William Monk 13 - Death of a Stranger

now they’d be questioning you on Dundas’s money! Or is that what you’re doing? Attempting to escape!” His face hardened. “Well, I’m damned if I’ll help you. My father told me on the night of his death how you tried to put him out of business. What was that for? Revenge because he exposed Dundas?”
    “I tried to save hundreds of lives—without putting you out of business!” Monk said between his teeth. He kept his grasp on Baltimore’s arm. “For God’s sake, just hold your tongue and listen. We haven’t much time. If—”
    “Liar!” Baltimore snarled. “I know you made my father sign a letter that he would never manufacture the brakes again. What did you threaten him with? He’s not an easy man to frighten . . . what did you do to him?” He snatched his arm away from Monk’s grip. “Well, you won’t frighten me. I’ll see you in jail first.”
    “Why do you think your father agreed to it?” Monk demanded, containing his temper with intense difficulty as he stared at Baltimore’s arrogant, angry face, and felt the train sway and jolt beneath them as it gathered speed, hurtling towards the long incline, and the viaduct beyond. “Just because I asked him?”
    “I don’t know,” Baltimore replied. “But I won’t give in to you!”
    “Your father never did favors for anyone,” Monk said between his teeth. “He stopped manufacturing the brakes after the Liverpool crash because I paid to have the enquiry return a verdict of human error, not to ruin the company . . . but on condition he signed that letter never to make them anymore.” He startled himself with the clarity with which he remembered standing in Nolan Baltimore’s magnificent office with its views of the Mersey River, and seeing Baltimore sit at his desk, his face red, his head shaking with shock and fury as he wrote the letter Monk dictated, and then signed it. The sunlight had been streaming across the floor, picking out the worn patches on the lush, green carpet. The books on the shelves were leather bound, the wood of the desk polished walnut. This was the piece at last! This was it! It made sense of it all.
    Now Jarvis Baltimore stared at him, his eyes round and wide, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. He gulped and tried to clear his throat. “What . . . what are you saying? That the Liverpool crash . . .” He stopped, unable to put it into words.
    “Yes,” Monk said harshly; there was no time to spare anyone’s feelings. “The crash was due to your brakes failing. There were two hundred children on that excursion train!” He saw the blood drain from Baltimore’s skin, leaving it pasty white. “And there must be a hundred people on this one. Order the driver to stop while you still can.”
    “What money?” Baltimore argued, struggling to deny it, shaking his head. “How would you get enough money to silence an enquiry? That’s absurd. You’re trying . . . I don’t know why—to cover yourself! You stole Dundas’s money. You had charge of it all! You didn’t even leave anything for his widow—damn you!”
    “Dundas’s money!” Monk tried not to shout at him. They were both swaying back and forth now. The train was gathering speed fast. “He agreed to it. You don’t think I would have touched it otherwise, do you? The man was in jail, not dead. I gave them all there was, apart from the little bit for her, but hell—it wasn’t much! It took almost everything there was to make them keep silent on the truth.”
    Baltimore was still fighting it. “Dundas was a fraudster. He’d already cheated the company of—”
    “No, he wasn’t!” The truth was there at last, bright and sharp as daylight breaking. “He was innocent! He warned your father that they hadn’t tested the brakes well enough, but nobody listened to him. He had no proof, but he would have got it, only they framed him for fraud, and after that nobody believed anything he said. He told me . . . but there was nothing I could do either. It was only his word, and by then he was branded.”
    Baltimore shook his head, but the denial died on his lips.
    “It took all the money I could scrape together,” Monk went on. “But it saved the company’s reputation. And your father swore he’d tar Dundas with the same brush if I didn’t succeed. We couldn’t sue the driver. Better he be blamed than everyone put out of work. We took care of his family.” He felt a stab of shame. “But that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t