The Railway Detective Collection: The Railway Detective, the Excursion Train, the Railway Viaduct (The Railway Detective Series)

by Edward Marston

  ‘He’s in for a nasty surprise.’

  ‘Yes, but it does behove us to show additional caution in future.’

  ‘I will,’ said Leeming. ‘I’ll never ride on that blessed cart again!’

  ‘I was talking about the killer. He’s armed and ready to shoot.’

  ‘You mentioned a pistol just now.’

  ‘That’s what it sounded like,’ said Colbeck, ‘though I couldn’t be sure. It all happened in a split second. One of the first things we need to do is to find the bullet. That will tell us what firearm was used.’

  ‘We’ll have to wait until daylight to do that.’

  ‘Yes, Victor. In the meantime, we need to talk to Butterkiss.’

  ‘Keep him away, Inspector! He almost did for me.’

  ‘He tried his best to control that runaway horse.’

  ‘But he still managed to overturn the cart,’ said Leeming, ruefully. ‘And while I hit the ground and took the impact, Constable Butterkiss simply landed on top of me. He wasn’t really hurt at all.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I’d like you to fetch him.’

  ‘Now, sir?’

  ‘If you feel well enough to go. His local knowledge is crucial to us. Give him my compliments and ask if he can spare us some time.’

  ‘I don’t need to ask that. If we’re not very careful, he’d spare us twenty-four hours a day. The man is so blooming eager.’

  ‘Eagerness is a good quality in a policeman.’

  ‘Not if you have to ride beside him on a cart!’ Leeming went to the door. ‘Will you come down to meet him, sir?’

  ‘No,’ said Colbeck, glancing round, ‘this room is more private. And nobody will be able to take a shot at me in here. Be careful how you go.’

  ‘Yes, Inspector.’

  ‘And you might ask him to bring needle and thread.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was a tailor, wasn’t he? Perhaps he can repair my coat.’

  When the visitor called, George Butterkiss was regaling his wife with the story of how he had fought to control the galloping horse in the high street. He broke off to answer the door and was delighted to hear the summons delivered by Victor Leeming.

  ‘I’ll get my coat at once, Sergeant,’ he said.

  ‘Talking of coats,’ said the other, detaining him with a hand, ‘the Inspector has a problem. That bullet grazed his arm and left a hole in his sleeve. He’s very particular about his clothing.’

  ‘Inspector Colbeck would be a gift to any tailor.’

  ‘Can you help him?’

  ‘I’ll need to see the damage first. A simple tear can be easily mended but, if the material has been shot away, it may be a question of sewing a new sleeve on to the coat.’

  Butterkiss ran swiftly up the stairs. When he reappeared soon afterwards, he was back in police uniform even though he only had to walk thirty yards or so to the Saracen’s Head. His enthusiasm was quite undiminished as they strolled along the pavement together. The Sergeant found it lowering.

  ‘I haven’t told you the good news,’ said Butterkiss.

  ‘Is there such a thing?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant. When I took the horse back and explained what had happened, the owner examined the animal carefully. It had no injuries at all. Isn’t that a relief?’

  ‘I’d have had it put down for what it did to me.’

  ‘You can’t blame the horse for bolting like that.’

  ‘Well, I’m in no mood to congratulate it, I can tell you.’

  ‘How do you feel now?’

  ‘Vengeful.’

  ‘I thought that we had a lucky escape.’

  ‘What’s lucky about being thrown head first from a moving cart?’

  Butterkiss laughed. ‘You will have your little joke, Sergeant.’

  They turned into the Saracen’s Head and went up the stairs. When they were let into Colbeck’s room, they were each offered a chair. The Inspector perched on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Thank you for coming so promptly, Constable,’ he said.

  ‘Feel free to call on me at any hour of the day,’ urged Butterkiss.

  ‘We need your guidance.’

  ‘It’s yours for the asking, Inspector.’

