-respectable young women who had been reduced to selling her body for a particularly repulsive type of abuse in order to pay the ever-mounting debt of such high rates of usury that she could never be free of it?”

“Yes.”

“Could you describe her for the court, Mrs. Monk? What did she look like?”

Now she understood. It was so terrible she felt sick. The room swam around her as if she were at sea, the silence was a roar like waves. She heard Rathbone’s voice only distantly.

“Mrs. Monk? Are you all right?”

She clung onto the rails, gripping them hard so the physical pain would bring her back to the moment.

“Mrs. Monk!”

“She was…” She gulped and licked her dry lips. “She was fairly tall, very handsome. She had dark hair and golden brown eyes… very beautiful. She gave me the name of Kitty… and the records said Kitty Hillyer…”

Rathbone turned very slowly to face the judge. “My lord, I believe we now know where Katrina Harcus obtained the money to dress as well as was necessary for a handsome but penniless young woman, born illegitimate, left destitute when her father died and his promised legacy did not come. She traveled south to London to try and make a fortunate marriage. However, within the space of two months her mother died, her fiancé rejected her for a richer bride, and her debts became so urgent she was drawn into the most repellent form of prostitution to satisfy the usurer, her father’s colleague, a man she had known as a child and to whom she had turned for help in a strange city, and who had so betrayed her. Perhaps because of who he was, his demands revolted her so intensely that she fought him off, to his death.”

The judge commanded silence in the growing swell of fury within the room, but it was several long seconds before he received it, so intense was the wave of emotion in the room. He nodded to Rathbone to continue.

“And that very night when she was taken by two other prostitutes to Coldbath Square to have her own injuries treated,” Rathbone resumed, facing the jury now, “who should be the nurse who helped her, but the wife of the man who was, in her mind, the author of her grief, all the injustices against her from childhood? She heard the name of Mrs. Monk, and the description both of Monk’s appearance and his nature, and his new occupation. I believe from that moment on she began to plan a terrible revenge.”

A hideous, unbelievable thought danced at the edge of Hester’s mind.

Fowler stood up, but did not know what to say. No one was listening to him anyway.

Hester could think only of Monk. Dalgarno, the jury, even Rathbone, melted from her vision. Monk was sitting motionless, his eyes wide and hollow, his skin bleached of every vestige of color. Margaret had moved closer to him, but she had no idea what to do to offer any word or gesture.

“Katrina Harcus had nothing left,” Rathbone said quietly, but in the now total silence every word was clear. “Her mother was dead, the man she loved had deserted her, and she had no hope of ever winning him back because there was, only too obviously, nothing to win. He was incapable of love or even of honor. She was in debt beyond her means ever to repay, and she had sold her body to a particularly degraded form of prostitution from which she may well have felt she would never again be clean. And now she was also guilty of a man’s death. She was wise enough in the ways of the world to know that society would see it as murder, regardless of the provocation she endured, or that she may not have intended him to die. It would be only a matter of time before the police found her, and she would live in fear of it for the rest of her life.”

He spread his hands. “The one thing left for her was revenge. And fate handed her the perfect opportunity for that when she found Mrs. Monk in Coldbath Square. She knew all about the original fraud in Liverpool for which her father, Arrol Dundas, was convicted. She created the impression of another fraud almost exactly like it, knowing that Monk would not be able to resist the temptation to investigate it. The likelihood of his recognizing her was remote. She had been a child of eight when he had last seen her, if indeed he saw her at all.”

He looked from the judge to the jury. “She took good care that they met in public, where they would be observed by impartial witnesses. She may have made certain Monk would be there at her house in Cuthbert Street that night. We can call Mr. Monk to the stand to testify of that, if necessary.” He drew in a deep breath and faced the judge again. “That, my lord, is the purpose of Mr. Garstang’s so very exact testimony. He saw her face as she fell. Inspector Runcorn described her on the ground, on her side… not her back. No one saw two distinct figures, and the cloak was left on the roof, my lord, because she was not thrown or pushed off-she jumped!”

He was momentarily prevented from continuing by the uproar of amazement, disbelief and horror that engulfed the room. But it faded quickly as the terrible truth sank into understanding, and then belief.

When he resumed, his voice fell into utter silence.

“My lord, Michael Dalgarno is innocent of murder, because there was no murder… at least not of Katrina Harcus when she went off the roof of her house and plunged to her death. As for the night she killed Nolan Baltimore, we shall-”

He was prevented from saying whatever he had intended by Livia, now lurching to her feet, her face gray.

