'You're too insular,' said Colbeck with a laugh.
'I like my country, that's all. I'm patriotic.'
'I have no quarrel with that.'
The railway had been built in defiance of geography. There were so many hills, valleys and rivers to cross that there was a long sequence of tunnels, cuttings, bridges and viaducts. As they sped across the Barentin Viaduct with its striking symmetry and its panoramic views, Colbeck thought it better not to mention that it had once collapsed into the valley below. Teeth clenched and hands gripping the seat for safety, Leeming was already troubled enough by having to cross it. The magnificent construction had all the qualities of a death trap to him. Only when they were well clear of the viaduct did he find his voice again.
'Why didn't he choose that instead, Inspector?' he asked. 'Why didn't the killer throw his victim over that viaduct instead of coming all the way to England to do it?'
'You're assuming that the murderer was French.'
'Isn't that why we're here?'
'No, Victor,' said Colbeck. 'We are hunting a motive. I'm fairly certain that the man who killed Gaston Chabal was English and that only the Sankey Viaduct would suffice.'
'In that case, the lady's husband must be involved.'
'I think not.'
'His wife was unfaithful to him – there's the motive.'
'On the face of it, perhaps,' said Colbeck, 'but there are two very good reasons why we can eliminate Alexander Marklew from our enquiries. To begin with, he was quite unaware of the friendship that existed between his wife and M. Chabal.'
'It was more than a friendship, sir. Let's not beat about the bush. It was adultery, pure and simple – except that it was far from pure. I don't hold with it,' declared Leeming, thinking of his wife. 'Marriage vows should be kept.'
'We are not here to sit in judgement on Mrs Marklew. The fact is that, but for the information that she volunteered, we would still be scratching our heads back in Scotland Yard. But there's an even stronger reason why the husband must be discounted,' he went on. 'Mr Marklew is a director of the London and North-West Railway. He would never do anything to create bad publicity for it. Murder is the worst possible advertisement, Victor.'
Colbeck had given him an abbreviated version of what he had learned from Hannah Marklew, making no reference to the fact that it was Madeleine Andrews who had obtained most of the salient facts. While he did not share the superintendent's dismissive attitude towards women, Leeming would certainly have questioned the use of one in a murder investigation. That was why Colbeck told him only what the sergeant needed to know. Victor Leeming was an able detective but he was shackled to correct police procedure. When it served his purpose, the inspector was ready to ignore it.
'Are you hungry, Victor?' he asked.
'No, sir,' replied Leeming, feeling his stomach. 'Crossing the Channel took away my appetite completely. Besides, I don't think that I'd take to French food.'
'Why not?'
'They eat horses and frogs and snails.'
'Not on the same plate,' said Colbeck with amusement. 'Wait until you taste their wine. If we stay here long enough, you'll acquire a real taste for it. You may even learn some of the language.'
'There's only one thing I want to hear, sir.'
'What's that?'
'The French for "We're going home". Very soon, please.'
Having removed his coat and hat, Thomas Brassey was at his desk, poring over surveyors' maps as he planned the next stage of the Mantes-Caen railway. Each project threw up its own individual challenges and this one was no exception. There were a number of potential hazards to be negotiated. He was grappling with one of them when there was a firm tap on the door. In response to Brassey's call, it opened to admit Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming. When introductions had been made, Brassey was amazed to hear that they had come all the way from England in order to see him.
'Have I committed a crime of some kind?' he asked.
'Not at all, sir,' said Colbeck. 'We're here on other business. I believe that you employ an engineer called Gaston Chabal?'
'I did employ him, Inspector, but the fellow seems to have vanished into thin air. He's an extremely competent man. If he keeps me waiting any longer, however, he'll find that he no longer has a job here. Nobody is indispensable.'
'M. Chabal will not be returning here, I fear. He's dead.'
Brassey was shocked. 'Dead – poor Gaston!'
