dark with outrage, above a clerical collar. Then it was gone. “Yes, of course,” he said quickly. He did not want the man to tell him more about it. The memory was unpleasant, touched with guilt.
“O’ course they protest.” The clerk shrugged his shoulders. “All kinds of ’em out by the score. Talk about Mammon an’ the devil, an’ ruin of the land, an’ so on.” He scratched his head. “ ’Ave ter say I wouldn’t take kindly if it were me mam an’ dad ’oo’s gravestones were took up, an’ they was left ter lie under the tracks o’ the five forty- five from Paddington, or whatever. I reckon I’d be out there wi’ placards in me ’and an’ threatenin’ ’ellfire on the profiteers as did it.”
“Has anybody ever done more than threaten?” Monk had to ask. If he did not, the question would remain in his mind, written across everything else until he found the answer. “Anyone ever sabotage a line?”
The clerk’s eyebrows rose almost halfway up his forehead. “Yer mean blow up a train? Gawd! I ’ope not!” He bit his lip. “Come ter think on it, though, there’ve bin a few nasty crashes, one or two of ’em nobody knows for sure ’ow they ’appened. Usually blame the driver or the brakeman. There was a real bad one up Liverpool way about sixteen years ago, an’ that was one as’ad a church removed, an’ the vicar was right cut up about it.” He stared at Monk with increasing horror. “Terrible one, that was. I was still livin’ at ’ome, an’ I can remember me dad comin’ inter the parlor, ’is face white as the tablecloth, an’ no newspaper in ’is ’and. It was a Sunday dinnertime. We’d bin ter church so we’adn’t seen the early papers.”
“ ’W’ere’s the papers, George?’ me mam asked’im.
“ ’We in’t gettin’ no papers terday, Lizzie,’ ’e answered ’er.
“ ’Nor you neither, Robert,’ ’e adds ter me.
“ ’There’s bin a terrible crash up Liverpool way. Near an ’undred people killed, an’ only God in ’Is ’eaven knows ’ow many injured. I’m a’tellin’ yer because yer’ll ’ear it any road, but don’ go lookin’ at no paper. There’s things in there yer don’ wanna know. Pictures they drawed yer don’ wanna see.’ That was ter protect me mam, o’ course.”
“But you looked?” Monk said, knowing the answer.
“O’ course!” The clerk’s face was pale at the memory. “An’ I wished I’adn’t. Wot me dad never said, fer me mam’s sake, was that a coal train’ad ’it a load o’ children on an ’oliday outing, one o’ them excursion trains. They was all comin’ ’ome from a day at the seaside, poor little beggars.” His mouth was tight with grief and he blinked away the vision even now, as if he could see the artist’s impressions back in front of him with all their horror and pain, the mangled bodies in the wreckage, rescuers trying desperately to reach them while there was still time, driven to try, and terrified of what they would find.
Was that what waited buried at the back of Monk’s mind, like a plague pit, waiting to be opened? What kind of a man was he that he could have had any part-even any knowledge-of a thing like that and forgotten it? Why, if he’d had no part in it, did it not stay an innocent grief such as this man felt?
What had he done then? Who had he been before that night nearly seven years ago when in an instant he had been obliterated and re-created again, washed clean in his mind but in his body still the same person, still responsible?
Was there anything on earth as important as learning that? Or as terrible?
“What caused the crash?” He heard his own voice as if from far away, a stranger speaking in the silence.
“Dunno,” the clerk said softly. “They never found out. Blamed the driver and the brakemen, like I said. That’s the easiest, seein’ as they were dead an’ couldn’t say nothin’ diff’rent. Coulda’ bin them. ’Oo knows?”
“Who laid the tracks?”
“Dunno, sir, but they was perfick. Bin used ever since, an’ nothin’ else’s ever ’appened.”
“Where was it exactly?”
“Can’t remember, sir. It wasn’t the only rail crash, o’ course. I just remember ’cos it were the worst… it bein’ children, like.”