“That’s not true!” she screamed. “That’s a wicked thing to say! It’s a lie!” Her voice choked in a sob. “An evil… terrible thing to say! My father…” She lashed her arms left and right as if fighting her way through some physical obstacle. “My father would never have done anything like that! It’s… it’s filthy! It’s disgusting! I saw those women-they were…” The tears were streaming down her face. “They were broken, bleeding… whoever did that was monstrous!”

Rathbone looked wretched. He struggled for something, anything, to say to ease her grief, but there was nothing left.

“That can’t be how he died!” Livia went on, turning from Rathbone to the judge. “He quarreled dreadfully with Michael and Jarvis that night!” she said desperately. “It was over the railway again, the huge order we have for the new brakes they’ve invented. Michael and Jarvis did it together, and Papa only found out that night, my lord! He flew into a terrible rage and said they’d ruin the company, because years ago Mr. Monk had forced him to sign a letter promising he would never manufacture the brakes again. He’d paid a fortune to silence somebody, but the price was that nobody would ever use them…”

Monk shot to his feet. “Where’s Jarvis Baltimore?” he shouted at Livia. “Where is he?”

She stared at him. “The train,” she said chokingly. “The inaugural run.”

Monk said something to Margaret, then looked at Hester once where she still stood in the witness-box, then he scrambled past the people next to him and ran up the aisle and out of the door.

The judge looked at Rathbone. “Do you understand, Sir Oliver?”

“No, my lord.” He turned to the witness-box. “Hester?”

“The rail crash sixteen years ago,” she answered. “I think… I think he knows what caused it now.” She looked at Livia. “I’m sorry… I wouldn’t have told you. I wish you hadn’t had to know. Most people get to keep their secrets.”

Livia stood for a moment, the tears running down her cheeks, then slowly she sank to her seat and buried her face in her hands.

“I’m so sorry…” Hester said again. She hated Nolan Baltimore as much for what he had done to his own family as for the injury to Katrina and Alice and Fanny, and the other women like them. They might recover. She did not know if Livia would.

Rathbone looked at Dalgarno, white and bitter in the dock, then to the judge. “My lord, I move that the charges against the accused be dropped. Katrina Harcus was not murdered. She took her own life in a desperate attempt to achieve the only thing she believed was left to her-revenge.”

The judge looked at Fowler.

Fowler swiveled around to stare at the jury, then back at the judge. “I concede,” he said with a shrug. “God help her…”

Outside the courtroom the street was almost empty, and it took Monk only five minutes to find a hansom and scramble in, shouting to the driver to take him to Euston Station as fast as the horse would go. An extra pound was in it for him if he made the inaugural train on the new line to Derby. Monk would willingly have given him more, but he had nothing else to spare. He must keep what he had in case he had to bribe his way onto the train.

The cabbie took him at his word, and with a yell of encouragement at the horse, and a long flick of the whip practically between its ears, set off as if on a racetrack.

It was a hair-raising journey with several close shaves where they missed other vehicles by inches, and more than once pedestrians leaped for their lives, some hurling abuse as they went. The cab pulled into the station and lurched to a stop. Monk thrust the money at the driver because he felt the man deserved it whether they had made the train or not, and sprinted to the platform.

Actually he was there with more than five minutes in hand. He straightened his jacket, ran his hand over his hair, and sauntered up to the door of the rearmost carriage as if he had every right to be there.

Without glancing around to see if he had been observed, which could have given away his lack of invitation, he pulled the handle, swung the door wide, and climbed in.

The inside of the carriage was beautifully furnished. It was a long train, but only first- and second-class. This was second, and still of a luxury to be admired. No doubt Jarvis Baltimore would be in the first-class. Since his father’s death this was his train, his entire enterprise. He would be busy talking to all the various dignitaries making this journey, boasting to them of the new track, the new carriages, and perhaps of the new braking system with its fatal weakness. Although presumably he did not know the full truth of that.

There would be several stops along the route. Monk would make his way forward on each of them until he found Jarvis.

He nodded to the other people in his compartment, then sat down on one of the polished wooden seats.

There was a jolt. Somewhere ahead the whistle blew and the carriage jerked forward, and again, then settled into gathering momentum. Billows of steam drifted past the windows. There were shouts from outside and cries of excitement and triumph from the other compartments, and through the open windows of the carriages ahead someone called out a toast and yelled “Hooray!”

