Death of a Stranger

chapter FOUR
The following morning it took Monk an hour and a half after leaving the town to reach the workings of the new railway.

It was a fine day with a light wind rippling the grass, carrying the scents of earth and spring and the sound of sheep in the distance. From the height of the horse's back he could see the hawthorn hedges sweeping low, already with leaves bursting. Later he knew they would be heaped with white blossoms almost to the ground. He was following a track that climbed slowly up toward the summit over a mile away, beyond which lay the last curve of the railway line. The breeze was light and cool in his face, and sweet with the smell of earth and grass.

There was an acute pleasure in feeling the strength of a good animal beneath him. It was a long time since he had ridden, yet the moment he had swung up into the saddle, there was a familiarity to it and he was at ease. These great rolling spaces were at once a freedom and a resurrection of something quite different.

Far away to his right he could see the roofs of a village half hidden by trees, the church spire towering above them, and elms scattered over green parkland.

A rabbit shot out of the grass almost at the horse's feet, white tail flashing, and ran a dozen yards before disappearing again.

He half turned to speak, smiling, prepared to say how surprised he was to see it, and then realized with a jolt that there was no one else with him. Whom had he expected? He could see him as clearly as if he had been there, a tall man with white hair, a lean face, prominent nose and dark eyes. He would be smiling also, knowing exactly what Monk meant so there was no need to elaborate on it. It was a comfortable thought.

Arrol Dundas. Monk knew it as surely as if it had happened. They had ridden together on bright spring days like this, up hills in all kinds of country, towards rail tracks half finished where hundreds of navvies worked. He could hear the sounds of shouting, the thud of picks on earth, the ring as the iron hit stone, the rumble of wheels on boards as if they were only beyond the rise. He saw in his mind's eye the bent backs of men, bearded as navvies nearly all were, lifting shovels, pushing barrows of rock and earth, urging the horses on. He and Dundas would be going to see the progress, to estimate the time till completion, or to sort out some problem or other.

Here there was silence but for the wind carrying the distant sounds of cattle and sheep, the occasional bark of a dog. Half a mile away he could see a cart moving along a lane, but he could not hear the sound of the wheels in the muddy ruts; the cart was too far away.

What kind of problems? Protesters, angry villagers, farmers whose land was divided, saying their cows were giving no milk because of the disturbance and when the engines were roaring through, shattering the peace of the fields, it would only be worse.

It was different in towns. Houses were knocked down, and scores of people, hundreds, were dispossessed. He dimly remembered some plan to use the arches of viaducts to house the homeless. There were to be three classes of accommodation-different qualities, different prices. The lowest was to be on clean straw, and free. He could not remember if it had ever come about.

But there had been no moral or practical decision to make. It was progress and inevitable.

He tried to snatch back more detail of memory, not the emotional but the practical. What had they spoken of? What did he know of the land purchases in detail? What was the fraud involved? Wedgewood had said there was no such thing as land across which it was not possible to make a track. It was only a question of cost. And navvies knew how to set up rails on pontoons, if necessary, which could cross marshland, shifting streams, subsidence, anything you cared to think of. They tunneled through shale or clay, chalk, sandstone, anything at all. Again, it was only cost which made the difference. Back to money.

All land had to be purchased. Was it as simple as money passed back to the officer of the company who decided which route to take? A track diverted from one path to another, the officer bribed by the landowner in order to keep his property intact? Or otherwise worthless land sold at an inflated price, and the profits shared back with the officer, straight into his own pocket, defrauding the company and the investors?

That was obvious, but was it so much that it had been overlooked, at least for a while? What arrogance, to imagine they could escape forever.

Had Dundas been arrogant? Monk tried again to recapture a sense of the man he had once known so well, and the harder he looked the more any clear remembrance evaded him. It was as if he could see it only in the corner of his vision; focus on it and it vanished.

The wind was growing warmer across the grass, and far above him, piercingly sweet, he heard skylarks singing. It was timeless. It must have been like this when trains were only a thing of the imagination, when Wellington's armies gathered to cross the Channel, or Marlborough's, or Henry VIII's for that matter, bound for the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Why could he not turn in the saddle now and catch some clearer glimpse of Dundas?

The brightness of the sun on his face brought back a feeling of affection and well-being, but it was no more than that, a remembrance of being utterly comfortable with someone, laughing at the same jokes, a kind of happiness in the past that was gone, because Dundas was dead. He had died alone in a prison, disgraced, his life ruined, his wife isolated, no longer able to live in the city that had been her home.

Had he had children? Monk thought not. There were none he could recall. In a sense Monk himself had been son to him, the young man he had nurtured and taught, to whom he had passed on his knowledge, his love of fine things, of arts and pleasures, good books, good food, good wine, good clothes. Monk remembered something of a beautiful desk, wood like silk, shining, inlaid, a depth to the color like light through a goblet of brandy.

He had a sudden sharp vision of himself standing before the looking glass in a tailor's rooms, younger, thinner in the shoulders and chest, and Dundas behind him, his face so clear the tiny lines in the skin around his eyes were etched sharply, telling of years of squinting against the light, and quick laughter.

"For heaven's sake, stand up straight!" he had said. "And change that cravat! Tie it properly. You look like a popinjay!"

Monk had felt crushed. He had thought it rather stylish.

He knew later that Dundas was right. He was always right in matters of taste. Monk had absorbed it like blotting paper, taking a blurred but recognizable print of his mentor.

