Murder on the Brighton Express

it came off the rails. Several spoke gratefully of the way that the Reverend Ezra Follis had helped them in the immediate aftermath, though one man had been highly alarmed by the sight of the clergyman, fearing that he had come to perform last rites. Colbeck found two people who had actually shared Follis’s carriage. Terence Giddens, the red-faced banker, was still desperate to be discharged from the hospital. He kept glancing anxiously at the door as if afraid that an unwanted visitor would walk through it.

Daisy Perriam had been the only woman in the carriage but the beauty that had attracted her travelling companions was now masked by ugly facial cuts and bruises. She had sustained cracked ribs during the crash and a broken wrist. The injury that really distressed her, however, was the crushed foot. She would never walk properly again. When Colbeck pointed out that she was lucky to survive, she burst into tears.

‘I’d rather have died,’ she wailed, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘What kind of a life do I face now? It will be a nightmare.’

‘Do your family know what happened to you?’ asked Colbeck.

‘No, Inspector, and I hope that they never do.’

On that mystifying note, Colbeck left the hospital and made his way to the railway station, a striking piece of architecture. It was late in the evening when he at last returned to Scotland Yard. The distinctive whiff of cigar smoke from the superintendent’s office told him that Edward Tallis was still there. A confirmed bachelor with scant interest in a social life, Tallis had dedicated himself completely to the never-ending fight against crime. Colbeck tapped on his door, entered in response to a brusque command and caught the superintendent in the act of stubbing out his cigar in an ashtray.

‘Ah,’ said Tallis, sarcastically, ‘the Prodigal Son returns!’

‘Does that mean you have a fatted calf roasting on the spit, sir?’

‘No, Inspector.’

‘Then perhaps you should read your Bible,’ suggested Colbeck.

Tallis sat up indignantly. ‘I study it every day and am well-acquainted with its contents,’ he affirmed. ‘If everyone in this blighted city was as devout and God-fearing as me, there’d be no need for a Metropolitan Police Force.’

‘I beg to differ, sir. You’d need hundreds of constables to control the masses fighting to get into the churches.’

‘Are you being facetious, Colbeck?

‘Light drollery was the most I was attempting.’

‘It has no place whatsoever in a criminal investigation.’

While Colbeck disagreed, he knew that it was not the moment to debate the subject. Tallis believed that a sense of humour was a sign of weakness in a man’s character. If he ever found something even remotely amusing, the superintendent made sure that nobody else ever found out about it. Waving Colbeck to a chair, he picked up a sheet of paper from his desk.

‘This is a report from Sergeant Leeming,’ he declared.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Colbeck, taking it from him. ‘I’ll be very interested to see it. Victor and I were dealing with two ends of a problematical relationship. While he was calling on Matthew Shanklin, I was visiting Horace Bardwell at the county hospital in Brighton.’

‘How is he?’

‘He’s very poorly, I’m afraid. He’s lost his sight as a result of the accident and took such a blow to the head that he’s in a state of great confusion.’ As he was talking, Colbeck was reading Leeming’s account of the interview with Shanklin. ‘This could be significant,’ he went on. ‘Victor has probed quite deeply.’

‘I want to hear about Mr Bardwell.’

‘Then you shall, superintendent.’

Colbeck told him about his fleeting encounter with Bardwell and what he had gleaned from other patients. He emphasised the number of people who had praised the work of Ezra Follis.

‘Disasters produce victims,’ said Tallis, grimly, ‘but they also create heroes. It sounds to me as if the Reverend Follis is one of them.’

‘There’s no question of that, sir. One of the doctors told me that he should be in hospital himself instead of carrying on as if nothing had happened to him.’

‘Christian stoicism – we can all learn from his example.’

‘Strictly speaking,’ said Colbeck, ‘Stoics were members of an ancient Greek school of philosophy, holding that virtue and happiness can only be attained by submission to destiny and natural law. I’m not sure that it can be aligned to Christianity.’

‘Don’t be so pedantic!’

‘Nevertheless, I see and appreciate what you were trying to say.’

‘I was not trying to say anything, Inspector – I was saying it.’

‘And your point was crystal clear,’ said Colbeck, suppressing a smile. ‘To return to Horace Bardwell, do you accept that his presence on that express train may – and I put it no higher than that – have been the reason it was derailed?’

‘I reserve my judgement.’

‘You’ve read Victor’s report and heard how Mr Bardwell reacted when I mentioned the name of Matthew Shanklin to him. Are you still not persuaded, sir?’

‘I’m persuaded that there might, after all, be something in your extraordinary notion that the train crash was intended to kill a particular individual,’ said Tallis, eyebrows forming a bushy chevron, ‘but I very much doubt if his name was Horace Bardwell.’

‘Who else could it possibly be?’ said Colbeck.

‘The gentleman who sent me this letter earlier today,’ replied the other, jabbing a finger on the missive. ‘According to this, he’s had two death threats to date and is sure that he is being followed. When he discharged himself from hospital, he did so under police guard.’

‘May I know his name, Superintendent?’

‘It’s Giles Thornhill, a Member of Parliament for Brighton.’

Colbeck was decisive. ‘I’ll call on him tomorrow morning, sir.’

CHAPTER SIX

When he finished his shift that Saturday evening, Caleb Andrews had left Euston station with his fireman, drunk a reviving pint of beer in his favourite public house then walked briskly home to Camden. His daughter, as usual, was waiting to make his supper.

‘Have you had a good day, Father?’ asked Madeleine.

‘No,’ he answered, removing his cap and hanging it on a peg. ‘I keep thinking about Frank Pike. I miss him, Maddy. I like a man who takes his job as seriously as he did. Frank listened to me. He was ready to learn.’ He nestled into his armchair. ‘How was Rose today?’

‘I only spent an hour with her. Rose’s parents were there and so was Frank’s mother. The house was rather crowded.’

‘Is she bearing up?’

‘She’s trying to be brave,’ said Madeleine with a sigh, ‘but, every so often, the pain is too much for her and she breaks down. I’ve told her that she can call on me at any hour of the day or night.’

‘It’s Sunday tomorrow – my rest day. I’ll pay Rose another visit myself. She needs someone to tell her what a good man Frank was.’

‘She found that out for herself, Father.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m sure that she did.’ He looked up quizzically. ‘Is there any word from Inspector Colbeck?’

‘No,’ she replied, ‘but that’s not surprising. You know how busy Robert always is. He works all the hours God sends him. I imagine that he’s still looking into the accident.’

‘That’s why I asked, Maddy. There’s a nasty rumour flying around that it might not have been an accident. I mean, why should the Railway Detective take an interest in it unless a crime had been committed?’

‘Robert said nothing about a crime when he was here.’

‘He’d only paid a short visit to the site and had no time to find out what really happened. If it turns out that