When he was told about the murder, he was aghast and felt guilty for harbouring so many unkind thoughts about the engineer's absence. It was no wonder that Chabal had been unable to return.
'Did you know that he went to England?' said Colbeck.
'No, Inspector. He told me that he was going to be in Paris for a few days to see his parents. I'd no idea that he crossed the Channel. Whatever could have taken him there?'
'We believe he went to see a friend, Mr Brassey, but that's not our major concern. What we are looking for is the reason why he was singled out in this way. That reason can only be found in France.'
'Nothing else would have brought us here,' said Leeming, sourly. 'We hope that the effort will have been worthwhile.'
'You must forgive Victor. Rail travel is a torment to him.'
'That boat was even worse, sir. Fair upset me, it did.'
'He misses London,' explained Colbeck. 'He hates to be away from his wife and children.'
'I always bring my family with me,' said Brassey.
Leeming scowled. 'I could hardly do that in my job, sir.'
'No,' agreed Colbeck. 'It might hamper you somewhat. But let's turn our attention to Chabal. He's the important person here. What sort of man was he, Mr Brassey?'
'An extremely able one,' said the contractor. 'Gaston had the sense to learn from good masters. Most of the engineers I employ are English, but Gaston Chabal could match any of them.'
'Did he have any enemies?'
'None that I know of, Inspector. He was very popular. Some of the men used to tease him because he was French, but it was all in good fun. I can't think of any reason why anyone should conceive such a hatred of him that he wanted him dead.'
'And yet someone clearly did.'
'Yes.'
'Have you had any trouble in your camp, sir?' said Leeming.
'We've had the usual fights and drunkenness, but you expect that from navvies. They're a law unto themselves. If you employ them, you have to allow for a certain amount of boisterous behaviour.' Brassey grew pensive. 'On the other hand…'
'Well?' prompted Colbeck.
'No, no. It's probably just a coincidence.'
'Let us be the judge of that, sir.'
'The truth is,' confessed Brassey, running a hand across his broad forehead, 'that we've been having a spot of bother here. I've tried to ignore it but Aubrey takes it very seriously.'
'Aubrey?'
'Aubrey Filton, one of the senior engineers. He worked alongside Gaston and he'll be very distressed to hear what's happened to him. Anyway,' he continued, 'there have been three or four incidents here that look as if they're part of a worrying pattern.'
'What sort of incidents, Mr Brassey?'
'Aubrey would be the best person to tell you that.'
'Is he here at the moment?'
'Yes, Inspector. He has an office in the hut at the end.'
'Then I think you should pay him a visit,' said Colbeck, raising an eyebrow at Leeming. 'Break the sad news to him, Victor, and see what memories he may have of Chabal. And make a list of these incidents. They could be significant.'
Leeming nodded and went straight out. Colbeck was glad to be alone with the contractor. He had long been an admirer of Thomas Brassey and had always felt it rather unjust that those who designed locomotives or ran railway companies enjoyed public acclaim while those who actually built the endless miles of track remained in the shadows. The two men appraised each other.
'Do sit down, Inspector,' said Brassey, resuming his own seat.
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'Thank you, sir.' Colbeck lowered himself on to a chair. 'This is a treat for me. I've always wanted to see a new stretch of line being laid. We hired a trap in Mantes to bring us out here so I was able to see what you've done so far.'
'Then you've also seen the problems created by the Seine.'
'We followed it for most of the journey.'
'Rivers are the bane of my life, Inspector Colbeck. Bridges and viaducts slow us down so much. If only we had a flat plain across which to construct a railway – flat and arid.'
'Then there would be no triumphs of civil engineering.'
'No triumphs, maybe, but far less sweat and toil.' He shook his head. 'I still can't accept that Gaston is dead. I always found him such an honest fellow. Why tell me that he was going to Paris when he intended to sail to England?'
'He was being discreet, I expect.'
'In what way?'
'There was a lady involved.'
'Ah, of course. Do you know who she was?'
