The excursion train irc-2

by Edward Marston

'Maybe.'

  'I know that I would if I was put behind bars.'

  'Of course.'

  'Goodbye, Maddy. I'm off.'

  'Goodbye.'

  'Don't I get my kiss?' he whined.

  But she did not even hear his complaint. Madeleine had just noticed a small item at the bottom of the page. Linked to the main story, it reminded her poignantly of the last time that she had seen Robert Colbeck. An idea suddenly flashed into her mind. Caleb Andrews had to manage without his farewell kiss for once.

  As soon as the shop opened, Adam Hawkshaw brought some meat out and started to hack it expertly into pieces before setting them out on the table. Other butchers were also getting ready for customers in Middle Row but all they had in response to their greeting was a curt nod of acknowledgement. The first person to appear in the passage was Inspector Colbeck. He strolled up to Adam Hawkshaw.

  'Good morning,' he said, politely.

  'I've nothing to say to you.'

  'Are you always so rude to your customers?'

  'Customers?'

  'Yes,' said Colbeck. 'I didn't come to buy meat but I am shopping for information and I'm not leaving until I get it. If you insist on refusing to speak to me, of course, I may have to arrest you.'

  'Why?' rejoined the other, testily. 'I done nothing wrong.'

  'Obstructing a police officer in the exercise of his duties is a crime, Mr Hawkshaw. In other words, a decision confronts you.'

  'Eh?'

  'We can either have this conversation here and now or we'll have it when you're in custody. It's your choice.'

  'I got to work in this shop.'

  'Then we'll sort this out right away, shall we?' said Colbeck, briskly. 'Where were you the night before last?'

  'That's my business,' retorted Hawkshaw.

  'It also happens to be my business.'

  'Why?'

  'I need to establish your whereabouts during that evening.'

  'I was in my room,' said the other, evasively. 'Satisfied now?'

  'Only if we have a witness who can verify that. Do we?' Hawkshaw shook his head. 'I thought not.'

  'I was on my own.'

  'Gregory Newman told me that you rented a room near the Corn Exchange. There must have been someone else in the house at the time. Your landlord, for instance?'

  'I can't remember.'

  'I'll ask him if he remembers.'

  'He wouldn't know,' said Hawkshaw. 'I come and go as I please.'

  'I've just been talking to the stationmaster at Ashford station. He recalls a young man of your build and colouring, who took a train to Paddock Wood on the evening in question.'

  'It must have been someone else, Inspector.'

  'Are you quite certain of that?'

  Hawkshaw met his gaze. 'I was alone in my room all evening.'

  'Studying the Bible, I daresay.'

  'What?'

  'No,' said Colbeck on reflection, glancing at the board beside him. 'I don't think you have much time for reading – or for writing either. That's evident. I doubt if you'd even know where to find St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, would you?' Hawkshaw looked mystified. 'There you are,' Colbeck went on, 'that wasn't too difficult was it? I'll have some more questions for you in time but I'll not hold you up any longer. I need to speak to your stepmother now.'

  'She's not in,' claimed the butcher.

  'Then I wonder whose face I saw in the bedroom window when I crossed the high street just now. Is it possible that Mrs Hawkshaw has a twin sister living over the shop?' Hawkshaw glowered at him. 'Excuse me while I speak to someone who's a little more forthcoming.'

  Meat cleaver in his hand, Hawkshaw moved across to block his way but the determination in Colbeck's eye made him change his mind. He stood aside and the detective went into the shop before tapping on the door at the rear. It was not long before he and Winifred Hawkshaw were sitting down together in the parlour. He held his top hat in his lap. She was watchful.

  'I finally had a conversation with your stepson,' he said.

  'Oh?'

  'He seems to be having a problem with his memory.'

  'Does he, Inspector?'

  'Yes, Mrs Hawkshaw. He tells me that he spent the night before last alone in his room yet a witness places him – or someone very much like him – at the railway station that evening. Have you any idea where he might have been going?'

  'Adam was where he said he was.'

  'How can you be so sure?'

