Death of a Stranger - Anne Perry [26]
But he did not know where, nor exactly when. Somewhere in England, before Monk had joined the police. It was his inability then to effect any kind of justice which had driven him to become part of the law. He had not learned more than that. Perhaps he had not wanted to. It was part of the man he used to be, and so much of that was not what he admired or wanted anymore. His youth belonged to that same hard, ambitious man who hungered for success, who despised the weak, and who all too often disregarded the vulnerable. And nothing he could do now would help Dundas or retrieve his innocence. He had failed then, when he knew everything. What was to be gained now?
Nothing! It was just that the survey map, with its proposed railway, and the purchase order for land had brought back a past of which he had no knowledge, almost as if he had broken from a dream to step into it, and it was the reality, and everything since only imagination.
Then it was gone again, and he was sitting in the present, in his own home in Fitzroy Street, holding a sheaf of papers and looking at a troubled young woman who wanted him to prove to the world, and perhaps most of all to her, that the man she was going to marry was not guilty of fraud.
“May I make notes of some of this, Miss Harcus?” he asked.
“Of course,” she agreed quickly. “I wish I could allow you to keep them, but they would be missed.”
“Naturally.” He admired her courage and the fact that she had taken them at all. He rose to his feet and fetched pen and paper from his desk, bringing the inkwell back with him and sitting at a small table by his chair. He copied rapidly from the first map, then the second, taking the grid references, the names of the principal towns and the main features of the route.
From the other papers he took the areas, prices, and names of the previous owners of the land purchased. Then he looked at the rest that she had handed him. There were purchase orders and receipts for an enormous amount of materials, including wood, steel, and dynamite; for tools, wagons, horses, food for men and animals; and endless wages for the navvies who cut the land, built bridges and viaducts, laid the track itself—but also for ostlers, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, surveyors and a dozen other minor tradesmen and artisans.
It was a vast undertaking. The sums involved amounted to a fortune. But building railways had always been about speculation and venture capital, about winning or losing everything. That is why men like Arrol Dundas were drawn to it, and it needed their skill and willingness to take risks.
Arrol Dundas in the past, Dalgarno now, and Monk as he had been however many years ago.
He must read the papers closely, he told himself. Notes were not enough. If there were anything fraudulent it would not be in the open for a casual observer to see. Had it been, then Katrina Harcus herself would have read it, and in all probability understood. Unless, of course, she had understood but could not bring herself to face Dalgarno with it, and she wanted Monk to stop him before he was committed beyond retreat?
He read the bills and receipts carefully. The expenses seemed reasonable. Two of them were signed by Michael Dalgarno, the others by a Jarvis Baltimore. The figures were added correctly and there was nothing unaccounted for. Certainly some of the land purchased was expensive, but it was the stretches previously occupied by houses, workers’ cottages, tenant farmers. The payment did not seem to be more than the land was worth.
He looked at the last two orders for navvies’ wages. They were what a hardworking and skilled man might expect. He flicked down the list. Masons received twenty-four shillings a week. Bricklayers were paid the same, also carpenters and blacksmiths. The navvies who used picks were paid nineteen shillings, the shovelers seventeen.