Death of a Stranger - Anne Perry [68]
Fear ran through him like a burning wave, but it was nameless and without sense. He reached for the only thing he knew which matched the violence and the enormity of what she was suggesting.
“Miss Harcus! Nolan Baltimore was murdered a short while ago. Most people assumed it was because he was frequenting a brothel in Leather Lane. But perhaps that is what they were intended to think.”
She jerked up her head, staring at him with terrified eyes, her face white. She was totally oblivious of the people around her, of their curiosity or alarm. “You think it was to do with the railway?” She breathed out the words in horror, putting her hand up to cover her mouth, as if that could stifle the truth.
He knew the worst fear that had to be in her mind, and he hurt for her pain, but it was senseless to evade it now. It would not drive it away.
“Yes,” he answered gently. “If you are correct, and there really is such a great deal of money involved, then if he knew of this scheme, he may have been murdered to assure his silence.”
Now she was so white he was afraid she was going to faint. Instinctively, he reached for her arms to stop her from falling.
She allowed him to hold her for no more than seconds, then she pulled away with a jerk so sharp he all but tore the fine muslin of her sleeves.
“No!” There was horror in her face, and she spoke with such pent-up, choking emotion that several people nearby actually turned and looked at them both, then in embarrassment at being caught staring, turned away again.
“Miss Harcus!” he urged. “Please!”
“No,” she repeated, but less fiercely. “I . . . I can’t think that . . .” She did not finish.
They both knew what it was that tormented her. The possibility was too clear. If the fraud were as great as she feared, the profit as high, then Nolan Baltimore could easily have been murdered to silence him. It could have been because he knew and he and his murderer quarreled. He wanted too large a share, or he threatened the plans in any other way, or because he had not known but had discovered, and had to be silenced before he betrayed them. Michael Dalgarno was the obvious man to suspect. As far as Katrina knew, only Dalgarno and Jarvis Baltimore were involved.
Monk ached for her. He knew with hideous familiarity what it was like to live with the dread of learning the truth, and yet be compelled to seek it. All the denial in the world changed nothing, and yet the knowledge, final and irrefutable, would destroy all that mattered most.
For her it would mean that the man she loved in a sense had never really existed. Even before he had gone to Leather Lane that night, before anything was irrevocable, he had had the seed of it within him, the cruelty and the greed, the arrogance that placed his own gain before another man’s life. He had betrayed himself long before he had betrayed Katrina, or his mentor and employer.
And if Monk had betrayed Arrol Dundas, and had even the slightest knowing or willing hand in the rail crash in the past, then he had never been the man Hester believed him to be, and everything he had so carefully built, with such difficult letting go of his pride, would come shattering down like a house of cards.
Suddenly this woman he barely knew was closer to him than anyone else, because they shared a fear which dominated their lives to the exclusion of everything else.
She was still staring at him in terrified silence.
“Miss Harcus,” he said with a tenderness that startled him, and this time he did not hesitate to touch her. It was only a small gesture, but of extraordinary understanding. “I will find out the truth,” he promised. “If there is a fraud, I’ll uncover it and prevent any further accidents. And I will do what I can to discover who murdered Nolan Baltimore.” He watched her gravely. “But unless there is fraud, and Michael Dalgarno is implicated, he would have no motive to have done such a thing. Baltimore was probably killed in some fight over money to do with prostitution, not a fortune but a few pounds some drunken pimp thought he owed. They may