Monk licked his lips.
“Disprove it, actually,” he countered.
“And he wanted to cast her aside and marry the Baltimore heiress,” Runcorn went on relentlessly. “That’s more than motive enough.”
Hester was looking silently from one to the other of them.
“Only if we prove the land fraud,” Monk argued. “And Livia Baltimore is probably quite comfortably off, but she’s not an heiress.”
“She will be when Baltimore and Sons sells its railway components to India,” Runcorn answered vehemently. “It will make them all rich, and it will only be the beginning. The money will go on and on.”
Something flickered in Monk’s brain, then vanished.
“What is it?” Runcorn demanded, looking at him more closely.
Monk sat motionless, trying to bring it back, to catch something of it from the edge of his mind, but it was gone. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
Anger flared for an instant in Runcorn’s eyes, then was replaced by understanding. “Well, if you remember, tell me. In the meantime, I’ve got to tie Dalgarno into the fraud better.” His tone of voice had a lift at the end, as if waiting for Monk to complete the thought for him.
“I’ll help,” Monk said immediately. It was a statement. He intended to whether Runcorn agreed or not; it would simply be easier if he did.
Runcorn must have searched the rest of Katrina’s house. Had he found any letters from Emma? There would be a return address on them. Dare he ask? What excuse could he give?
The moment slipped away.
Runcorn gave a wry smile. “Thought you would.” He pulled a sheaf of papers out of his pocket, maybe half a dozen or so, and for an instant Monk felt as if he must have spoken aloud. “Got these from Miss Harcus’s rooms.” Runcorn looked at him, all shadow of even the most bitter humor gone from his eyes. “They’re order forms and receipts from Baltimore and Sons. She really suspected him. She must have gone to a lot of trouble, and risk, to take these. She was a brave woman with a passionate love of honesty.” He held the papers high in his hand. “No matter how much she loved him, she wasn’t going to protect him from fraud. Even though when she started out suspecting, she was still betrothed to him, so in time she would have shared with him whatever he got out of it.” He shook his head very slowly. “Why are people such fools, Monk? Why did he want dishonest money more than a really fine woman? Not as if she wasn’t handsome as well, and young.”
“Precisely because she was honest, I expect,” Hester replied for him. “She loved him in spite of what he was, not because of it. Maybe his pride couldn’t live with that. He wants admiration.”
“Then he’d have to have been a saint,” Runcorn said in disgust. “As it is, he’ll swing for her. Sorry, Mrs. Monk, but he will.” He held the papers out to Monk. “Here, take these and see if you can find anything. I’m going to follow the Baltimore money and see just how much of it ends up with Dalgarno, either now or if he marries Miss Baltimore.” He turned to Hester. “Thank you for the tea. I apologize for disturbing you.”
She smiled and rose to see him to the door.
Monk stood in the center of the room with his hands clenched and shaking, the papers crumpled by the power of his grip.
Monk read very carefully through everything Runcorn had left with him. There were no letters to implicate Dalgarno in anything but the desire to make as large a profit as possible, and that was common to all businessmen. There was nothing illegal, nothing even underhanded. All they showed was that Dalgarno was involved in every aspect of the survey, bargaining for and purchasing the land. But that was part of his duty. Jarvis Baltimore had apparently dealt with the purchase of timber, steel and other necessary materials for the track itself, and Nolan Baltimore had overseen the whole enterprise and concerned himself with the government and the competition. The fiercest rivalry between railway companies lay in the great days of expansion, a generation or so before, but it still required knowledge now, ability and the right connections, to achieve any success.
The one thing that impressed itself upon Monk as he looked over the papers a third time, reading the principal pieces aloud to Hester, was that the amounts of profit were not undue.
“The Baltimores must be comfortably off,” she observed. “But it is not really a fortune.”
“No,” he agreed wryly. “Not by railway standards, I suppose.”
Memory teased him that Dundas had been accused of defrauding for much larger profits than anything written here. It was only glimpses so brief they were gone again before he could understand them. They might have no connection with the present issue, but something in them could be the key, the one element still missing. And there was something that would tie them all together and make sense of them, but it floated always just beyond his reach, melting into shapelessness one moment, on the verge of identity the next. He grasped for it, and it melted into fear without meaning.
But there was another fear with very precise shape-Emma, to whom Katrina had written so frankly and in whom she had confided that she did not trust Monk. Who was she, and why had she not come forward? Someone would tell her Katrina had been murdered, friends, gossips, even possibly some lawyer with whom Katrina had entrusted her affairs. From his brief sight of her rooms, and the clothes she had worn to meet him, she was not without means.
If they corresponded with such candor then they were close, wrote frequently. There would surely be some note among Katrina’s papers-of her address, or at least something from which he could deduce where she lived.
She might even know more about Dalgarno than Katrina had told him, something to help Runcorn.
He must go back to her rooms. The question was: would it be wiser to go brazenly in daylight, lie that he had authority, or break in at night and trust to his skill not to be caught? Either way he had no honest explanation. Worst of all could be if he were caught having found Emma’s address, or some further damning letter from her.
But the risk of leaving it was too great, not only if Runcorn found it, but for the first time in his life that he could remember, his nerves were raw enough to betray him, to Hester at least, and it was she who mattered, even above the law.
He did not know if it was the braver of the two ways or not, but he chose to go by daylight. He would have a better chance of bluffing his way if he was questioned, and it was quicker. He wanted it over with. The waiting was almost as hard as the preparation and the doing.
He found no one on duty at the door of Katrina’s building, but there was a beat constable twenty yards away. He hesitated. Should he wait until the man moved on, then try to sneak in, and if he was caught think of some excuse for not being honest? Or would it be better to go up to him boldly, lie about having thought of something useful and having Runcorn’s permission to search? Implicitly he did have. Runcorn wanted him to prove Dalgarno’s guilt.
There were only two choices; the latter had dangers, but it was the better of the two. He forced the consequences out of his mind. Fear would show in his face, and if the constable was very good he would see it. He walked firmly up to the constable and stopped in front of him.
“Good morning, Constable,” he said with a very faint smile, no more than a gesture of civility. “My name is Monk. You may remember me from the night Miss Harcus was killed.” He saw recognition in the man’s face with a wave of relief. “Mr. Runcorn has asked for my assistance, since I knew Miss Harcus and was working on a case for her. I need to go into the house again and make a further search. I do not require your assistance. I am simply informing you so that you are not concerned if you see me there.”
“Right, sir. Thank you,” the constable said with a nod. “If you need me, sir, I’ll be ’ere.”
“Good. I’ll send for you if there’s anything. Good day.” And before the man could sense his tension, he turned and left, going as rapidly as he dared toward the house. He had no keys. He was going to have to fiddle with the lock and pick his way in, but that was an art he had learned from a master in the days before the accident, and the skill had not left him.
He was inside the house within seconds, and retraced his steps up to Katrina’s rooms. It took him even less time to pick the lock on her door, and then he was in the room. The sense of tragedy closed around him, the silence, the very faint film of dust showing on the wooden surfaces in the sunlight through the bay windows. Perhaps to someone else it would simply have looked like the room of someone on holiday; to him the presence of
