Railway to the Grave

by Edward Marston

  She was dubious. ‘Did the rector actually agree to that?’

  ‘I gave him no chance to disagree.’

  ‘So all you’ve done is to antagonise him further.’

  ‘I simply put him in his place,’ said Tarleton through a mouthful of food. ‘Trust me, Eve. When we go to church tomorrow, he’ll be ready to accede to our wishes.’

  ‘I think that’s highly unlikely,’ she said. ‘Besides, it would be very unwise of you to attend the service. It would be like red rag to a bull.’

  ‘You can’t go to church on your own.’

  ‘I won’t have to, Adam. Mrs Withers will come with me. There’s even a chance that my husband will join us. Lawrence is due back in England today. When he realises what’s been happening while he was abroad, he’ll catch the first train here.’

  ‘I need to be there as well,’ said Tarleton, ‘to discuss the details of the funerals with the rector.’

  ‘There’s no point. He won’t budge. After the way you confronted him, he’ll be even more determined to prevent our stepfather’s body from being buried in the churchyard. Inspector Colbeck made the best suggestion. We must appeal to the archbishop.’

  ‘That could take time.’

  ‘Not if you write a letter and deliver it by hand today.’

  ‘I’ll do it my way, Eve,’ he insisted. ‘I showed the rector that we won’t be pushed about by him. He’s bound to capitulate.’

  Eve was about to reply but she saw Lottie hovering at the door, waiting to clear away the breakfast things. She beckoned the servant over and the girl entered hastily, gathering up the plates with a clatter then backing out with a string of mumbled apologies.

  ‘Where on earth did they find that useless creature?’ complained Tarleton. ‘Why couldn’t they hire someone more efficient?’

  ‘Lottie is cheap.’

  ‘She’s a liability. I’ve never seen anyone so nervous.’

  ‘That’s because of you, Adam. You scare her. She’s terrified to make a mistake in case you punish her.’

  ‘Well, she made a mistake yesterday. I heard Mrs Withers scolding her in the kitchen. The girl was sent to get two dozen eggs from Rock Farm. She managed to break three of them on her way back here. She’s a ditherer and I can’t tolerate that.’

  ‘Coming back to tomorrow,’ she said, ‘I don’t think it would be wise for you to go to church.’

  ‘Of course I’ll go,’ he asserted. ‘It will be expected of me.’

  ‘I find that ironic. When we lived here, the one thing we could expect was that you wouldn’t go to church. You did everything you could to get out of it.’

  ‘The services were so tedious. Once he gets into that pulpit, the rector can spout for hours. It was like purgatory sometimes,’ he recalled. ‘Tomorrow is different. People will want to commiserate with us. Family friends will be there.’

  ‘That’s why I don’t want any unpleasantness.’

  ‘I’ll be as good as gold, Eve.’

  ‘The rector is bound to talk about the tragedies we’ve had to endure. He’ll ask everyone to pray for us. What if he refuses in public to accept one of the bodies for burial?’

  ‘In that case,’ said Tarleton, grinding his teeth, ‘he’ll get a lot more than mere unpleasantness. I can vouch for that.’

  Madeleine couldn’t believe her good fortune. After doing some chores in the house, she’d intended to visit a friend in Highgate. Instead of that, Colbeck had arrived out of nowhere, told her to change into her best dress, then helped her into a cab that took them to King’s Cross. The two of them now had a first-class carriage to themselves in a train that was thundering north. She was still dizzied by the turn of events.

  ‘What am I to tell Father?’ she asked.

  ‘Tell him that you were abducted by a handsome stranger.’

  ‘He’ll worry about me, Robert.’

  ‘You’ll be safely back home long before he finishes work,’ said Colbeck. ‘I’m only taking you as far as Peterborough. You can catch the next train back to London from there.’ He indicated the book she’d brought. ‘You can finish Cranford on the return journey.’

  ‘Father will hate the fact that I travelled on the Great Northern Railway. You know how much he complained when you took me on the GWR. He called that an act of treason. According to him,’ she said, ‘the only company who should be allowed to take passengers is the London and North Western.’

