Death of a Stranger (11 page)

“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 naÏveté? 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.”