The judge commanded silence in the growing swell of fury within the room, but it was several long seconds before he received it, so intense was the wave of emotion in the room. He nodded to Rathbone to continue.
“And that very night when she was taken by two other prostitutes to Coldbath Square to have her own injuries treated,” Rathbone resumed, facing the jury now, “who should be the nurse who helped her, but the wife of the man who was, in her mind, the author of her grief, all the injustices against her from childhood? She heard the name of Mrs. Monk, and the description both of Monk’s appearance and his nature, and his new occupation. I believe from that moment on she began to plan a terrible revenge.”
A hideous, unbelievable thought danced at the edge of Hester’s mind.
Fowler stood up, but did not know what to say. No one was listening to him anyway.
Hester could think only of Monk. Dalgarno, the jury, even Rathbone, melted from her vision. Monk was sitting motionless, his eyes wide and hollow, his skin bleached of every vestige of color. Margaret had moved closer to him, but she had no idea what to do to offer any word or gesture.
“Katrina Harcus had nothing left,” Rathbone said quietly, but in the now total silence every word was clear. “Her mother was dead, the man she loved had deserted her, and she had no hope of ever winning him back because there was, only too obviously, nothing to win. He was incapable of love or even of honor. She was in debt beyond her means ever to repay, and she had sold her body to a particularly degraded form of prostitution from which she may well have felt she would never again be clean. And now she was also guilty of a man’s death. She was wise enough in the ways of the world to know that society would see it as murder, regardless of the provocation she endured, or that she may not have intended him to die. It would be only a matter of time before the police found her, and she would live in fear of it for the rest of her life.”
He spread his hands. “The one thing left for her was revenge. And fate handed her the perfect opportunity for that when she found Mrs. Monk in Coldbath Square. She knew all about the original fraud in Liverpool for which her father, Arrol Dundas, was convicted. She created the impression of another fraud almost exactly like it, knowing that Monk would not be able to resist the temptation to investigate it. The likelihood of his recognizing her was remote. She had been a child of eight when he had last seen her, if indeed he saw her at all.”
He looked from the judge to the jury. “She took good care that they met in public, where they would be observed by impartial witnesses. She may have made certain Monk would be there at her house in Cuthbert Street that night. We can call Mr. Monk to the stand to testify of that, if necessary.” He drew in a deep breath and faced the judge again. “That, my lord, is the purpose of Mr. Garstang’s so very exact testimony. He saw her face as she fell. Inspector Runcorn described her on the ground, on her side… not her back. No one saw two distinct figures, and the cloak was left on the roof, my lord, because she was not thrown or pushed off-she jumped!”
He was momentarily prevented from continuing by the uproar of amazement, disbelief and horror that engulfed the room. But it faded quickly as the terrible truth sank into understanding, and then belief.
When he resumed, his voice fell into utter silence.
“My lord, Michael Dalgarno is innocent of murder, because there was no murder… at least not of Katrina Harcus when she went off the roof of her house and plunged to her death. As for the night she killed Nolan Baltimore, we shall-”
He was prevented from saying whatever he had intended by Livia, now lurching to her feet, her face gray.
“That’s not true!” she screamed. “That’s a wicked thing to say! It’s a lie!” Her voice choked in a sob. “An evil… terrible thing to say! My father…” She lashed her arms left and right as if fighting her way through some physical obstacle. “My father would never have done anything like that! It’s… it’s filthy! It’s disgusting! I saw those women- they were…” The tears were streaming down her face. “They were broken, bleeding… whoever did that was monstrous!”
Rathbone looked wretched. He struggled for something, anything, to say to ease her grief, but there was nothing left.
“That can’t be how he died!” Livia went on, turning from Rathbone to the judge. “He quarreled dreadfully with Michael and Jarvis that night!” she said desperately. “It was over the railway again, the huge order we have for the new brakes they’ve invented. Michael and Jarvis did it together, and Papa only found out that night, my lord! He flew into a terrible rage and said they’d ruin the company, because years ago Mr. Monk had forced him to sign a letter promising he would never manufacture the brakes again. He’d paid a fortune to silence somebody, but the price was that nobody would ever use them…”
Monk shot to his feet. “Where’s Jarvis Baltimore?” he shouted at Livia. “Where is he?”
She stared at him. “The train,” she said chokingly. “The inaugural run.”
Monk said something to Margaret, then looked at Hester once where she still stood in the witness-box, then he scrambled past the people next to him and ran up the aisle and out of the door.
The judge looked at Rathbone. “Do you understand, Sir Oliver?”
“No, my lord.” He turned to the witness-box. “Hester?”
“The rail crash sixteen years ago,” she answered. “I think… I think he knows what caused it now.” She looked at Livia. “I’m sorry… I wouldn’t have told you. I wish you hadn’t had to know. Most people get to keep their secrets.”
Livia stood for a moment, the tears running down her cheeks, then slowly she sank to her seat and buried her face in her hands.
“I’m so sorry…” Hester said again. She hated Nolan Baltimore as much for what he had done to his own family as for the injury to Katrina and Alice and Fanny, and the other women like them. They might recover. She did not know if Livia would.
Rathbone looked at Dalgarno, white and bitter in the dock, then to the judge. “My lord, I move that the charges against the accused be dropped. Katrina Harcus was not murdered. She took her own life in a desperate attempt to achieve the only thing she believed was left to her-revenge.”
The judge looked at Fowler.
Fowler swiveled around to stare at the jury, then back at the judge. “I concede,” he said with a shrug. “God help her…”
Outside the courtroom the street was almost empty, and it took Monk only five minutes to find a hansom and scramble in, shouting to the driver to take him to Euston Station as fast as the horse would go. An extra pound was in it for him if he made the inaugural train on the new line to Derby. Monk would willingly have given him more, but he had nothing else to spare. He must keep what he had in case he had to bribe his way onto the train.
The cabbie took him at his word, and with a yell of encouragement at the horse, and a long flick of the whip practically between its ears, set off as if on a racetrack.
It was a hair-raising journey with several close shaves where they missed other vehicles by inches, and more than once pedestrians leaped for their lives, some hurling abuse as they went. The cab pulled into the station and lurched to a stop. Monk thrust the money at the driver because he felt the man deserved it whether they had made the train or not, and sprinted to the platform.
Actually he was there with more than five minutes in hand. He straightened his jacket, ran his hand over his hair, and sauntered up to the door of the rearmost carriage as if he had every right to be there.
Without glancing around to see if he had been observed, which could have given away his lack of invitation, he pulled the handle, swung the door wide, and climbed in.
The inside of the carriage was beautifully furnished. It was a long train, but only first- and second-class. This was second, and still of a luxury to be admired. No doubt Jarvis Baltimore would be in the first-class. Since his father’s death this was his train, his entire enterprise. He would be busy talking to all the various dignitaries making this journey, boasting to them of the new track, the new carriages, and perhaps of the new braking system with its fatal weakness. Although presumably he did not know the full truth of that.
There would be several stops along the route. Monk would make his way forward on each of them until he found Jarvis.
He nodded to the other people in his compartment, then sat down on one of the polished wooden seats.
There was a jolt. Somewhere ahead the whistle blew and the carriage jerked forward, and again, then settled into gathering momentum. Billows of steam drifted past the windows. There were shouts from outside and cries of excitement and triumph from the other compartments, and through the open windows of the carriages ahead someone called out a toast and yelled “Hooray!”
Monk settled in for the journey, expecting the best part of an hour to elapse before he had an opportunity to