  'Because we brought him up to be honest,' said Winifred, stoutly. 'I know you think he might have had something to do with the murder of the prison chaplain but you're wrong. Adam is like his father – he's been falsely accused.'

  'I haven't accused him of anything, Mrs Hawkshaw.'

  'You suspect him. Why else are you here?'

  'I wanted to eliminate him from my inquiries,' said Colbeck, levelly, 'and I did so by discovering if he had any acquaintance with the New Testament. Patently, he does not. The reason I wanted to see you is to ask a favour.'

  She was suspicious. 'What sort of favour?'

  'When your husband was arrested, several people rallied around you and supported your campaign.'

  'Nathan had lots of friends.'

  'Did you keep a record of their names?'

  'Why should I do that?'

  'Because you knew how to organise things properly.'

  'That was Gregory's doing, Inspector.'

  'I fancy that you were intimately involved in every aspect of the campaign, Mrs Hawkshaw. You had the biggest stake in it, after all. He was your husband. That's why you fought tooth and nail to save him.'

  'Yes,' she said, proudly, 'and I'd do the same again.'

  'I respect that.'

  'Yet you still think Nathan was guilty.'

  'Oddly enough, I don't,' he told her. 'In fact, having learnt more details of the case, I'd question the safety of the conviction.'

  'Do you?' Winifred Hawkshaw regarded him frank distrust. 'Or are you just saying that to trick me?'

  'Trick you into what?'

  'I'm not sure yet.'

  'All I want to know is who helped you in your campaign and how you funded the whole thing? There's no trickery in that, is there?'

  'I can't remember all the names,' she said. 'There were far too many of them. Most people paid a little towards our expenses.'

  'And what about the rescue attempt at Maidstone prison?'

  'I told you before – I know nothing of that.'

  'But you must have approved of it.'

  'If I thought I could have got my husband out,' she said, 'I'd have climbed over the wall of the prison myself.' She looked at him quizzically. 'Are you married, Inspector?'

  'No, I'm not.'

  'Then you'll never understand how I felt. Nathan was everything to me. He came along at a very bad time in my life when I had to fend alone for Emily and myself. Nathan saved us.'

  'But he wasn't your first husband, was he?'

  'No, he wasn't. Martin was killed in an accident years ago.'

  'In a fire, I believe. What were the circumstances exactly?'

  'Please!' she protested. 'It's painful enough to talk about one husband who was taken away from me before his time. Don't ask me about Martin as well. I've tried to bury those memories.'

  'I'm sorry, Mrs Hawkshaw. It was wrong of me to bring it up.'

  'Have you finished with me now?'

  'One last question,' he said, choosing his words with care. 'Your second husband had good reason to loathe Joseph Dykes. What impelled him to go after the man was the assault on your daughter, Emily. Can you recall what she told you about that incident?'

  'Why you should want to know that?'

  'It could be important. What precisely did she say to you?'

  'Nothing at all at the time,' answered Winifred, 'because I wasn't here. I was visiting my mother. It was Nathan who had to console her. As soon as he'd done that, he left Adam in charge of the shop and charged off to find Joe Dykes.'

>   'With a meat cleaver in his hand.'

  'You sound just like that barrister at the trial.'

  'I don't mean to, Mrs Hawkshaw,' he apologised. 'Your daughter had just been through a frightening experience. She must have told your husband enough about it to make him seek retribution. Though I daresay that she reserved the full details for you.'

  'No,' she confessed. 'That's the strange thing. She didn't.'

  'But you're her mother. Surely, she confided in you?'

  'If only she had, Inspector. I tried to get the story out of her but Emily refused to talk about it. She said that she wanted to forget it but there's no way that she could do that. In fact,' she went on as if realising something for the first time, 'that's when it really started.'

  'What did?'

  'This odd behaviour of hers. Emily pulled away from me. We just couldn't talk to each other properly again. I don't know what Joe Dykes did to her in that lane but I was his victim as well. He took my daughter away from me.'

