Death Of A Stranger

Dear Emma,

I promised to tell you all I learned, so I must keep my word, even though it is extremely painful for me to acknowledge such a mistake. I have discovered papers to do with the original fraud in Liverpool, and it now seems incontrovertible that Mr. Monk, whom I had trusted profoundly, was actually involved in that terrible affair himself. I found an old receipt among the Baltimore papers, and it was signed by him!

Upon further investigation, I learned that he once worked in merchant banking, and was co

I have not confronted him yet, but I believe I must. How else can I behave honorably?

Dear Emma, I wish you were here, so I could counsel with you what to do. I am suddenly deeply afraid.

There was no more written.

Monk stared at it. Who was Emma? Where did she live? There was no address. What else might Katrina have written to her?

He flicked very carefully through the other papers in the first drawer and found bills, an old invitation, and another letter, written in a cramped, sloping backhand:

My dearest Katrina,

It is so good to hear from you, as always, but I confess I do not care for the sound of this man, Monk, whom you have employed, and all you have told me only adds to my foreboding. Please, my dear, be very careful. Do not trust him.

He sca

Runcorn had come in from the balcony. He was holding up a large, slightly crumpled man’s cloak. In the gaslight it appeared to be black.

“What’s that?” Monk asked, moving to shield the papers from Runcorn’s view, and put out his other hand to leaf the pages and mask the sound of the two he was taking out. He folded them quickly and slid them inside his shirt, around the side of his body where movement would not make them crackle.

“It was out there,” Runcorn said with a frown. “Lying on the ground near the edge where she must have gone over.” He looked at it. “It’s too long for her, and anyway it’s not a woman’s.”

Monk was surprised. “That’s a careless thing to do-leave it behind.”

“Must have come off when he struggled with her.” Runcorn wrapped it over, lining to the outside. “Doesn’t have a tailor’s name, but we’ll find out where it comes from and whose it is. Did you find anything?”

“Nothing significant yet,” Monk replied, keeping his voice perfectly level, u

Tell Monk of conversation I overheard which makes me certain that there is a fraud currently at Baltimore and Sons and that I am deeply afraid that Michael Dalgarno is involved. A very great deal of money is to be made shortly, but the matter must be kept completely secret.

The land fraud is basically the same as before-he will see that when he looks carefully enough. Questions to raise-is it cheaper, and therefore illegal profit to be made by diverting the line and somehow stealing the difference from investors? Or is there bribery, either by someone to use their land-or not to use it? There are several possibilities.

Again, Michael has to know of it! His signature is on the wages receipts and on the land purchase orders.

There was nothing more, as if it were written as an aid to her own memory.

Runcorn looked at Monk. “Well?” he demanded. “Are those the papers you looked into?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you found nothing to incriminate this Dalgarno?” Runcorn was skeptical. “Not like you to miss something-’specially if you know all about railways! You’re slipping, aren’t you?” There was only the very faintest trace of the old animosity in his voice, but Monk heard it. He was too sensitive to years of enmity not to know every shade and nuance of a jibe when it was there. He had made enough of his own; more often than not, Runcorn had been the victim.

“There wasn’t any land fraud like the first,” he said defensively.

Runcorn’s eyes widened. “Oh-you found the first, then?”

“Yes, of course I did!” Monk desperately did not want to tell Runcorn about Arrol Dundas or anything to do with his own past with all its secrets and its wounds. “That was land fraud, and this time it looked to be the same, but Dalgarno didn’t buy the land himself, so there was no profit for him when it was sold.”

Runcorn looked at him pensively. “And what was the fraud the first time, exactly?”

“A man bought poor land at a cheap price, then had the railway line diverted to it when it didn’t have to be, and sold the land to the railway company at a much higher price,” Monk replied, hating putting it into words.

“And she thought this was the same, but it wasn’t?” Runcorn concluded.

“That seems so.”

“Then why did this Dalgarno kill her?”

“I don’t know.” It did not occur to Monk that it might not be Dalgarno. She had spoken of him with such a consuming hunger for revenge; only someone she had once loved could have aroused such a fury in her. Strangers could never waken passion so deep.

“Well, I intend to find out,” Runcorn said with scalding heat. “I’ll hunt him down and I’ll drag him all the way to the gallows. I promise you that, Monk!”

“Good. I’ll help you-if I can.”

“Help me look at the rest of this, in case you can explain any of it-to do with railways and so on,” Runcorn said. “Then you can go home, and I’ll go and find Mr. Dalgarno and see what he has to say for himself!”

By quarter past ten Monk was at home in Fitzroy Street again. Hester was sitting by a low fire, but she started up as soon as she heard him at the door. She looked tired and a little pale; her hair was pi

The misery of his own failure was like a gray fog around him. He longed to be able to tell her all of it and allow her to comfort him, to say over and over that it did not matter, that it was not true of him, but only a collision of circumstances.

But even if she said all that, he would not believe her. He was afraid that it was true, and he was even more afraid that she would be denying it out of pity, and loyalty, not because in her heart she could believe it. She would be disappointed, let down. It was not her standard of integrity ever to have done such a thing, or been so dishonest at the core.

It was the past reaching out like a dark hand to pull him back from all he had built, staining the present, stopping him from being the man he tried to be.

But he had to tell her something, and it must be true, if not all the truth.

“I went to see Miss Harcus,” he said, taking off his coat with its torn button. He would have to replace it if he could, or get rid of the coat. “To tell her that I can find no proof that Dalgarno is guilty of anything… in fact, there doesn’t seem to be anything to be guilty of.”

She waited, her face pale, eyes wide.

“She was dead,” he told her. “Someone threw her off the balcony of her apartment. Runcorn was there.”

“William… I’m so sorry…” She meant it; the pity was there in her face-for him, but far more for the woman she had never met. “Do you have any idea who-”