Death of a Stranger

chapter THREE
Before Hester returned from Coldbath Square on the morning after Alice's attack, Monk received a new client in Fitzroy Street. She came into the room with the air of tension and tightly controlled nervousness that almost all his clients showed. He estimated her to be about twenty-three, and not beautiful, although her bearing was so filled with grace and vitality it was a moment or two before he realized it. She was dressed in a dark skirt and matching jacket fitted to her waist, and the cloth of it was obviously discreetly expensive, it sat so perfectly. She was carrying a bag much larger than a reticule, about a foot or more square.

"Mr. Monk?" she asked, but only as a formality. There was an air of purpose about her which made it plain she was there because she knew who he was. "My name is Katrina Harcus. I believe you undertake enquiries for people, privately. Is that correct?"

"How do you do, Miss Harcus," he replied, gesturing to one of the two large, comfortable chairs on either side of the fireplace. There was a fire burning today. It was spring, but still chilly early in the morning and in the evening, particularly for anyone sitting still, and who might be in a state of some distress. "You are quite correct. Please sit down and tell me what I may do to help you."

She accepted, setting the bag at her feet. From its shape he guessed it might contain documents of some sort, which already marked her as unusual. Most women who came to him did so about personal matters rather than business: jewelry lost, a servant who had occasioned their suspicion, a prospective son-or daughter-in-law-about whom they wished to know more, but without betraying themselves by asking any of their own acquaintances.

He sat down opposite her.

She cleared her throat as if to dispel her nervousness, then began to speak in a low, clear voice. "I am about to become engaged to marry a Mr. Michael Dalgarno." She could not help smiling as she said his name, and there was a brightness in her eyes which made her feelings obvious. However, she hurried on without waiting for Monk's acknowledgment or congratulations. "He is a partner in a large company building railways." Here her face tightened and Monk was aware of increased anxiety in her. He was accustomed to watching people minutely, the angle of the head, the hands knotted together or at ease, the shadows in a face, anything that told him what emotions people were concealing behind their words.

He did not interrupt her.

She took a deep breath and let it out silently. "This is very difficult, Mr. Monk. I need to speak in confidence, as I would were you my legal adviser." She looked at him steadily. She had very fine eyes, golden brown rather than dark.

"I cannot conceal a crime, Miss Harcus, if I have evidence of it," he warned. "But other than that, all you say to me is in confidence."

"That is what I had been told. Forgive me for having to ascertain it for myself, but I need to tell you things that I would be most distressed were they repeated."

"Unless it is to conceal a crime, they will not be."

"And if there is a crime involved?" She spoke quite steadily and her eyes did not flinch from his, but her voice had sunk to a whisper.

"If it is a crime planned, then I must seek to prevent it by any means I can, including informing the police," he answered. "If it is one that has already happened, then I must share with them any knowledge I may come by, if I am certain it is true. Otherwise I would be complicit in the act myself." His curiosity was piqued. What kind of help did this very composed young woman want from him? Her manner was unusual; it seemed as if her request was going to be even more so. He realized how disappointed he would be if it proved to be a case he could not accept.

"I understand." She nodded. "I do fear a crime, but I wish you to prevent it, if that is possible. If I had the skill to do so myself, then I would. However my greatest concern is to protect Michael-Mr. Dalgarno. I may be mistaken, of course, but whether I am or not, word of my suspicions must never come out."

"Of course not," he agreed, desiring to spare her the explanation she obviously found painful. "If they are innocent it would be embarrassing and perhaps worse; if they are guilty they must not be warned." He saw the relief in her face at his quickness of understanding. "Tell me what you fear, and why, Miss Harcus."

She hesitated, reluctant to take the final step of commitment. It was not difficult to understand, and he waited in silence.

"This is gathered from things Mr. Dalgarno has told me in the course of conversation," she began, her eyes steady on his face, watching and judging his reaction. "Little pieces of information I have overheard... and now actual papers which I have brought with me for you to read and consider. I..." She looked away for the first time. "I took them... stole them, if you like."

He was careful not to express shock. "I see. From where?"

She raised her eyes. "From Mr. Dalgarno's rooms. I am worried for him, Mr. Monk. I think there is fraud being practiced in the building of the new track for the railway, and I am very afraid he may be implicated, although I am certain he is innocent... at least... at least I am almost certain. Sometimes even good people yield to the temptation to turn the other way when their friends are involved in something wrong. Loyalties can be... misplaced, especially when you owe much that is good in your life to someone else's generosity, and trust in you." She looked at him intently, as if to judge how much he understood.

Some far memory stabbed him at the thought, but he kept his face blank. He could not tell her how acute was his feeling for just that kind of obligation, and the pain of failure.

"Is it a fraud from which Mr. Dalgarno might profit?" he asked levelly.

"Certainly. He is a junior partner in the company, so if the company made more money then he would also." She leaned forward a fraction, just a tiny movement, but the earnestness in her face was intense. "I would give everything I have to prove his innocence and protect him from future blame, should there be any."

