Death of a Stranger (37 page)

He spread his hands. “The one thing left for her was revenge. And fate handed her the perfect opportunity for that when she found Mrs. Monk in Coldbath Square. She knew all about the original fraud in Liverpool for which her father, Arrol Dundas, was convicted. She created the impression of another fraud almost exactly like it, knowing that Monk would not be able to resist the temptation to investigate it. The likelihood of his recognizing her was remote. She had been a child of eight when he had last seen her, if indeed he saw her at all.”

He looked from the judge to the jury. “She took good care that they met in public, where they would be observed by impartial witnesses. She may have made certain Monk would be there at her house in Cuthbert Street that night. We can call Mr. Monk to the stand to testify of that, if necessary.” He drew in a deep breath and faced the judge again. “That, my lord, is the purpose of Mr. Garstang’s so very exact testimony. He saw her face as she fell. Inspector Runcorn described her on the ground, on her side… not her back. No one saw two distinct figures, and the cloak was left on the roof, my lord, because she was not thrown or pushed off-she jumped!”

He was momentarily prevented from continuing by the uproar of amazement, disbelief and horror that engulfed the room. But it faded quickly as the terrible truth sank into understanding, and then belief.

When he resumed, his voice fell into utter silence.

“My lord, Michael Dalgarno is innocent of murder, because there was no murder… at least not of Katrina Harcus when she went off the roof of her house and plunged to her death. As for the night she killed Nolan Baltimore, we shall-”

He was prevented from saying whatever he had intended by Livia, now lurching to her feet, her face gray.

“That’s not true!” she screamed. “That’s a wicked thing to say! It’s a lie!” Her voice choked in a sob. “An evil… terrible thing to say! My father…” She lashed her arms left and right as if fighting her way through some physical obstacle. “My father would never have done anything like that! It’s… it’s filthy! It’s disgusting! I saw those women-they were…” The tears were streaming down her face. “They were broken, bleeding… whoever did that was monstrous!”

Rathbone looked wretched. He struggled for something, anything, to say to ease her grief, but there was nothing left.

“That can’t be how he died!” Livia went on, turning from Rathbone to the judge. “He quarreled dreadfully with Michael and Jarvis that night!” she said desperately. “It was over the railway again, the huge order we have for the new brakes they’ve invented. Michael and Jarvis did it together, and Papa only found out that night, my lord! He flew into a terrible rage and said they’d ruin the company, because years ago Mr. Monk had forced him to sign a letter promising he would never manufacture the brakes again. He’d paid a fortune to silence somebody, but the price was that nobody would ever use them…”

Monk shot to his feet. “Where’s Jarvis Baltimore?” he shouted at Livia. “Where is he?”

She stared at him. “The train,” she said chokingly. “The inaugural run.”

Monk said something to Margaret, then looked at Hester once where she still stood in the witness-box, then he scrambled past the people next to him and ran up the aisle and out of the door.

The judge looked at Rathbone. “Do you understand, Sir Oliver?”

“No, my lord.” He turned to the witness-box. “Hester?”

“The rail crash sixteen years ago,” she answered. “I think… I think he knows what caused it now.” She looked at Livia. “I’m sorry… I wouldn’t have told you. I wish you hadn’t had to know. Most people get to keep their secrets.”

Livia stood for a moment, the tears running down her cheeks, then slowly she sank to her seat and buried her face in her hands.

“I’m so sorry…” Hester said again. She hated Nolan Baltimore as much for what he had done to his own family as for the injury to Katrina and Alice and Fanny, and the other women like them. They might recover. She did not know if Livia would.

Rathbone looked at Dalgarno, white and bitter in the dock, then to the judge. “My lord, I move that the charges against the accused be dropped. Katrina Harcus was not murdered. She took her own life in a desperate attempt to achieve the only thing she believed was left to her-revenge.”

The judge looked at Fowler.

Fowler swiveled around to stare at the jury, then back at the judge. “I concede,” he said with a shrug. “God help her…”

Outside the courtroom the street was almost empty, and it took Monk only five minutes to find a hansom and scramble in, shouting to the driver to take him to Euston Station as fast as the horse would go. An extra pound was in it for him if he made the inaugural train on the new line to Derby. Monk would willingly have given him more, but he had nothing else to spare. He must keep what he had in case he had to bribe his way onto the train.

