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“But she was murdered?” Colman interrupted, leaning forward with urgency.
“Yes. And Dalgarno is charged with it. But in order to prove his guilt we need to show the fraud beyond question.”
“I see.” It was clear from his expression that he understood perfectly. “What is it that you want of me?”
“You were the one who first suspected fraud. Why?”
Colman frowned. He was clearly fascinated by the concept of such total loss from the mind of something in which Monk had been passionately involved. “You really remember nothing of it?” His voice thickened with emotion; his body became rigid. “You don’t remember my church? In the valley, with the old trees around it? The graveyard?”
Monk struggled, but nothing came. He was picturing it in his mind, but it was imagination, not memory. He shook his head.
“It was beautiful,” Colman said, his face tender with sorrow. “An old church. The original was Norman, with a crypt underneath where men were buried nearly a thousand years ago. The graveyard was full of old families, over fifteen or twenty generations. It was the history of the land. History is only people, you know.” He stared at Monk intensely, reaching for the man behind the facade, the passions which could be stirred—and wounded—deeper than the analytical brain. “They sent the railway right through the middle of it.”
Now something clicked in Monk’s mind, a bishop mild and reasonable, full of regret, but acknowledging progress and the need for work for men, transport, the moving forward of society. There had been a curate, shy and enthusiastic, wanting to keep the old and bring in the new as well, and refusing to see that to have both was impossible.
And caught between the two of them the Reverend Colman, an enthusiast, a lover of the unbroken chain of history who saw the railways as forces of destruction, shattering the cement of family bonds with the dead, vandalizing the physical monuments that kept the spiritual ties whole. Monk could hear voices raised—shouting, angry and afraid, faces twisted with rage.
But Colman had done more than protest, he had proved crime. Was this it, the elusive memory at last—the proof? Who would it blame—Baltimore, or Monk himself? He cleared his throat. It felt tight, as if he could not breathe.
“They destroyed the church?” he asked aloud.
“Yes. The new line goes right over where it used to be.” Colman did not add anything; the emotion in his voice was sufficient.
“How did you discover the fraud?” Monk forced himself to sound almost normal. He almost had the truth.
“Simple,” Colman replied. “Someone told me he watched rabbits on the hill they said they had to go around because it would be too expensive to tunnel through. He was a parishioner of mine, in trouble for poaching. When I asked where he’d been caught, he told me. Rabbits don’t tunnel in granite, Mr. Monk. Navvies can blast through pretty well anything; solid mountains just take longer, and therefore cost more.
“I found the original survey. When one looked more carefully at the one Baltimore was using, it was falsified. Whoever did it had been too clever to alter the heights or composition—he found a hill that was exactly right somewhere else and altered the grid reference. It was an extremely skilled job.”
Monk asked the question he had to, but he had to clear his throat again to make his voice come. “Arrol Dundas?”
“It looked like it,” Colman said with regret, as if he would rather it had been someone else.
“Did he ever admit to it?”
“No. Nor did he blame anyone else, but I think that was more a matter of dignity, even morality, than because he had no idea who it might have been.”
It was a moment before Monk realized the full meaning of what Colman had said. He had begun his own next question, and stopped in the middle of the sentence.
“You mean you doubted Dundas was guilty?” he said incredulously.
Colman blinked. “You always maintained he wasn’t. Even after the verdict, you swore he was not the one who had changed the survey, and that his profit was through good speculation but not dishonesty. He simply bought low and sold high.”
Monk was confused. “Then who forged the survey references? Baltimore? Why would he? He didn’t have any land!”
“Nor money in the bank from it afterwards,” Colman agreed. “I don’t know the answer. If it wasn’t Dundas, then the real money probably came in bribery somewhere, but no one will ever prove it.”
“Why would anyone else falsify the surveys?” Monk pressed.
Colman frowned, weighing his answer before he gave it, and then his words were picked with great care. “The railway cut through the middle of my church, and that was all I could think of at the time.” His eyes filled with sudden tears. “And then the crash . . . the children . . .” He stopped. There was no way to express it, and perhaps he saw some recognition of horror in Monk, and words became unnecessary.
Monk’s recollection of him was growing sharper. He had wanted to like him before; it was his testimony against Dundas that had made it impossible. Now all that had receded into history for both of them and there was no issue to be fought anymore.
Colman blinked and smiled in apology. “I am afraid I am not much help in gaining the evidence you need to prove Dalgarno’s guilt for murdering the young woman, or whether Baltimore was the one practicing the fraud. But if I understood you correctly, he was already dead himself by the time she was killed.”
“Yes, by two or three weeks,” Monk agreed.
“Then possibly Dalgarno was in the fraud with Baltimore, and once Baltimore was dead he would take all the profits to himself?” Colman suggested.