  ‘Then I’d like you to take another look at these names,’ said Colbeck, handing him the petition. ‘Are you ready, Victor?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Leeming, taking his notebook dutifully from his pocket. ‘I’ll write down all the relevant details.’

  ‘We drew a blank with the first batch of names. Can you take us slowly through the next dozen or so, please?’

  ‘If I can read their handwriting,’ said Butterkiss, poring over the document. ‘There are one or two signatures that defy even me.’

  ‘Do your best, Constable.’

  ‘You can always count on me to do that.’

  Taking a deep breath, he identified the first name and described the man in detail. As soon as he learnt the age of the person, Colbeck interrupted and told him to move on to the next one. Leeming’s pencil was busy, writing down names then crossing them out again. Of the fifteen people that Butterkiss recognised, only seven were deemed to be worth closer inspection.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Colbeck. ‘Now turn to the women, please.’

  Butterkiss lifted an eyebrow. ‘The women, sir?’

  ‘As opposed to the men,’ explained Leeming.

  ‘But a woman couldn’t possibly have committed those murders on the trains nor could one have fired that shot at you, Inspector.’

  ‘You are mistaken about that,’ said Colbeck. ‘Earlier this year, the Sergeant and I arrested a woman in Deptford who had shot her husband with his army revolver. The bullet went straight through his body and wounded the young lady who was in bed with him at the time.’

  ‘Dear me!’ exclaimed Butterkiss.

  ‘Never underestimate the power of the weaker sex, Constable.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He addressed himself to the petition once more and picked out the female names that he recognised. Most were found to be very unlikely suspects but three names joined the Sergeant’s list.

  ‘Did you make a note of their details, Victor?’ asked Colbeck.

  ‘Yes, Inspector.’

  ‘Good. You can talk to those three ladies tomorrow.’

  ‘What about me?’ said Butterkiss.

  ‘I have two important tasks for you, Constable.’

  ‘Just tell me what they are.’

  ‘I want you to find Amos Lockyer for me.’

  ‘I’ll do it somehow,’ vowed Butterkiss. ‘What’s the other task?’

  Colbeck reached for his frock coat. ‘I wonder if you could look at this sleeve for me?’ he said. ‘Tell me if it’s beyond repair.’

  Winifred Hawkshaw was on tenterhooks. Whenever she heard a sound from the adjoining bedroom, she feared that her daughter had woken up and was either trying to open the door or to escape through the window. After a sleepless night, she used her key to let herself into Emily’s room and found her fast asleep. Putting a chair beside the bed, Winifred sat down and kept vigil. It was an hour before the girl’s eyelids fluttered. Her mother took hold of her hand.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, sweetly.

  Emily was confused. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘In your own bed, dear.’

  ‘Is that you, Mother?’

  ‘Yes.’ Winifred rubbed her hand. ‘It’s me, Emily.’

  ‘I feel strange. What happened?’

  ‘The doctor gave you something to make you sleep.’

  ‘The doctor?’ The news brought Emily fully awake. ‘You let a doctor touch me?’

  ‘You’d passed out, Emily. When the Inspector brought you down from that tower, you were in a dead faint.’

  The girl needed a moment to assimilate the information. When she remembered what she had tried to do, she brought a hand up to her mouth. Her eyes darted nervously around the room. She felt trapped.

  ‘We need to talk,’ s
aid Winifred, softly.

  ‘I’ve nothing to say.’

  ‘Emily!’

  ‘I haven’t, Mother. I meant to jump off that tower.’

  ‘No, I can’t believe that,’ insisted her mother. ‘Is your life so bad that you could even think of such a thing? It’s sinful, Emily. It’s so cruel and selfish and you’re neither of those things. Don’t hurt us any more.’

  ‘I wasn’t doing it to hurt you.’

  ‘Then what made you go up there in the first place?’

  ‘I was afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Everything.’

