Timetable of Death

by Edward Marston

‘Would you need one if I wasn’t here?’

  Mildly put, the question had explosive power. Beatrice recoiled.

  ‘I didn’t say that, Lydia.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘I haven’t thought about it.’

  ‘I’ll wager that you’ve thought about nothing else.’

  ‘All right,’ conceded the other, ‘it has crossed my mind.’

  ‘In other words,’ said Lydia, grasping the nettle and speaking more forcefully, ‘you’d be better off without me.’

  ‘I might be.’

  ‘Why can’t you be honest about it?’

  ‘Why can’t you be honest about your plan to go home?’

  ‘I don’t have a plan.’

  ‘Yes, you do, I can see it in your face. It’s been fomenting in your mind ever since Sergeant Leeming and that woman came here. Their visit changed your attitude towards your family somehow.’

  It was true and Lydia was unable to deny it. Her conversation with Madeleine Colbeck had altered her perception of the world she’d left behind in Nottingham. While she didn’t feel a strong urge to return, she did view her family with less bitterness than hitherto. Attuned to her moods, Beatrice had been aware of it at once.

  ‘They ruined everything,’ she said, abruptly. ‘Until they came here – until that vile man and that interfering woman arrived – we’d always enjoyed peace and contentment, but not any more.’

  ‘You can’t blame the sergeant and Mrs Colbeck. They’re trying to solve a murder and must take whatever steps are necessary.’

  Beatrice spoke with coldness. ‘That’s the other thing.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Most people in my position would find it intolerable,’ she said, giving full vent to her anger. ‘When you came to London, you drifted from one hotel to another. I offered you a place of sanctuary and you brought murder into my house. Yes, I know,’ she went on, quelling Lydia’s protest, ‘it wasn’t your fault that your father was killed. That’s not the point. The simple fact is that you are inescapably linked to a heinous crime. Some people would find that highly embarrassing in a lodger yet I was ready to accept it and to support you through a difficult period. In the name of friendship, I did everything humanly possible to offer you succour. When I did that, of course, I was unaware that you’d started a correspondence with your brother.’

  Full of pain and recrimination, the words poured out of her but Lydia heard only one of them. It was enough to wound her deeply. Beatrice had described her as a ‘lodger’. The older woman had invited her to move in as a dear friend yet Lydia’s status was now that of someone who merely rented a room.

  ‘I’ll leave immediately,’ said Lydia.

  When they met at the hotel, they had a lot of information to exchange. Colbeck told him about the second visit to Melbourne and about his clash with Donald Haygarth. The acting chairman had shrugged off his question about the funeral.

  ‘He claimed that it did not constitute a proper visit to Spondon because he was so preoccupied with the service that he saw nothing of the village.’

  ‘Why was he there in the first place?’ asked Leeming.

  ‘It turns out that he’s a friend of Mr Peet and went out of courtesy.’

  ‘Mr Haygarth could have told us that before.’

  ‘I think that there are lots of things he could have told us, Victor. One by one, I suspect, we’ll go on finding them. But what do you have to report? Did you follow Hockaday to Duffield?’

  ‘He didn’t go there, Inspector.’

  Leeming explained what had happened and how he had met an old man who confided that he was Jed Hockaday’s father. Where the cobbler had gone, he didn’t know because Hockaday had given the sergeant the slip.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Colbeck. ‘He may not even have known that you were following him. You’ve always been adept at shadowing people.’

  ‘I felt cheated, sir. He shook me off.’

  ‘Then he’s cleverer than we gave him credit. On the night of the murder, he was in Duffield, as he told us, but he only called on Mr and Mrs Verney at the end of the evening. Where had Hockaday been beforehand?’

  ‘I’ll tackle him about that.’

  ‘What else have you discovered, Victor?’

  ‘Oh, I had a surprise, sir,’ said Leeming. ‘Stanley Quayle came here to see you. He wasn’t very pleased to deal with me instead but we had an interesting talk. That was the surprise. He may have looked down his nose at me but he’s not the ogre you took him for when you first met him.’