  ‘I admire his loyalty to the LNWR,’ said Colbeck with a grin, ‘but it’s not as faultless as he thinks. Captain Huish, the general manager, has stooped to all kinds of machinations to keep rivals at bay. Take this very line, for instance. Huish had wanted to preserve the LNWR’s monopoly between London and Edinburgh. He did all he could to starve this eastern route of traffic. Every company touched by the Great Northern was coerced into the so-called Euston Confederacy whose sole aim was to undermine the GNR. I’m pleased to say that his skulduggery failed,’ he went on. ‘Four years ago, Huish got a royal slap in the face when Her Majesty abandoned his company’s route to Scotland and went to Balmoral by means of the GNR instead.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare say that to Father. He idolises Captain Huish.’

  ‘Then he’s worshipping a false god, Madeleine.’ He squeezed her arm and pulled her closer. ‘But why are we talking about railways when we have so many other things to discuss?’

  ‘You haven’t even mentioned the investigation yet.’

  ‘I was enjoying this short-lived break from it.’

  ‘How much longer will you be away, Robert?’

  ‘Ideally, the murder will be solved by Monday.’

  ‘That’s wonderful!’ she cried, nestling closer. ‘Are you so near to making an arrest?’

  ‘The truth is that I don’t know, Madeleine. Ideally, everything will become clear in the next two days. If it doesn’t, Superintendent Tallis will resume control and that will slow the whole process down.’ He pulled a face. ‘I want to avoid that at all costs.’

  ‘Is he really the ogre that Sergeant Leeming says he is?’

  ‘No, he’s a dedicated man with a firm belief in the importance of law and order. Everything else in his life is subordinate to his work.’

  ‘Is that why he disapproves of marriage?’

  ‘I’d rather not go into that now, Madeleine.’

  ‘You haven’t told him, have you?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘It’s not like you to be afraid, Robert.’

  ‘It’s a question of being diplomatic. At the moment, he’s so caught up in the horrors of this case that he can think about nothing else. I have to take matters slowly.’

  She searched his eyes. ‘Is that the real explanation?’

  ‘What other explanation is there?’

  ‘Some people might say that you’re too ashamed of me to tell the superintendent that we’re engaged to be married.’

  ‘That’s absurd!’ he said, enfolding her in his arms. ‘And you must never think that, Madeleine. I love you and I’m proud of you. When you accepted my proposal, I couldn’t wait to put details of the engagement in the newspapers. Had it been left to me, it would have been in headlines on the front pages.’ She laughed with gratitude. ‘How could I be ashamed of you when you’re the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me?’

  ‘Is that what you’re going to tell the superintendent?’

  ‘Well…maybe not in exactly the same words.’

  ‘Why didn’t you mention it to him this morning?’

  ‘It would have been the worst possible time.’

  ‘You mean that he’s too distracted?’

  ‘No, Madeleine,’ he said, ‘that’s only part of the reason. The one marriage that Mr Tallis admired was that between the colonel and his wife. When he was with them, he really understood the true value of holy matrimony. Without warning, he’s confronted with the fact that their marriage might not have been as happy as he’d assumed. One of them is murdere
d and the other commits suicide. All sorts of secrets are being unearthed and that’s shaken him.’

  ‘I can see why you’d rather wait now, Robert.’

  ‘When this business is over, I’ll tell him immediately.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll say no more on the subject.’ He kissed her then pulled her close. It was minutes before she spoke again. ‘You said that secrets are being unearthed.’

  ‘That’s right, Madeleine.’

  ‘What sort of secrets?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘one of them concerns Doncaster.’

  ‘What happened there?’

  ‘That’s the trouble – we don’t know. I’m hoping that Victor will be able to find out. I told him to go there today.’