"What is it exactly that you have overheard, Miss Harcus, and from whom?" There was something in the mention of railways that stirred an old memory within him-light and shadows, unease, a knowledge of pain from before the accident. He had rebuilt his life since then, created something new and good, recognizing and piecing together the facts of himself he had discovered, and the shards of memory that had returned. But the vast mass of it was lost like a dream, somewhere in the mind but inaccessible, frightening because it was unknown. What detection had shown him was not always pleasant: a man driven by ambition-ruthless, clever, brave, feared more than liked.

She was watching him with those intense, golden-brown eyes. But she was consumed by her own discomfort.

"Talk of great profit which must be kept secret," she answered him. "The new line is due to be completed very soon. They are working on the last link now, and then it will be ready to open."

He was struggling to make sense of it, to understand why she should imagine dishonesty. "Is it not usual to make a large profit from such an undertaking?"

"Of course. But not one that must be kept secret, and... and there is something else which I have not yet told you."

"Yes?"

Her eyes searched his face minutely, as if every inflection, no matter how tiny, were of importance to her. It seemed she cared for Dalgarno so profoundly that her concern over his involvement was more important to her than anything else. A misjudgment of Monk could be a disaster.

She made her decision. "If there has been fraud, and it is to do with the purchase of land, then that would be morally very wrong," she said. "But if it concerns the actual building of the track, the cutting through hills, which is sometimes necessary, or the building of bridges and viaducts, and something is done which is not right, a matter of design or materials, do you not see, Mr. Monk, that the consequences could be far more serious... even terrible?"

A memory stirred in him so briefly he was not even sure if he imagined it, like a darkness at the edge of the mind. "What sort of consequence are you thinking of, Miss Harcus?"

She let her breath out in a sigh, then gulped. "The worst I can imagine, Mr. Monk, would be if a train were to come off the rails and crash. It could kill dozens of people... even hundreds..." She stopped. The idea of it was too dreadful to allow her to continue.

Train crash.The words moved something inside Monk like a bright, vicious dagger in his mind. He had no idea why. Certainly a train crash was a fearful thing, but was it any worse than loss at sea, or any other of a dozen disasters, natural or man-made?

"You understand?" Her voice came to him as if from far away.

"Yes!" he said sharply. "Of course I do." He forced his attention back to the woman in front of him, and her problem. "You are afraid that some fraud in the construction of the railway, whether in the land used or the materials, may cause an accident in which many people could lose their lives. You think it possible Mr. Dalgarno may share the blame for this, even though you believe it extremely unlikely that he would be morally guilty. You would like me to find out the truth of the matter before any of this happens, and thereby prevent it."

"I am sorry," she said softly, but she did not lower her gaze. "I should not have questioned your understanding. That is exactly what I would like. Please... before you say anything else, look at the papers I have with me. I dare not leave them in case they are missed, but I believe they matter." She reached for the bag at her feet and picked it up. She opened it and took out fifteen or twenty sheets of paper and leaned across, offering them to him.

He accepted them almost automatically. The first one was folded over, and he opened it. It was a survey map of a large area of countryside, most of it with many hills and valleys, and a line of railway track marked clearly through it. It took him a moment or two to recognize the names. It was in Derbyshire, on a line running roughly between London and Liverpool.

"This is the new line Mr. Dalgarno's company is building?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yes. It goes through some very beautiful land between mining districts and the big cities. It will be used a great deal for both goods and passengers."

He did not repeat his comment about quite normal profit. He had said it once. He looked at the next paper, which was a map of a much smaller section of the same area, and therefore in greater detail. This time the grid references were on the corners, the scale below, and every rise and fall of the land was written in, and in most places the actual composition of the soil and rock beneath the surface. As he stared at it he had an odd sense of familiarity, as if he had seen it before. And yet as far as he knew he had never been to any part of Derbyshire. The names of the towns and villages were unknown to him. One or two of the higher peaks were identified, and they were equally unknown.

Katrina Harcus waited without comment.

He looked at the next sheet, and the next. They were deeds to purchase stretches of land. He had seen such things often before. There would be many of them necessary in the construction of a railway. Land always belonged to someone. Railways had to stop at towns if they were to be any use, and the way in and out lay through areas that were bound to be built upon. It was sometimes a long and difficult matter to acquire a passage through.

Some enthusiasts believed the rights of progress overruled everything else. All structures across the path of the railway should be demolished, even ancient churches and abbeys, monuments to history, great works of architecture, private homes. Others took the opposite view and hated the noise and destruction with a violence that did not stop short of action.

He flicked back to the first map again. Then he realized what it was that had jolted his memory, not the land at all, but the fact that it was a surveyor's map. He had seen such maps before, with a proposed railway line penciled through them. It had to do with Arrol Dundas, the man who had been his friend and mentor when he had left Northumberland as a young man and come south, the man to whom he had owed just that kind of loyalty of which Katrina Harcus had spoken, the debt of honor. Monk had been a banker then, determined to make his fortune in finance. Dundas had taught him how to look and behave like a gentleman, how to use charm and skill and his facility with figures to advise in investment and always earn himself a profit at the same time.

