Timetable of Death Read online

  ‘How did you get on in Melbourne?’ asked Cope.

  ‘I thoroughly enjoyed my visit. The Hall itself and the church nearby are exceptional.’

  ‘I was referring to your meeting with Mr Burns.’

  ‘He was quite exceptional as well, in his own way,’ said Colbeck. ‘He’s a first-rate gardener and an outstanding cricketer. Few of us have two such strings to our bow.’

  ‘What did you make of him, Inspector?’

  ‘I have something to find out before I make a final judgement.’

  ‘Is he a credible suspect?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘I’d like to pass on the observation to Mr Haygarth. He wants to know about every stage of your investigation.’

  ‘Then you may tell him that we are still gathering evidence across a wide front. Given the fact that he worked for Mr Quayle and fell out with him, Mr Burns must be considered as – how shall I put it – a person of interest to us. What was your estimate of him, Mr Cope?’

  ‘I’ve never met the fellow and nor has Mr Haygarth.’

  ‘So you’ve never seen Gerard Burns playing cricket?’

  ‘It’s a game I have no time to watch, Inspector.’

  Colbeck glanced at a framed photograph on the wall of the Derby Works.

  ‘There’s another reason why I like this place,’ he said. ‘It’s a railway town but quite unlike most of the others. Places like Crewe, Swindon and Wolverton have their works near the heart of the town, and so does Ashford in Kent. Yours is on the outer edge of Derby.’

  ‘Other industrial developments got here first, Inspector.’

  ‘I’d value the opportunity to take a look around the works.’

  ‘You won’t find any murder suspects there.’

  ‘I just want to satisfy my curiosity, Mr Cope.’

  ‘Then I’ll ensure that you’re made welcome there. Will Sergeant Leeming want to accompany you on a tour of inspection?’

  ‘No,’ said Colbeck with a laugh. ‘He doesn’t share my enthusiasm for rail transport. In any case, he’ll be back in London by now.’

  Cope was astonished. ‘What’s he doing there?’

  ‘He’s widening the search.’

  ‘You seem to have strange methods of investigation, Inspector.’

  ‘They usually bring gratifying results, I assure you.’

  ‘There’s something I wish to say,’ said Cope, clearing his throat for what was plainly a rehearsed speech. ‘Donald Haygarth is part of the backbone of this company. He’s essential to its future success. Since he is the person to profit most from the unfortunate demise of Mr Quayle, it’s only natural that some people would name him as a suspect. I know that Superintendent Wigg has done so. I can see it in his eyes.’

  ‘The superintendent has made no secret of the fact.’

  ‘He needs to understand that nobody is more committed to unmasking the killer than Mr Haygarth. It was he who sent for you, Inspector.’ He hunched his shoulders interrogatively. ‘Do you think he’d be rash enough to do that if he had any blood on his hands?’

  He paused for an answer that never came. Early in his career, Colbeck had been summoned to solve a murder by the very man who’d committed it and who was certain that he would be absolved from suspicion by making contact with Scotland Yard. Ultimately, his hopes had been dashed. There was no proof so far that Haygarth was attempting the same sort of bluff but he had certainly not been eliminated as a possible suspect working in conjunction with others.

  ‘What is your next step, Inspector?’ asked Cope.

  ‘I’m going to pay a visit to Ilkeston.’

  ‘Why do you need to go there?’

  ‘There’s an alibi that needs to be checked. It’s one of those tedious jobs that a murder investigation always throws up but it can’t be ignored.’ He looked Cope up and down. ‘Tell me, sir, would you say that you had a good memory?’

  ‘I have an excellent memory, as it happens.’

  ‘And would you describe yourself as honest?’

  Cope bridled. ‘I find that question rather offensive,’ he said. ‘Speak to anyone in this building and you’ll find that I’m known for my honesty.’

  ‘Gerard Burns would think differently.’

  ‘What has he got to do with it?’

  ‘If your memory was as sound as you claim, you’d remember. You once approached him on Mr Haygarth’s behalf to entice him away from his job by offering him more money. Has that slipped your mind?’

