A Christmas Railway Mystery Read online

  ‘Word about them must have got around, surely?’

  ‘They were drummed out of one house by angry women so they found somewhere else and kept their heads down. They’re very careful about the men they deal with. Because they only work at night, their clients arrive after dark. Yes,’ he concluded, ‘deep down, I can’t condone what they do but, out of friendship, I lend them a hand now and then. Didn’t Claire mention that?’

  Leeming shook his head. Edgar Fellowes had been so smooth, confiding and plausible that he knew the man was mixing fact with a liberal amount of fiction.

  When they were not in use, the altars in St Mark’s Church were each covered by a green cloth to protect them from the droppings of the bats that had somehow managed to get into the building. Invisible during the day, they were clearly active at night. The vicar and his curates had learnt to accept them in the same way as they were resigned to the occasional presence of the church mice. The main altar had a large wooden cross set in the middle of it. Before a service, the sacristan removed it along with the green cloth. Underneath it was a gleaming white cloth thrown into relief by the decorative purple altar frontal, which hung in place for the Sundays during Advent. The wooden cross was replaced by the large one made of brass and brass candlesticks were placed either side of it. When the candles were lit, the main altar was a blaze of colour.

  As he walked down the nave that morning, all that it collected from the vicar was a cursory glance. Howard Law went off into the vestry and was about to unlock a cupboard when he stopped to think. Without realising it, he’d noticed something very irregular about the main altar but simply couldn’t remember what it was. He therefore retraced his steps and took a proper look. What he saw was alarming. The wooden cross had disappeared and been replaced by an object that was covered by some filthy sacking. The vicar was outraged. Striding forward, he grabbed the sacking and tore it away to reveal a human head plastered with dried blood.

  Frank Rodman stared at him with a lopsided grin on his face.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hiram Wells was bringing up a crate of beer from the cellar when he heard someone banging on the door. He opened it to find Daniel Gill standing on his doorstep.

  ‘We’re closed,’ he told him. ‘You should know that, Dan.’

  ‘I just wanted a word with you.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘If you let me in, I’ll tell you.’

  The landlord stood back so that Gill could get in. He looked anxious.

  ‘We haven’t seen you for ages,’ said Wells. ‘Where do you drink now?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. I need a favour from you, Hiram. In the past, I put a lot of money in that till of yours. I think you owe me something in return.’

  ‘That depends what you’re after.’

  ‘Those detectives are staying here, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but if you want to speak to them, you can go to their office. I can tell you how to get there.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Gill, nervously, ‘that’s the last thing I want to do. Since they came here, they’ve made my life a misery. They got me into real trouble with my uncle and one of the buggers has been talking to my wife.’

  ‘So why have you come to me?’

  ‘You’ve got closer to them than anyone.’

  Wells was guarded. ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘You must have heard them chatting over their meals. What did they say? Have they any idea who the killer was?’ He clutched the landlord’s arm. ‘Have they ever mentioned me?’

  ‘You sound like a man with a guilty conscience.’

  ‘I’m not, honestly. I’m just interested. I don’t want them wasting time on me when it was someone else who murdered Frank Rodman.’

  ‘Have you told them that?’

  ‘Yes – but they won’t believe me.’

  ‘If they thought it was you, Dan, they’d have arrested you by now.’

  ‘Is that what they said? Am I really worrying about nothing?’

  ‘You are. If you’re truly innocent, you shouldn’t have a care in the world. On the other hand …’

  ‘I didn’t do it, Hiram. I swear it. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have liked to kill him. It crossed my mind more than once. But I never laid a finger on him. Come on,’ he said, grinning obsequiously. ‘We’re old friends. You can tell me.’

  The landlord put a hand on his chest and eased him firmly away.

  ‘I’ve run the Queen’s Tap on the basis of one strict rule,’ he said. ‘As long as customers behave themselves, they can drink as much as they like and say whatever they wish without having me telling tales. Inspector Colbeck and the sergeant have paid for privacy and that’s what I’ve given them.’

  ‘Did you or did you not hear them talking about me?’

  ‘I haven’t heard them talking about anyone, Dan.’

  ‘Have you gone deaf?’ demanded the other.

  ‘It’s what happens to me when I have guests staying here. They trust me.’

  Gill was embittered. ‘I thought that I could trust you.’

  ‘If you really want a favour,’ said Wells, ‘you can have one. I’m not going to say anything at all about this conversation. If I did, they’d come looking for you with an arrest warrant. That’s the best I can do.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’re the killer or not. All I can say is this. If you were involved in Frank Rodman’s murder in any way, you might as well go and confess to Inspector Colbeck right now. Otherwise, you’ll suffer agonies while you’re waiting for him to come looking for you. He and the sergeant know what they’re doing, Dan. There’d be no escape.’

  Without a word, Gill let himself out and closed the door behind him.