'No,' said Colbeck, determined to honour his promise to keep Hannah Marklew's name out of it. 'But I'm convinced that Chabal was on his way to visit her when he was killed.'
Aubrey Filton was very upset to hear of his colleague's murder. It made him twitch slightly and glance over his shoulder. His office was in a much smaller hut, but it was perfectly serviceable. Victor Leeming glanced at the array of drawings that had been pinned to the wall.
'What are these, Mr Filton?' he said.
'Part of the original survey.'
'Is this your work, sir?'
'I wish it was, Sergeant,' replied Filton, looking enviously across at the wall, 'but my drawings are not quite as neat and accurate as these. Gaston was very gifted.'
'Do you mean that Chabal did these?'
'Most of them. It's all we have to remember him by.'
Leeming was pleased to have the responsibility of questioning Aubrey Filton. It gave him something to do and took his mind off the queasiness that he still felt. Having heard so many French voices since their arrival, he was relieved to be talking to an Englishman.
'Mr Brassey mentioned some incidents,' he said, taking out a notebook and pencil. 'Could you tell me what they were, sir?'
'The most recent happened only yesterday. When I inspected a tunnel, I discovered that someone had levered the rails off their sleepers and scattered the ballast everywhere. A week earlier, we had a more serious setback.'
'Go on, Mr Filton.'
'A fire had been started in one of our storage huts. We were able to stop it spreading but it destroyed everything inside. It slowed us down, Sergeant Leeming. Time costs money in this business.'
'And were there any other incidents?'
'The first was a case of simple theft – at least that's what we thought at the time. But who would want to steal gunpowder?'
'Someone who needed to blast through rock.'
'The second incident was a week later,' said Filton. 'A stack of our timber was pushed into the river. By the time we became aware of it, the sleepers had floated over a mile away.'
'Stolen gunpowder, missing timber, arson in a storeroom and wreckage in a tunnel. These are all serious crimes, Mr Filton. Have you reported them to the police?'
'Mr Brassey chose not to, Sergeant.'
'Oh.'
'He believes that we should take care of our own security and he does not want too much interference from the French. We have enough of that, as it is. In any case,' he continued, 'there's no police force out here in the wilds. The nearest constable is ten miles away. What can one man on a horse do?'
'Travel in comfort,' said the other with feeling. 'From what you tell me, it's evident that somebody is taking pains to delay the building of this railway. This is not wanton damage. It's deliberate.'
'That's what I feel about the scaffolding.'
Filton told him about the way that Brassey and his companion had fallen when the scaffolding had collapsed under them. Leeming duly noted the information down. It was Filton who discerned a clear connection with the murder.
'It's all part of the same plot,' he decided.
'Is it, sir?'
'In killing Gaston Chabal, they've inflicted yet another blow.'
'A critical one at that, Mr Filton.'
'They'll stop at nothing to wreck this railway.'
'Have you any idea who these people might be?' asked Leeming. 'Do you have any suspects in mind?'
'Several of them.'
'Such as?'
'Business rivals, for a start,' said Filton. 'This contract is worth a large amount of money. Mr Brassey was not the only person to put in a tender. He was up against others.'
'French or English?'
'Oh, French. They resent the fact that a contractor has been brought over from England, in spite of the fact that Mr Brassey has such an outstanding record of work in this country.'
'Anybody other than jealous rivals, sir?'
'Resentful navvies. We brought most of our labour with us because it's more reliable, but we've had to take on some Frenchmen as well. They bear grudges.'
'Why would that be?'
'They get paid less than our own men,' said Filton, 'and it's caused a lot of bad blood. Yes,' he went on, warming to his theme, 'I fancy that's where the trouble is coming from – French labour. It's their way of making a protest.'
'Then it has no connection with M. Chabal's death, sir.'
'I believe that it does.'
'Why would someone track him all the way across the Channel,' asked Leeming, 'when they could have killed him here? More to the point, how could a mere labourer possibly know that Chabal was going to England in the first place? I'm sorry, Mr Filton. I think you are forging links where they may not exist.' He consulted his notebook. 'Let's go back to the first incident, shall we? You say that gunpowder was stolen – for what purpose?'