  ‘I deny it flatly,’ said Cope, standing his ground.

  ‘Are you claiming that Burns has made a mistake?’

  ‘No, Inspector, I’m claiming that he’s told you a downright lie. But, then, what can you expect from an unprincipled rogue who wormed his way into the affections of one of Mr Quayle’s daughters?’

  ‘When we spoke about him in Mr Haygarth’s presence, you insisted that his name was new to you. How is it that you’ve suddenly become aware of his reason for leaving Mr Quayle?’

  Cope held firm under Colbeck’s accusatory gaze. ‘I, too, have been making enquiries,’ he said. ‘You’re not the only one who can do that, Inspector.’

  The anomaly had been pointed out to him many times. Victor Leeming was one of the bravest detectives at Scotland Yard, justly famed for his readiness to tackle violent criminals and for his disregard of personal injury. His courage had earned him many commendations and won him promotion to the rank of sergeant. Yet when he had to spend time alone with Edward Tallis, he had an attack of cowardice. Taking a deep breath and pulling himself to his full height, he knocked on the superintendent’s door and received a barked command to enter. Leeming went into the room and closed the door gently behind him. Head bent over a document he was perusing, Tallis kept him waiting. When he finally looked up, his eyes widened.

  ‘Is that you, Leeming?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘What the devil are you doing here?’

  ‘Inspector Colbeck sent me to deliver this report,’ said Leeming, stepping forward to put the envelope on the desk then jumping back as if he’d just put food through the bars of a lion’s cage. ‘He sends his regards.’

  ‘Does he, indeed?’

  Tallis opened the letter and read the report with a blend of interest and exasperation. His grunts of disapproval were warning signals. Leeming was about to become the whipping boy yet again.

  ‘So,’ said Tallis, glaring at him, ‘the Inspector is scouring the Midlands for an unusual top hat and you have been amusing yourself by pushing a wheelbarrow uphill. Is that the sum total of your achievements?’

  ‘There’s more to it than that, sir.’

  ‘Then why is there little else in the report?’

  ‘The missing top hat and the wheel marks of a barrow in the churchyard might turn out to be useful clues.’

  ‘Then again, they might not.’

  ‘We shall see, Superintendent. Does the inspector make no mention in his report of Gerard Burns, one of our suspects?’

  ‘Yes, he does,’ said Tallis, ‘but Colbeck seems more interested in telling me about his ability as a fast bowler than about his potential as a killer. And what’s this nonsense about a search for Miss Lydia Quayle?’

  ‘The inspector believes that she will give us information that can’t be obtained elsewhere. In the shadow of a murder, you expect a family to retreat into itself but, in this case, they’ve shut us out completely. Inspector Colbeck called at the house and had short shrift from Stanley Quayle. He’s the elder son. You’d have thought he’d have wanted to help those of us who are trying to catch the man who murdered his father but he’s shown no interest. His sister may be able to tell us why.’

  ‘Lydia Quayle had a disastrous relationship with this fellow, Burns.’

  ‘That’s why it’s important to find her, sir.’

  ‘You and Colbeck were sent to Derby to solve a heinous crime. I don’t want the pair of you poking into a misalliance between a g
ardener and a lady who should have known better. This is work for detectives of another kind,’ said Tallis with utter contempt. ‘I refer to that odious breed of private investigators that enjoy peeping through keyholes and eavesdropping on conversations. We are dealing with murder, Sergeant, not with sexual peccadilloes.’

  ‘The inspector called it a true romance.’

  ‘Well, he’d better not do so in my hearing.’

  ‘They must have loved each other to take such a risk.’

  ‘Don’t you dare invite me to speculate on the stratagems to which they resorted,’ said Tallis, leaning forward aggressively. ‘This attachment was never going to be sanctified by marriage. All that it did was to estrange a young woman from her family and give a dissolute fast bowler a reason to hate her father.’

  ‘Oh, he wasn’t dissolute, sir.’

  ‘Don’t argue with me, you idiot!’

  ‘Inspector Colbeck described him as a responsible person.’