Monk settled in for the journey, expecting the best part of an hour to elapse before he had an opportunity to find Baltimore. But they were on double track all of that distance. He knew the route probably as well as Baltimore himself.

The train was gathering speed. The gray streets and roofs of the city were sliding away. There were more trees, open land.

There were foot warmers in the compartment, one close by him, but he was still cold; in fact, he started to shiver. There was nothing he could do about Baltimore until the first stop. His mind was filling at last with the knowledge he had forced from it since the moment he had realized about the brakes, and that it could happen again.

There had been no murder of Katrina Harcus, at least not from the roof in Cuthbert Street. He could see her face with its brilliant eyes as if she were in the seat opposite him. But nothing was the same as it had seemed. It was clear now: she had orchestrated the whole thing with passion and extraordinary skill, even to tearing the button off his coat and clasping it in her hand when she fell-jumped.

It made him cold to the pit of his stomach to know that she had hated him enough to leap deliberately into the darkness and crash, breaking her body on the stones beneath, into the abyss of death and whatever lay beyond it, simply to know that he would be destroyed with her.

And how close she had come to succeeding!

It was a dark and fearful thing to be hated so deeply by another human being. It could never be retrieved, because she was dead. He could not explain himself, tell her why, soften any of the tearing, wounding edges.

And she was Arrol Dundas’s daughter! That was an indelible wound never to be eased away.

He sat huddled, avoiding the eyes of the other man in the compartment, until the first stop, then he got out, as did everyone else. When the whistle blew for the next leg of the journey he got into one of the first-class carriages and moved from compartment to compartment through the polished wood, the warmth, the soft seats, but Baltimore was not there.

He got out again at the next station and moved forward, and at the next. Time was getting short. He felt a flutter of panic. He found him at last in the front carriage. He must have gone forward also, to speak to every one of his guests. Indeed, he was talking to a portly gentleman with a glass of champagne in his hand.

Monk must attract his attention, if possible in a manner which would not cause embarrassment. He moved discreetly until he was close enough to grasp Baltimore ’s arm by the elbow, firmly, so he could not brush him off.

Baltimore turned to him, startled by the pain. He recognized Monk after a second’s hesitation, and his face hardened.

“Mr. Baltimore,” Monk said levelly, staring at him without blinking. “I have news for you from London which you need to hear as soon as possible. I think privately would be best.”

Baltimore took his meaning and was eager not to mar his moment of triumph with an awkward interview. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “I will only be a moment. Please enjoy yourselves. Accept our hospitality.” He turned to Monk, saying something under his breath as he half pushed him out of the door into an unoccupied compartment of the carriage they were in.

“What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought by now they’d be questioning you on Dundas ’s money! Or is that what you’re doing? Attempting to escape!” His face hardened. “Well, I’m damned if I’ll help you. My father told me on the night of his death how you tried to put him out of business. What was that for? Revenge because he exposed Dundas?”

“I tried to save hundreds of lives-without putting you out of business!” Monk said between his teeth. He kept his grasp on Baltimore ’s arm. “For God’s sake, just hold your tongue and listen. We haven’t much time. If-”

“Liar!” Baltimore snarled. “I know you made my father sign a letter that he would never manufacture the brakes again. What did you threaten him with? He’s not an easy man to frighten… what did you do to him?” He snatched his arm away from Monk’s grip. “Well, you won’t frighten me. I’ll see you in jail first.”

“Why do you think your father agreed to it?” Monk demanded, containing his temper with intense difficulty as he stared at Baltimore ’s arrogant, angry face, and felt the train sway and jolt beneath them as it gathered speed, hurtling towards the long incline, and the viaduct beyond. “Just because I asked him?”

“I don’t know,” Baltimore replied. “But I won’t give in to you!”

“Your father never did favors for anyone,” Monk said between his teeth. “He stopped manufacturing the brakes after the Liverpool crash because I paid to have the enquiry return a verdict of human error, not to ruin the company… but on condition he signed that letter never to make them anymore.” He startled himself with the clarity with which he remembered standing in Nolan Baltimore’s magnificent office with its views of the Mersey River, and seeing Baltimore sit at his desk, his face red, his head shaking with shock and fury as he wrote the letter Monk dictated, and then signed it. The sunlight had been streaming across the floor, picking out the worn patches on the lush, green carpet. The books on the shelves were leather bound, the wood of the desk polished walnut. This was the piece at last! This was it! It made sense of it all.

