Death of a Stranger (30 page)

“Cheaper?” Squeaky yelled. “You should pay me compensation! That’s what you should do… you… you lunatic!”

“Nonsense!” she said briskly. “At least you will stay out of jail. You can run this place as a hospital for the sick and injured. There’s plenty of room.”

He gulped and choked.

“The money can be raised by charity,” she went on in the deafening silence. “You’ve got lots of young women here who could learn to be nurses. It would-”

“Gawd Almighty!” Squeaky burst out in anguish.

“Hester!” Rathbone protested.

“It seems like quite a good bargain to me.” Hester adopted an air of utmost reason.

Squeaky turned to Rathbone to appeal to him.

“I’m sorry,” Rathbone said, a strange lift in his voice, as if he were teetering on the edge between horror and laughter. “I have no intention of investing in your business, Mr. Robinson. Unless, of course, you adopt Mrs. Monk’s suggestion? I had no idea that she had such a thing in mind, but it seems to me something to which I could donate a certain amount, and possibly find others who would do the same.” He took a deep breath. “I appreciate that it would ruin your reputation among your colleagues, but it might earn you a certain leniency in other directions.”

“What other directions?” Squeaky wailed. “You’re asking me to be worse than legitimate! It’d be downright… good!” He said the word as if it were damnation.

“The law,” Rathbone said reasonably. “I am a barrister.” He bowed very slightly. “Sir Oliver Rathbone, Q.C.”

Squeaky Robinson let out a long, wordless groan.

“Then we will all be well suited,” Hester said with satisfaction.

“We shall even be able to tell Mr. Jessop that his premises are no longer required,” Margaret added. “I personally will enjoy that very much. We shall, of course, not pay you well, Mr. Robinson, but the donations will be sufficient, without that expense, to see that you are comfortable and properly fed and clothed. If you manage the place, it will give you something to occupy your time, and the other work will need to be overseen. The present young ladies can earn a modest living, quite honorably…”

Squeaky howled.

“Good,” Margaret said with deep satisfaction. She glanced at last at Rathbone, and blushed at the admiration in his eyes. She looked at Hester.

Hester smiled back at her.

“You’re all in it together!” Squeaky accused, his voice hitting falsetto in outrage.

“You are exactly right,” Rathbone agreed gently, smiling as if extraordinarily pleased with himself. “And now you are fortunate to be in it with us also, Mr. Robinson. My sincere advice, for which I will not charge you, is to make the best of it.”

Squeaky let out a last, despairing groan, and was utterly ignored.

The journey to Liverpool was just like the others. He could hear the rattle of iron wheels over the joints in the rails even when he drifted into sleep, although he fought against it. He was afraid of what the dreams would bring back, the sense of horror and grief, the piercing, sick knowledge of guilt, although he still did not know for what.

He stared out of the window. The rolling countryside with its plowed fields was dark where the grain was sown but not yet through the ground, green like thrown gauze over the earth where the earlier crop had sprung. The cherry and wild plum and pear trees were mounded white with blossom, but all of them made no mark on his senses. He got out and back in again at every stop, eager to be there.

He reached Liverpool Lime Street just before dark, stiff and tired, and found himself lodgings for the night.

In the sharp chill of morning his mind was made up where to begin. Whatever pain it might bring, whatever revelations not only as to his life, but to Monk’s also, he must start with Arrol Dundas. Where had he lived? Who had been his friends, or his associates? What had been the style and the substance of his life? Monk had wanted to know these things, and at the same time dreaded it, ever since the first splinters of memory had begun to return. It was time to realize both the hopes and the fears.

The newspaper accounts had stated where Dundas had lived at the time of his arrest. It was a simple enough matter to check, and take a cab out to the elegant, tree-lined street. He sat in the hansom outside number fourteen, staring up and down at the beautiful houses, which were spacious and meticulously cared for. Maids beat carpets in the back alleyways, laughing and flirting with delivery boys, or arguing over the price of fish or fresh vegetables. Here and there a bootboy idled a few minutes, or a footman stood looking important. Monk needed no one to tell him this was an expensive neighborhood.

“This right, sir?” the cabbie asked.

“Yes. I don’t wish to go in. Just wait here,” Monk answered. He wanted to think, to let the air of the place, the sights and sounds, swirl around him and settle in his mind. Perhaps something here would rip away the veils in his mind and show him what he hoped and dreaded to see-himself as he had been, generous or greedy, blindly loyal or a betrayer. The past was closing in. Only another fact, a smell, a sound, and he would be face-to-face with it at last.

Who lived in this house now? Was there still a stained-glass window at the top of the stairs, before the flight turned up another story? Was there still a pear tree in the garden, white with spring blossom? There would be a different carpet in the withdrawing room, not red and blue anymore, probably not red curtains either.