What had happened to Dundas's money? If he had been found guilty of fraud, there must have been a profit somewhere. Had he spent it, perhaps on fine clothes, pictures, wine? Or had it been confiscated? Monk had no idea.

He breasted the rise, and the panorama that spread out in front of him took his breath away. Fields and moorlands stretched to the farther hills five or six miles distant and around the curve of the escarpment on which he sat. The unfinished track snaked over farmland and open tussock toward the sudden dip of a stream and an adjoining marshy stretch across which spanned the incomplete arches of a viaduct. When it was finished it would be over a mile long. It was a thing of extraordinary beauty. The sheer engineering skill of it filled him with a sense of exhilaration, almost spiritual uplift at the possibilities of man and the certainty in his own mind of what it would be when the last tie was driven in. The great iron engines with more power than hundreds of horses would carry tons of goods or scores of people at breakneck speeds from city to city without resting. It was a marvelous, complicated beauty of strength, the force of nature harnessed by the genius of man to serve the future.

He remembered his own words: "It'll be on time!" He could see Dundas's face as clearly as if he had been there, hair a little windblown, skin burned, narrowing his eyes against the light. Monk was stung by loneliness that there was nothing but miles of empty grass rippling over the long curve toward the valley, broken by a few wildflowers, white and gold in the green.

He could remember the joy of it like a beat in the blood. It was not money, or gain of any natural things; it was the accomplishment, the moment when they heard the whistle in the distance and saw the white plume of steam and heard the roar of the train as it swept into view, a creation of immense, superb, totally disciplined power. It was a kind of perfection.

Dundas had felt exactly the same. Monk knew that with certainty. He could hear the vibrancy in his mentor's voice as if he had just spoken, see it in his face, his eyes. Time and again they had ridden until they were exhausted, just to see a great engine, boiler fired, belching steam, begin to move on some inaugural journey. He could see those engines, green paint gleaming, steel polished, great wheels silent on the track until the whistle blew. The excitement was at fever pitch, the railmen with faces beaming as at last the great beast stirred, like a giant waking. It would gather speed slowly-a puff, a gasp, a turn of the wheels, another, and another, the power as huge and inevitable as an avalanche, albeit man-made and man-controlled. It was one of the greatest achievements of the age. It would change the face of nations, eventually of the world. To have a part in it was to shape history.

Dundas had said that. They were not Monk's words. He could hear Dundas's voice in his head, deep, a little edge to it, a preciseness as if he had practiced to lose some accent he disliked. Just as he had taught Monk to lose his lilting country Northumbrian.

What had Monk really felt for Arrol Dundas? It had probably begun with ambition and, he hoped, gratitude. Surely later on affection had been the greater part? What he remembered now was the sense of loss, the absence of that warmth of friendship, and the certainty of having owed Dundas so much more than knowledge and advantage, but things of the inner self that could never be repaid.

He tried to put together more of the pieces, memories of laughter shared, simple fellowship in traveling. It was not only riding up hills like this on horseback, but sitting in public houses somewhere, the sun shining on a stretch of grass by a canal, bread and pickles and the smell of ale, voices he could not place. But the feeling was the same-comfortable, looking to both past and future without fear or darkness.

It should have been like that now. He had found the woman he truly loved, far better for him than the women he had wanted then, or thought he wanted. In spite of the fear at the front of his mind, he smiled at his own ignorance, not of them so much as of himself. He had thought he wanted softness, pliancy, someone to answer his physical hungers, be there to provide the home that was the background for his success, and at the same time not intrude into his ambitions.

Hester was always intruding; whether he intended her to be or not, she was part of all his life. Her courage and her intelligence made it impossible for him to exclude her. She demanded his emotions. She was a companion of his mind and his dreams as well as of his physical self. What he imagined women to be had been startlingly incomplete. At least he had not committed himself to someone else, and hurt both himself and whoever she had been.

He jerked himself back to the present and stared below him. There were laborers all over the place, hundreds of them, swarming, tiny and foreshortened in the distance. About half a mile before the viaduct there was a ridge, and they were cutting through it. He could see the pale scar of the rock face and the slope where men were "running" the barrow-loads of earth and stones up to the top, balancing with high skill on the narrow planks. It was one of the most dangerous jobs. He knew that. A slip could cause a fall, with the weight of the load crashing on top of him.

They were almost through. It was not quite high enough to require a tunnel. He could remember the brickwork, the digging, the shoring-up of tunnels. The smell of clay was in his nostrils as if he had left it minutes ago, and the steady sound of dripping from roofs, the wet splashes on the head and shoulders. He knew the labor was backbreaking. Men sometimes worked for thirty-six hours with no more than a few minutes for food, then were replaced by another shift, also working night and day.

He urged his horse forward and went carefully down the incline, following what track there was, until he was on the level and only a hundred yards from the rail. Now the noise was all around him, the thud of pick heads hitting rock and earth, the rattle of wheels on the wooden runs up the cutting, the ring of hammers on steel, voices.

The nearest man to him looked up, his shovel idle in his hands for a moment, his back straightening slowly. His skin was caked with dust and the sweat cut rivulets through it. He regarded Monk's casual clothes and well-cut boots, and the horse standing at his shoulder. "Yer one o' the surveyor's men?" he asked. " 'E in't 'ere yet. Yer a day soon." He half turned. "Eh, 'Edge'og!" he shouted at a short, heavy-shouldered man with a shock of gingery hair. "Yer sure yer in the right place, then?"

