William Monk 13 - Death of a Stranger

called, people who had written entries in ledgers, kept books, filed orders for money, purchases of land, title deeds, surveys. But it was all too complicated, and half of them had become uncertain under cross-examination. The main thrust of the defense had been not that there was no fraud but that Nolan Baltimore could equally be suspected of it.
    But Nolan Baltimore was in the witness-box. Arrol Dundas was in the dock—and that perception made all the difference. It depended upon whom you believed, and then in that light all the evidence fell one way or the other. Monk could see how it had been, and he could find no loose thread to unravel a greater truth.
    There seemed no question that Dundas had purchased land in his own name, farmland of poor quality, which he had paid market value for, little enough when you need it for running sheep. But when the railway was diverted from its original track, around a hill and through that farmland, which it was obliged to buy at a considerably larger amount, then Dundas’s very rapidly turned profit was huge.
    That in itself would be regarded as no more than exceptionally fortunate speculation, to be envied but not blamed. One might well resent not having done the same oneself, but only a small-minded man hates another for such advantage.
    It only looked fraudulent when it emerged that the rerouting of the track from its original passage was not only unnecessary but brought about at all only by forged papers and lies told by Dundas. The original route would have been used, in spite of the fact that a certain owner of a huge estate was actually campaigning against it because it spoiled the path of his local hunt and the magnificent landscaped view from his house. The hill that had been the pretext for the rerouting was real, and certainly lay across the proposed path of the track, but it was less high in reality than on the survey they had used, which was actually of another hill of remarkably similar outlines, but higher, and of granite. The grid references had been changed in an imaginative forgery. The actual hill across the track could probably have been blasted into a simple cutting with a manageable gradient. If not, even tunneling for a short distance would have been possible. The cost of that had been wildly overestimated in Dundas’s calculations, too much to have been incompetence.
    All Dundas’s past plans were reviewed, and no errors were found of more than a foot here or there. This miscalculation was over a hundred feet. When it was put together with his profit on the sale of the land, the assumption of intentional fraud was inescapable.
    A defense of incompetence, misjudgment and coincidental profit might have succeeded, but it was Dundas’s name on the purchase and on the survey, and the money was in Dundas’s bank, not Baltimore’s.
    In the face of the evidence, the jury returned the only verdict it could. Arrol Dundas was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. He died within months.
    Monk was cold where he sat, drenched with memory. He could feel again the overwhelming defeat. It hurt with a pain so intense it was physical. It was for Dundas, white-faced, crumpled as if age had caught up with him and shrunken him inside and in a day he had been struck by twenty years. It was for his wife as well. She had hoped until the very end, she had kept a strength that had sustained them all, but there was nothing left to hope for now. It was over.
    And it was for himself also. It was the first bitter and terrible loneliness he could recall. It was a knowledge of loss, a real and personal sweetness gone from his life.
    How much of the truth had he known at the time? He had been far younger then, a good banker, but naÏve in the ways of crime. It was before he had become a policeman. He was accustomed to making judgments of men’s character, but not with the view to dishonesty he had developed later, not with the knowledge of every kind of fraud, embezzlement, and theft—and the suspicion carved deep into every avenue of his mind.
    He had wanted to believe Dundas. All his emotions and loyalty were vested in his honesty and his friendship. It was like being asked to accept that your own father had deliberately deceived you over the years, and everything you had learned from him was tainted with lies, not just to the world, but specifically to you.
    Was that why he had believed Dundas? And the rest of the world had not? All the proof had been pieces of paper.