Now Jarvis Baltimore stared at him, his eyes round and wide, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. He gulped and tried to clear his throat. “What… what are you saying? That the Liverpool crash…” He stopped, unable to put it into words.

“Yes,” Monk said harshly; there was no time to spare anyone’s feelings. “The crash was due to your brakes failing. There were two hundred children on that excursion train!” He saw the blood drain from Baltimore ’s skin, leaving it pasty white. “And there must be a hundred people on this one. Order the driver to stop while you still can.”

“What money?” Baltimore argued, struggling to deny it, shaking his head. “How would you get enough money to silence an enquiry? That’s absurd. You’re trying… I don’t know why-to cover yourself! You stole Dundas ’s money. You had charge of it all! You didn’t even leave anything for his widow-damn you!”

“ Dundas ’s money!” Monk tried not to shout at him. They were both swaying back and forth now. The train was gathering speed fast. “He agreed to it. You don’t think I would have touched it otherwise, do you? The man was in jail, not dead. I gave them all there was, apart from the little bit for her, but hell-it wasn’t much! It took almost everything there was to make them keep silent on the truth.”

Baltimore was still fighting it. “ Dundas was a fraudster. He’d already cheated the company of-”

“No, he wasn’t!” The truth was there at last, bright and sharp as daylight breaking. “He was innocent! He warned your father that they hadn’t tested the brakes well enough, but nobody listened to him. He had no proof, but he would have got it, only they framed him for fraud, and after that nobody believed anything he said. He told me… but there was nothing I could do either. It was only his word, and by then he was branded.”

Baltimore shook his head, but the denial died on his lips.

“It took all the money I could scrape together,” Monk went on. “But it saved the company’s reputation. And your father swore he’d tar Dundas with the same brush if I didn’t succeed. We couldn’t sue the driver. Better he be blamed than everyone put out of work. We took care of his family.” He felt a stab of shame. “But that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t his fault… it was your father’s. And now you’re going to do the same-unless you stop this train.”

Baltimore shook his head more fiercely, his eyes wild, his voice high-pitched. “But we’re supplying those brakes all over India! There’s tens of thousands of pounds of orders!” he protested.

“Recall them!” Monk shouted at him. “But first tell the driver to stop this bloody train before the brakes fail and we come off the viaduct!”

“Will… will they?” Baltimore said hoarsely. “They worked perfectly well when we tested them. I’m not a fool.”

“They only fail on an incline, with a certain load,” Monk told him, shards of memory falling into place more vividly every moment. He could remember this same feeling of urgency before, the same rattle of wheels over the rail ties, the roar of movement, steel on steel, the knowledge of disaster ahead.

“Most of the time they’re excellent,” he went on. “But when the weight and the speed get above a certain level and with a curve in the track, then they don’t hold. This is a far heavier train than usual, and there’s exactly such a place just before the viaduct ahead. We can’t be far from it now. Don’t stand there, for God’s sake! Go and tell the driver to slow up, then stop! Go on!”

“I don’t believe it…” It was a protest, and a lie. It was clear in Baltimore ’s frantic eyes and dry lips.

The train was already gathering speed. They were finding it harder to stand upright, even though Baltimore had his back against the carriage wall.

“Are you sure enough of that to risk your life?” Monk asked, his voice ruthless. “I’m not. I’m going, with or without you.” And he backed away, almost losing his balance as he turned and started towards the other compartments and the front of the carriage next to the engine.

Baltimore jerked around and plunged after him.

Monk charged through the next compartment, scattering the few company men along for the inaugural ride. They were too startled to block his way.

He felt a wild exhilaration unlike anything he had known in years. He could remember! Dreadful as some of the memory was, filled with pain and grief, with helplessness and the knowledge that Dundas was innocent and he had not saved him, it was no longer confusion. It was as clear as the reality of the moment. He had failed Dundas, but he had not betrayed him. He had been honest. He knew that, not from evidence or from other people’s word, but from his own mind.

He was in the next compartment, pushing through the men, who were angry at his intrusion. The train, hurtling through the countryside toward the incline and the single track of the viaduct, brought back the time before when he had been on that other train, as if it had all been only weeks ago. He remembered Dundas telling him how he had tried to persuade Nolan Baltimore to wait, test the brakes more carefully, and Baltimore had refused. There was no proof, only Dundas ’s fear.

“Excuse me! Excuse me!” he cried more sharply. They parted for him.

One caught at his sleeve. “What’s wrong?” he said anxiously, feeling the carriage pitching from side to side.