He had deduced much of this from fragmentary facts that came to him in other cases-a snatch of recollection, a momentary picture in the mind-rather than remembered it in any sequence. And with it always came the memory of helplessness and pain. He had failed terribly, overwhelmingly. As he looked at the map now, the grief engulfed him again. Arrol Dundas was dead. Monk knew that. Dundas had died in prison, disgraced for something he did not do. Monk had been there, and unable to save him, knowing the truth, trying repeatedly to make anyone else believe him, and always failing.

But he did not know where, nor exactly when. Somewhere in England, before Monk had joined the police. It was his inability then to effect any kind of justice which had driven him to become part of the law. He had not learned more than that. Perhaps he had not wanted to. It was part of the man he used to be, and so much of that was not what he admired or wanted anymore. His youth belonged to that same hard, ambitious man who hungered for success, who despised the weak, and who all too often disregarded the vulnerable. And nothing he could do now would help Dundas or retrieve his innocence. He had failed then, when he knew everything. What was to be gained now?

Nothing! It was just that the survey map, with its proposed railway, and the purchase order for land had brought back a past of which he had no knowledge, almost as if he had broken from a dream to step into it, and it was the reality, and everything since only imagination.

Then it was gone again, and he was sitting in the present, in his own home in Fitzroy Street, holding a sheaf of papers and looking at a troubled young woman who wanted him to prove to the world, and perhaps most of all to her, that the man she was going to marry was not guilty of fraud.

"May I make notes of some of this, Miss Harcus?" he asked.

"Of course," she agreed quickly. "I wish I could allow you to keep them, but they would be missed."

"Naturally." He admired her courage and the fact that she had taken them at all. He rose to his feet and fetched pen and paper from his desk, bringing the inkwell back with him and sitting at a small table by his chair. He copied rapidly from the first map, then the second, taking the grid references, the names of the principal towns and the main features of the route.

From the other papers he took the areas, prices, and names of the previous owners of the land purchased. Then he looked at the rest that she had handed him. There were purchase orders and receipts for an enormous amount of materials, including wood, steel, and dynamite; for tools, wagons, horses, food for men and animals; and endless wages for the navvies who cut the land, built bridges and viaducts, laid the track itself-but also for ostlers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, surveyors and a dozen other minor tradesmen and artisans.

It was a vast undertaking. The sums involved amounted to a fortune. But building railways had always been about speculation and venture capital, about winning or losing everything. That is why men like Arrol Dundas were drawn to it, and it needed their skill and willingness to take risks.

Arrol Dundas in the past, Dalgarno now, and Monk as he had been however many years ago.

He must read the papers closely, he told himself. Notes were not enough. If there were anything fraudulent it would not be in the open for a casual observer to see. Had it been, then Katrina Harcus herself would have read it, and in all probability understood. Unless, of course, she had understood but could not bring herself to face Dalgarno with it, and she wanted Monk to stop him before he was committed beyond retreat?

He read the bills and receipts carefully. The expenses seemed reasonable. Two of them were signed by Michael Dalgarno, the others by a Jarvis Baltimore. The figures were added correctly and there was nothing unaccounted for. Certainly some of the land purchased was expensive, but it was the stretches previously occupied by houses, workers' cottages, tenant farmers. The payment did not seem to be more than the land was worth.

He looked at the last two orders for navvies' wages. They were what a hardworking and skilled man might expect. He flicked down the list. Masons received twenty-four shillings a week. Bricklayers were paid the same, also carpenters and blacksmiths. The navvies who used picks were paid nineteen shillings, the shovelers seventeen. The last two seemed a trifle high. He looked at the signature at the bottom-Michael Dalgarno. Was that really fraud-a shilling or two on the price of pickmen?

He looked at the last one. The pickmen were twenty-four shillings, the shovelers twenty-two shillings and sixpence. The signature was... he felt the blood pounding in his head. He blinked, but his vision did not clear. It was there in front of him-William Monk!

He heard Katrina Harcus say something, but it was no more than a jumble of sound in his ears.

This made no sense. His name on the order! And his hand! There was no arguing it. He had lost the past up to 1856, but since then he remembered everything as well as anyone else. Date? When was it? He could prove he had nothing to do with it.

Date! There it was at the top, just under the company name. Baltimore and Sons, August 27, 1846. Seventeen years ago. Why was this receipt in with the present-day ones? He looked up at Katrina Harcus. She was watching him, her eyes bright, eager.

"Have you found something?" she said breathlessly.

Should he tell her? Everything in him shrank from the thought. It was his fear, to be kept secret until he understood it. All she cared about was Dalgarno. Someone had accidentally picked up an extra piece of paper and an old receipt had been mixed in with the current ones. It was coincidence that it was the same company. But then why not the same? There were only so many large manufacturers and builders in the business. It was the same area, London to the northwest. Not really such a coincidence.

"Not yet." His mouth was dry; his voice came with an effort. "The figures seem correct, but I shall make notes of all the facts and investigate them. From what you have here, though, there does not seem to be any irregularity."

"I heard them speak of an enormous profit, far above and beyond what is usual," she said anxiously, her brow furrowed. "If it were there openly"-she gestured to the papers-"I could have found it myself. But I am deeply afraid, Mr. Monk, firstly for Michael, his reputation and his honor, even his freedom. Men can go to prison for fraud..."