  Emily began to sob quietly and her mother bent over to hug her. The embrace lasted a long time and it seemed to help the girl because it stemmed her tears. She became so quiet that Winifred wondered if she had fallen asleep again. When she drew back, however, she saw that Emily’s eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling.

  ‘Promise me that you won’t do anything like this again,’ said Winifred, solemnly. ‘Give me your sacred word of honour.’ A bleak silence ensued. ‘Did you hear what I said, Emily?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then give me that promise.’

  ‘I promise,’ murmured the girl.

  ‘Say it as if you mean it,’ scolded Winifred. ‘As it is, the whole town will know what happened yesterday and I’ll have to face the shame of that. Don’t make it any worse for me, Emily. We love you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then behave as if it does.’

  ‘I will.’

  Emily sat up in bed and reached out for her mother. Both of them were crying now, locked together, sharing their pain, trying to find a bond that had somehow been lost. At length, it was the daughter who pulled away. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and made an effort to control herself.

  ‘You need more time,’ said Winifred, watching her closely. ‘You need more time to think about what you did and why you did it.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘But I’ll want the truth, Emily.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘I have a right to know. When something as wicked and terrible as this happens, I have a right to know why. And I’m not the only one, Emily,’ she warned. ‘The vicar will want to speak to you as well.’

  ‘The vicar?’

  ‘Taking your own life is an offence against God – and you made it worse by trying to do it from a church tower. The vicar says that it would have been an act of blasphemy. Is that what you meant to do?’

  ‘No, no,’ cried Emily.

  ‘Suicide is evil.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We couldn’t have buried you on consecrated ground.’

  ‘I didn’t think about that.’

  ‘Well, you should have,’ said Winifred, bitterly. ‘I don’t want two members of the family denied a Christian burial in the churchyard at St Mary’s. You could have ended up like your father, Emily. That would have broken my heart.’

  Emily began to tremble violently and her mother feared that she was about to have another fit but the girl soon recovered. The experience she had been through was too frightful for her to contemplate yet. Her mind turned to more mundane concerns.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ she announced.

  ‘Are you?’ said her mother, laughing in relief at this sign of normality. ‘I’ll make you some breakfast at once. You need to be up and dressed before he calls.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Inspector Colbeck. He was the person who saved your life.’

  A long sleep had revived Robert Colbeck and got him up early to face the new day. The stinging sensation in his wound had been replaced by a distant ache though his left arm was still rather stiff when he moved it. Before breakfast, he was outside the Saracen’s Head, standing in the position that he had occupied the previous evening and trying to work out where the bullet might have gone. Deciding that it must have ricocheted off the wall, he searched the pavement and the road over a wide area. He eventually found it against the kerb on the opposite side of the high street. Colbeck showed the bullet to Victor Leeming when the latter joined him for breakfast.

  ‘It’s from a revolver,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘How can you tell, sir? The end is bent out of shape.’

  ‘That happened on impact with the wall. I’m going by the size of the bullet. My guess is that it came from a revolver designed by Robert Adams. I saw the weapon on display at the Great Exhibition last year.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Leeming, enviously. ‘Because we saved Crystal Palace from being destroyed, you were given two tickets by Prince Albert for the opening ceremony. You took Miss Andrews to the Exhibition.’

  ‘I did, Victor, though it wasn’t to see revolvers. Madeleine was much more interested in the locomotives on show, especially the Lord of the Isles. No,’ he went on, ‘it was on a second visit that I took the trouble to study the firearms because they were the weapons that we would be up against one day – and that day came sooner than I expected.’

  ‘Who is this Robert Adams?’

  ‘The only serious British rival to Samuel Colt. He did not want the American to steal all the glory so he developed his solid-frame revolver in which the butt frame and barrel were forged as a single piece of metal.’

  ‘And this was what they fired?’ said Leeming, handing the bullet back to him. ‘You thought that it came from a pistol.’

