William Monk 13 - Death of a Stranger

mouth, but the compulsion within him was greater than any whispered caution in his mind.
    She relaxed, and for the first time since she had entered the room, she smiled. Her smile was dazzling, intensely alive, making her face almost beautiful. She rose to her feet.
    “Thank you, Mr. Monk. There is nothing you could say that would make me happier. I feel confident that you will do everything I hope. Indeed, you are all I had believed of you.”
    She was waiting for the papers. Could he keep the one with his own name on it? No. She was watching him. There was no possibility.
    She took them from his hand and replaced them in her bag, then from her purse she carefully took out five sovereigns and offered them to him. “Will this suffice as a retainer for your services?”
    His lips were dry. “Certainly. Where may I reach you to report anything I find, Miss Harcus?”
    The gravity returned to her face. “I have to practice the utmost discretion. It is important that Mr. Dalgarno, and indeed the Baltimore family, have no idea whatsoever of my concern, as I am sure you will appreciate.”
    “Of course.”
    “I do not know whom I may trust, or who among my friends would feel a divided loyalty if they were aware of my fears. Therefore I think it would be prudent of me to place no one at all under that burden. I will be in the Royal Botanic Society Gardens in the afternoon at two o’clock, from the day after tomorrow until I see you.” She smiled very slightly. “It is no inconvenience to me. I have always had a fondness for plants and my presence will not cause any surprise. Thank you, Mr. Monk. Good day.”
    “Good day, Miss Harcus. I will be there as soon as I have anything to tell you.”
    He sat for a little while after she had gone, reading and rereading his notes. Apart from the order signed by himself, the others made excellent sense. It was all exactly what he would have expected. Obviously they were only samples of a very much larger quantity which would stretch over years of activity. But would anyone be blatant enough to alter or corrupt receipts so that someone looking at them could see a discrepancy? Surely the differences would lie between the paper and the reality. For that he would have to go to Derbyshire and look at the track itself.
    If, on the other hand, as seemed far more likely, the fraud lay in the purchase of land, if he went to the appropriate offices in Derbyshire, he would be able to find the original copies of the survey and begin to trace the ownership, the transfer of money, and anything else that was relevant.
    When Hester came home at nearly eleven, exhausted and frightened by the events of the night, he was relieved to see her. She was later than usual and he had become anxious. He made an effort to put everything to do with railways out of his mind, even the fact that his own name had been on one of the orders. She had been up all night, and obviously wished to speak to him about something so urgently she barely waited until she had sat down.
    “No, thank you,” she replied to his offer of tea. “William, there is most despicable business going on in Coldbath.” And she proceeded to tell him about the young women who had been lent money and required to pay it back at extortionate rates of interest by prostituting themselves for the particular tastes of men who liked women of good family. “It is their pleasure to humiliate them in a way that using an ordinary woman of the streets could never do,” she said furiously. “How can we fight it?” She stared at him with anger burning in her eyes and her cheeks flushing.
    “I don’t know,” he replied honestly, feeling guilty as he said it. “Hester, women have been exploited like that for as long as anyone knows. I don’t know how to help it, except now and then in individual cases.”
    She would not accept defeat. She sat on the edge of her seat, her back rigid, her body stiff. “There has to be something!”
    “No . . . there doesn’t have to be,” he corrected her. “Not this side of God’s justice. But if there is, and you can find it, I’ll help you all I can. In the meantime I have a new case, possibly to do with fraud in the building of railways . . .” He saw the look of impatience in her face. “No, it’s not just money!” he said quickly. “If a railway track is built on land that is fraudulently obtained, or there is an unjust profit, that is illegal and immoral, but what if it is built on land that