Monk was cold inside. He, of all people, knew that! As if it were only days ago, hours even, he could see Dundas's white face in the dock as he was sentenced. He could remember their last parting. And he knew exactly where he had been when Mrs. Dundas had told him of her husband's death. He had gone to visit her. She was sitting in the dining room. He could recall exactly the sunlight through the windows shining bright and hard on the glass cabinets, almost obscuring the Staffordshire china dogs inside. The tea had been cold. She had been sitting there by herself, time sliding by, as if the world had stopped.

"Yes, I know," he said abruptly. "I will look into the land purchases very carefully, and the quality of the materials and that the building is actually what is specified here. If there is anything that can cause or contribute to a rail crash I shall find it, I promise you, Miss Harcus." It was a rash thing to say, and he knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth, but the compulsion within him was greater than any whispered caution in his mind.

She relaxed, and for the first time since she had entered the room, she smiled. Her smile was dazzling, intensely alive, making her face almost beautiful. She rose to her feet.

"Thank you, Mr. Monk. There is nothing you could say that would make me happier. I feel confident that you will do everything I hope. Indeed, you are all I had believed of you."

She was waiting for the papers. Could he keep the one with his own name on it? No. She was watching him. There was no possibility.

She took them from his hand and replaced them in her bag, then from her purse she carefully took out five sovereigns and offered them to him. "Will this suffice as a retainer for your services?"

His lips were dry. "Certainly. Where may I reach you to report anything I find, Miss Harcus?"

The gravity returned to her face. "I have to practice the utmost discretion. It is important that Mr. Dalgarno, and indeed the Baltimore family, have no idea whatsoever of my concern, as I am sure you will appreciate."

"Of course."

"I do not know whom I may trust, or who among my friends would feel a divided loyalty if they were aware of my fears. Therefore I think it would be prudent of me to place no one at all under that burden. I will be in the Royal Botanic Society Gardens in the afternoon at two o'clock, from the day after tomorrow until I see you." She smiled very slightly. "It is no inconvenience to me. I have always had a fondness for plants and my presence will not cause any surprise. Thank you, Mr. Monk. Good day."

"Good day, Miss Harcus. I will be there as soon as I have anything to tell you."

He sat for a little while after she had gone, reading and rereading his notes. Apart from the order signed by himself, the others made excellent sense. It was all exactly what he would have expected. Obviously they were only samples of a very much larger quantity which would stretch over years of activity. But would anyone be blatant enough to alter or corrupt receipts so that someone looking at them could see a discrepancy? Surely the differences would lie between the paper and the reality. For that he would have to go to Derbyshire and look at the track itself.

If, on the other hand, as seemed far more likely, the fraud lay in the purchase of land, if he went to the appropriate offices in Derbyshire, he would be able to find the original copies of the survey and begin to trace the ownership, the transfer of money, and anything else that was relevant.

When Hester came home at nearly eleven, exhausted and frightened by the events of the night, he was relieved to see her. She was later than usual and he had become anxious. He made an effort to put everything to do with railways out of his mind, even the fact that his own name had been on one of the orders. She had been up all night, and obviously wished to speak to him about something so urgently she barely waited until she had sat down.

"No, thank you," she replied to his offer of tea. "William, there is most despicable business going on in Coldbath." And she proceeded to tell him about the young women who had been lent money and required to pay it back at extortionate rates of interest by prostituting themselves for the particular tastes of men who liked women of good family. "It is their pleasure to humiliate them in a way that using an ordinary woman of the streets could never do," she said furiously. "How can we fight it?" She stared at him with anger burning in her eyes and her cheeks flushing.

"I don't know," he replied honestly, feeling guilty as he said it. "Hester, women have been exploited like that for as long as anyone knows. I don't know how to help it, except now and then in individual cases."

She would not accept defeat. She sat on the edge of her seat, her back rigid, her body stiff. "There has to be something!"

"No... there doesn't have to be," he corrected her. "Not this side of God's justice. But if there is, and you can find it, I'll help you all I can. In the meantime I have a new case, possibly to do with fraud in the building of railways..." He saw the look of impatience in her face. "No, it's not just money!" he said quickly. "If a railway track is built on land that is fraudulently obtained, or there is an unjust profit, that is illegal and immoral, but what if it is built on land that is wrongly surveyed, that subsides under the weight of a coal train? Or if the bridges or viaducts are constructed with cheap or substandard materials or labor? Then you risk having a crash. Have you thought how many people are killed or injured in a rail crash? How many people does a passenger train carry?"

Her impatience vanished. She let out her breath in a slow sigh. "There might be land fraud; I don't know anything about that. But navvies know materials. They wouldn't build with anything that wasn't good enough, and they wouldn't build in a substandard way." She spoke with complete certainty, not as if it were an opinion but a fact.

"How on earth would you know that?" he asked, not patronizingly but as if she might have an answer, not because he thought she could, but because she was tired and had seen too much pain, and he did not want to hurt her anymore.

"I know navvies," she replied, stifling a yawn.

"What?" He must have misheard. "How do you know navvies?"