'I dread to think, Sergeant Leeming.'
They moved swiftly. While one man kept watch, the other scuttled along the track in the darkness until he reached one of the largest of the wagons. He packed the gunpowder firmly beneath it and ran a fuse alongside the iron rail. Both men made sure that they were well clear of the danger area before the fuse was lit. When they saw it burning away purposefully in the direction of the wagon, they ran off quickly to their hiding place. The explosion was deafening. Shattering the silence, it lifted the wagon high off the track and blew it into small pieces that were dispersed everywhere at great velocity. Rolling stock in the immediate vicinity was also destroyed in the blast. A section of rail was plucked from the sleepers and snapped apart. Fires started. Injured men screamed in pain. Falling debris killed a dog.
Another incident could be added to the list.
CHAPTER SIX
Robert Colbeck and Victor Leeming were staying at a cottage almost a mile away, but the noise of the blast woke them up. Though railway companies often used gunpowder to shift awkward obstructions, they would never do so at night. To someone like Thomas Brassey, it would be anathema. He was renowned for the care he took to keep any disruption to an absolute minimum in the locality where his men were working. Instead of putting all his navvies in one camp, and risking the uncontrollable mayhem that usually followed the creation of a private town, he placed as many of them as he could in houses, inns and farms in the area to spread them out. It was also a means of developing ties of friendship with local people and that was important.
A nocturnal explosion meant trouble. The two detectives got up at once, dressed in the dark then walked swiftly in the direction from which the sound had come. There was no danger of their getting lost. They simply followed the track that had already been laid. As each new extension was added, it was used to bring fresh supplies of iron, timber, ballast, bricks and other materials required on site. Movement by rail was so much quicker and more efficient than having to rely on horses and carts or using barges on the river. It also helped to raise morale. When they saw that their track was already in operation, those work
ing on it could measure the progress they had already made. They could take pride.
As they got closer, Colbeck and Leeming could see a mass of torches and lanterns. Raised voices were then carried on the breeze towards them. They quickened their step until figures were slowly conjured out of the gloom. Dozens of people were moving about as they tried to establish the full extent of the damage. Thomas Brassey was supervising the operation. Colbeck and Leeming walked through the scattered wreckage to get to him.
'What happened, Mr Brassey?' asked Colbeck.
'We're still not entirely sure,' replied the contractor, 'but it looks as if someone planted gunpowder beneath one of the wagons and blew it to pieces. We'll have to wait until dawn before we can make a complete inventory of the damage.'
'It must have been the stuff that was stolen earlier,' said Leeming, confidently. 'Mr Filton told me about it.'
'Whoever used it knew what he was doing, Sergeant. One wagon was blown apart and four others were damaged beyond repair. As you can see, the track was ripped up as well.'
'Was anyone hurt?'
'Some of the nightwatchmen were injured by the debris but nobody was killed, as far as we know.' He looked around and sighed. 'This is the worst incident yet. Someone is trying to cripple us.'
'No, sir,' said Colbeck. 'This was simply another warning.'
'Warning?'
The detective recoiled from the clamour all round him.
'Is there somewhere a little quieter where we might talk?'
'Of course, Inspector. Come to my office.'
Carrying a lantern, Brassey picked his way carefully through the gathering crowd and led them to the wooden hut. Once inside, he put the lantern on a ledge and lit some oil lamps, one of which was set on the large safe that stood in a corner. Brassey waved them into chairs before sitting down behind his desk.
'What's this about a warning?' he said.
'Somebody wishes you to think again about building this railway. I know that you have a contract to do so,' said Colbeck before Brassey could protest, 'but contracts can be revoked. The object of the exercise, I believe, is to frighten you off.'
'I'm not a man who's easily frightened, Inspector,' said the other with defiance. 'Whatever happens, I'll press on.'
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