There was a guffaw of laughter from half a dozen men further away, and they all resumed their digging and shoveling.

Hedgehog screwed up his face. "No, Con, we'd better start all over an' dig through that damn great 'ill over there!" he replied.

"Three weeks, mebbe," Con said to Monk. "If that's wot yer want ter know. I in't see'd yer 'ere before. Yer come up from Lunnon?"

Apparently they assumed he was from Baltimore and Sons' main office.

"Where's your foreman?" Monk enquired.

"I'm the foreman, Contrairy York," the first man replied. "Like I said, three weeks. Can't do it no faster."

"I can see that." Monk squinted along the line of the rail. The last bit of the viaduct would take another two weeks at least, and then there were sleepers to lay, the rails themselves to lay and tie. It was double track most of the way, single through the cutting and as far as the other end of the viaduct. There must be a plan for timetables and trains passing. A length like this was far too expensive to use only one engine at a time on.

He had studied the survey map. The shortest route lay through the hill he had just crossed. "Couldn't you have cut through that?" he asked. "Then you would have avoided having to build a viaduct."

" 'Course, we could," Contrairy said dismissively. "Cost, though! Too 'igh fer a straight cuttin', an' tunnels are about the most expensive things there is. Look at yer map. See the 'eight on it! An' granite! Takes time, an' all."

Monk swung around and looked up at the hill. He pulled out the map from his pocket and read the height on it, then looked at the crest of the rise again. Something flashed in his memory and was gone before he caught it, but it was a moment of unease, nothing more, nothing he could explain. He should check the alternative routes, see who owned which land, where the vested interests lay, estimate the costs of cutting and tunneling the hill for a direct route compared with the small cutting there was here, and the viaduct, and the extra land, and length of rail. It would be a long, tedious task, but the answer, if there was one, lay in the figures. He had had the skill once. It had been where his business lay... his and Dundas's. That was a chill thought he would rather not have owned, but it would not go away.

He thanked the navvy, mounted his horse again and rode slowly back up the slope, thinking. He had studied the surveyor's maps and reports, and Baltimore and Sons' estimate of costs for rerouting. On paper it seemed reasonable. The investors had accepted it. Some of the new land necessary was expensive, but the land for the old route had been expensive also. It was the hidden costs that would make the difference: the bribes to do one thing or another, what to purchase, what to avoid. That could be where the fraud lay.

It was warm here, even with the very slight breeze ruffling the grass. A rabbit popped up, gazed around, then bolted twenty yards, its white tail flashing until it disappeared down a hole.

It was a moment before it meant anything to him. He searched his memory. It was the rabbit. It signified something. He was on another hillside in the sun, but colder, a wind out of the east, clouds scudding across the sky and a sense of darkness in spite of the bright light.

He remembered he had watched a rabbit sit in the sun, nose twitching, then take fright and run, going into a hole. He had seen it with a slow-dawning horror!

Why? What could be more ordinary than a rabbit in the grass, running away and diving down one of its own holes into a vast warren riddling a hillside? Doubtless it would emerge somewhere else, a hundred yards away.

Except that if a rabbit could dig through the hillside and build tunnels using nothing but its feet, then an army of navvies with explosives would have little trouble digging a tunnel for a train. The hill could not possibly be granite! The survey had lied!

He could remember it now, the shock of realization, the gaslight wavering on the paper as he opened it out on the table in his hotel bedroom and read the legend on the map. But he could not recall what else there had been, try as he might, sitting there now with the sun and wind on his face, and his eyes closed, attempting to re-create the past.

Of course there was profit in some land and not in other. But surely the investors had also checked? They must have representatives who were aware of that. It would have to have been cleverer, far subtler than simply a lie, whether the land were granite instead of clay, or chalk or conglomerate, or whatever the hill was actually composed of.

And always in the back of his mind there was the jumbled horror of something dark, unclear and violent, the rending of steel, the scream of tearing metal, sparks in the night, then flame, and through it all fear so dreadful it cramped the stomach and locked the muscles in pain.

But there seemed nothing to connect the two. Arrol Dundas had been convicted of fraud, guilty or not. There had been a crash which Monk seemed to remember, and shortly after Dundas's death he had left merchant banking and gone into the police force, driven by the passion to serve justice in future, which had to mean he had believed with a passion that there had been injustice then.

But he could do nothing more here to help Katrina Harcus or learn any greater truth about Michael Dalgarno. If there were fraud at Baltimore and Sons, then Dalgarno was almost certainly involved in it, but it was merely profiting unjustly from land purchase. There was nothing to cause injury to anyone, except the loss of possible profit to the investors. That was yet to be proved, and speculation was always as likely to end in loss as in gain. He could call for an official audit if any evidence warranted it.

It was time he stopped evading the old truth that lay at the core of his fear. Remembered pieces were little help. He must use the detective skills he had refined so well. If he wanted to know it for a client, where would he begin were it himself and not Dalgarno that he were investigating for Katrina Harcus?

Begin with the known, facts that could be checked and proven without the possibility of misinterpretation. He knew the date on the work order with his own name on it that Katrina had handed to him with the others. That was proof that he had once worked for Baltimore and Sons, but not where, and not that he had had anything to do with the fraud for which Dundas had been convicted.

