William Monk 13 - Death of a Stranger

became suddenly very solemn also. “I heard that, although it was extraordinary. He was an excellent banker, quite brilliant. But you can’t have forgotten that, surely?”
    “I had. But not now. Where did the money go?”
    Colman stared at Monk somberly.
    “I have no idea. No one had. And shortly after that the crash put all such things out of everyone’s thoughts.” Suddenly his face was pinched and the color went from his cheeks again. “It was the closest thing to hell I think this life could offer. I shall remember the screams as long as I live. The smell of burnt hair still brings me out in a sweat and I feel sick. But you know that. You were there.”
    He looked ill. Monk lowered his eyes. He knew what Colman meant. He had tasted something of it in his own nightmare. It was strange, an almost irrelevant reality, to hear Colman say that Monk had been there; he knew it far more urgently and terribly from the nightmare of his hidden mind.
    “What caused it?” he said aloud.
    Colman looked up slowly. “They never found out. But it wasn’t the new track. That was perfectly good. At least . . . as far as anyone could tell.” The last vestige of blood drained out of his face and his body stiffened. “Oh, no! You don’t think it’s going to happen again? Please God—no! Is that what you’re afraid of?”
    “It is what Katrina Harcus was afraid of,” Monk replied. “But I’ve searched everything I can; I’ve walked the track myself and I can’t see anything wrong with it at all. Tell me, Mr. Colman—how can I prove this fraud? It’s happened again—and I still can’t see it!”
    Colman looked at him with intense pity. “I don’t know. Do you think if I did I would have stayed silent all these years? Whoever it hurt, I would have spoken. I simply don’t know!”
    Monk stared at him helplessly, his mind caught like a runner through the breaking surf, feeling the tide drag at his feet, taking away his balance, and still no sense came out of it.
    “Look for the bribe,” Colman urged. “That’s all it can be.”
    Monk did not argue as to whether there had been a bribe or not. Colman had long ago made up his mind. He stayed a little longer, then thanked Colman and left, walking more easily, with lighter feet. One old enmity had been exorcised. Now he would not dread seeing Colman’s face in his dreams.
    But he had not found that one fact which he was convinced would let him unravel all the others from the fast-tied knot of his memory. There was something which he dared not bring back because of the pain, and yet until he knew what it was, and faced it, all the rest was just beyond his reach.
    He had the courage to look at it, and the will in his conscious mind, but that tiny part of him which looked too deep to touch, which knew what it was, still held it just beyond his reach.
    Was it defying him . . . or protecting him?
    * * *

    He went back to London through Derby, checking once more on the original route, before the alteration, and seeing exactly whose land it had crossed. There was a large and wealthy farm it would have cut in half, making it impossible to have taken cattle from one side to the other, effectively ruining the unity of it.
    It would also have sliced through a spinney of trees, one of the best in the area for drawing a fox, a favorite place of the local hunt. Would it have needed bribery to divert the track a mile or two through unused land? On the whole, he thought not. It seemed the obvious thing to do. Not to would have been an act of vandalism, and earned a dangerous enmity among the people of the nearest town.
    Was any of this really a crime? Was it even a sin worth caring about more than with a passing regret?
    Michael Dalgarno was a worthless man in his relationship with Katrina. He had taken her love while it suited him, and then cast her aside when a financially better prospect had presented itself in Livia Baltimore. But that was not a crime either . . . a sin certainly, but one many men were guilty of. As men had married for beauty, so many an empty woman had married for wealth.
    None of that was motive for Dalgarno to have murdered Katrina.
    To conceal fraud was, certainly, but where was the fraud? None that Monk could prove. It was all only suggestion and suspicion. Monk remembered the letter with his own name in it that he had removed from Katrina’s. His hand stung as if it had burnt him. Had he left it there, it would be he that Runcorn was after now, and