  He was wrong. Because it was a flourishing railway town, Leeming had assumed that it would be covered in industrial grime and that, in fact, was the aspect that first presented itself to him. Alighting at the station, he found it swarming with passengers, waiting to go on the main line north or south or on the branch line to Sheffield. A goods train carrying coal went past on the through line. Other wagons were being loaded with coal in a siding. A strong breeze whipped up the coal dust and sent it flying through the air in clouds, mingling with the dense smoke from departing locomotives. The din was continual, its volume increased by the turmoil from the railway works nearby.

  Yet when he went into the town itself, Leeming realised that it was a charming place with a pleasant situation on the River Don. Many of the vestiges of its time as a coaching town still remained. Its long, wide high street was an impressive thoroughfare, lined with houses, shops, inns, eating houses, banks and business premises. As he explored the town, Leeming found much to admire. Doncaster had a mansion house, a town hall, fine churches, a theatre, schools, a hospital, almshouses and other institutions for promoting the welfare of its inhabitants. New terraced housing had been built by the railway company for its employees but the serried ranks didn’t detract from the weathered graciousness of the older buildings.

  Leeming’s problem was that he didn’t know where to begin. In a town with a population of several thousand, he could hardly knock on every door in search of anyone who’d known Colonel Tarleton. By the time he’d finished his initial stroll around the town, he could think of several reasons why the colonel had visited it. Many of the larger residences might have been the home of friends from the same social class. Leeming sought out one of the town constables for advice.

  Claude Forrester knew exactly who the colonel was.

  ‘It was him what was took mad,’ he said, darkly. ‘Him what threw himself in front of that train. It were in the newspaper.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Leeming. ‘Are you aware that he used to come to Doncaster quite often at one time?’

  ‘Lots of people do that, Sergeant.’

  ‘But they’re not all as distinctive as the colonel.’

  ‘He’d be lost in the crowd. Know your trouble? You’re searching for a grain of sand on Blackpool beach.’

  Forrester was a lugubrious individual in his forties whose days in uniform had convinced him of the existence of criminal tendencies in most human beings. As they talked, his eyes flicked suspiciously at every passer-by.

  ‘There’s two reasons why the colonel came,’ he said.

  ‘He could have had friends here.’

  ‘That’s a third reason but I think there’s two main ones.’

  ‘What are they?’ asked Leeming.

  ‘I can see you’ve never been to Doncaster before,’ said Forrester, mentally frisking an old woman who waddled past. ‘We have one of the finest racecourses in the country on Town Moor. Come here in September when the St Leger is run and you’ll find the world and his wife in this part of Yorkshire. I know,’ he added, ‘because I’m always on duty there. Last year, almost a quarter of a million people came to Doncaster during the week of the St Leger.’

  ‘That’s only once a year, Constable.’

  ‘There’s plenty of other race meetings as well.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leeming, ‘but there’s nothing to suggest that the colonel was a betting man. Besides, if he’d simply been here for the races, he’d have brought his wife. There’d be no need to be so secretive about it.’

  ‘Ah, now, if it’s secrecy we’re talking about,’ said the constable, ‘then I come to my second main reason.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘He was paying a visit, sir.’

  Leeming was impatient. ‘I said that at the very start.’

  ‘He was paying a visit to a certain place.’

  ‘What I need to find out is where that certain place was.’

  ‘I could take you there, if you wish.’

  ‘You know where it is?’

  ‘I know everything about this town,’ boasted the other. ‘This particular house is where rich men go to spend their money.’

  ‘It’s a gambling den?’

  ‘They take a gamble of sorts, I suppose. They gamble that their wives won’t ever find out. I’m talking about harlotry. You should see some of our ladies of easy virtue, Sergeant. They’re quite a sight.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Leeming. ‘When I was a young constable, I raided enough brothels in London to last me a lifetime. The colonel wasn’t here for the delights of the flesh. He was a faithful husband.’

  ‘No? Then I can’t help you.’

  ‘Do you know anyone who could?’

  ‘No,’ said Forrester, rubbing his chin. ‘Unless you talk to Ned Staddle – but I daresay you’ve already done that.’

  ‘Who’s Ned Staddle?’

  ‘He’s the stationmaster. Got a keen eye and a good memory, for all that he’s long in the tooth. Talk to Ned and mention my name. He’s a friend.’