  When he’d finally recovered his voice and his composure, Howard Law sent for the detectives. They came as quickly as they could. While Colbeck listened to the vicar’s story, Leeming was transfixed by the head on the altar. The eyes seemed to be looking straight at him. Finding such a thing in a church was an abomination. He wasn’t at all pleased when Colbeck told him to put the head back in the sack and take it to the police morgue so that it could be examined. Colbeck stressed that nobody else needed to be told what had happened. Leeming handled the head gingerly as if it was about to explode. It was only when he’d put it back in the blood-soaked sack that he felt safe. Holding it at arm’s length away from him, he went out, leaving Colbeck to question the vicar.

  ‘The church was locked all night, I presume?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Inspector.’

  ‘Apart from you, who has a key?’

  ‘The verger has one, of course, and the wardens. One of them usually unlocks the door in the morning. Because I needed something from the vestry, I unlocked the church today.’

  ‘Was everything as you expected – apart from the head, that is?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Have you checked?’

  ‘Well, no, to be honest.’

  ‘Then I suggest that you get the verger to do so. A person with such a twisted mind might not be satisfied with leaving one item here. A thorough search of the church is needed to make sure there are no other horrors lurking in wait. You don’t want the people in tomorrow’s congregation stumbling on something designed to upset them in the way that you were.’

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t upset,’ said Law. ‘I was incensed. It was an act of desecration.’

  ‘St Mark’s was chosen for a reason. The killer wanted both to startle and to express his contempt for the Church.’

  ‘How could he possibly have broken in here?’

  ‘We don’t know that he did. He might have slipped in here during the day when the church was unlocked and hidden away until it was empty. When nobody was about, he arranged that macabre display on the altar. I’m assuming,’ said Colbeck, ‘that it’s possible to open one of the doors from the inside to get out.’

  ‘It is, Inspector.’

  ‘I can’t be cer
tain but it’s one explanation. The other is that he somehow got hold of a key and made a copy of it. An experienced smith would be able to do that without too much difficulty. He’d just need an impression of the key. One of our suspects is a smith. Three of the others have all been trained to work with metal.’

  ‘Then it has to be one of those four,’ decided Law. ‘And he has to have perverted ideas about religion.’ He shuddered. ‘The whole atmosphere in here has been poisoned. It doesn’t smell like a holy place any more. It’s almost as if this villain is trying to pollute the House of God.’

  ‘That’s one thing he could never do.’

  ‘How should we react?’

  ‘Remain calm and dignified,’ advised Colbeck. ‘For the rest of Advent, you must behave as you would normally do at this special time in the Christian calendar. Don’t give him the pleasure of seeing you all in disarray because that’s what he wants. Deny him any satisfaction.’

  ‘He’ll expect to see a full report of this in the Swindon Advertiser.’

  ‘Then I’ll make sure that Mr Morris doesn’t print a word about what happened in here. Only a handful of us know about it. Let it remain that way.’

  ‘But that will only annoy him. He might strike again.’

  ‘How?’ asked Colbeck. ‘His main weapon was the victim’s head and he’s just given it away. There’s nothing left with which to scare this community. The killer has shot his bolt. Now, I have another a theory to offer. I believe that the killer may be rebelling against the unrelenting sameness of the Railway Village because it’s a place where variety of any kind is outlawed and where lives are, for the most part, forced to follow a common pattern.’

  ‘There’s more than a little truth in that, Inspector.’

  ‘It was not simply religion that the killer despises. It’s conceivable that rebelling against the way that industry has robbed people of any individuality and turned them into so many faceless worker ants coming out each day from their interchangeable houses.’

  ‘That’s an interesting thesis,’ said Law.

  ‘It means that we’re not just looking for an atheist. If we were, Simeon Cudlip would be our killer. But I can’t see him keeping a human head in his house for any length of time. The smell would offend him, for a start. There’s a reason why he chose a job that allows him to go to work in a suit and give himself a false air of refinement.’

  ‘Let me ask you something,’ said the vicar. ‘When you and Sergeant Leeming came in here, you didn’t seem at all surprised by the sight of a severed head. The sergeant turned away in disgust but you didn’t.’

  ‘I was forewarned.’

  ‘How?’

  Hand in his pocket, Colbeck took out the letter popped through the letter box of Betty Rodman’s house. He showed it to Law, who winced as he read it.

  ‘What a cruel thing to do!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘He was twisting the knife in the wound.’

  ‘Who is this excrescence, Inspector? He doesn’t belong in a civilised world.’

  ‘I still can’t put a name to him,’ admitted Colbeck, ‘but I’m getting ever nearer to being able to do so. Driven on to cause the maximum shock and offence, he’s actually given us a few more clues as to his identity.’

  ‘Why punish Betty Rodman like this?’

  ‘It gives him pleasure to do so.’

  ‘But this behaviour is inhuman.’

  ‘I agree. Having wrecked her life by killing her husband, he adds further torment by telling her that his missing head would soon make an appearance. Since the fact of the decapitation had been kept from her, you can imagine the pain it must have caused her when she learnt the truth.’