  ‘A single-cocking pistol, Victor. Adams used a different firing mechanism from the Colt. I’m sufficiently patriotic to be grateful that it was a British weapon,’ said Colbeck, pocketing the bullet. ‘I’d hate to have been shot dead by an American revolver last night.’

  ‘Who would own such a thing in Ashford?’

  ‘A good point.’

  ‘You were right to stay on the ground when you were hit, sir. If it was a revolver, it could have been fired again and again.’

  ‘Adams designed it so that it would fire rapidly. What probably saved me was that the self-cocking lock needed a heavy pull on the trigger and that tends to upset your aim.’

  ‘Unless you get close enough to the target.’

  ‘We’ll have to make sure that he doesn’t do that, Victor.’

  Having finished his breakfast, Colbeck sat back and wiped his lips with his napkin. Leeming ate the last of his meal then sipped his tea. He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket.

  ‘You want me to talk to these three women, then?’

  ‘Ask them why they signed that petition.’

  ‘One of them lives in a farm near Wye.’

  ‘Then I suggest that you don’t go there by cart. Take a train from Ashford station. Wye is only one short stop down the line.’

  ‘What will you be doing, sir?’

  ‘Going back to source.’

  ‘Source?’

  ‘I’m going to have a long-overdue talk with Emily Hawkshaw,’ said Colbeck. ‘This whole business began when she had that encounter with Joseph Dykes. It’s high time that the girl confided in me. After what happened on the top of that church tower yesterday, I feel that Emily owes me something.’

  Caleb Andrews had been driving trains for so long that he knew exactly how long it took him to walk to Euston Station from Camden. He also knew how important punctuality was to a railway company. After a glance at the clock, he got up from the table and reached for his hat.

  ‘I’m off, Maddy.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said, coming out of the kitchen to give him a kiss.

  ‘What are you going to do today?’

  ‘I hope to finish the painting.’

  ‘One of these fine days,’ he said, ‘you must come down to Euston and do a painting of me on the footplate. I’d like that. We could hang it over the mantelpiece.’

  ‘I’ve done dozens of drawings of you, Father.’

  ‘I want to be in colour – like the Lord of the Isles.’

  ‘You are the Lord of the Isles,’ she said, fondly. ‘At least, y
ou think you are when you’ve had a few glasses of beer.’

  Andrews laughed. ‘You know your father too well.’

  ‘Try not to be late this evening.’

  ‘I will. By the way,’ he said, ‘you needn’t bother to read the newspaper this morning. There’s no mention at all of Inspector Colbeck. Without my help, he’s obviously making no progress.’

  ‘I think that he is. Robert prefers to hide certain things from the press. When he’s working on a case, he hates having any reporters around him. They always expect quick results.’

  ‘The Inspector had an extremely quick result. As soon as he got to Ashford, someone else was murdered on a train.’

  ‘Father!’

  ‘You can’t be any quicker than that.’

  ‘Go off to work,’ she said, opening the door for him, ‘and forget about Robert. He’ll solve these murders very soon, I’m sure.’

  ‘So am I, Maddy. He’s got a good reason to get a move on,’ said Andrews with a cackle. ‘The Inspector wants to get back here and have his painting of the Lord of the Isles.’

  Robert Colbeck was pleased with the way that the sleeve of his frock coat had been replaced. George Butterkiss had done such an excellent job sewing on a new sleeve that Colbeck was able to wear the coat again. Looking as spruce as ever, he turned into Middle Row and raised his top hat to a woman who went past. Adam Hawkshaw was displaying joints of meat on the table outside the shop. The Inspector strolled up to him.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, breezily.

  ‘Oh.’ The butcher looked up at him, visibly shocked.

  ‘You seem surprised to see me, Mr Hawkshaw.’

  ‘I heard that you’d been shot last night.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Everyone was talking about it when I got here this morning.’

  ‘As you can see,’ said Colbeck, careful to give the impression that he was completely uninjured, ‘reports of the incident were false.’

  ‘Yes.’