Suddenly, with a jolt of clarity, he remembered perfectly sitting at the dining room table. The curtains were blue all along the row of windows opposite him. The chandeliers were blazing with candles, reflecting on the silver cutlery and the white linen below. He could see the patterns on the handles as if he held one right now, ornate, with a
D
engraved in the center. There were fish knives as well, a new invention. Before that people had eaten fish with two forks. Mrs. Dundas was extraordinarily pleased with them. He could see her face, calm and happy. She had been wearing a sort of plum color; it complimented her rather sallow skin. She was not beautiful, but there was a dignity and an individuality about her he had always liked. But it was her voice that pleased most, low and a little husky, especially when she laughed. There was pure joy in it.

There had been a dozen people around the table, all perfectly dressed, jewels glittering, faces smooth and happy, Arrol Dundas at the head, presiding over the good fellowship.

There had been money, plenty of it.

Had it been the product of fraud? Had all that elegance and charm been bought at the expense of other people’s loss? It was a thought so ugly he was surprised he could entertain it without it leaving him with a raw wound. And yet it did not. Perhaps he was too anesthetized by Katrina’s death and the snatched memories and imagination of the crash to be capable of still more hurt.

He leaned and tapped hard to get the cabbie’s attention.

“Thank you. Take me back to the records office, please,” he instructed him.

“Yes, sir. Right.” The cabbie had had his fair share of eccentrics, and it made no difference to him, as long as they paid. He flicked the whip lightly and the horse moved forward, glad to stand no longer in the sharp sunlight. The overnight frost had not yet melted on the cobbles in the shade.

Had the house been Dundas’s, or merely rented? Monk had followed enough other people’s affairs to know that all kinds of men lived on credit, sometimes the last ones you would expect. He remembered Mrs. Dundas somewhere quite different when she had told him of her husband’s death. Had she left this beautiful place for financial reasons, or because she could no longer bear to live so close to her old friends after her husband was disgraced? There would be no invitations anymore, no calls, no conversations in the street. Anyone might choose to move-he would have!

Dundas must have left a will. And there would be records somewhere of the house’s being sold, with the date.

It took him till the middle of the afternoon to trace what he was looking for. It left him puzzled and acutely aware of a mystery he should already have solved, but if he had there was nothing of it left in his memory. The house had been sold before Dundas’s death. In fact, by then his estate had been worth no more than the new, very modest house in which his widow had lived, and a very small annuity, sufficient only to keep her in the necessities, and even to do that she would have had to spend with care.

What startled him, and left him with shaking hands and a tightness in his chest, was that the name of the executor of the will was William Monk.

He stood in front of the shelf with the book open in front of him, and leaned over it, his legs weak.

What had happened to the money from the sale of the house? The court had not taken it. The profit from the sale of land which had been charged as fraud was still to be realized. Dundas had owned the house for twelve years. There was no shadow or taint upon his purchase of that.

So where had it gone? He looked again, and again, but search as he might, he could find no record of it. If he had handled it himself, and it seemed that Dundas had trusted him to do just that, then he had concealed all trace of it. Why? Surely the only reason a man hid his dealings with money was because they were dishonest?

It had been a fortune! If he had taken it himself, then he would have been an extremely rich man. Surely that was not something he could have forgotten? When he joined the police he had owned nothing but the clothes he stood up in-and a few others besides. Clothes-Dundas had taught him to dress well, very well, and he had never lost the taste for it.

Glimpses of memory returned of fittings at tailors, Dundas leaning back elegantly and giving instructions, a lift here, an inch in or out there, a little longer in the legs.
Yes-that’s right! This cut of shirt is best, Egyptian cotton, that is how to tie a cravat. Smart but vulgar-don’t ever wear one like that! Understated, always understated. A gentleman does not need to draw attention to himself. Discreet but expensive. Quality tells in the long run.

Monk found himself smiling, against his will, a lump in his throat so high and hard it stopped him from swallowing.

The legacy was still with him; he spent too much on clothes even now.

What had happened to the money?

What had Mrs. Dundas bequeathed at the time of her death?

That too was easily discovered when he found her will: very little indeed. The annuity died with her. The house was worth a small amount, but some of that went to settle outstanding debts. She had lived to the meager limits of her income.

If he had been Dundas’s executor, had he disposed of the money somehow? Where? To whom? Above all, why? That question beat in his mind at every turn like the scrape of leather on a bleeding blister.

He drank hot coffee and was too tense to eat.

What did it have to do with Baltimore? Perhaps the affairs of Baltimore and Sons would give him some of the answers or lead him to another avenue to follow in his search.

It took him until the next day to find someone both willing and able to discuss the subject with him: Mr. Carborough, who made a study of the finances of such businesses with a view to investment in them for himself.