“Nothing!” Monk lied. “Excuse me!” He jerked free and went on forward, Baltimore on his heels now.

Then Dundas had been accused of the fraud, and Monk had forgotten about brakes in the fear and dismay of trying to prove his innocence. But there was too much evidence, carefully placed. Dundas was tried, convicted, sent to prison.

Less than a month later there had been the crash… a day exactly like this one, another train roaring through the peace of the countryside, belching steam and sparks, blindly careering toward a death of mangled steel and blood and flames.

Monk had realized it all, but it was too late to do anything but save what he could out of the pieces, and stop Baltimore from doing it again. Dundas had been more than willing to give everything he owned to stop it.

That was it! The last piece falling into place, sickeningly, making Monk halt where he stood at the end of the carriage behind the engine. Baltimore, a step behind, knocked against him and all but drove the air out of his lungs.

He had not known it at the time he had handed the money to Baltimore to bribe the enquiry, he had known it afterwards, when it could not be undone. It was not to protect Dundas ’s reputation, or the Baltimore company, although that mattered, a thousand men and their families. Nolan Baltimore had said he would implicate Monk in the faulty brakes. It had been his signature on the banking forms that had provided the money for their development. It had been to save Monk that Dundas had been prepared to sacrifice everything he had left.

As he lunged forward, forced open the carriage door against the onrushing air and stepped out onto the narrow ledge at the side, clinging to the door frame, it was more than the wind, the steam and the smuts that stung his skin and his eyes, it was an agony of memory, a sacrifice, a loss, the price of his own escape from ruin and prison as well.

He turned to see how far he had to inch along the carriage until he could scramble onto the plates that connected the carriage to the coal wagon and the engine.

Baltimore was screaming something behind him.

By then Dundas had understood what the price was. He might even have felt the jail fever in his bones and known he would die there. Certainly he knew the hatred of the injured and the bereaved after the crash. Blame for it would have destroyed any man, dogged him for the rest of his life. Poverty was a small price in comparison. Perhaps he trusted that his wife would have borne that lightly compared with Monk’s ruin. He might even have discussed it with her.

Maybe that was why she had smiled even as she wept for him when she told Monk of his death.

He must move. The train was still increasing speed. If his hand slipped, if he lost his hold on the door frame, he would be dead in seconds. He must not look down. The countryside was a blur, like something seen through a rain-smeared window.

He started to inch along, moving his hands then his feet. It was not far to the front of the carriage, two yards maybe, but they were the longest two yards on earth.

There was no time to delay, no time to think. He put one hand along as far as he dared, and stretched his foot to grip. He let go with the other hand and jerked his body forward. The carriage swayed and he slipped, and grasped again. He almost fell onto the footplate behind the coal wagon, the sweat breaking out on his body until his clothes were cold and wet against his skin.

He turned to see Baltimore teetering on the edge, white with terror, and shot out his hand to haul him in. Baltimore ’s knees crumpled and he sank down onto the plate.

The noise was indescribable. Monk gestured toward the coal wagon.

Baltimore clambered to his feet, waving his hands.

“He’ll never hear us!” he shouted desperately. His hair flying, whipped about his head, his face wild-eyed, wind stung, already splotched with smuts.

Monk waved at the coal wagon again and moved toward it.

“You can’t!” Baltimore screamed at him, shrinking back against the carriage wall.

“I damn well can!” Monk yelled. “And so can you! Come on!”

Baltimore was plainly terrified of the thought of struggling to climb up the wagon into the loose coal and trying to crawl on hands and knees over it in the teeth of the choking steam as the train careered over the rails, growing faster and faster, lurching from one side to the other. The long slope was steepening ahead of them, and Monk could see the sweep beyond and down to the viaduct as if it were in his mind’s eye.

He swiveled around to face Baltimore. “Is there anything else due on this line?” he shouted, driving his hand the other way to illustrate his meaning.

Baltimore put his hand up to his face, now ashen gray. He nodded very slightly. Like a man in a nightmare, he stepped forward, swayed, righted himself, and put his hands onto the coal wagon. It was a more powerful and terrible answer than any words could have been.

Monk followed after him, scrambling up onto the rough lumps of coal and feeling the wind batter him and the wagon’s bucket around like a ship at sea.

The stoker turned, shovel in his hand. His mouth fell open at the sight. Baltimore, his fair hair streaming back, his face fixed in a grimace of terror, was clambering over the coal toward the engine. A yard behind him, Monk followed, more agile.