Could there be more than one fraud? No, too much of a coincidence.

Nonsense-lies to comfort! Of course there could. A man who will defraud once will adopt it as a pattern if he gets away with it. The question then became: was Dundas caught on his first attempt, or on the second or third, or the twentieth?

With a jolt so sharp he startled his horse by the sudden change in his hands on the reins, Monk realized he had actually admitted the possibility that Dundas had been guilty. In fact, he had assumed it. What a betrayal of the belief he had held without shadow all his life, until now!

He turned his horse to head up the track and around the long slope of the hill back toward the ostlers' where he had hired it, and the railway station back to London.

Where would he find the history of Dundas's bank and its dealings? He did not even know in which city they had been headquartered. It could be any of a dozen or more. Presumably, Dundas would have been imprisoned at the closest place to the court in which he was tried, and that in turn would be the nearest large city to the scene of the fraud itself.

Or could it be where the principal investors banked?

He was still considering where to begin when he rode into the ostlers' yard and dismounted reluctantly. It was a good animal and he had enjoyed riding, even though it brought the best memories, cutting sharp with loss.

He paid the ostler and walked out of the yard with its smells of leather, straw, and horses, and the sounds of hooves on stone and men's voices soft as they talked to animals. He did not look back, he did not want to see it, although it was clear in his mind.

The stationmaster was on the platform, standing almost at attention with his tall top hat shining in the sun and his Crimean medals on his chest. Monk did not know what each one meant, but Hester would have.

He spoke to the man briefly, then paced the platform waiting for the next train. His original intention had been to return to London with whatever further information he had for Katrina Harcus. The promise he had made her was still strong in his mind. At least he was one step further forward in that. Like the other, this present railway was also rerouted around a hill that had been falsely surveyed. It would have been perfectly possible, and cheaper, to have blasted through it, first by cuttings, then if necessary tunneling.

If necessary?

Something else tugged at his memory, something about grid references for areas on the map, but he could not unravel it. Everything he caught hold of slipped meaninglessly out of his mind, taking him nowhere.

He heard the train before it came into sight around the curve in the track, shining, roaring, billowing steam, and drew to a halt with a hiss and clank of metal. The driver was grinning. The stoker, smut-stained, wiped a heavy hand across his brow, smearing coal dust on his skin.

There was a bang of opening and closing doors. Someone struggled with a wooden box. A porter ran forward.

Monk climbed into a second-class carriage again, and sat down on one of the hard wooden seats. A few minutes later the whistle blew and the train jolted forward and began to pick up speed.

The journey to London seemed endless, full of stops where he could get off, stretch his legs and get on again. They rattled over the rails, rhythmically jolted from side to side. He drifted into sleep filled with dreams, and woke stiff and aware of waiting for something terrible. He forced himself to stay awake, eyes wide open, watching the countryside slide past him.

Was Katrina right, and Nolan Baltimore had discovered the land fraud, and Dalgarno had murdered him to keep him silent? But the old receipt with Monk's name on it was from seventeen years ago, and the fraud that had ruined Arrol Dundas had happened shortly after that, long before Dalgarno could possibly have had any position with the company at all. He would barely have been out of school.

Had that first fraud been practiced on Baltimore and Sons at all? Or was Monk's connection with them coincidence? If Dundas's bank had made a business of financing railways, he might have been connected with many.

But the fraud was the same! Or it seemed the same. He could remember the rabbits, the rerouting on the longer track, the protestors, the anger, the questions as to which land was to be used, and the accusations of profiteering.

Was he transplanting all that from the past, and his own broken memory, into the present where it did not belong?

No. Katrina Harcus had come to him because she had overheard Dalgarno and Jarvis Baltimore talking of large and dangerous profits that must be kept secret, and she feared fraud. That was fact, nothing to do with memory, true or false, and very much in the present. As was Nolan Baltimore's murder, whether it had anything to do with the railway or not.

The train pulled into Euston at last, and Monk got out and hurried along the platform, jostled by tired and impatient travelers.

The huge space beyond the platform, arched over by a magnificent roof, was filled with peddlers, people hurrying to catch outgoing trains, porters with boxes and cases, friends and relatives come to meet those arriving or to wish good-bye to those leaving. Coachmen looked for their masters or mistresses.

A paperboy was calling out the latest news. Hurrying past him, Monk heard something about the Union troops in America having captured Roanoke Island on the Kentucky border. The violence and tragedy of that war seemed very far away; the searing heat and dust and blood of the battle he and Hester had been caught up in were in another world now.

When at last he got home he found Hester asleep, curled over in the bed as if she had reached to touch him and found him not there. One arm was still outstretched.

He stood still for several moments, hesitating whether to waken her or not. The fact that she did not stir, unaware of him, told him how tired she must be. There were times when his own impulse would have woken her anyway. She would not have minded. She would have smiled and turned to him.

Now he resisted. What would he say to her? That he had found nothing in Derby except ghosts of familiarity that he could not place? That there was a crash in the past which was so terrible he could neither remember it nor forget it, and he dared not look at the reasons because he was afraid that they involved some kind of guilt, but he had no idea for what? And he had nothing yet that would help his client.

He turned away and went to wash, shave, and change into clean clothes. Hester was still asleep when he left to go to the Royal Botanic Gardens to meet with Katrina Harcus.

