Anne Perry - Death Of A Stranger

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.