depend on our own wits.
Fortunately, Sherlock Holmes had a connoisseur’s knowledge of the oddities of the British railway system. During the hours of darkness, there were trains which cross-crossed the country without being listed in Bradshaw’s passenger time table. Many were supervised by the railway police on behalf of Her Majesty’s Royal Mail. They included “high-value-package” coaches, kept out of bounds to the travelling public.
From Smiler Hawkins’s information, Mordaunt must have intended to catch the eleven o’clock ferry train from Liverpool Street to Harwich, for the overnight crossing to the Hook of Holland. Or did he merely want us to think this, the more easily to throw us off the scent? The 11 p.m. was the last passenger train on the Harwich line and we had missed it already. Our thoughts turned to the 11.50 East Coast mail train. Its vans carried the bulky canvas post-bags from the City of London sorting-office to King’s Lynn in Norfolk, via Chelmsford, Colchester, Felixstowe, Harwich and Great Yarmouth.
By good fortune, Lestrade was duty commander of the Criminal Investigation Division at Scotland Yard overnight. As Holmes suggested, Gregson turned to his sergeant with orders to alert the chief inspector and request his presence urgently at Liverpool Street.
“A further wire to be sent to Harwich,” Gregson added, calling the man back. “The ferry train is to be met at the docks. All passengers to be checked. Look for a thick-set man with red hair and whiskers, wearing a brown- and-white plaid coat. Possibly carrying or wearing a grey hat.”
“You think of everything, my dear fellow!” said Holmes admiringly. I looked at my friend uneasily.
Gregson ignored this compliment and beckoned the police van which had brought us to Eaton Place. A moment later its two horses were moving at a gallop across Belgrave Square, down the Strand, up Ludgate Hill and past St Paul’s, towards Bishopsgate Street and the East Coast mail. We passed the illuminated face of Liverpool Street Station clock-tower, whose hands pointed to twenty-five minutes to midnight. Gregson glanced at it and checked his watch. A moment later the inspector got down from the van in the station forecourt and strode towards the office door of the railway police.
Under the glass canopy of the departure platforms, the lamp lit air was filled by columns of steam and the boom of engines in motion. Holmes and I headed for Platform 12, where the mail train appeared as a set of six security vans with very few windows, all of them barred. Inside it, as the powerful locomotive rattled through the night, workers in brown overalls and arm-bands stood at long tables. Deftly and casually, they would sort envelopes and packets from the canvas bags into bundles for delivery to the towns and villages of East Anglia. At every stop along the line, another squadron of bags would be hoisted out onto flat trolleys.
At the iron-railed gate of the platform, a lean ferret-like man in an Inverness cape, his air furtive and sly, was already standing by the gate. Scotland Yard was nearer to Liverpool Street than Belgravia had been. Chief Inspector Lestrade held out his hand in greeting.
“Well, Mr Holmes! Should I thank you for giving us Maria Jessel? A most contrary lady! From all that’s happened, Mordaunt ought to be a dose of poison to her. Rum thing is, she won’t say a word against him now. What she’s hoping for? Do you know?”
“Her freedom, I suppose,” said Holmes unhelpfully.
Lestrade pulled a face.
“I don’t see it. What’s she after?”
“Justice, if you prefer it.” My friend looked at me, his back to the chief inspector, and raised his eyebrows as if in despair of him.
“Then why won’t she ditch him and have done with it, sir?”
Holmes swung round on him.
“I believe, Lestrade, I may go so far as to say we shall learn the answer to that by tomorrow morning. Meantime, I have two requests to make.”
The Scotland Yard man’s eyes narrowed a little.
“Yes? Such as?”
“Your colleague Gregson is on a somewhat different track to us. He fancies Mordaunt will make a dash for the Hook of Holland.”
“And how do you propose to remedy that, Mr Holmes?”
“By assuming that Mr Gregson is mistaken. The ferry train is not half-way to Harwich yet. Colchester is the last stop before the docks, I believe. Put aboard two plain-clothes men for the last leg of the journey. Give them Mordaunt’s description, as we have it. He can hardly change it much in full view of the other passengers. By this time of night there will be only a final handful of travellers still making for the docks. Just let your two men search the train unobtrusively between Colchester and Harwich for anyone who might be Mordaunt. From the police post at the docks let them wire the result of their search to every station-master along the route.”
Lestrade’s eyes widened.
“You think he might not be on the train after all this?”
“Let us say I think it very unlikely that they will find him on it.”
“Then you’re the only one who does!” said the chief inspector humorously. “After he bought a ticket for the docks!”
“Just as any man would who wanted to throw off the pursuit. As for other opinions, I am well used to being in a minority.”
I was quite sure that Lestrade’s inclination was to refuse us, but he mastered his feelings after a few moments’ thought.
“Very well, Mr Holmes. You have done us a good turn in finding Maria Jessel. We owe you a favour. You shall have two men at Colchester. And your other request?”
“A little more ambitious. I require Inspector Alfred Swain of the Essex Constabulary Criminal Investigation Branch, his sergeant and a dozen good uniformed men to meet this mail train at Abbots Langley. Mind you, Lestrade, it must be Alfred Swain.”
I thought there was going to be a pitched argument over this. What possible reason could there be for a detachment of police to meet a train on which Major Mordaunt could not possibly travel? He would surely be at Harwich by then! Our Scotland Yard man drew his plaid cape more tightly round his shoulders and spoke quietly.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Mr Holmes. I do so hope you do. As for Alfred Swain, I suppose you know his story? He had to leave Scotland Yard for a country posting. A matter of personal differences with his commander.”
“Differences with Superintendent Toplady that I might also have had, were I in Swain’s place.” Holmes became more coaxing. “My dear Lestrade, Mordaunt is no ordinary criminal. I believe you are playing for higher stakes than you suppose. On the evidence you have, the major could reduce Maria Jessel’s story to thin air, the vapours of feminine spite. Who are your witnesses? A poor mad governess now lying in Broadmoor and a cast-off mistress who must almost admit to murder herself in order to catch him. I fear you would seize him only to let him go again.”
Lestrade fell silent for a moment. Then, he said, “Meaning what in particular?”
“Your supposition is correct but your timing is in error. Mordaunt will make a sudden bolt for the Continent. However, he will not do so—he dare not—until he is certain that nothing is left behind to betray and therefore destroy him. Your evidence remains precarious. I warn you that you must catch him in the act or you will not catch him at all. With due modesty, I believe I am the only person who can accomplish that.”
“Do you indeed?” Lestrade straightened up and looked at him hard. “You don’t think much of yourself, do you, Mr Holmes?”
Holmes ignored this pleasantry.
“Take him too soon, Lestrade, and what have you got? Can you even prove that Mordaunt killed Quint and that it was not some other man of Miss Jessel’s acquaintance whom she now protects? Can you prove that Mordaunt carried Quint’s body to the bridge and left it there? You know you cannot. Even the verdict of the coroner’s court stands against you. You may suspect it but you can prove nothing. Leave that to me!”
Lestrade appeared to chew his lip. It was now 11.45 by the illuminated clock-face above the platform.
“A man as clever as you say Mordaunt is will not wait around to be caught by you, Mr Sherlock Holmes!”
A little twitch of impatience pulled at Holmes’s mouth.
“I venture to think he is a little less clever than I shall be.”