  Leeming was glad to part from the cheerless constable. Yet the man had a useful suggestion. On his way back to the station, Leeming rebuked himself for not thinking of questioning people there when he first arrived. Since the colonel had been such a regular visitor – and since his name had been given prominence by the suicide – a member of the staff might well recall him. The sergeant soon learnt that talking to the stationmaster required a long wait. Ned Staddle was too busy controlling the traffic in and out of the different platforms to spare him a moment. Tall, skinny and with silver hair hidden beneath his hat, Staddle seemed to be in constant motion. It was only when he took his morning break that he was able to find time for Leeming.

  ‘Aye, I know who the colonel was,’ said the stationmaster. ‘Used to see quite a bit of him at one time.’

  ‘Constable Forrester said that you had a good memory.’

  ‘You been talking to that miserable old devil?’

  ‘He claimed to be a friend of yours.’

  Staddle laughed. ‘He doesn’t have a friend within a hundred miles of here,’ he said. ‘If this was a village, Claude Forrester would be its idiot. Looking like that, he should have been a gravedigger.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Leeming, ‘chatting to him was a bit like attending a funeral. Putting the constable aside, can you tell me why the colonel used to come to Doncaster?’

  ‘It wasn’t to see Forrester, I know that much. Let me think.’ Staddle put a hand to his forehead as he ransacked his memory for details. At length, he gave a sigh of regret. ‘I’m sorry, Sergeant. I did speak to the colonel whenever he came but we never really talked. The only person who might be able to help you is Mr Kinchin.’

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Mr Kinchin retired a few years ago. He used to work for the Great Northern as a manager. I seem to remember that he was here to meet the colonel sometimes.’

  ‘Does this gentleman live in Doncaster?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Staddle, ‘but you won’t find him at home. He caught the early train to Sheffield. He always goes to see his mother on the first Saturday of the month. She’s in her eighties.’

  ‘Will he be returning here today?’

  ‘Oh, aye, he’ll be back in Doncaster this evenin
g.’

  ‘I take it that you’ll still be on duty, Mr Staddle.’

  The stationmaster chortled. ‘I’m always on duty, sir.’

  ‘Then perhaps you’ll give a message to this gentleman. I’ll write it down, if you wish.’

  ‘There’s no need. Constable Forrester was right about one thing, but then even a fool says a wise thing sometimes. I do have a good memory. I’ll pass on any message word for word.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Leeming, feeling that he was at last getting close to the answer he sought. ‘Impress upon him that he may have some information that will help to further a murder investigation. Tell him to catch the next train to South Otterington and to ask for me or for Inspector Colbeck at the Black Bull.’ He paused to give Staddle time to absorb everything. ‘Can you remember all that?’

  ‘He’s to come to the Black Bull at South Otterington.’

  ‘We’ll pay his rail fare. No matter how late it is, it’s vital that he comes. If I had the time, I’d wait here until he returned but I’ve lots of other enquiries to make so I must go back.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘What sort of person is Mr Kinchin?’

  ‘He was a manager – the kind you tip your hat to.’

  ‘Do you know much about him?’

  ‘Not really, Sergeant Leeming.’

  ‘Had he ever been in the army?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask him at the Black Bull in South Otterington,’ said Staddle with another chuckle. ‘See? I did remember. He’s to speak to you or to Inspector Colbeck.’

  Having had the pleasure of Madeleine’s company all the way to Peterborough, Colbeck spent the rest of his journey addressing his mind to the investigation. It was a paradox. Though certain that a man committed the murder, he somehow felt that they needed the help of a woman to solve the crime. Their names popped into his head in order of importance – Eve Doel, Agnes Reader, Mrs Withers, Lottie Pearl and Dorcas Skelton. He hadn’t forgotten Ginny Hepworth, the daughter of the railway policeman. Then there was the anonymous female who’d been there when the body of Miriam Tarleton had been discovered. Colbeck began to wish that he’d taken Madeleine all the way with him. In the past, her instincts about other women had always been acute and reliable.