The cabbie took him at his word, and with a yell of encouragement at the horse, and a long flick of the whip practically between its ears, set off as if on a racetrack.

It was a hair-raising journey with several close shaves where they missed other vehicles by inches, and more than once pedestrians leaped for their lives, some hurling abuse as they went. The cab pulled into the station and lurched to a stop. Monk thrust the money at the driver because he felt the man deserved it whether they had made the train or not, and sprinted to the platform.

Actually he was there with more than five minutes in hand. He straightened his jacket, ran his hand over his hair, and sauntered up to the door of the rearmost carriage as if he had every right to be there.

Without glancing around to see if he had been observed, which could have given away his lack of invitation, he pulled the handle, swung the door wide, and climbed in.

The inside of the carriage was beautifully furnished. It was a long train, but only first- and second-class. This was second, and still of a luxury to be admired. No doubt Jarvis Baltimore would be in the first-class. Since his father’s death this was his train, his entire enterprise. He would be busy talking to all the various dignitaries making this journey, boasting to them of the new track, the new carriages, and perhaps of the new braking system with its fatal weakness. Although presumably he did not know the full truth of that.

There would be several stops along the route. Monk would make his way forward on each of them until he found Jarvis.

He nodded to the other people in his compartment, then sat down on one of the polished wooden seats.

There was a jolt. Somewhere ahead the whistle blew and the carriage jerked forward, and again, then settled into gathering momentum. Billows of steam drifted past the windows. There were shouts from outside and cries of excitement and triumph from the other compartments, and through the open windows of the carriages ahead someone called out a toast and yelled “Hooray!”

Monk settled in for the journey, expecting the best part of an hour to elapse before he had an opportunity to find Baltimore. But they were on double track all of that distance. He knew the route probably as well as Baltimore himself.

The train was gathering speed. The gray streets and roofs of the city were sliding away. There were more trees, open land.

There were foot warmers in the compartment, one close by him, but he was still cold; in fact, he started to shiver. There was nothing he could do about Baltimore until the first stop. His mind was filling at last with the knowledge he had forced from it since the moment he had realized about the brakes, and that it could happen again.

There had been no murder of Katrina Harcus, at least not from the roof in Cuthbert Street. He could see her face with its brilliant eyes as if she were in the seat opposite him. But nothing was the same as it had seemed. It was clear now: she had orchestrated the whole thing with passion and extraordinary skill, even to tearing the button off his coat and clasping it in her hand when she fell-jumped.

It made him cold to the pit of his stomach to know that she had hated him enough to leap deliberately into the darkness and crash, breaking her body on the stones beneath, into the abyss of death and whatever lay beyond it, simply to know that he would be destroyed with her.

And how close she had come to succeeding!

It was a dark and fearful thing to be hated so deeply by another human being. It could never be retrieved, because she was dead. He could not explain himself, tell her why, soften any of the tearing, wounding edges.

And she was Arrol Dundas’s daughter! That was an indelible wound never to be eased away.

He sat huddled, avoiding the eyes of the other man in the compartment, until the first stop, then he got out, as did everyone else. When the whistle blew for the next leg of the journey he got into one of the first-class carriages and moved from compartment to compartment through the polished wood, the warmth, the soft seats, but Baltimore was not there.

He got out again at the next station and moved forward, and at the next. Time was getting short. He felt a flutter of panic. He found him at last in the front carriage. He must have gone forward also, to speak to every one of his guests. Indeed, he was talking to a portly gentleman with a glass of champagne in his hand.

Monk must attract his attention, if possible in a manner which would not cause embarrassment. He moved discreetly until he was close enough to grasp Baltimore ’s arm by the elbow, firmly, so he could not brush him off.

Baltimore turned to him, startled by the pain. He recognized Monk after a second’s hesitation, and his face hardened.

“Mr. Baltimore,” Monk said levelly, staring at him without blinking. “I have news for you from London which you need to hear as soon as possible. I think privately would be best.”