It was a bright, windy, March afternoon and a score of people had chosen to spend it admiring the early flowers, the vivid green of the grass, and the giant trees, still bare, wind gusting noisily through the branches. In spite of the brilliant light, the ladies had abandoned parasols. As it was, now and again both hands were needed to keep hats in place and skirts from being whipped and lifted above petticoats.

He saw Katrina after a moment. There was a distinction about her bearing which marked her out. Apparently she recognized him just as quickly and came over without any pretense that it was a casual meeting.

Her face was flushed, but that might have been the wind and sun rather than any expectation so soon.

"Mr. Monk!" She stopped in front of him breathlessly. "What have you learned?"

An elderly gentleman out walking alone turned and smiled at them indulgently, no doubt mistaking it for a lovers' meeting. Another couple walking arm in arm nodded and moved even closer to each other.

"Very little, Miss Harcus," he replied quietly. This was not a conversation he wished overheard.

Her eyes dropped and disappointment filled her face, too acute to be concealed.

"I have made enquiries about workmanship and materials," he went on. "From what I have heard, the railway navvies are too skilled to use inadequate materials of any kind. Not only their reputations and future livelihood would depend on it, but their lives at the time. They have built railways all over the world, and there is no known example of a bad one anywhere."

She lifted her eyes quickly to gaze into his face. "Then where is the secret profit coming from?" she demanded. "This is not enough, Mr. Monk! If the materials are good, then perhaps there was dishonesty in acquiring them?" She was watching him intently, her face burning with emotion. He realized again how deeply she was in love with Dalgarno, and how terribly afraid that he would be driven into crime and then ruined by it, not only morally but in every other way, perhaps even to end in prison like Arrol Dundas. Monk knew the bitterness of that only too well. It was one thing of which even his shattered memory had not completely let go.

He offered her his arm, and after only a moment's hesitation she took it and they walked side by side between the flower beds.

"I haven't looked closely at the possibility of land fraud yet," he said, speaking quietly so passersby, strolling in the bright day, would not overhear him. He was aware of their curiosity, politely masked as courteous nods and smiles as they passed. He and Katrina must make a striking picture, both handsome people, elegantly dressed and obviously involved in a conversation of deep emotional content.

She kept her hand lightly on his arm, a delicate gesture, one of trust rather than familiarity. "Please look into it, Mr. Monk, I beg you," she said urgently. "I am desperately afraid of what may happen if no one learns the truth before it is too late. We may be able to prevent not only the tragedy of an innocent man's being implicated in a crime, but the loss of an untold number of people's lives in the kind of disaster that only something like a rail crash could bring."

"Why do you fear a crash, Miss Harcus?" he asked, frowning a little at her. "There is no reason whatever to think there is either faulty material or workmanship. If there is land fraud, then that is dishonest, certainly, but it does not cause accidents."

She lowered her eyes and turned away until he could no longer see her face except in profile, and her hand slipped off his arm. When she spoke it was barely audible.

"I have not told you everything, Mr. Monk. I had hoped not to have to speak of this. I feel ashamed of having stopped on the landing and overheard a conversation below me in the hall. I tread very lightly, and I am not always heard. It is not intentional, simply a habit from childhood which my mother instilled in me: 'Ladies should move silently and with grace.' " She took a deep breath, and he saw that she blinked rapidly, as if to control tears.

"What did you overhear, Miss Harcus?" he asked gently, wishing he could offer her more comfort, even reach the unnamed grief inside her which was easy to guess. "I am sorry to insist, but I need to know if I am to look in the right places for the dishonesty you fear."

She kept her eyes averted. "I overheard Jarvis Baltimore say to Michael that as long as no one discovered what they had done," she said quietly, "then they would both be rich men, and there would be no accident this time to mar the profits, or if there were, no one would make the connection." She swung back to face him, her skin white, her eyes brilliant, demanding. "Can it matter where an accident is? It is still human life, still people crushed beyond any kind of help. Please, Mr. Monk, if you have any skill or wit at all which can prevent this happening, do so, not just for my sake, or for Michael Dalgarno's, whom God knows I would save from harm, but for the sake of those people who might be riding the train when it happens!"

He was cold inside, imagination of mangled bodies too vivid in his mind.

"I don't see how land fraud could cause an accident, but I promise I will do everything I can to find out if there has been any theft or dishonesty of any kind in Baltimore and Sons," he promised. He would have to for his own sake as much as hers. The knowledge of the Liverpool crash and the memory of Arrol Dundas were too violent to ignore. No one knew the cause of that carnage. Perhaps if he learned more about surveying, land purchase, the movement of money, he would see the connection. "I will tell you all I know," he went on. "But do not expect an answer sooner than three or four days."

She smiled at him, relief flooding her expression like sunlight. "Thank you," she said with sudden gentleness, a warmth that seemed to reach out to him. "You are all I trusted you would be. I shall be here every afternoon from three days hence, awaiting your news." And with a slight touch of his arm again, she turned away and walked back along the path past two elderly ladies talking to each other, nodding graciously to them, and on out of the gate without looking back.

Monk turned on his heel and retraced his steps to the road, but he could not rid himself of the sense of oppression that haunted his mind. There were no specific images, just a heaviness, as if he had been forcing something out of his recollection for so long it had dimmed the sharp outlines to a blur, but its presence had never left him. What was it that he had refused to face in the past? Guilt. He already knew the sense of failure because he could not help Dundas, made the sharper by Dundas's subsequent death. But what about his part in the fraud in the first place? They had worked together, Dundas as mentor and Monk as pupil. Monk had believed Dundas innocent. That was one thing he was sure of. The emotion of admiration and respect was still perfectly clear.