  ‘And look at what he was responsible for!’

  ‘It happened years ago, sir.’

  ‘He ruined this young lady’s life and drove her apart from her family. And now,’ he continued, glancing at the report, ‘he’s had the gall to get married.’

  ‘It’s not a crime,’ retorted Leeming, emboldened by the scorn in Tallis’s voice. ‘If it is, you must arrest the inspector and me because we’ve both found someone with whom to share our lives. What happened between Gerard Burns and Lydia Quayle has a direct bearing on this case. One of them has been found,’ he stressed. ‘It’s important that we track down the other.’

  Tallis was so stunned by the unaccustomed forthrightness of his visitor that he could find nothing to say. Instead, he scanned the report again so that he could take in the fine detail. When he’d finished, he looked up at Leeming.

  ‘As you wish, Sergeant,’ he said, chastened. ‘Find the lady.’

  Though Ilkeston was in Derbyshire, it was much closer to Nottingham than it was to the county town that Colbeck had just left. It was an archetypal industrial community, owing its wealth to coal, ironworks and textile manufacture. When he got his first look at the place, Colbeck despaired of ever finding a cricket pitch there. It was so defiantly urban that the few trees he could see were like nervous guests afraid to step fully into a room. The ironworks stood at New Stanton to the south of the town and it soon made its presence felt. One of the three blast furnaces on the banks of the Nutbrook Canal suddenly boomed out and made the ground quake. Colbeck mused that even an experienced bowler like Gerard Burns would find it hard to maintain the rhythm of his run-up if disturbed by the deafening noise from the Stanton Ironworks.

  The cab driver had a pleasant surprise for him. There was indeed a cricket pitch half a mile out of the town and he spoke fondly of it. Colbeck asked to be taken there. Having watched matches at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, he was bound to compare the Ilkeston equivalent unfavourably with it. Small, oval and encircled by trees, it also served as a park and a few tethered goats were grazing on it. Yet it was relatively flat and had a pavilion of sorts, a long wooden shed with a verandah in front of it. An old man was coming out of the pavilion. When Colbeck approached him, he discovered that he was talking to the groundsman.

  ‘How often are matches played here?’

  ‘Not often, sir.’

  ‘Is there a regular team here?’

  ‘Not really, sir.’

  ‘How much money is spent on the upkeep of the ground?’

  ‘Not much, sir.’

  ‘I see that you’ve got goats here.’

  ‘Better’n sheep, sir – far less dung.’

  There was an element of pride in the man’s voice. What was a rather sorry pitch in Colbeck’s eyes was a source of pleasure to him. It was he who kept the grass cut and marked everything out. Ramshackle as it was, the pavilion had a fairly recent coat of white paint.

  ‘You had a match here a few days ago.’

  The man chuckled. ‘We beat a team from Matlock, sir.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘We ’ad best bowler in’t county.’

  ‘Gerard Burns?’

  ‘Aye, thass ’im.’

  He went into rhapsodies about the game and described how none of the Matlock team could handle the speed, aggression and accuracy of Burns’s bowling. The Ilkeston team was gathered from the surrounding area. Miners, ironworkers and those employed in textile factories showed little interest in cricket. They saw it as a game for gentlemen and preferred rougher sports. Yet a cluster of spectators had turned out to watch Ilkeston destroy Matlock.

  ‘It were a treat, sir.’

  ‘I wish I’d seen Burns in action,’ said Colbeck. ‘I’ve heard a lot about him.’

  ‘The lad were champion.’

  ‘What happened after the game?’

  ‘We drank till we dropp’d.’

  The old man’s reminiscences were so filled with excitement and spiced with the local dialect that Colbeck didn’t understand much of what he said but he heard the salient details. Burns had been invited to join the team by someone who’d seen him play for Nottinghamshire and knew of his move to Melbourne. It had taken time to persuade the gardener to represent Ilkeston as a guest player but, once he’d committed himself, he gave of his best. The celebrations went on into the evening and Burns had drunk more than his share of beer.

  ‘Then he went back to Melbourne, I suppose,’ said Colbeck.