  Victor Leeming was in luck. When he got to the venerable city of Canterbury, he discovered that Patrick Perivale was at his chambers, interviewing a client. The detective did not mind waiting in the gracious Georgian house that served as a base for the barrister. After a ride through the countryside with Constable George Butterkiss at his most aggravating, Leeming felt that he was due some good fortune. Taking out the piece of paper that Colbeck had given him, he memorised the questions by repeating them over and over again in his head. Eventually, he was shown into a large, well-proportioned, high-ceilinged room with serried ranks of legal tomes along one wall.

  Standing in the middle of the room, Patrick Perivale did not even offer him a handshake. A smart, dark-haired, dapper man in his forties with curling side-whiskers, he wore an expression of disdain for lesser mortals and he clearly put his visitor in that category. The bruising on Leeming's face made him even less welcome to someone who resented unforeseen calls on his time.

  'What's this all about, Sergeant?' he inquired, fussily.

  'The trial of Nathan Hawkshaw.'

  'That's history. There's no cause to reopen it.'

  'I simply want to discuss it, sir.'

  'Now?' said Perivale, producing a watch from his waistcoat pocket and looking at it. 'I have another appointment soon.'

  'You'll have to hear me out first,' said Leeming, doggedly.

  'Must I?'

  'Inspector Colbeck was most insistent that I should warn you.'

  'About what?' asked the other, putting his watch away. 'Oh, very well,' he went on, going to the chair behind his desk. 'I suppose that you'd better sit down – and please make this visit a short one, Sergeant.'

  'Yes, sir.' Leeming lowered himself into a high-backed leather armchair that creaked slightly. 'Are you aware that the man who hanged Nathan Hawkshaw was murdered recently?'

  'I do read the papers, you know.'

  'Then you'll also have picked up the information that the Reverend Jones, the prison chaplain from Maidstone, was killed the night before last in a railway carriage.'

  'Is this some kind of test for me on recent news events?'

  'Both murder victims received death threats from someone.'

  'Not for the first time, I warrant.'

  'But it was for the last,' stressed Leeming. 'One of them heeded the warning but was nevertheless killed. The other – the chaplain – took no notice of the threat and lost his life as a result.'

  'I was truly sorry to hear that,' said Perivale. 'I met the chaplain once and he struck me as a fellow of sterling virtue – not always the case with Welshmen. As a nation, they tend to veer towards the other side of the law.'

  'Did you receive a death threat, sir?'

  'That's none of your damned business, Sergeant!'

  'I think that it is.'

  'I refuse to divulge any information about what I receive in relation to my cases. It's a question of professional confidentiality.'

  Leeming was blunt. 'I'd say it was a question of staying alive.'

  'That's a very offensive remark.'

  'There's a pattern here, sir. Two people have had-'

  'Yes, yes,' said the barrister, interrupting him. 'I can see that, man. When you deal with criminal law, you inevitably make enemies but that does not mean you let the imprecations of some worthless villain upset the even tenor of your life.'

  'So you did get a death threat.'

  'I didn't say that. What I am telling you – if only you had the grace to listen – is that I am very conscious of the dangers appertaining to my profession and I take all sensible precautions. To be more precise,' he continued, opening a drawer to pull out a gun, 'I always carry this when I go abroad in the streets. It's a Manton pocket pistol.'

  'Jacob Guttridge was armed as well but it did him no good.'

  'Thank you for telling me, Sergeant.' He put the pistol away then stood up. 'Now that you've delivered your message, you can go.'

  'But I haven't asked the questions yet, sir.'

  'What questions?'

  'The ones given to me by Inspector Colbeck.'

  'I don't have time to play guessing games.'

  'The Inspector used to be a barrister,' said Leeming, irritated by the other man's pomposity. 'Of course, he worked in the London criminal courts where they get the important cases that provincial barristers like you would never be allowed to touch. If you don't help me,' he cautioned, 'then Inspector Colbeck will come looking for you to know the reason why. And he won't be scared off by that toy pistol of yours either.'

  Patrick Perivale was checked momentarily by Leeming's forthrightness but he soon recovered his natural arrogance. One hand on a hip, he gave a supercilious smile.