  After listening to an account of the conversation between the two men, Colbeck was sorry to have missed Stanley Quayle. Some valuable information had been gleaned and the most telling fact concerned the murder victim’s whereabouts in the hours leading up to his death.

  ‘His appointments diary was stolen by the killer,’ decided Colbeck, ‘because it would have told us where he would have been.’

  ‘His elder son didn’t know, sir. His father was always away somewhere on business, he said. Stanley Quayle and his brother were working at one of their pits. They assumed that their father would have been involved with the Midland Railway.’

  ‘Yet neither Haygarth nor Cope saw him that day.’

  ‘That’s what they claim.’

  ‘The appointments diary was probably kept in the office where the self-appointed acting chairman now sits so he could have been in the best position to take possession of it.’

  ‘The finger points at Haygarth once again.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean we forget the other suspects,’ warned Colbeck. ‘Did Stanley Quayle admit that his father had particular enemies this time?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leeming, ‘but he added no new names to the list and he missed out Superintendent Wigg. When I mentioned him, Mr Quayle had a long think then said that we should keep the superintendent in mind. Talking of which …’

  ‘Don’t worry, Victor. I sent another report to Superintendent Tallis. He would have got it today, after you’d left London. I gave the impression that I’d made slightly more progress than I actually had while you were away but it should be enough to pacify him. Our superintendent is like a caged tiger,’ said Colbeck with a nostalgic smile. ‘The only way to stifle his roar is to feed the beast on a regular basis.’

  Edward Tallis returned to his office after a testing interview with the commissioner. While he exercised power over his officers, he was answerable to Sir Richard Mayne, the man who’d run the Metropolitan Police Force since the death of the other joint founding commissioner four years earlier. Though Tallis and Mayne had a mutual respect for each other, the meeting that day had been highly uncomfortable for the superintendent. He was roundly criticised for his lack of success in the fight against crime. It was only when he reached the safety of his office, and was smoking a consolatory cigar, that he realised why the commissioner had been in such a bad mood. The satirical magazine, Punch, had somehow got hold of Mayne’s standing orders to uniformed policemen and made much of the fact that the commissioner had decreed that, however inclement the weather, his men were not to carry umbrellas. Mayne was lampooned mercilessly. Having himself been ridiculed in cartoons, Tallis had some sympathy for the commissioner but it didn’t lessen the sting of the barbs directed at him. The superintendent wanted to pass on the pain.

  As he looked at the pile of documents on his desk, he saw that the latest letter from Colbeck was at the very top. Tallis read through it again. It was a model of how a report should be delivered. Written in a neat hand, it was literate, well organised and informative. No other detective at Scotland Yard could have sent such a crisp yet apparently comprehensive account of an investigation. At a first reading, it had been very satisfying. But the superintendent knew Robert Colbeck of old. The inspector could use words to beguile and distract. When he looked at the report again, Tallis read between the lines before slapping it down on the desk and drawing on his cigar. After he’d exhaled a veritable cloud of smoke, he spoke alou
d.

  ‘What are you up to this time, Colbeck?’

  Much as he liked to see his daughter, Caleb Andrews rationed his visits carefully, mindful of the fact that Madeleine needed time to work on her paintings. For the most part, therefore, he called on her by prior arrangement so as not to interrupt her time at the easel. When he came to the house that day, he knew that she’d finished her daily stint and would give him a welcome. Over a cup of tea, he told her about the visits he’d made to other retired railwaymen and how they’d all agreed that the standard of driving a locomotive had fallen since they’d ceased to occupy a footplate. Madeleine listened to it all with an amused tolerance.

  ‘Is there any word from Robert?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I had a letter from him yesterday.’

  ‘What’s the latest news about the case?’

  ‘He said very little about that,’ replied Madeleine, trying to guide him off the subject. ‘He’s still collecting evidence.’

  ‘Did you pass on my offer of help, Maddy?’

  ‘Robert knows that you’re always standing by.’