The stoker threw down his shovel and lunged toward Baltimore.

Baltimore screamed something at him, but the sound was torn from his lips.

The stoker came forward, hands outstretched.

The train was going ever faster as the incline steepened.

Monk made a desperate effort to claw himself forward and catch up with Baltimore. The coal rolled underneath him. A large lump unsettled and fell sideways, and he slid after it, narrowly missing injuring his shoulder against the mound above.

He heaved himself up, disregarding his torn hands, and threw his weight forward.

Baltimore was almost on top of the stoker.

Monk yelled at him, but his voice was drowned in the roar and crash of steel on steel and the howl of the wind.

Baltimore fell forward and the stoker went down with him.

Monk hauled himself up and swung around to land on his feet.

The brakeman was staring at him, his face streaming sweat as he struggled with the lever and felt it yield. The driver was coming toward them, waving his arms.

Suddenly, Monk knew what to do. He had done it before, hurling his weight and his strength against the brakes, and feeling them rip out just as they were now. He knew exactly what it was, and the memory of it turned him sick with terror. Only then he had been in the rear wagon of the train, and the impact had thrown him off, to roll over and over, bruised and bleeding down the slope but alive-while the others died. That was the guilt that stabbed through his mind with pain-he had survived, and they had not-not one of them. They had all been crushed in that inferno of flame and steel.

“Stoke!” he yelled with all the power of his lungs. He swung his arms. He understood now what they must do, the only chance. “The brakes are gone! They’re no use! Go faster!”

Behind him, Baltimore and the stoker were struggling to their feet. He swiveled around. “Stoke!” he mouthed to Baltimore. “Faster!” He swung his arms.

Baltimore looked terrified. The stoker made to move forward and catch Monk and restrain him physically. Baltimore charged at him. The two of them rocked and swayed as the train roared through the gathering dusk, pitching like a ship in a storm.

Monk picked up the fallen shovel and started to heave more coal into the boiler. It was already yellow hot at the heart, and the blast from it scorched his face, but he threw in more, and then more. They had to pass over the viaduct before the other train came; it was the only chance. Nothing on earth could slow them now.

Baltimore was shouting behind him, waving his arms like a windmill. The stoker was stupefied. Suddenly his kingdom was invaded by madmen, his train was screaming through the twilight like a rocket on fire, and the single-track viaduct lay ahead with another train due on it in minutes.

Then at last the brakeman understood. He had felt the brakes tear out and knew how useless it was to hurl his weight or strength against them anymore. He picked up the other shovel and worked beside Monk.

They were going faster, ever faster. The sound was deafening, like a solid thing against the head; the heat seared the skin, burned the eyelashes; and still they threw the coal on, until the stoker grabbed Monk by the arm and pulled him back. He shook his head. He held his arms across his chest, then flung them wide.

Monk understood. Any more and the boiler would explode. There was nothing to do now but wait, and perhaps pray. They were going as fast as any engine on earth could take them. Sparks were flying in the air, steam like clouds tore from the stack and shredded in the wind. The wheels on the track were one continuous roar.

The viaduct was in sight, and the next moment they were on it.

Monk looked at Baltimore and saw the terror in his face, and a kind of jubilation. There was nothing now but to wait. Either they would make the end of the single track in time, or there would be a crash that would explode and send the wreckage a thousand yards in every direction until there was nothing human left to find on the rocks below.

The breath was torn from their lips; the wind burned and stung with ash, smuts, red sparks like hornets. Their clothes were torn and singed.

The noise was like an avalanche falling.

But Monk had been right: Dundas was innocent, the brakes were as he had said. He had paid a terrible price for it, but knowing it, willing it, to save a young man he had loved profoundly, selflessly, and without limit-love greater than Katrina’s hate, to be held in the heart forever.

And now his name would be vindicated!

There was a darkness, an even greater noise, and something rushed by them so quickly it was gone before Monk even realized they were on double tracks again. It had been the train in the other direction. They were safe.

Around them, the other men let off a cheer, but he could hear nothing of it, only see in the furnace light their upraised arms and the triumph in their blackened faces. The driver staggered back against the wall, the controls barely in his grasp. The stoker and the brakeman clasped each other.

Jarvis Baltimore held out his hand and Monk took it.

“Thank you!” Baltimore mouthed. “Thank you, Monk! For the past, and the present!”

Monk found himself grinning idiotically, and could think of nothing at all to say. Anyway he could not have spoken; his voice was choked with tears.