“Good company,” he said enthusiastically, waving a pencil in the air. “Small, but good. Made a nice profit from the land deals, not excessive, and better, of course, from the railways themselves. Headquarters in London now, I believe. Building another nice line to Derby.”

They were sitting in Carborough’s office overlooking a narrow, busy street down near the docks. The smell of salt drifted up to the half-open window, and the shouts and clangs of traffic, winches and bales being loaded and unloaded.

“What about Dundas and the land fraud?” Monk asked, keeping his voice casual, as if it were of no personal interest to him.

Carborough curled his lip. “Stupid to get caught in something as trivial as that,” he said, shaking his head. “Never understood it myself. He was brilliant. One of the best merchant bankers in the city, if not the best. Then he goes and does a foolish thing like changing the grid reference on a survey so they move the course of the track onto his own land, and he makes… what?” He shrugged. “A thousand pounds at most. Hardly as if he needed it. And at the time he did it, he’d have expected to get an interest in whatever the company made on the new brakes. He found the money to develop them.”

“What new brakes?” Monk said quickly.

Carborough opened his eyes wide.

“Oh… they invented their own system of braking for carriages and goods wagons. Quite a bit cheaper than the standard ones used now. Would have cleaned up a fortune. Don’t know what happened there. They never followed through with it.”

“Why not?” he asked. The same flicker of memory woke in Monk and died in the same instant.

“Don’t know that, Mr. Monk,” Carborough replied. “After Dundas’s trial everything seemed to stop for a while. Then he died, you know?” He put the pencil down next to his pad, making it perfectly level. “In prison, poor devil. Maybe the shock of it all was too much. Anyway, after that they concentrated on new lines. Seemed to forget all about brakes. Built their own wagons and so on. Did pretty well out of it. As I said, moved down to London.”

Monk asked him more questions, but Carborough knew nothing about Dundas personally and had not heard Monk’s name before that he recalled.

Neither was there any sign of the money that Dundas must have received for his house. It had vanished as completely as if the treasury notes it was paid in had been burned.

The next step was to pursue the Reverend William Colman, who had given such telling evidence against Dundas. It might be an unpleasant encounter, since Colman would certainly remember Monk from the trial. He would be the first person Monk had spoken to who had known him from that time. Dundas and his wife were both dead, and so was Nolan Baltimore. Monk would be coming face-to-face with the reality of who he had been, and finally there would be no escape from whatever Colman remembered of him.

Had he hated the man then, for his evidence? Had he been offensive to him, tried to discredit him? Had Colman even believed him equally guilty with Dundas, but simply been unable to prove it?

Colman was still in the ministry, and it was not a difficult matter to find him in Crockford’s, the registry of Anglican priests. By late afternoon Monk was walking up the short path to the vicarage door in a village on the outskirts of Liverpool. He was aware of a fluttering in his stomach and that his hands were clammy and aching from the frequency with which he was clenching them. Deliberately, he forced himself to relax, and pulled the bell knob.

The door opened surprisingly quickly and a tall man in slightly crumpled clothes and a clerical collar stood staring at him expectantly. He was lean with gray hair and a vigorous, intelligent face. Monk knew with a thrill of memory so sharp it caught his breath that this was Colman-the face he had seen sketched with the protesters against the railway. Immeasurably more vivid than that, it was the face he had seen in his dreams, and desperate, fighting through the wreckage of the burning train.

In that same instant Colman recognized him, his jaw momentarily slack with amazement.

“Monk?” He stared more closely. “It is Monk, isn’t it?”

Monk kept his voice steady with difficulty. “Yes, Mr. Colman. I would appreciate it if you could spare me a little of your time.”

Colman hesitated only a moment, then he swung the door wide. “Come in. What can I do for you?”

Monk had already decided that the only way to achieve what he needed was for the complete truth to come out, if indeed it was possible at all. The truth necessarily involved being honest about his loss of memory, and that bits and pieces were now coming back.

Colman led the way to the room in which he received parishioners and invited him to be seated. He regarded Monk with curiosity, which was most natural. He had not seen him in sixteen years. He must be looking at the changes in him, the character more deeply etched in his face, the tiny differences in texture of skin, the way the lean flesh clothed the bones.

Monk was acutely aware of Colman’s personality and the force of emotion he had felt in him before-nothing had diminished it. The grief was all still there, the memory of burying the dead, of trying to scrape together some kind of comfort for stricken families.

Colman was waiting.

Monk began. It was difficult, and his voice stumbled as he summarized the years between then and now, ending with the story of Baltimore and Sons and the new railway.

As Colman listened the guardedness was there in his face, the echoes of old anger and shattering grief. They had been on opposite sides of the issue then, and it was clear in his expression, in his careful eyes and slightly pinched lips, and above all in the tightness in his body as he sat, one leg still crossed over the other. His fists were closed, his muscles rigid. They were opponents still. That would never be forgotten.