  ‘Why hasn’t he sent more details? I need something to work on.’

  ‘Let him do his job, Father,’ she advised.

  In fact, the letter she’d received from Colbeck that morning had been full of details about the case but Madeleine didn’t wish to divulge any of it to her father. She would certainly never admit that Victor Leeming had recruited her help and that she’d been directly involved in the inquiry. Powered by envy, her father would pester her for every morsel of information. Instead, therefore, she talked about the locomotive that she was currently putting onto canvas. Since it belonged to his beloved LNWR, he waxed lyrical about its features and asked to see it. Madeleine told him to wait, preferring to show him a finished painting.

  ‘Why do you never put me on the footplate?’ he asked, tetchily.

  ‘I never put any figures in my paintings.’

  ‘Are you ashamed of your old father?’

  ‘No,’ she replied, squeezing his arm, ‘I’m proud of what you did as an engine driver. But when you’re an artist, you have to do what you do best and keep away from things you’re not good at. I’m not a figurative artist.’

  ‘You’re the best artist I’ve ever seen, Maddy.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen some of the figures I’ve tried to paint. I’m much safer with locomotives and rolling stock. Somehow I just can’t make people look real on canvas.’

  ‘You could make me look real.’

  ‘I’ve tried to put you in a painting many times, Father, but it never works.’

  ‘Is that my fault or yours?’

  ‘It’s mine,’ she confessed. ‘That’s why I stick to what I can do.’

  ‘But you can do anything if you really try,’ he argued. ‘You’re like me, Maddy. I worked on the railway but I also found that I had a gift for solving crimes so I developed that gift.’

  Madeleine had to suppress a smile. She heard the doorbell ring and, since she was not expecting a visitor, wondered whom it could be. Moments later, a servant came into the room to say that a lady had asked to see her but would not give her name. Madeleine excused herself and went into the hall. When she saw who her visitor was, she was grateful that her name had not been divulged in her father’s hearing.

  Lydia Quayle was standing there.

  Victor Leeming was delighted to see him again. Apart from the landlord at the Malt Shovel, the reporter was the only person he’d befriended in Spondon. The vicar had been helpful to him but it was Philip Conway with whom the sergeant had formed any sort of bond. Since he was staying at the hotel at the Midland Railway’s expense, Leeming had no compunction about putting the cost of two more drinks on the bill. He and Conway found seats in the lounge. After giving the sergeant an attenuated account of his day, the reporter told him about the friction he’d experienced with Jed Hockaday.

  ‘Yes,’ said Leeming, ‘it was the cobbler who caused me a headache as well.’

  ‘I thought he was going to assault me.’

  ‘Did he actually hit you?’

  ‘No, but he certainly wanted to. Hockaday was angry because I told you things about him. He warned me to keep my mouth shut. But what happened to you?’ asked Conway. ‘When we saw him walk past the Malt Shovel, you went after him.’

  ‘I tried to, anyway.’

  Leeming repeated the story he’d told Colbeck but it had a deliberate omission. There was no reference to the fact that Seth Verney claimed to be the cobbler’s father. While he was a friend, Conway was not a detective who could be trusted with every item of interest that was unearthed. In the light of Hockaday’s threat to the reporter, Leeming didn’t want him to confront the cobbler about his parentage. It was a treat that the sergeant was reserving for himself.

  ‘If he didn’t go to Duffield,’ said Conway, ‘where did he go?’

  ‘It must have been somewhere farther up the line. On the other hand,’ said Leeming, ‘he might simply have got off at the next station and caught the first train back to Spondon. I still think he must’ve spotted me. Hockaday is cunning.’

  ‘He’s cunning and dangerous, Sergeant.’

  ‘I just wish I knew where he went earlier on. Anyway, I came back here and was amazed to find Stanley Quayle keen to help us.’

  ‘And so he should. His father was the murder victim, after all.’

  ‘He was dressed from head to foot in black but he didn’t really seem to be in mourning. Most people who are bereaved are quiet and withdrawn. He talked down to me as if I was one of his miners.’