"In the Crimea," she said, pushing her hair back off her brow. "When we were stuck in the siege of Sebastopol in the winter of '54 to '55, nine miles from the port of Balaclava and with the only road washed out so not even a cart could get through. The army was freezing to death, or dying of cholera." She shook her head a little, as if the memory still hurt. "We had no food, no clothes, no medicine. They sent hundreds of navvies out from England to build us a railway... and they did. Without any help, and all through the Russian winter, they worked, and swore, and fought each other, and it was all finished by March. A double track, with tributary lines as well. And it was perfect." She looked at him with a spark of pride and defiance, as if they were her own men, and perhaps she had nursed a few of them if there had been accidents or fever.

He tried to picture it, the gangs of men laboring to cut a track through the mountains in the middle of the bitter snow, thousands of miles from home, to relieve the armies who had no other way out. He dared not think of the soldiers, or of the incompetence which had brought about such a thing.

"You didn't mention that before," he said to her.

"Nothing brought it to mind," she replied, stifling another yawn. "They were all volunteers, but I don't think you'll find it any different here. But look into it. See if there has ever been an accident caused by bad excavation or bad building of track. See if you can find a tunnel that caved in or a viaduct that collapsed or rails that were built on bad ground, or at the wrong incline, or anything else that was the navvies' doing."

"I will," he agreed. "Now go to bed. You've done all you can." He reached out and put his hand over hers. "Don't think about the usurer and the women. There's always going to be violence. You can't stop it; all you can do is try to help the victims."

"That seems pretty pathetic!" she said angrily.

"It's like the police," he said with a half-smile. "We never prevented crime from happening, we only caught people afterwards."

"You took them to the courts!" she argued.

"Sometimes, not always. Do the best you can; don't cripple yourself by agonizing over what you can't reach."

She conceded, giving him a quick, gentle kiss, and then all but stumbled her way to the bedroom.

Monk left the house and went into the city to begin searching for the information which would help him answer Katrina Harcus's questions. He tried to concentrate, but nagging like a constant, dull toothache was the sight of his own name on the receipt of Baltimore and Sons from seventeen years before. He did not even think of denying it was his. He had recognized it beyond doubt, the familiar, bold writing, more assertive than now, written by the man he used to be, before he looked more closely at himself and knew how others perceived him.

He went to see a merchant banker for whom he had solved a small domestic mystery to his great satisfaction.

"Baltimore and Sons?" John Wedgewood said, hiding his curiosity with difficulty. They were sitting in his oak-paneled office. A crystal tantalus was on the side table, but Monk had declined whiskey. "Well-respected company. Financially sound enough," Wedgewood went on. "A great tragedy, especially for the family. I take it that it is the family who has asked you to investigate? Don't trust the police." He pursed his lips. "Very wise. But you'll need to move very swiftly if you are to forestall scandal."

Monk had no idea what the man was talking about. It must have been clear from his face, because Wedgewood understood before Monk had time to frame a reply.

"Nolan Baltimore was found dead in a brothel in London," Wedgewood said, puckering his brow with distaste, and something which might or might not have been sympathy. "I apologize. I rather leaped to the conclusion that you had been asked to find the truth of the matter before the police, and if possible to persuade them into some sort of discretion."

"No," Monk answered, wondering for an instant why he had not read about the case in newspaper headlines, then realizing the answer before the question was on his tongue. It must be the murder Hester had referred to, and which had set the police buzzing around the Farringdon Street area in what was very probably a hopeless quest. No doubt the press would learn the reason for all the activity soon enough. They had only to ask one of the local inhabitants sufficiently inconvenienced, and sooner or later the story would emerge, suitably dramatized.

"No," he repeated. "I am interested in the reputation of the company, not Mr. Baltimore personally. How good is their work? What skill and honesty have their men?"

Wedgewood frowned. "In what regard?"

"All regards."

"Are you asking on behalf of someone interested in investment?"

"In a manner of speaking." It was true enough. Katrina Harcus was investing her life, her future, in Michael Dalgarno.

"Financially sound," Wedgewood said without hesitation. "Weren't always. Had a shaky spell fifteen or sixteen years ago, but weathered it. Don't know what theirs was about specifically, but a lot of people did then. Great age of expansion. People took risks."

"Their workmanship?" Monk asked.

Wedgewood looked a little surprised. "They use the traveling navvies, the same as everyone else. Platelayers, miners, masons, bricklayers, carpenters, and blacksmiths-all that sort of thing. And there are engine men and fitters, foremen, timekeepers, clerks, draftsmen and engineers." He shrugged slightly, looking at Monk with puzzlement.

"But they're all competent or they wouldn't last. The men themselves see to that. Their lives depend on every man doing what he should, and doing it right. Best workmen in the world, and the world knows it! British navvies have built railways all over Europe and America, Africa, Russia, and no doubt will go to India and China as well, and South America too. Why not? They all need railways. Everybody does."

Monk steeled himself to ask the question he dreaded. "What about accidents, crashes?"

"God knows how many men get killed in the construction." Wedgewood pursed his lips, a flicker of anger and sadness in his eyes. "But I never heard of one that was down to poor building."

"Substandard materials?" Monk asked.