“Something caused it,” Monk insisted. “Trains don’t crash for no reason.” He longed to be told it was human error for certain, nothing to do with the planning or building of the line, but without proof he could not believe it. Arrol Dundas had been tried and sent to prison. The jury had believed him guilty of fraud. Why? What fraud? Monk knew nothing about it now, but what had he known then? Could he have saved Dundas if he had been prepared to admit his own part? That was the fear that crowded in on him from all sides like the oncoming of night, threatening to snatch back from him all the warmth and the sweetness he had won in the present.
“I dunno,” the clerk insisted. “Nobody knew that, sir. Or if they did, they weren’t tellin’.”
“No… of course not. I’m sorry,” Monk apologized. “Where can I find out about land acquisition and surveying for railways?”
“Best go ter the nearest county town for the track in question,” the clerk replied. “If yer want that old one, go ter Liverpool, I reckon, an’ start from there.”
“Derbyshire? Derby, I suppose.” That was not really a question. He had supplied his own answer. “Thank you.”
“Yer welcome, I’m sure. I ’ope it’s some use to yer,” the clerk said graciously.
“Yes. Yes, thank you.” Monk left the office in something of a daze. Liverpool was what mattered, but if he found out whatever land purchase was concerned in the present Baltimore line, at least he would be familiar with the mechanics of it. Liverpool had waited sixteen years, and he had to report back to Katrina Harcus. If it had been fraud which had somehow caused the first crash, he was morally obliged more than any other man to prevent it from recurring. He could not go off to Liverpool chasing the demons of his memory and allow the whole nightmare to happen again because he was too preoccupied to attend to it.
He went back to Fitzroy Street to collect clean clothes and sufficient money, and to tell Hester where he was going and why. Then he took a hansom to Euston Station, and the next train to Derby.
The journey cost nineteen shillings and threepence and took nearly four hours, with a change at Rugby, which he was glad of. The second-class carriage was divided into three compartments, each less than five feet long and with twelve bare, narrow wooden seats in it. The compartments did not connect, and the partitions were covered with advertising posters. The whole was only five feet high, which meant that Monk had to duck to avoid hitting his head. First-class would have been higher, but also more expensive, and not necessarily any warmer or cleaner- although the louvered windows would have stopped vendors from sticking their heads in at the stations and breathing gin on the occupants!
It was a chilly day, alternate sun and rain, which was usual for late March, and of course there was no heating on the train. The metal foot warmers filled with hot water were restricted to first-class. Still, it was a lot better than the nicknamed “Parliamentary trains,” required to fill Lord Palmerston’s legislation that rail travel should be available to the ordinary people at a penny a mile.
Monk was delighted to get out at Rugby and stretch his legs, use the convenience, and buy a sandwich from one of the peddlers on the platform.
He also bought a newspaper to read on the next part of the journey. Having been in America at the very beginning of the civil war which was raging there, he was interested to see an article on the progress of the Union troops under a Major General Samuel R. Curtis, beginning a campaign in Missouri. According to the latest dispatches, the Confederates, outnumbered, had withdrawn to northwestern Arkansas.
He remembered with a shiver of grief the slaughter he had witnessed in the battle he had been caught up in during the previous summer, the uncontrollable horror he had felt, and Hester’s courage in helping the wounded. His admiration for her had never been more intense, more based in the hideous reality of the broken bodies she tried to save. Everything he had ever thought or felt about her before was seen through different eyes, her anger, her impatience, the cutting edge of some of her words now passionately understood.
He looked at the peaceful countryside through the carriage windows with a sharper gratitude for it, and an upsurging will to protect it, preserve it from violence or indifference.
He was pleased when the train pulled into the station in Derby and he was able to begin his search.
He spent all day in the city records offices looking at every purchase along the entire track from one border of the county to the other until his eyes ached and the pages swam in front of him. But he found nothing illegal. Certainly there were profits made, advantage taken of ignorance, and hundreds of families dispossessed of their homes-although there was also some effort made to find them new houses-and an enormous amount of money had changed hands.
Monk tried to bring back the skills he must have had with figures in his banking days, in order to understand exactly what had happened and where the profit had gone. He pored over the pages, but if there had been any
