'Yes, Father, but you were driving an engine at the time. You've never seen the viaduct from below as Robert has. According to him, it was a painting rather like this that will help to solve the murder.'
'I don't see how.'
Madeleine put her pencil aside and got up from her chair. She explained how Ambrose Hooper had witnessed the body being hurled over the viaduct, and how he had duly recorded the moment in his watercolour of the scene. She felt privileged that Colbeck had confided the information to her. What both she and the inspector knew was that the murder victim had been on his way to an assignation, but it was something she would not confide to her father. Caleb Andrews would have been alarmed to hear that she had been involved in a police investigation. More worrying from Madeleine's point of view was that fact that he was likely to pass on the information over a drink with his railway colleagues. Discretion was unknown to him.
'Why do you want to draw the Sankey Viaduct?' he wondered.
'I was just passing an idle hour.'
'You're never idle, Maddy. You take after me.'
'Robert told me so much about it that I wanted to put it down on paper. It's not something I'd ever expect to sell. I was just trying to do what Mr Hooper did and reconstruct the crime.'
'The real crime was committed by the guard on that train,' said Andrews with passion. 'He should have kept his eyes open. If he'd seen that body being thrown from the train, he could have jumped on to the platform at the next stop and caught the killer before he could sneak away.'
'But the guard didn't see a thing, Father.'
'That's my point.' Swaying uneasily, he put a hand on the back of a chair to steady himself. 'I'm for bed, Maddy. What about you?'
'I'll be up soon.'
'Next time you speak to Inspector Colbeck, tell him to consult me. I've got a theory about this crime – lots of them, in fact.'
'I know,' she said, fondly. 'I've heard them all.'
Madeleine kissed her father on the cheek then helped him to the staircase. Holding the banister, he went slowly up the steps. She returned immediately to a drawing that she had embarked on in the first instance because it kept Robert Colbeck in her mind. It was not meant to be an accurate picture of the viaduct. Madeleine had departed quite radically from the description that she had been given. She now added some features that were purely imaginary.
Using her pencil with a light touch, she removed the brook and canal that ran beneath the viaduct by drowning them completely in the foaming waves of the English Channel. On one side of the viaduct, she drew a sketch of a railway station and wrote the name Dover above it. On the other, she pencilled in a tall, elegant man in a frock coat and top hat. England and France had been connected in art. The drawing was no longer her version of what had happened to Gaston Chabal. It was a viaduct between her and Robert Colbeck, built with affection and arching its way across the sea to carry her love to him. As she put more definition and character into the tiny portrait of the detective, she wondered how he was faring in France and hoped that they would soon be together again.
Thomas Brassey did not only expect his employees to work long hours, he imposed the same strict regimen on himself. Accordingly, he arrived on site early that morning to discover that Robert Colbeck was there before him. The inspector was carrying a newspaper.
'You've read the report, I daresay,' noted Brassey.
'Yes, sir.'
'I got my wife to translate it for me. I'm glad that they described Gaston as an outstanding civil engineer because that's exactly what he was. My only concern is that the report of his murder will bring droves of people out here to bother me.'
'I doubt it,' said Colbeck. 'Since the crime was committed in England, reporters would have no reason to visit you. The police, on the other hand, may want to learn more about the deceased so I am sure that they will pay you a call at some time.'
'I hope that you're on hand when they come, Inspector.'
'Why?'
'I need an interpreter.'
'What about your wife?'
'Maria doesn't like to come to the site. And who can blame her?' he said, looking around at the clamorous activity. 'It is always so noisy, smelly and dirty here.'
'Building a railway means making a mess, Mr Brassey.'
The contractor laughed. 'I've made more mess than anybody.'
'All in a good cause.'
'I like to think so.'
Brassey unlocked the door of his office and the two of them went in. Various people began to call to get their orders for the day from the contractor. It was some time before Colbeck was alone again with him. Meanwhile, he had been studying the map of northern France that was on the wall.
'Compared to us,' he remarked, 'they have so few railways.'
'That will change in time, Inspector. Mind you, they've been spared the mad rush that we had. Everyone wanted to build a railway in England because they thought they would make a fortune.'
'Some of them did, Mr Brassey.'
'Only the lucky ones,' said the other. 'The crash was bound to come. When it did, thousands of investors were ruined, credit dried up and everything ground to a standstill. The Railway Mania was over.'
'You survived somehow.'
'We still had plenty of work on our books, in France as well as England. Many of our rivals went to the wall. It was the one good thing to come out of the disaster – we got rid of a lot of crooked promoters, incompetent engineers and contractors who gave us all a bad name. It stopped the rot, Inspector.'
'Is that why you prefer to work in France?'
'My partners and I will go wherever railways need to be built,' said Brassey. 'We've contracts in Canada, Italy and Denmark at this point in time.'
'But this one is your major concern.'
'At the moment.'
'I can understand why,' said Colbeck, glancing at the map. 'If you can secure the contract for the extension of this line from Caen to Cherbourg, you'll have work in France for years to come.'
'That's why nothing must jeopardise the project.'
'We headed off one big threat last night.'
'When will the next one come?'
'I hope that it won't Mr Brassey.'
'But you can offer no guarantee.'
'No, sir. I fear not. What I can tell you is this. Gaston Chabal was murdered in England for reasons that are connected to this railway. As you pointed out to me,' Colbeck went on, 'he was much more than an engineer. He obviously had a pivotal role to play here.'
'He did, Inspector. He was a sort of talisman.'
'In more ways than one, it seems.'
'I knew nothing of Gaston's private life when I took him on,' said Brassey. 'Even if I had been aware of his adulteries, I'd still have employed him. I'm a contractor, not a moral guardian.'
'That's clear from the vast number of navvies you employ.'
'Quite so, Inspector Colbeck. All sorts of irregularities go on in their camps but it's none of my business. As long as a man can do the job he's paid for, he can have three wives and a dozen mistresses.'
'I don't think that Chabal went to that extreme.' Colbeck moved away from the map to look through the window. 'I fear that it will all have come as a great shock to Victor.'
'What?'
'The moral laxity in the camp. He's a married man who tries to lead a Christian life. Some of the antics here will shake him to the core. He won't have seen anything like this before.'
