Death of a Stranger - Anne Perry [24]
Some far memory stabbed him at the thought, but he kept his face blank. He could not tell her how acute was his feeling for just that kind of obligation, and the pain of failure.
“Is it a fraud from which Mr. Dalgarno might profit?” he asked levelly.
“Certainly. He is a junior partner in the company, so if the company made more money then he would also.” She leaned forward a fraction, just a tiny movement, but the earnestness in her face was intense. “I would give everything I have to prove his innocence and protect him from future blame, should there be any.”
“What is it exactly that you have overheard, Miss Harcus, and from whom?” There was something in the mention of railways that stirred an old memory within him—light and shadows, unease, a knowledge of pain from before the accident. He had rebuilt his life since then, created something new and good, recognizing and piecing together the facts of himself he had discovered, and the shards of memory that had returned. But the vast mass of it was lost like a dream, somewhere in the mind but inaccessible, frightening because it was unknown. What detection had shown him was not always pleasant: a man driven by ambition—ruthless, clever, brave, feared more than liked.
She was watching him with those intense, golden-brown eyes. But she was consumed by her own discomfort.
“Talk of great profit which must be kept secret,” she answered him. “The new line is due to be completed very soon. They are working on the last link now, and then it will be ready to open.”
He was struggling to make sense of it, to understand why she should imagine dishonesty. “Is it not usual to make a large profit from such an undertaking?”
“Of course. But not one that must be kept secret, and . . . and there is something else which I have not yet told you.”
“Yes?”
Her eyes searched his face minutely, as if every inflection, no matter how tiny, were of importance to her. It seemed she cared for Dalgarno so profoundly that her concern over his involvement was more important to her than anything else. A misjudgment of Monk could be a disaster.
She made her decision. “If there has been fraud, and it is to do with the purchase of land, then that would be morally very wrong,” she said. “But if it concerns the actual building of the track, the cutting through hills, which is sometimes necessary, or the building of bridges and viaducts, and something is done which is not right, a matter of design or materials, do you not see, Mr. Monk, that the consequences could be far more serious . . . even terrible?”
A memory stirred in him so briefly he was not even sure if he imagined it, like a darkness at the edge of the mind. “What sort of consequence are you thinking of, Miss Harcus?”
She let her breath out in a sigh, then gulped. “The worst I can imagine, Mr. Monk, would be if a train were to come off the rails and crash. It could kill dozens of people . . . even hundreds . . .” She stopped. The idea of it was too dreadful to allow her to continue.
Train crash. The words moved something inside Monk like a bright, vicious dagger in his mind. He had no idea why. Certainly a train crash was a fearful thing, but was it any worse than loss at sea, or any other of a dozen disasters, natural or man-made?
“You understand?” Her voice came to him as if from far away.
“Yes!” he said sharply. “Of course I do.” He forced his attention back to the woman in front of him, and her problem. “You are afraid that some fraud in the construction of the