Wedgewood shook his head. "They know their materials, Monk. No navvy is going to put in the wrong stone or wood, or anything else. They know what they're doing. They have to. Don't shore up a wall properly, or put in insufficient timber, and the whole lot will come down on top of you. It's my business to know, and I've never heard an instance of navvies getting it wrong."

"But there have been accidents!" Monk insisted. "Crashes, people killed!"

Wedgewood's eyes widened. "Of course there have, God help us. Terrible ones. But they were nothing to do with the track."

"What then?" Monk found himself holding his breath, not for Katrina Harcus but for himself. It was Arrol Dundas who filled his mind, and his own guilt in whatever had happened seventeen years ago.

"All sorts of things." Wedgewood was looking at him curiously. "Driver error, overloaded wagons, bad brakes, signals wrong." He leaned forward a little. "What are you after, Monk? If someone wants to invest in Baltimore and Sons all they have to do is ask in the financial community anywhere. They don't need a private agent of enquiry for that. Any merchant banker would do."

"I have a nervous client," Monk admitted. "What about unsuitable land?"

"No such thing," Wedgewood replied instantly. "Good navvies can build on anything, and they do. Sand. Swamps, even-it just costs more. They need to lay pontoons, or sink stilts until they come to bedrock. Are you sure you aren't after his personal life?"

Monk smiled. "Yes, I am sure. The Baltimore family is not my client, nor is anyone related to them. I have no concern in his death unless it has to do with his railway's honesty or safety."

"I doubt it has," Wedgewood said ruefully. "Just a very regrettable lapse of personal judgment."

Monk thanked him and left to pursue the other idea nagging more and more insistently in his mind. Perhaps no one would risk a fraud in which one sharp-eyed navvy might betray him. And the amounts of profit he made might be small. Far easier and less dangerous, and certainly with more money to be made from it, would be something to do with the purchase of the land for the track.

He did not mention this to Hester. It was far more real, closer to him and not to be laid so easily at some anonymous door, although he had no memory he could pin down. There was nothing but a nameless anxiety, something dark at the back of his mind.

The following day he started specific enquiries. Who decided where a railway line should run? What provisions were there for obtaining the land? Where did the money come from? Who surveyed it? Who bought it?

It was not until he had answered these questions, all ending back with the railway company, that it crossed his mind to wonder what happened to the dispossessed who had once lived in the houses knocked down to make room for progress, or to those who had worked the land now divided or gouged out for cuttings?

None of the answers surprised him, as if he had once known them as easily as did the small, neat clerk who sat across the office table from him. The clerk looked slightly baffled at the question.

"They move to live somewhere else, sir. They can hardly stay there!"

"Do they all agree to that?"

"No sir, not quietly," the clerk acceded. "An' sometimes if it's a big estate-aristocracy, or the like-then the railway just 'as ter go 'round it. No choice. 'Em as 'as got the power, in Parliament or that, can see their land don't get cut up. An' o' course there's gentry what object like mad to their 'unting being sliced in 'alf."

"Grouse and pheasants?" Monk asked with slight surprise. He had imagined farmland.

"Foxes, actually," the clerk corrected him. "Likes ter ride after 'em, an' can't get 'orses ter jump tracks like they do 'edges, an' all." The light in his eyes betrayed a certain satisfaction in this, but he did not elaborate. He had long ago learned not to have personal opinions, as far as anyone else would know.

"I see," Monk acknowledged.

"Yer bin abroad, sir?"

"Why?"

"I was jus' wonderin' 'ow yer missed knowin' all this kind o' thing. Lot o' fuss about it in the papers, goin' back a bit, like. Protests, an' all. Work o' the devil... railways. If the good Lord'ad meant us ter travel that way, an' at that speed, 'E'd 'ave made us with steel skins an' wheels on our feet."

"And if He hadn't meant us to think, He wouldn't have given us brains," Monk countered immediately, and even as the words were on his tongue, he heard an echo of them as if he had said them before.

"Yer try tellin' that to some o' them ministers 'oo's churches get knocked down an' moved!" The clerk's face was eloquent of his awe, and an amusement he was trying hard to suppress.

"Knocked down and moved?" Monk repeated the words as if they were incredible, but he believed them-in fact, he knew they were true. Again memory had jabbed at him and then disappeared. For an instant he saw a lean face, dark with outrage, above a clerical collar. Then it was gone. "Yes, of course," he said quickly. He did not want the man to tell him more about it. The memory was unpleasant, touched with guilt.

"O' course they protest." The clerk shrugged his shoulders. "All kinds of 'em out by the score. Talk about Mammon an' the devil, an' ruin of the land, an' so on." He scratched his head. " 'Ave ter say I wouldn't take kindly if it were me mam an' dad 'oo's gravestones were took up, an' they was left ter lie under the tracks o' the five forty-five from Paddington, or whatever. I reckon I'd be out there wi' placards in me 'and an' threatenin' 'ellfire on the profiteers as did it."

"Has anybody ever done more than threaten?" Monk had to ask. If he did not, the question would remain in his mind, written across everything else until he found the answer. "Anyone ever sabotage a line?"

