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.
“Nolan Baltimore has been murdered,” Monk stated. He saw Colman’s start of surprise, then a gleam of satisfaction, and immediately afterwards guilt for it, even a flush in his cheeks. But he was in no haste to express the usual regrets. There was an honesty in him which prevented it.
“By a prostitute,” Monk added. “While in the pursuit of somewhat irregular pleasures.”
Disgust was plain in Colman’s eyes.
“And that brings you here?” he said in disbelief.
“Not directly,” Monk replied. “But it does mean we cannot question him about anything to do with what very much appears to be another fraud in Baltimore and Sons, almost exactly like the first.”
Colman sat upright with a jolt. “Another? But Dundas is dead, poor soul. You, of all people, must know that. Surely your memory cannot be so affected… I mean…” He stopped.
Monk rescued him in his embarrassment. “I remember that. But what I don’t recall is how the fraud was discovered… not in detail. You see, it seems this time as if a man named Dalgarno is responsible, only the person who was his main accuser is also dead… murdered.” He saw the pity in Colman’s face, this time unmixed with anything else. “A woman,” Monk continued. “She was betrothed to him, and because of her privileged position as his fiancee, discovered certain things about the business, overheard conversations, saw papers, which made her realize there was something seriously wrong. She brought it to me. I investigated it as far as I was able, but I could find no fraud. A little questionable profiteering, but that’s all.”
“But she was murdered?” Colman interrupted, leaning forward with urgency.
“Yes. And Dalgarno is charged with it. But in order to prove his guilt we need to show the fraud beyond question.”
“I see.” It was clear from his expression that he understood perfectly. “What is it that you want of me?”
“You were the one who first suspected fraud. Why?”
Colman frowned. He was clearly fascinated by the concept of such total loss from the mind of something in which Monk had been passionately involved. “You really remember nothing of it?” His voice thickened with emotion; his body became rigid. “You don’t remember my church? In the valley, with the old trees around it? The graveyard?”
Monk struggled, but nothing came. He was picturing it in his mind, but it was imagination, not memory. He shook his head.
“It was beautiful,” Colman said, his face tender with sorrow. “An old church. The original was Norman, with a crypt underneath where men were buried nearly a thousand years ago. The graveyard was full of old families, over fifteen or twenty generations. It was the history of the land. History is only people, you know.” He stared at Monk intensely, reaching for the man behind the facade, the passions which could be stirred-and wounded-deeper than the analytical brain. “They sent the railway right through the middle of it.”
Now something clicked in Monk’s mind, a bishop mild and reasonable, full of regret, but acknowledging progress and the need for work for men, transport, the moving forward of society. There had been a curate, shy and enthusiastic, wanting to keep the old and bring in the new as well, and refusing to see that to have both was impossible.
And caught between the two of them the Reverend Colman, an enthusiast, a lover of the unbroken chain of history who saw the railways as forces of destruction, shattering the cement of family bonds with the dead, vandalizing the physical monuments that kept the spiritual ties whole. Monk could hear voices raised-shouting, angry and afraid, faces twisted with rage.
But Colman had done more than protest, he had proved crime. Was this it, the elusive memory at last-the proof? Who would it blame-Baltimore, or Monk himself? He cleared his throat. It felt tight, as if he could not breathe.
“They destroyed the church?” he asked aloud.
“Yes. The new line goes right over where it used to be.” Colman did not add anything; the emotion in his voice was sufficient.
“How did you discover the fraud?” Monk forced himself to sound almost normal. He almost had the truth.
“Simple,” Colman replied. “Someone told me he watched rabbits on the hill they said they had to go around because it would be too expensive to tunnel through. He was a parishioner of mine, in trouble for poaching. When I asked where he’d been caught, he told me. Rabbits don’t tunnel in granite, Mr. Monk. Navvies can blast through pretty well anything; solid mountains just take longer, and therefore cost more.
“I found the original survey. When one looked more carefully at the one Baltimore was using, it was falsified. Whoever did it had been too clever to alter the heights or composition-he found a hill that was exactly right somewhere else and altered the grid reference. It was an extremely skilled job.”
Monk asked the question he had to, but he had to clear his throat again to make his voice come. “Arrol Dundas?”
“It looked like it,” Colman said with regret, as if he would rather it had been someone else.
“Did he ever admit to it?”
“No. Nor did he blame anyone else, but I think that was more a matter of dignity, even morality, than because he had no idea who it might have been.”
It was a moment before Monk realized the full meaning of what Colman had said. He had begun his own next question, and stopped in the middle of the sentence.
“You mean you doubted Dundas was guilty?” he said incredulously.
Colman blinked. “You always maintained he wasn’t. Even after the verdict, you swore he was not the one who had changed the survey, and that his profit was through good speculation but not dishonesty. He simply bought low and sold high.”
Monk was confused. “Then who forged the survey references? Baltimore? Why would he? He didn’t have any
