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Baltimore took his meaning and was eager not to mar his moment of triumph with an awkward interview. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “I will only be a moment. Please enjoy yourselves. Accept our hospitality.” He turned to Monk, saying something under his breath as he half pushed him out of the door into an unoccupied compartment of the carriage they were in.
“What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded. “I thought by now they’d be questioning you on Dundas’s money! Or is that what you’re doing? Attempting to escape!” His face hardened. “Well, I’m damned if I’ll help you. My father told me on the night of his death how you tried to put him out of business. What was that for? Revenge because he exposed Dundas?”
“I tried to save hundreds of lives—without putting you out of business!” Monk said between his teeth. He kept his grasp on Baltimore’s arm. “For God’s sake, just hold your tongue and listen. We haven’t much time. If—”
“Liar!” Baltimore snarled. “I know you made my father sign a letter that he would never manufacture the brakes again. What did you threaten him with? He’s not an easy man to frighten . . . what did you do to him?” He snatched his arm away from Monk’s grip. “Well, you won’t frighten me. I’ll see you in jail first.”
“Why do you think your father agreed to it?” Monk demanded, containing his temper with intense difficulty as he stared at Baltimore’s arrogant, angry face, and felt the train sway and jolt beneath them as it gathered speed, hurtling towards the long incline, and the viaduct beyond. “Just because I asked him?”
“I don’t know,” Baltimore replied. “But I won’t give in to you!”
“Your father never did favors for anyone,” Monk said between his teeth. “He stopped manufacturing the brakes after the Liverpool crash because I paid to have the enquiry return a verdict of human error, not to ruin the company . . . but on condition he signed that letter never to make them anymore.” He startled himself with the clarity with which he remembered standing in Nolan Baltimore’s magnificent office with its views of the Mersey River, and seeing Baltimore sit at his desk, his face red, his head shaking with shock and fury as he wrote the letter Monk dictated, and then signed it. The sunlight had been streaming across the floor, picking out the worn patches on the lush, green carpet. The books on the shelves were leather bound, the wood of the desk polished walnut. This was the piece at last! This was it! It made sense of it all.
Now Jarvis Baltimore stared at him, his eyes round and wide, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. He gulped and tried to clear his throat. “What . . . what are you saying? That the Liverpool crash . . .” He stopped, unable to put it into words.
“Yes,” Monk said harshly; there was no time to spare anyone’s feelings. “The crash was due to your brakes failing. There were two hundred children on that excursion train!” He saw the blood drain from Baltimore’s skin, leaving it past
y white. “And there must be a hundred people on this one. Order the driver to stop while you still can.”
“What money?” Baltimore argued, struggling to deny it, shaking his head. “How would you get enough money to silence an enquiry? That’s absurd. You’re trying . . . I don’t know why—to cover yourself! You stole Dundas’s money. You had charge of it all! You didn’t even leave anything for his widow—damn you!”
“Dundas’s money!” Monk tried not to shout at him. They were both swaying back and forth now. The train was gathering speed fast. “He agreed to it. You don’t think I would have touched it otherwise, do you? The man was in jail, not dead. I gave them all there was, apart from the little bit for her, but hell—it wasn’t much! It took almost everything there was to make them keep silent on the truth.”
Baltimore was still fighting it. “Dundas was a fraudster. He’d already cheated the company of—”
“No, he wasn’t!” The truth was there at last, bright and sharp as daylight breaking. “He was innocent! He warned your father that they hadn’t tested the brakes well enough, but nobody listened to him. He had no proof, but he would have got it, only they framed him for fraud, and after that nobody believed anything he said. He told me . . . but there was nothing I could do either. It was only his word, and by then he was branded.”
Baltimore shook his head, but the denial died on his lips.
“It took all the money I could scrape together,” Monk went on. “But it saved the company’s reputation. And your father swore he’d tar Dundas with the same brush if I didn’t succeed. We couldn’t sue the driver. Better he be blamed than everyone put out of work. We took care of his family.” He felt a stab of shame. “But that wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t his fault . . . it was your father’s. And now you’re going to do the same—unless you stop this train.”
Baltimore shook his head more fiercely, his eyes wild, his voice high-pitched. “But we’re supplying those brakes all over India! There’s tens of thousands of pounds of orders!” he protested.
“Recall them!” Monk shouted at him. “But first tell the driver to stop this bloody train before the brakes fail and we come off the viaduct!”
“Will . . . will they?” Baltimore said hoarsely. “They worked perfectly well when we tested them. I’m not a fool.”
“They only fail on an incline, with a certain load,” Monk told him, shards of memory falling into place more vividly every moment. He could remember this same feeling of urgency before, the same rattle of wheels over the rail ties, the roar of movement, steel on steel, the knowledge of disaster ahead.
“Most of the time they’re excellent,” he went on. “But when the weight and the speed get above a certain level and with a curve in the track, then they don’t hold. This is a far heavier train than usual, and there’s exactly such a place just before the viaduct ahead. We can’t be far from it now. Don’t stand there, for God’s sake! Go and tell the driver to slow up, then stop! Go on!”
“I don’t believe it. . . .” It was a protest, and a lie. It was clear in Baltimore’s frantic eyes and dry lips.
The train was already gathering speed. They were finding it harder to stand upright, even though Baltimore had his back against the carriage wall.
“Are you sure enough of that to risk your life?” Monk asked, his voice ruthless. “I’m not. I’m going, with or without you.” And he backed away, almost losing his balance as he turned and started towards the other compartments and the front of the carriage next to the engine.
Baltimore jerked around and plunged after him.
Monk charged through the next compartment, scattering the few company men along for the inaugural ride. They were too startled to block his way.
He felt a wild exhilaration unlike anything he had known in years. He could remember! Dreadful as some of the memory was, filled with pain and grief, with helplessness and the knowledge that Dundas was innocent and he had not saved him, it was no longer confusion. It was as clear as the reality of the moment. He had failed Dundas, but he had not betrayed him. He had been honest. He knew that, not from evidence or from other people’s word, but from his own mind.
He was in the next compartment, pushing through the men, who were angry at his intrusion. The train, hurtling through the countryside toward the incline and the single track of the viaduct, brought back the time before when he had been on that other train, as if it had all been only weeks ago. He remembered Dundas telling him how he had tried to persuade Nolan Baltimore to wait, test the brakes more carefully, and Baltimore had refused. There was no proof, only Dundas’s fear.
“Excuse me! Excuse me!” he cried more sharply. They parted for him.
One caught at his sleeve. “What’s wrong?” he said anxiously, feeling the carriage pitching from side to side.