The clerk's eyebrows rose almost halfway up his forehead. "Yer mean blow up a train? Gawd! I 'ope not!" He bit his lip. "Come ter think on it, though, there've bin a few nasty crashes, one or two of 'em nobody knows for sure 'ow they 'appened. Usually blame the driver or the brakeman. There was a real bad one up Liverpool way about sixteen years ago, an' that was one as'ad a church removed, an' the vicar was right cut up about it." He stared at Monk with increasing horror. "Terrible one, that was. I was still livin' at 'ome, an' I can remember me dad comin' inter the parlor, 'is face white as the tablecloth, an' no newspaper in 'is 'and. It was a Sunday dinnertime. We'd bin ter church so we'adn't seen the early papers."

" 'W'ere's the papers, George?' me mam asked'im.

" 'We in't gettin' no papers terday, Lizzie,' 'e answered 'er.

" 'Nor you neither, Robert,' 'e adds ter me.

" 'There's bin a terrible crash up Liverpool way. Near an 'undred people killed, an' only God in 'Is 'eaven knows 'ow many injured. I'm a'tellin' yer because yer'll 'ear it any road, but don' go lookin' at no paper. There's things in there yer don' wanna know. Pictures they drawed yer don' wanna see.' That was ter protect me mam, o' course."

"But you looked?" Monk said, knowing the answer.

"O' course!" The clerk's face was pale at the memory. "An' I wished I'adn't. Wot me dad never said, fer me mam's sake, was that a coal train'ad 'it a load o' children on an 'oliday outing, one o' them excursion trains. They was all comin' 'ome from a day at the seaside, poor little beggars." His mouth was tight with grief and he blinked away the vision even now, as if he could see the artist's impressions back in front of him with all their horror and pain, the mangled bodies in the wreckage, rescuers trying desperately to reach them while there was still time, driven to try, and terrified of what they would find.

Was that what waited buried at the back of Monk's mind, like a plague pit, waiting to be opened? What kind of a man was he that he could have had any part-even any knowledge-of a thing like that and forgotten it? Why, if he'd had no part in it, did it not stay an innocent grief such as this man felt?

What had he done then? Who had he been before that night nearly seven years ago when in an instant he had been obliterated and re-created again, washed clean in his mind but in his body still the same person, still responsible?

Was there anything on earth as important as learning that? Or as terrible?

"What caused the crash?" He heard his own voice as if from far away, a stranger speaking in the silence.

"Dunno," the clerk said softly. "They never found out. Blamed the driver and the brakemen, like I said. That's the easiest, seein' as they were dead an' couldn't say nothin' diff'rent. Coulda' bin them. 'Oo knows?"

"Who laid the tracks?"

"Dunno, sir, but they was perfick. Bin used ever since, an' nothin' else's ever 'appened."

"Where was it exactly?"

"Can't remember, sir. It wasn't the only rail crash, o' course. I just remember 'cos it were the worst... it bein' children, like."

"Something caused it," Monk insisted. "Trains don't crash for no reason." He longed to be told it was human error for certain, nothing to do with the planning or building of the line, but without proof he could not believe it. Arrol Dundas had been tried and sent to prison. The jury had believed him guilty of fraud. Why? What fraud? Monk knew nothing about it now, but what had he known then? Could he have saved Dundas if he had been prepared to admit his own part? That was the fear that crowded in on him from all sides like the oncoming of night, threatening to snatch back from him all the warmth and the sweetness he had won in the present.

"I dunno," the clerk insisted. "Nobody knew that, sir. Or if they did, they weren't tellin'."

"No... of course not. I'm sorry," Monk apologized. "Where can I find out about land acquisition and surveying for railways?"

"Best go ter the nearest county town for the track in question," the clerk replied. "If yer want that old one, go ter Liverpool, I reckon, an' start from there."

"Derbyshire? Derby, I suppose." That was not really a question. He had supplied his own answer. "Thank you."

"Yer welcome, I'm sure. I 'ope it's some use to yer," the clerk said graciously.

"Yes. Yes, thank you." Monk left the office in something of a daze. Liverpool was what mattered, but if he found out whatever land purchase was concerned in the present Baltimore line, at least he would be familiar with the mechanics of it. Liverpool had waited sixteen years, and he had to report back to Katrina Harcus. If it had been fraud which had somehow caused the first crash, he was morally obliged more than any other man to prevent it from recurring. He could not go off to Liverpool chasing the demons of his memory and allow the whole nightmare to happen again because he was too preoccupied to attend to it.

He went back to Fitzroy Street to collect clean clothes and sufficient money, and to tell Hester where he was going and why. Then he took a hansom to Euston Station, and the next train to Derby.

The journey cost nineteen shillings and threepence and took nearly four hours, with a change at Rugby, which he was glad of. The second-class carriage was divided into three compartments, each less than five feet long and with twelve bare, narrow wooden seats in it. The compartments did not connect, and the partitions were covered with advertising posters. The whole was only five feet high, which meant that Monk had to duck to avoid hitting his head. First-class would have been higher, but also more expensive, and not necessarily any warmer or cleaner-although the louvered windows would have stopped vendors from sticking their heads in at the stations and breathing gin on the occupants!