  ‘This is despicable,’ said Law, rancorously. ‘Betty Rodman is already in a fragile state. Someone is trying to shatter her completely.’

  ‘The one consolation,’ Colbeck pointed out, ‘is that she didn’t come in here today. If she’d seen her husband’s head set upon the altar like that, you might have been arranging two funerals in the Rodman family.’

  Betty Rodman sat in the chair and ignored the crying of the baby in her lap. Her mind was still on the letter sent to sharpen her grief. She couldn’t believe that there was anyone capable of doing such a thing. To stop the child wailing, Liza took her from her mother and rocked her gently to and fro. Martha Rodman soon stopped crying. Unaware of the fierce blows dealt to her family, she dropped off to sleep and burbled contentedly.

  Betty came out of her reverie and turned on her friend.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me what he did to Frank?’ she demanded.

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Liza.

  ‘You must have known. Fred was inside the Works when the body was discovered. They must have told him about the state Frank was found in. He’d have told you, Liza. You kept it from me.’

  ‘All right,’ confessed the other, ‘it’s true. We tried to protect you from knowing.’

  ‘I was bound to find out one day.’

  ‘We wanted as long a delay as possible to give you chance to get over the news that someone had … murdered Frank. We hoped you’d rally.’

  ‘How can I do that when someone out there is determined to punish me? What’s he going to do next?’ she shouted. ‘Will someone please tell me? Who is he and why is he trying to kill me as well?’

  Her raised voice woke the baby up and she promptly started howling.

  ‘My life is just not worth living any more,’ cried Betty.

  Though he’d been told not to broadcast the information about the discovery at St Mark’s Church, Leeming felt obliged to confide in Piercey. Now that he’d made a useful contribution to the inquiry, the police inspector deserved to be taken into their confidence. When he heard about the incident, Piercey grimaced.

  ‘That was an appalling thing to do,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a measure of the man we’re after.’

  ‘Are you any closer to catching him?’

  ‘We believe so,’ said Leeming with more confidence than he felt. ‘To put the head on that altar in the way that he did, he had to take chances. People who do that always slip up in the end.’

  ‘I’d love to be the person to arrest him.’

  ‘So would I. He’s sure to put up a fight and I’d be ready for him.’

  ‘There’s a rumour that Daniel Gill is a suspect.’

  ‘He’s one of the people who’s come to our attention,’ said Leeming, carefully. ‘There are a number of others. Thanks to you, we haven’t been diverted by false claims from anonymous sources.’

  ‘I’ve arrested two of those anonymous sources,’ said Piercey, proudly. ‘They’re still languishing in one of our cells. People who try to make money out of someone else’s tragedy are nothing but vultures.’

  ‘They always gather when someone is murdered. Inspector Colbeck and I are tackling this case with increased vigour. It isn’t simply a question of clearing everything up in time for Christmas. We’re eager to join another investigation.’

  ‘Has there been a second murder?’

  ‘There may have been.’

  ‘Who is the victim this time?’

  ‘We don’t know for certain that he has been killed,’ said Leeming. ‘A hunt has been launched for our superintendent. He vanished without trace in Canterbury.’

  ‘Was he abducted?’

  ‘Everything points that way, Inspector.’

  ‘Has a ransom note been sent?’

  Leeming swallowed hard. ‘I sincerely hope so.’

  While he was flattered to be given so much authority, Alan Hinton was struggling to prove that he was worthy of it. His main problem was being younger than everyone around him. The policemen in Canterbury regarded him as callow and unassertive while the soldiers refused to take orders from anyone but their senior officer. Hinton had widened the search to the hamlets and villages outside the city but all to no avail. Terence Wardlow was becoming increasingly alarmed.

  ‘Have there been no reported sightings at
all?’ he asked.

  ‘None, sir.’

  ‘Major Tallis is a big man. Someone must have seen him being hustled away.’

  ‘If they did,’ said Hinton, ‘they didn’t realise the significance of what they saw. He might have had a gun or a knife held against his back. Otherwise, he’d have fought back bravely.’

  They were at the police station in Canterbury. Although his arthritis was more painful than ever, Wardlow had forced himself to go into the city in order to find out what was happening. One piece of information was ominous.

  ‘There’s still been no ransom demand?’

  ‘I fear not, sir.’

  ‘Has there been any contact at all from the kidnappers?’

  ‘We’ve not heard a single word.’

  Wardlow sagged. ‘That’s disturbing.’

  ‘It’s unusual in such cases,’ said Hinton, ‘but we mustn’t give up hope. It’s something that Superintendent Tallis impresses upon us time and again. Never give up hope. Press on regardless. That’s what we’re doing.’

  ‘Did you meet Captain Ardingley?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He gave me a flea in my ear and sent me on my way. When I suggested that someone at the barracks had learnt what was in the letter you sent, he was infuriated. It’s been kept under lock and key since it arrived.’

  ‘It would be. Ardingley is a stickler for security.’

  Hinton was tentative. ‘He thought that the problem might have been … at your house, sir.’