  ‘No, sir. I were on’t cart wi’ ’m when it took us ter station.’

  ‘So where did he go?’

  ‘Derby.’

  Colbeck felt a minor thrill of discovery. Flushed with alcohol, Gerard Burns sounded as if he had been in the right place and at the right time to kill the man he hated. How he had contrived to get Vivian Quayle to Spondon was not so easily explained. Nobody had been able to tell Colbeck where exactly Quayle had been in the twenty-four hours leading up to his murder. He was as ubiquitous as he’d been industrious. Was it possible that Burns had somehow become aware of the man’s movements that night? He had, after all, returned to what was part of the Quayle fiefdom. The coal mines in Ilkeston and beyond were owned by the family. They employed large numbers of people from the town. Burns would have been well aware of that. Was that the reason he’d come to Ilkeston in the first place?

  Colbeck’s speculations took him all the way back to the railway station. When he descended from the cab, he paid the driver and thanked him for his help. He was just about to walk away when a carriage rolled past nearby. The passenger could be seen clearly. He appeared to be wearing funereal garb but it was his top hat that made Colbeck stare. Tall and with a delicately curved brim, it looked remarkably like the one missing from the murder victim. At that moment, the passenger turned his head idly in the direction of the detective and there was a searing moment of recognition between them.

  Colbeck was looking at the face of Stanley Quayle.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When Caleb Andrews called in unexpectedly at the house, his daughter was on tenterhooks, fearing that Victor Leeming would soon turn up as well and that the two men would meet. There would be no way to get rid of her father then. He’d insist on knowing the latest developments in the case and – after a volley of derisive comments about the Midland Railway – he’d offer his help in the investigation. Madeleine was therefore greatly relieved when he announced that he was off to visit a former colleague from the LNWR.

  ‘He should have retired years ago,’ said Andrews, disparagingly. ‘Silas always had poor eyesight and he was slow to react to things. You can’t be in charge of a locomotive when you’re like that. It’s how accidents happen and he’s had a few of those. I was different,’ he went on, thrusting out his chest. ‘My eyesight was always perfect and I had a quick brain. I’m still as fit as I always was, Maddy. I could go back to work tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ve put all that behind you, Father. Enjoy your retirement.’

  ‘I need something to kee
p me active.’

  ‘You talked about getting an allotment.’

  ‘That wouldn’t suit me.’

  ‘What would attract you?’

  ‘You know the answer to that. Whenever he starts a new case, I’d like Robert to call on me for advice. I’ve lived and breathed railways, Maddy. I know things.’

  ‘Then you can discuss them with Silas Pegler. You’ll have shared memories.’

  ‘You can’t have a serious talk with Silas,’ he complained. ‘He’s a likeable old fellow but he’s got no conversation.’

  What that meant, she knew, was that her father dominated any discussion with his friend and allowed him few opportunities to speak. It was a situation she’d seen with virtually all of his railway colleagues. Andrews was a fluent talker but a bad listener. Eager to send him on his way, she made no comment and he eventually took his leave. They exchanged a farewell kiss then she waved him off from the doorstep. His departure was timely. Five minutes later, Victor Leeming arrived. He and Madeleine adjourned to the drawing room. The sergeant was in an almost ebullient mood.

  ‘How did you get on with the superintendent?’ she asked.

  ‘I put him in his place for once.’

  ‘You told me that it was like facing a firing squad.’

  ‘I was the one with a rifle in my hands this time,’ he bragged. ‘When he said that there was no need to find Lydia Quayle, I made him see that it was vital.’ His buoyancy faded. ‘We’re now left with the small problem of exactly how to find her, of course. London is a huge city with a population of over three million. She could be anywhere.’

  ‘Didn’t Robert give you any instructions?’

  ‘He simply told me where to start.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  ‘We have to visit some libraries,’ he explained. ‘How much has the inspector told you about the case?’

  ‘His letter was very detailed,’ replied Madeleine. ‘I know about the friendship between Miss Quayle and the gardener, and I know that she was sent abroad by her father to keep the two of them apart.’