Baltimore took his meaning and was eager not to mar his moment of triumph with an awkward interview. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “I will only be a moment. Please enjoy yourselves. Accept our hospitality.” He turned to Monk, saying something under his breath as he half pushed him out of the door into an unoccupied compartment of the carriage they were in.

“What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought by now they’d be questioning you on Dundas ’s money! Or is that what you’re doing? Attempting to escape!” His face hardened. “Well, I’m damned if I’ll help you. My father told me on the night of his death how you tried to put him out of business. What was that for? Revenge because he exposed Dundas?”

“I tried to save hundreds of lives-without putting you out of business!” Monk said between his teeth. He kept his grasp on Baltimore ’s arm. “For God’s sake, just hold your tongue and listen. We haven’t much time. If-”

“Liar!” Baltimore snarled. “I know you made my father sign a letter that he would never manufacture the brakes again. What did you threaten him with? He’s not an easy man to frighten… what did you do to him?” He snatched his arm away from Monk’s grip. “Well, you won’t frighten me. I’ll see you in jail first.”

“Why do you think your father agreed to it?” Monk demanded, containing his temper with intense difficulty as he stared at Baltimore ’s arrogant, angry face, and felt the train sway and jolt beneath them as it gathered speed, hurtling towards the long incline, and the viaduct beyond. “Just because I asked him?”

“I don’t know,” Baltimore replied. “But I won’t give in to you!”

“Your father never did favors for anyone,” Monk said between his teeth. “He stopped manufacturing the brakes after the Liverpool crash because I paid to have the enquiry return a verdict of human error, not to ruin the company… but on condition he signed that letter never to make them anymore.” He startled himself with the clarity with which he remembered standing in Nolan Baltimore’s magnificent office with its views of the Mersey River, and seeing Baltimore sit at his desk, his face red, his head shaking with shock and fury as he wrote the letter Monk dictated, and then signed it. The sunlight had been streaming across the floor, picking out the worn patches on the lush, green carpet. The books on the shelves were leather bound, the wood of the desk polished walnut. This was the piece at last! This was it! It made sense of it all.

Now Jarvis Baltimore stared at him, his eyes round and wide, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. He gulped and tried to clear his throat. “What… what are you saying? That the Liverpool crash…” He stopped, unable to put it into words.

“Yes,” Monk said harshly; there was no time to spare anyone’s feelings. “The crash was due to your brakes failing. There were two hundred children on that excursion train!” He saw the blood drain from Baltimore ’s skin, leaving it pasty white. “And there must be a hundred people on this one. Order the driver to stop while you still can.”

“What money?” Baltimore argued, struggling to deny it, shaking his head. “How would you get enough money to silence an enquiry? That’s absurd. You’re trying… I don’t know why-to cover yourself! You stole Dundas ’s money. You had charge of it all! You didn’t even leave anything for his widow-damn you!”

“ Dundas ’s money!” Monk tried not to shout at him. They were both swaying back and forth now. The train was gathering speed fast. “He agreed to it. You don’t think I would have touched it otherwise, do you? The man was in jail, not dead. I gave them all there was, apart from the little bit for her, but hell-it wasn’t much! It took almost everything there was to make them keep silent on the truth.”

Baltimore was still fighting it. “ Dundas was a fraudster. He’d already cheated the company of-”

“No, he wasn’t!” The truth was there at last, bright and sharp as daylight breaking. “He was innocent! He warned your father that they hadn’t tested the brakes well enough, but nobody listened to him. He had no proof, but he would have got it, only they framed him for fraud, and after that nobody believed anything he said. He told me… but there was nothing I could do either. It was only his word, and by then he was branded.”

Baltimore shook his head, but the denial died on his lips.

“It took all the money I could scrape together,” Monk went on. “But it saved the company’s reputation. And your father swore he’d tar Dundas with the same brush if I didn’t succeed. We couldn’t sue the driver. Better he be blamed than everyone put out of work. We took care of his family.” He felt a stab of shame. “But that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t his fault… it was your father’s. And now you’re going to do the same-unless you stop this train.”