Anne Perry - Death Of A Stranger

He had the courage to look at it, and the will in his conscious mind, but that tiny part of him which looked too deep to touch, which knew what it was, still held it just beyond his reach.

Was it defying him… or protecting him?

He went back to London through Derby, checking once more on the original route, before the alteration, and seeing exactly whose land it had crossed. There was a large and wealthy farm it would have cut in half, making it impossible to have taken cattle from one side to the other, effectively ruining the unity of it.

It would also have sliced through a spinney of trees, one of the best in the area for drawing a fox, a favorite place of the local hunt. Would it have needed bribery to divert the track a mile or two through unused land? On the whole, he thought not. It seemed the obvious thing to do. Not to would have been an act of vandalism, and earned a dangerous enmity among the people of the nearest town.

Was any of this really a crime? Was it even a sin worth caring about more than with a passing regret?

Michael Dalgarno was a worthless man in his relationship with Katrina. He had taken her love while it suited him, and then cast her aside when a financially better prospect had presented itself in Livia Baltimore. But that was not a crime either… a sin certainly, but one many men were guilty of. As men had married for beauty, so many an empty woman had married for wealth.

None of that was motive for Dalgarno to have murdered Katrina.

To conceal fraud was, certainly, but where was the fraud? None that Monk could prove. It was all only suggestion and suspicion. Monk remembered the letter with his own name in it that he had removed from Katrina’s. His hand stung as if it had burnt him. Had he left it there, it would be he that Runcorn was after now, and were it anyone other than Runcorn, with as much certainty of his guilt!

“Of course he’s guilty!” Runcorn said indignantly when Monk went straight from the station to see him and report his failure. As always, his office was crowded with papers, but they were all neatly stacked, as though studied and dealt with. He was too busy to offer Monk tea. Anyway, he seemed to regard him now as a colleague rather than a guest. He looked at him skeptically and with some disappointment. “The fact that you still didn’t bring back any proof of the fraud doesn’t mean he’s innocent,” he said grimly. “It just means he hid it too well for you to uncover. Presumably he learned from Dundas’s mistakes. Two farms, or estates or whatever, you said?”

“Yes,” Monk replied stiffly. “And if I’d been planning that line you wouldn’t have had to bribe me to divert around a hill rather than go through it, if it meant not vandalizing a stretch of land like that.”

“And you think Dalgarno is the same as you, do you?” Runcorn lifted his eyebrows in a mixture of surprise and disbelief.

Monk hesitated. The question had been meant sarcastically, but he realized how much truth there could be in it. There was a physical resemblance, increased by their similar self-assurance-one might say arrogance, the love of good clothes, a certain grace of movement. If the witnesses to Katrina’s death had really seen someone on the roof, if their descriptions fitted Dalgarno, they would just as easily fit Monk. Plenty of people had seen him with Katrina-ask anyone in the Botanic Gardens. And to an onlooker they could have appeared to be quarreling. With a chill in the pit of his stomach, Monk remembered how she had put her hands up and grasped his coat, pulling off the button. He knew when it had been torn-but she had died with it in her hand. Why? What was she doing still holding it so long after?

Without the motive, Dalgarno was no more proved guilty than was Monk himself. Perhaps the evidence against Dalgarno was just as rooted in chance-or mischance?

“Monk!” Runcorn said loudly. “Are you saying Dalgarno was like you?”

Monk returned to the moment with a jolt. “Somewhat,” he answered.

“Somewhat like you?” Runcorn said, amazement showing in his face that Monk was considering it seriously.

Monk felt himself on the brink of a precipice and pulled back. “Superficially,” he answered. Already his mind was enmeshed in other thoughts, farther into his own doubts and necessities. “Only superficially.” He wanted to excuse himself as soon as he could. He was feeling more and more impelled to see Rathbone. It was imperative. Perhaps it was almost too late now.

“There isn’t anything more,” he said aloud. “You’ll have to trust your prosecution. Sorry.”

Runcorn grunted. “I suppose I should be grateful that you tried.”

He had to wait an hour and a half before Rathbone was free to see him. It was a wretched time, far too long to sit and consider the difficulty and the embarrassment of what he must do.

When eventually Rathbone came and he was conducted into his familiar, elegant office, he began without preamble.

“Michael Dalgarno has been charged with murdering Katrina Harcus, but the proof depends on his having a motive,” he said bluntly.

“Of course.” Rathbone nodded, looking at Monk with sharpening interest. They knew each other well enough for him to be aware that Monk would not be there to say something so obvious, nor would he be so tense, his body tight, his voice on edge, were it not of acute personal importance, even pain, to him. The relationship between them was deep, at times troubled by rivalry between the smooth, socially and intellectually confident Rathbone, who nevertheless lacked emotional courage, and the arrogant, uncertain Monk, who looked and behaved almost like a gentleman, yet had the inner passion to commit his heart, win or lose, and was now so desperately afraid that after all the effort, the change, the hope, it would be lose.

Rathbone was regarding him gravely, waiting for him to explain.

“Runcorn assumes it was because Katrina had proof of his being involved in fraudulent purchase and sale of land for Baltimore’s railway line to Derby,” he began. “I thought so too, but I’ve searched as thoroughly as I can, even comparing all the dealings with the fraud in Baltimore and Sons in Liverpool sixteen years ago, when I worked for the banks concerned myself.” He saw Rathbone’s slight start of surprise, concealed almost instantly. “But I can find no proof,” he went on. “Certainly not sufficient to hang a man for murder.”

Rathbone looked at his hands, then up at Monk. “Exactly what was your involvement in the first fraud, as much as you know?” he asked.

Now was the time when only the naked truth would do. Any evasion might come back as guilt, like a knife to destroy whatever good was left.

“Arrol Dundas, the man who taught me everything I knew and was almost a father to me, was accused of buying land cheaply and then selling it at huge profit after falsifying the surveys so the railway would divert its course,” he replied. “He was found guilty, and died in prison.” It was odd, put so baldly, devoid of the reality of passion that had made it acutely and irrevocably painful. It sounded like a legal issue, not people’s lives torn apart. Best to add the ugliest part of that now, get it over. “And while he was in prison, there was one of the most terrible rail crashes in history. A coal train collided with an excursion train full of children.”

Rathbone was so moved by his own imagination of the horror of it that for a moment or two he did not speak. “I see,” he said at last, his voice low enough to be almost inaudible. “And did it have anything to do with the fraud?”

“Not that I could tell. It was attributed to human error-possibly both driver and brakeman.”

“Proof?” Rathbone raised his eyebrows very slightly.