But had that been knowledge or his own naivete? Or far darker and uglier than that, had he known the truth but been unwilling to speak it or prove it at Dundas's trial because it implicated himself?

Could a rail crash between a coal train and a holiday excursion trip have anything to do with fraud? The clerk who had told him of the crash had said no one ever found the cause of it. Surely they must have looked. Experts on the whole subject would have examined every detail. If it were even possibly the fraud, they would have torn apart everything to do with it until all the facts were known.

He should put it from his mind. His guilt was only that he had believed Dundas innocent and he had failed to get him acquitted, nothing to do with the crash. Dundas had gone to prison and died there, a good man who had been unquestioningly generous to Monk, sacrificed by a judicial system which made mistakes. People are fallible. Some are wicked, or at least they perform wicked acts.

What about Michael Dalgarno, with whom Katrina Harcus was so deeply in love? It was time Monk met him face-to-face and formed his own judgment.

He crossed the outer circle and walked briskly down York Gate to the Marylebone Road, where he took the next empty hansom south toward Dudley Street and the offices of Baltimore and Sons.

He went up the steps and in through the door of the building. He climbed the oak-paneled stairs, his imagination racing. By the time he was inside in front of the clerk who answered the bell on the reception desk, he had decided at least roughly what he was going to say. He already had the printed card in his waistcoat pocket.

"Good afternoon, sir. How can I help you?" the clerk enquired.

"Good afternoon," Monk replied confidently. "My name is Monk. I represent Findlay and Braithwaite, of Dundee, who have been asked to acquire certain rolling stock for railways in France, and if their venture there should be successful, in Switzerland also."

The clerk nodded.

"The reputation of Baltimore and Sons is very high," Monk continued. "I should be much obliged for the advice of whoever is available to give it to me regarding possible business of great value, which must be of the best. If whoever is in charge of land and material purchase has the time to spare me, it could be of great profit to all of us." He produced the card which gave his name, an address in Bloomsbury, and a very general occupation of adviser and agent. He had found it useful on many occasions.

"Certainly, Mr. Monk," the clerk said smoothly, pushing his spectacles a little further up his broad nose. "I shall ask Mr. Dalgarno if he can spare the time. If you would be good enough to wait there, sir." That was an instruction, not a question, and taking the card in his hand, he disappeared through the doorway, leaving Monk alone.

Monk glanced around the walls at a number of very striking paintings and etchings, several of them of dramatic railway works, towering cliffs on either side of gorges carved by swarming teams of navvies, tiny figures against the grandeur of the scenery. Ramps curved upwards from the lower levels to the higher, dotted with wagons piled with stone, horses straining against the weight. Men were swinging picks, lifting shovels, hauling, digging.

He moved to the next, which showed the exquisite arc of a viaduct stretching halfway across a valley of marshland. Again there were teams of men and horses lifting, carrying, building for the railway to press on its relentless way, to take industry from one city to another over whatever lay between.

He walked over to the other wall, where paintings hung of specific engines-magnificent, shining machinery belching steam into the sky, wheels gleaming, paintwork bright. He felt a long-forgotten pride surge back, a shiver of excitement and fear, a sense of extraordinary exhilaration.

The door opened and he turned almost guiltily, as if he had been caught in some forbidden pleasure, and saw the clerk waiting for him.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" the clerk said with pride. "Mr. Dalgarno can see you now, if you'd like to come this way, sir."

"Thank you," Monk accepted quickly. "Yes, they are very fine." He was reluctant to leave the pictures, almost as though if he looked at them long enough they would tell him something more. But Dalgarno was waiting, so there was no time now. He followed the clerk through into a spacious but very modestly furnished office, as of a company that had yet to make any income beyond that which it plowed back into further projects rather than luxury for its employees.

But Michael Dalgarno dominated the room so that carved desks or newly upholstered chairs would seem superfluous. He was roughly Monk's height, and he stood with the relaxed grace of a man who knows his own elegance. His clothes not only fitted him perfectly but were in every way appropriate to his situation-stylish, discreet, and yet with the slight individual touch that marked a man who was not one of the crowd. In Dalgarno's case it was the unusual fold of his cravat. His hair was dark with a heavy wave, his features regular, but pleasingly not quite handsome. Perhaps his nose was a little long, his lower lip rather too wide. It was a strong face in which the emotions were unreadable.

"How do you do, Mr. Monk," he said courteously but not with the eagerness that betrays too much hunger for business. "How may I be of assistance to you?" He indicated one of the chairs for Monk to be seated, then returned and sat in the one behind the desk himself.

Monk accepted, feeling almost familiar in the office, as if it had been his own. The piles of paper, bills, and invoices were things he was used to. The books on the shelf behind Dalgarno were about the great railways of the world, and there were also atlases, gazetteers, ordnance survey maps, and references to steel manufacturers, lumber mills, and the dozen major and minor industries connected with the building of railways.

"I represent a company acting for a gentleman who prefers to remain unnamed at this point," he began, as if it were the most ordinary way to conduct business. "He has the opportunity to supply a foreign country with a very large amount of rolling stock, specifically both passenger carriages and goods wagons."