  ‘I’ve heard that he likes to crack the whip.’

  ‘This is only my opinion, mind you,’ said Leeming, thoughtfully, ‘but he was less interested in his father’s actual death than he was in the fact that it’s made him head of the family. Stanley Quayle loves power.’

  ‘Like father, like son.’

  ‘He thinks the killer is a choice between Mr Haygarth and Gerard Burns. At least, that was until I put another name into his head.’

  ‘And who was that?’

  ‘Superintendent Wigg.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ recalled Conway, ‘the inspector asked me about him. I explained why he was no friend of Vivian Quayle. You must know the story.’

  ‘I do. What else can you tell me about the superintendent?’

  ‘He keeps the streets of Derby fairly safe. I have to admit that.’

  ‘What about his private life?’

  Conway became defensive. ‘I don’t know much about that,’ he said. ‘He’s a married man but I’ve no idea what his interests are or, indeed, if he has any. Running the police force is a full-time job. He doesn’t have time for anything else.’

  ‘I can sympathise with him there,’ said Leeming, soulfully. ‘You’re never really off duty in the police.’

  There was a long pause. He couldn’t understand why the reporter was being so reticent. On any other subject, Conway was a mine of information. Reading the question in Leeming’s eyes, the other man explained.

  ‘The superintendent is very close to my editor,’ he said. ‘They dine together sometimes. It means that the Mercury gets the first whiff of any crime but it also means that none of us is allowed to look too closely at Elijah Wigg. In a town like this, he’s untouchable.’

  ‘If he’s involved in the murder,’ said Leeming, ‘we’ll certainly touch him.’

  ‘But you’ll have a job finding any evidence.’

  ‘We like a challenge.’

  ‘Wigg is a freak,’ said Conway. ‘He loves to be seen abroad in Derby but he remains invisible somehow. Nobody has really got the measure of him, not even my editor. Isn’t that strange?’

  ‘There must be something you can tell me.’

  Conway needed a meditative sip of his drink before he recalled something.

  ‘Superintendent Wigg has a brother in Belper.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He’s a pharmacist.’ />
  Madeleine Colbeck hated having to lie to her father but there was no alternative. Having ushered her visitor to another room, she returned to Andrews and told him that the caller had come to the wrong address. She then made a supreme effort to look relaxed and to signal that he could stay as long as he wished. In the event, her father soon began to yawn and decided that it was time to wend his way home. Madeleine saw him off at the door with a kiss then went straight to Colbeck’s study. Standing in front of the fireplace, Lydia Quayle was admiring the painting of Puffing Billy.

  ‘This has your name on it,’ she said in wonderment.

  ‘I always sign my work.’

  ‘So you really did paint this?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Madeleine. ‘My husband was kind enough to take me all the way up to Wylam Colliery in Northumberland so that I could make sketches of it.’ She indicated the painting. ‘This is the result.’

  ‘It’s magnificent,’ said Lydia. ‘I had no idea you were so talented. But why paint a funny old steam engine. It’s so …’

  ‘It’s so unwomanly?’ suggested Madeleine.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose that’s what I mean.’

  ‘Let me take you somewhere more comfortable and I’ll explain why I’d rather paint a locomotive than anything else in the world.’

  Madeleine conducted her into the drawing room and told her how her passion for the railways made her want to paint and how Colbeck had encouraged her to develop her talent. Lydia was duly impressed. Madeleine’s long recitation had the advantage of taking some of the stress out of her visitor.

  It was Lydia’s turn to speak now and she did so haltingly.

  ‘You told me that I could come here, if I felt the need to,’ she began.

  ‘I was pleased to see you, Miss Quayle. I’m just sorry that you called when my father happened to be here. I hope you didn’t mind being locked in my husband’s study for so long.’

  ‘No, I loved it. There were even more books than we have. It’s a wonderful place to sit and read.’

  ‘Unfortunately, he has very little time to do that.’

  ‘Beatrice and I read all the time.’