William Monk 13 - Death of a Stranger

question would remain in his mind, written across everything else until he found the answer. “Anyone ever sabotage a line?”
    The clerk’s eyebrows rose almost halfway up his forehead. “Yer mean blow up a train? Gawd! I ’ope not!” He bit his lip. “Come ter think on it, though, there’ve bin a few nasty crashes, one or two of ’em nobody knows for sure ’ow they ’appened. Usually blame the driver or the brakeman. There was a real bad one up Liverpool way about sixteen years ago, an’ that was one as’ad a church removed, an’ the vicar was right cut up about it.” He stared at Monk with increasing horror. “Terrible one, that was. I was still livin’ at ’ome, an’ I can remember me dad comin’ inter the parlor, ’is face white as the tablecloth, an’ no newspaper in ’is ’and. It was a Sunday dinnertime. We’d bin ter church so we’adn’t seen the early papers.”
    “ ’W’ere’s the papers, George?’ me mam asked’im.
    “ ’We in’t gettin’ no papers terday, Lizzie,’ ’e answered ’er.
    “ ’Nor you neither, Robert,’ ’e adds ter me.
    “ ’There’s bin a terrible crash up Liverpool way. Near an ’undred people killed, an’ only God in ’Is ’eaven knows ’ow many injured. I’m a’tellin’ yer because yer’ll ’ear it any road, but don’ go lookin’ at no paper. There’s things in there yer don’ wanna know. Pictures they drawed yer don’ wanna see.’ That was ter protect me mam, o’ course.”
    “But you looked?” Monk said, knowing the answer.
    “O’ course!” The clerk’s face was pale at the memory. “An’ I wished I’adn’t. Wot me dad never said, fer me mam’s sake, was that a coal train’ad ’it a load o’ children on an ’oliday outing, one o’ them excursion trains. They was all comin’ ’ome from a day at the seaside, poor little beggars.” His mouth was tight with grief and he blinked away the vision even now, as if he could see the artist’s impressions back in front of him with all their horror and pain, the mangled bodies in the wreckage, rescuers trying desperately to reach them while there was still time, driven to try, and terrified of what they would find.
    Was that what waited buried at the back of Monk’s mind, like a plague pit, waiting to be opened? What kind of a man was he that he could have had any part—even any knowledge—of a thing like that and forgotten it? Why, if he’d had no part in it, did it not stay an innocent grief such as this man felt?
    What had he done then? Who had he been before that night nearly seven years ago when in an instant he had been obliterated and re-created again, washed clean in his mind but in his body still the same person, still responsible?
    Was there anything on earth as important as learning that? Or as terrible?
    “What caused the crash?” He heard his own voice as if from far away, a stranger speaking in the silence.
    “Dunno,” the clerk said softly. “They never found out. Blamed the driver and the brakemen, like I said. That’s the easiest, seein’ as they were dead an’ couldn’t say nothin’ diff’rent. Coulda’ bin them. ’Oo knows?”
    “Who laid the tracks?”
    “Dunno, sir, but they was perfick. Bin used ever since, an’ nothin’ else’s ever ’appened.”
    “Where was it exactly?”
    “Can’t remember, sir. It wasn’t the only rail crash, o’ course. I just remember ’cos it were the worst . . . it bein’ children, like.”
    “Something caused it,” Monk insisted. “Trains don’t crash for no reason.” He longed to be told it was human error for certain, nothing to do with the planning or building of the line, but without proof he could not believe it. Arrol Dundas had been tried and sent to prison. The jury had believed him guilty of fraud. Why? What fraud? Monk knew nothing about it now, but what had he known then? Could he have saved Dundas if he had been prepared to admit his own part? That was the fear that crowded in on him from all sides like the oncoming of night, threatening to snatch back from him all the warmth and the sweetness he had won in the present.
    “I dunno,” the clerk insisted. “Nobody knew that, sir. Or if they did, they weren’t tellin’.”
    “No . . . of course not. I’m sorry,” Monk apologized. “Where can I find out about land acquisition and surveying for railways?”
    “Best go ter the nearest county town for the track in question,” the clerk replied. “If yer want that old