Anne Perry - Death Of A Stranger

“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.