He saw Dalgarno's interest, but the intensity of it was concealed.

"Naturally, I am searching this area for the best stock at the best price," he continued. "One at which all parties will gain from the deal. Baltimore and Sons has been mentioned as a company that is rather more imaginative than most, and is of a size to give individual advice and attention to a good client." He saw Dalgarno's eyes flicker. It was only a slight widening, a greater stillness, but he was experienced in observing people and reading the unspoken word, and he allowed Dalgarno to perceive that. He leaned back a little and smiled, adding no more.

Dalgarno understood. "I see. What sort of quantities are we speaking of, Mr. Monk?"

From some untapped recess of memory, the answer came to his tongue. "Five hundred miles of track, to begin with," he answered. "If it is successful, going up to at least two thousand over the next ten years. Approximately half of it would be over easy terrain, the other half would involve a good deal of cutting and blasting, probably at least five miles of tunneling. The rolling stock would begin with a hundred goods wagons, and perhaps as many passenger carriages, but we have excellent manufacturers in mind for the latter. Of course, we could always entertain another offer if it proved to be better."

"Let me understand you, Mr. Monk." Dalgarno's expression was utterly relaxed, as if he were only mildly interested, but Monk could see the tension in the muscles beneath the eloquent lines of his jacket. Far more than anything he saw or heard betrayed in Dalgarno's voice, he knew exactly how Dalgarno felt. He had sat in such a chair at Dalgarno's age. He could feel it as if he were sitting there now. It was deeper than memory; it was an understanding almost in the bone. With no idea why, his mind could change places with Dalgarno's.

"You are going to ask me if better means cheaper," Monk said for him. "It means better value for the money, Mr. Dalgarno. It must be safe; accidents are expensive. And it must last. A thing that has to be replaced before its time is expensive, however little you pay for it. There is cost in purchase, in contracts, in haulage, in disposal of the old, and above all in idleness while you obtain the new."

Dalgarno smiled-a broad, instinctive gesture. He had excellent teeth. "Your points are well taken, Mr. Monk. I can assure you that any offer Baltimore and Sons might make would meet with all your criteria."

Monk smiled more widely himself. He had no intention of committing to anything, both because Dalgarno would have no respect for him if he did and because he wanted to remain in Dalgarno's company for as long as possible. It was his only opportunity to form a personal opinion of the man. Already he found it hard to believe Dalgarno was anybody's dupe. He would never meet Nolan Baltimore to know if he might have used and misled the younger members of his company, but if he had, Monk doubted it would have included this man opposite him. There was an alertness, a confidence in Dalgarno he could feel, as if he knew the man's thoughts and could sense his nature. He understood very well why Katrina Harcus was in love with him, but not why she was convinced of his innocence. Surely that was a blindness of the heart?

"If I submit all the particulars," Monk went on aloud, "would you be able to give me times, costs, and specifications within a month, Mr. Dalgarno?"

"Yes," Dalgarno said without hesitation. "Delivery might take a little while, especially of rolling stock. We have a very large order in place already, to be shipped to India. That country is building at a great rate, as I am sure you are aware."

"Yes, of course. But I am impressed that you ship to India!" He was astounded, although he could not have said why.

Dalgarno relaxed, putting his fingers together in a steeple in front of him. "Not us, Mr. Monk. Unfortunately, we are not yet large enough for that. But we are supplying components to another company. But I assume you know this."

That was not really a question. He was taking it for granted that Monk was testing him, and he was allowing his candor to show.

Monk recovered himself rapidly. "Can you speak for your senior partner also?"

Dalgarno's face clouded. It was impossible to tell if his hesitation was genuine or a matter of propriety. "Tragically, our senior partner died recently," he answered. "But he is succeeded by his son, Mr. Jarvis Baltimore, who is more than able to take his place."

"I'm sorry," Monk said appropriately. "Please accept my condolences."

"Thank you," Dalgarno accepted. "You will appreciate that at this moment Mr. Jarvis Baltimore is somewhat occupied attending to family affairs, and endeavoring to be of comfort to his mother and sister. And that is where I should be this evening, Mr. Monk. Mr. Baltimore's death was sudden and totally unexpected. But of course that is not your concern, and railways wait for no man. I give you my word we shall not let personal tragedy keep us from our duty. Any promise given by Baltimore and Sons will be honored to the letter." He rose to his feet and held out his hand.

Monk took it, rising also. It was a firm, strong grip, unaffected. Dalgarno was extremely sure of himself, but with a sharp edge of hunger, an ambition in which Monk could see himself as he had once been... in fact, not so long ago. He had left merchant banking and financial venture far behind, but as a policeman that ambition had merely been redirected. Every case was still a battle, a personal challenge.

His charges from Katrina Harcus were to save Dalgarno and to prevent any possible disaster, and to do either of them he needed to have as much knowledge as he could of Jarvis Baltimore.

"One further question, Mr. Dalgarno," he said casually. "There are always risks of land purchase posing problems. The best deals can founder on that if a section of the proposed track runs into difficulties. Not everyone sees progress as a blessing."

Dalgarno's face was mute testimony of his understanding.

"Who deals with that subject in your company?" Monk enquired. "Yourself? Or Mr. Baltimore?"

Was there a slight hesitation in Dalgarno, or was it only that Monk wanted to see it there?

"We've all dealt with it at one time or another," Dalgarno replied. "As you say, it is a subject which can cause a great deal of concern."