  'Why did your Inspector leave the bar?'

  'Because he wanted to do something more worthwhile.'

  'Nothing is more worthwhile than convicting criminals.'

  'They have to be caught first, sir,' said Leeming. 'Besides, you don't always see justice being done in court, do you? I've sat through too many trials to know that. I've watched guilty men go free because they had a clever barrister and innocent men convicted because they didn't.'

  'I hope that you don't have the effrontery to suggest that Nathan Hawkshaw was innocent.'

  'I don't know the facts of the case well enough, sir, but Inspector Colbeck has studied it in detail and he's raised a few queries.'

  'He's too late. Sentence has been passed.'

  'It was passed on the hangman and the prison chaplain as well.'

  'Are you being frivolous, Sergeant?'

  'No, sir,' said Leeming, 'I was just pointing out that this case is by no means over for those who feel aggrieved on Hawkshaw's behalf. Two lives have been lost already. We'd like to catch the killer before anyone else joins the list. To do that, we need your help.'

  'What can I possibly do?'

  'Tell us something about the trial. Newspaper reports can only give us so much. You were there.'

  'Yes,' said the other with self-importance, 'and I regard it as one of my most successful cases. The reason for that is that I refused to be intimidated. I had to walk through a baying crowd outside the court and defy the howling mob in the public gallery.'

  'The judge had them cleared out, didn't he?'

  'Not before they'd made their point and weaker vessels would have been influenced by that. I was simply spurred on to get the conviction that Hawkshaw so obviously deserved.'

  'And how did you do that?'

  'By making him crack under cross-examination.'

  'He maintained his innocence until the end.'

  'But he'd already given himself away by then,' said Perivale with a note of triumph in his voice. 'He could not give a convincing explanation of where he was at the time of the murder. That was his undoing, Sergeant. He had no alibi and I taunted him with that fact.'

  'He claimed that he walked away from Lenham to think things over and then returned in a calmer frame of mind.'

  'Calmer frame of mind �
�� balderdash! The fellow was in a state of sustained fury. He had to be to inflict such butchery on his victim. It was an assault of almost demonic proportions.'

  'I know. I visited the scene of the crime.'

  'Then you'll have seen how secluded it was. Hawkshaw chose it with care so that he'd not be disturbed.'

  'But how did he persuade Dykes to join him there?'

  'That's beside the point.'

  'I don't think so,' said Leeming, remembering one of Colbeck's notes. 'Dykes would hardly agree to meet him in a private place when he knew that the butcher was after him. He'd have stayed drinking in the Red Lion where he was safe. And what proof is there that Hawkshaw was in that part of the woods, anyway?'

  'He was seen there by a witness.'

  'After the event. Yet there was no blood on him.'

  'You're dragging up the same feeble argument as the defence,' said the barrister. 'Because there was no blood on him, they argued, he could not have committed such a violent crime. Yet there was a stream nearby. Hawkshaw could easily have washed himself clean.'

  'What about his clothing? He couldn't wash blood off that.'

  'Quite right. That's why his coat mysteriously disappeared.'

  'His coat?'

  'Yes,' continued Perivale, almost crowing over him. 'That's one little detail that you and the Inspector missed. When he went to that fair in Lenham, Hawkshaw was wearing a coat. A number of witnesses testify to that, including his son. Later, however, when he was observed by the youth returning to the farm, he had no coat on and was thoroughly dishevelled, as if he'd been involved in vigorous exercise. In other words,' he said, coming to the end of his peroration, 'he discarded his coat because it was spattered with the blood of his victim.'

  'Was the coat never found?'

  'No – he must have buried it somewhere.'

  'Then why wasn't it discovered? The police searched the area.'

  'They were only looking for a certain part of Joseph Dykes's anatomy that had gone astray – a fact that tells you everything about the mentality of the killer. Taken together, the missing coat and the absence of an alibi put Hawkshaw's neck into the hangman's noose. Hundreds of people were at that fair with more arriving every minute. If Hawkshaw really had walked off towards Ashford, somebody must have seen him but no witnesses could be found.'