It was a chilly day, alternate sun and rain, which was usual for late March, and of course there was no heating on the train. The metal foot warmers filled with hot water were restricted to first-class. Still, it was a lot better than the nicknamed "Parliamentary trains," required to fill Lord Palmerston's legislation that rail travel should be available to the ordinary people at a penny a mile.

Monk was delighted to get out at Rugby and stretch his legs, use the convenience, and buy a sandwich from one of the peddlers on the platform.

He also bought a newspaper to read on the next part of the journey. Having been in America at the very beginning of the civil war which was raging there, he was interested to see an article on the progress of the Union troops under a Major General Samuel R. Curtis, beginning a campaign in Missouri. According to the latest dispatches, the Confederates, outnumbered, had withdrawn to northwestern Arkansas.

He remembered with a shiver of grief the slaughter he had witnessed in the battle he had been caught up in during the previous summer, the uncontrollable horror he had felt, and Hester's courage in helping the wounded. His admiration for her had never been more intense, more based in the hideous reality of the broken bodies she tried to save. Everything he had ever thought or felt about her before was seen through different eyes, her anger, her impatience, the cutting edge of some of her words now passionately understood.

He looked at the peaceful countryside through the carriage windows with a sharper gratitude for it, and an upsurging will to protect it, preserve it from violence or indifference.

He was pleased when the train pulled into the station in Derby and he was able to begin his search.

He spent all day in the city records offices looking at every purchase along the entire track from one border of the county to the other until his eyes ached and the pages swam in front of him. But he found nothing illegal. Certainly there were profits made, advantage taken of ignorance, and hundreds of families dispossessed of their homes-although there was also some effort made to find them new houses-and an enormous amount of money had changed hands.

Monk tried to bring back the skills he must have had with figures in his banking days, in order to understand exactly what had happened and where the profit had gone. He pored over the pages, but if there had been any transgression it was too cleverly hidden for him to find. Perhaps he would have seen it sixteen or seventeen years ago, but if he had had that skill then, he had lost it since.

Railways were progress. In a country like England, with its mines and stockyards and shipbuilding, its cotton mills and factories, canals would inevitably have given way to faster, more adaptable railways that could cut through mountains, climb hills, and cross valleys without the time-consuming and expensive business of locks filling and emptying, and the moving of tons of water. The destruction along the way was merely a part of that progress that there was no art or skill to avoid. Farmers, landed gentry, vicars, or the tenants of villages or towns would not have liked canals any better.

He saw articles with drawings of protestors holding placards, cartoons in newspapers and periodicals calling the roaring, steam-belching iron engines the work of Satan, whereas in fact they were only the work of industry and time. Corruption, if there was any, was in the nature of man.

He sat until his head ached and his shoulders were stiff, searching every record he had determined to. There was gain and loss, but it was only the ordinary fortunes of commerce. There were stupid decisions, beside those that he could have foreseen as mistaken with the wisdom of some half-recollected experience. And of course there were those which were simply bad luck-but there was good luck as well. There were errors of judgment, but small, a matter of distance, a mismeasurement here or there.

As he pored over the pages the work became more and more familiar to him. Time stopped, like a wheel moving a cog, and he could have looked up from the lamplight on the papers to see Dundas smiling at him, not the empty inn bedroom, or the lonely tables of the records office or the library.

It was the second night that he awoke in the dark, lying rigid in the bed, startled by the silence and with no idea at all where he was. There were still shouting voices in his head-furious, accusing, people jostling each other, white faces twisted with grief.

He was breathless, as if he had been running. Without realizing it he had sat up in the bed. His body was stiff. What was the dream? He wanted to escape, run and run and leave it behind him forever!

And yet if he did, it would follow him. His mind knew that. If you fled your fears, they pursued you. He could remember that much from the coach crash which had taken his past, and from the nightmares that had followed it.

Nothing in him was willing to turn and look at those accusing faces. He felt almost bruised by them, as if they could physically have touched him, so real had they been. But there was no escape, because they were inside him, part of his mind, his identity.

Very slowly he lay down again, against sheets that were now cold. He was shivering. The fear was still there, some nameless horror that even when he found the courage to look, or could no longer help it, held no form. He could remember the anger, the loss, but the faces themselves were gone. What did they think he had done? Taken their land? Cut a farm in half, ruined an estate, demolished houses, even desecrated a burial ground? It was not personal; he had been acting for the railway!

But it was acutely personal to those who lost. What was more personal than your home? Or the land your fathers and their fathers had farmed for generations? Or the earth in which your family's bones were buried?

Was that what it was? The blind, terrified resistance to change? Then he was not guilty of anything but being the instrument of progress. So why did his body ache and why was he afraid to go back to sleep because of the demons in his mind which would return when he had no guard to keep them out?

Was it not land but the infinitely worse thing he dared not think of at all... the crash?

He had found nothing except the possibility that Baltimore and Sons had made too much profit from the land where the track had been diverted around the hill he had climbed with so much pleasure. Another, older survey had made it at least fifty feet less. With a skillful mixture of gradient and cutting, a tunnel would have been unnecessary. But the blasting would still have been expensive. Granite was hard and moving it was costly. Was the profit enough to justify calling it fraud? Only if he could prove foreknowledge and intent. And even then it was open to doubt.