Monk frowned. "All?"

"The late Mr. Nolan Baltimore was also concerned with land," Dalgarno explained.

"Indeed." Monk was about to continue when the door opened and a man he instantly assumed to be Jarvis Baltimore stood in the entrance, his face a little flushed, his expression impatient. "Michael, I..." He saw Monk and stopped abruptly. "I'm sorry. I didn't know you had a client." He held out his hand. "Jarvis Baltimore," he introduced himself.

Monk took Baltimore's hand and felt a grip a little too powerful, as of someone determined to exert his authority.

"Mr. Monk represents a client interested in a large purchase of rolling stock," Dalgarno explained.

Baltimore fixed his expression into one of ease and interest, although his body still carried a barely suppressed tension. "I'm sure we can help you, Mr. Monk. If you give us your client's requirements, we will quote for you on all goods."

"And services?" Monk raised his eyebrows. "Mr. Dalgarno said you also have some skill in negotiating the purchase of land and right-of-way."

Baltimore smiled. "Certainly. At a fee, of course!" He glanced quickly at Dalgarno, then back at Monk. "Now I'm afraid we must both leave the discussion for today. My family has very recently been bereaved, and Dalgarno is a close friend-one of us, almost. My mother and sister are expecting us both this evening..."

Monk looked to Dalgarno and saw the quick response in his face, the immediacy of his answer. Was that ambition, affection, pity? He had no way of telling.

"I'm sure you understand," Baltimore went on.

"Of course," Monk agreed. "Again, please accept my condolences. This was only a preliminary discussion. I will report back to my principals, and they will instruct me further. Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Baltimore, Mr. Dalgarno."

He excused himself and took his leave, turning over impressions in his mind as he made his way home.

"What was Dalgarno like?" Hester asked him an hour later over a supper of grilled fish with mashed potato and onions. "Do you think he is involved in any kind of fraud?"

He hesitated before he replied, surprised by how decisive his answer was. She was watching him with interest, her fork poised in the air.

"I don't know whether there is any fraud or not," he replied steadily. "But if there is, I would find it hard to believe he was duped. He seemed knowledgeable, intelligent, and far too ambitious to leave anything to chance-or to anyone else's judgment. I would think him the last man to trust his welfare to another."

"Then Miss Harcus's opinion of him is formed more by being in love than the reality?" She smiled a trifle ruefully. "We all tend to see people we care about rather more as we wish them to be. Are you going to tell her he is very well able to care for his own reputation?"

"No," he said with his mouth full. "At least not until I know if there is any land fraud or not. I'm going to Derbyshire tomorrow to look at the survey reports, and then at the site."

She frowned. "Why is she so convinced that there is something wrong? If it is not Dalgarno, who is it she thinks is to blame?" She put her fork down, forgetting her meal altogether. "William, is it possible that it was Nolan Baltimore, the man who was killed in Leather Lane, and his death had to do with land fraud, and not prostitution at all? I know he probably wasn't there because of land," she went on quickly. "I do know what Abel Smith does for a living!" Her mouth twisted in a tight little smile. "And I assume he went there for that purpose. But it would make sense, wouldn't it, if whoever killed him followed him there and chose that place in order to disguise his real motive?"

This time she ignored the quickening of his interest.

"And left Baltimore there so anyone would assume exactly what they do," she went on. "Except his family, of course. Did I tell you his daughter came to me in Coldbath Square to ask if I knew anything that could help clear his name?"

"What?" He jerked forward. "You didn't tell me that!"

"Oh... well, I meant to," she apologized. "Not that it makes any difference. I can't, of course. Tell her anything, I mean. But the family would want to believe it was nothing to do with prostitution, wouldn't they?"

"They wouldn't be keen to think it was land fraud either," he said with a smile. But the thought took fire in his mind. It fitted with what he had seen of the two younger men in Baltimore's offices, what Katrina Harcus believed of Dalgarno, and it made more sense of Nolan Baltimore's death than a prostitute's or a pimp's having killed him.

Hester was looking at him, waiting for his response.

"Yes," he agreed, taking more fish and potato. "But I still don't know if there is any fraud-or, if you're right, I suppose I should say was! I must go to Derbyshire tomorrow and see the site. I need all the maps, in large detail, and I need to look at exactly what they are doing."

She frowned. "Will you know from that? I mean, just looking at the maps and the land?"

This was the time to tell her of his jolting memory, his sense of familiarity with the whole process of surveying for railways, and the land purchase with its difficulties. He had told her long ago of the snatches he had remembered of Arrol Dundas and his helplessness to prove the truth at the time. She would understand why he was compelled now to learn the truth about Baltimore and Sons, whether Katrina Harcus needed it or not. If he explained his fears it would make it easier if he had to admit later on that he had been at least partly implicated in the fraud-and the disaster afterwards which it may have caused.

He thought of her work with the women in Coldbath Square. She would be going back there tonight. She was dressed for it already, a long night's hard and thankless labor. He might not see her again until after he came back from Derbyshire. It should wait until another time, when he would have the opportunity to be with her, to assure her of... what? That whatever he had been in the past, he was no longer that man anymore?

"I don't know," he said. That was in essence true, even if not all of it. "I don't know what better to try."

She picked up her knife and fork and started to eat again. "If I hear anything more about Nolan Baltimore, I'll tell you," she promised.