‘This is my daughter, Emily,’ said Winifred, indicating her. ‘Emily, this is Inspector Colbeck from London. He’s a policeman.’
It was all that the girl needed to hear. Mumbling an excuse, she closed the door and went hurriedly back upstairs. Winifred felt impelled to offer an explanation.
‘You’ll have to forgive her,’ she said. ‘Emily still can’t believe that it all happened. It’s changed her completely. She hasn’t been out of here since the day of the execution.’
Victor Leeming was dreaming about his wedding day when he heard a distant knock. The door of the church swung open but, instead of his bride, it was a plump young woman with a wooden tray who came down the aisle towards him.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ she said, boldly.
‘What?’
Leeming came awake and realised that he was lying fully clothed on the bed in his room at the Saracen’s Head. The plump young woman was standing inside the doorway, holding a tray and staring at his bruised face with utter fascination.
‘Did you hurt yourself, sir?’ she asked.
‘I had an accident,’ he replied, leaping off the bed to stand up.
‘What sort of accident?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It would to me if I had injuries like that.’
‘Who are you and what do you want?’
‘My name is Mary, sir,’ she said with a friendly smile, ‘and I work here at the Saracen’s Head. The other gentleman told me to wake you with a cup of tea at eleven o’clock and give you this letter.’ She put the tray on the bedside table. ‘There you are, sir.’
As she brushed his arm, he stepped back guiltily as if he had just been caught in an act of infidelity. It was a paradox. As a policeman in earlier days, Leeming had been used to patrolling areas of London that were infested with street prostitutes yet he was embarrassed to be alone in a room with a female servant. Mary continued to stare at him.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You can go now.’
‘I don’t believe it was an accident.’
‘Goodbye, Mary.’
‘Did it hurt, sir?’
‘Goodbye.’
Ushering her out, he closed the door and slipped the bolt into place. Then he stirred some sugar into the tea and took a welcome sip. A clock was chiming nearby and his pocket watch confirmed that it was exactly eleven o’clock, meaning that he had slept for over two hours. Grateful to Colbeck for permitting him a rest, he opened the envelope on the tray and read his instructions, written in the neat hand that he knew so well. Leeming was not pleased by his orders but he seized on one benefit.
‘At least, I don’t have to go there by train!’ he said.
Ashford was the home of the South Eastern Railway Company’s main works, a fact that gave the town more kudos while inflicting a perpetual clamour upon it during working hours. The construction of a locomotive was not something that could be done quietly and the clang of industry had now become as familiar, if not as euphonious, as the tolling of a church bell. Robert Colbeck was delighted with an excuse to visit the works and he spent some time talking to the superintendent about the locomotives and rolling stock that were built there. To find the man he was after, Colbeck had to go to the boiler shop, the noisiest part of the factory, a place of unremitting tumult as chains were used to manoeuvre heavy pieces of iron, hammers pounded relentlessly and sparks flew.
Gregory Newman was helping to lift a section of a boiler into position. He was a big man in his forties with a mop of dark hair and a full beard that was flecked with dirt. He used a sinewy forearm to wipe the sweat from his brow. Colbeck waited until he had finished the job in hand before he introduced himself, detached Newman from the others and took him outside. The boilerman was astonished by the arrival of a detective from Scotland Yard, especially one as refined and well dressed as Colbeck. He took a moment to weigh up the newcomer.
‘How can you work in that din?’ asked Colbeck.
‘I was born and brought up in a forge,’ said Newman, ‘so I’ve lived with noise all my life. Not like some of the others. Three of the men in the boiler shop have gone stone deaf.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘They should have stuffed something in their ears.’
Newman had a ready grin and an affable manner, the fruit of a lifetime of chatting to customers while they waited for their horses to be shod or for him to perform some other task in his forge. Colbeck warmed to the man at once.
‘Why did you stop being a blacksmith?’ he said.
‘This job pays me better,’ replied the other, ‘and locomotives don’t kick as hard as horses. But that’s not the real reason, Inspector. I used to hate trains at first but they’ve grown on me.’
‘They’re the face of the future, Mr Newman.’
‘That’s what I feel.’
‘Though there’ll always be a call for a good blacksmith.’
‘Well, I won’t hear it – not with all that hullabaloo in the boiler shop. It’s a world of its own in there.’ His grin slowly faded. ‘But you didn’t come all the way here from London to hear me tell you that. This is about Nathan, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Mr Newman. I’ve just spoken with his wife.’
‘How is Win?’
‘Holding up much better than I dared to expect,’ said Colbeck. ‘Mrs Hawkshaw was very helpful. The same, alas, could not be said of her stepson. He doesn’t have much respect for the law.’
‘How could he after what happened?’
‘Was he always so truculent?’
‘Adam is a restless lad,’ explained Newman, ‘and he likes his own way. When he lived at home, he and Nathan used to argue all the time so I found him a room near the Corn Exchange. There’s no real harm in Adam but he won’t let anyone push him around.’
‘How does he get on with his stepmother?’
‘Not too well. Win is a good woman. She’s done all she could for him but he was just too much of a handful for her. Then, of course, there was the problem with Emily.’
‘Oh?’
‘Adam was always teasing her. I’m sure it was only meant in fun,’ said Newman, defensively, ‘but I think it went too far sometimes. Emily’s scared of him. It wasn’t good for them to be sleeping under the same roof. They’ve nothing in common.’
‘They share the same father, don’t they?’
‘No, Inspector. Emily is not Nathan’s daughter.’
‘I assumed that she was.’
‘Win’s first husband was killed in a fire,’ said Newman, sadly, ‘and she was left to bring up a tiny baby on her own. She and Nathan didn’t get married until a year later. His wife had died of smallpox so he had a child on his hands as well – Adam.’
‘I’m told that you were close to the Hawkshaws.’
‘We’ve been friends for years.’
‘Was it a happy marriage?’
‘Very happy,’ returned the other, as if offended by the query. ‘You can see that from the way that Win fought for his release. She was devoted to her husband.’
‘But you ran the campaign on his behalf.’
‘It was the least I could do, Inspector. Nathan and I grew up together in Ashford. We went to school, fished in the Stour, had our first pipe of tobacco together.’ He smiled nostalgically. ‘We were only twelve at the time and as sick as dogs.’
‘Was Mr Hawkshaw a powerful man?’
‘Stronger than me.’
‘Strong enough to hack a man to death, then?’ asked Colbeck, springing the question on him to gauge his reaction.
‘Nathan didn’t kill Joe Dykes,’ asserted the other.
‘Then who did?’
‘Go into any pub in the town and you’ll find a dozen suspects in each one. Joe Dykes was a menace. Nobody had a good word for him. If he wasn’t getting drunk and picking a fight, he was stealing something or pestering a woman.’
‘From what I heard, he did more than pester Emily Hawkshaw.’
‘Yes,’
said Newman, grimly. ‘That was what really upset Nathan. The girl is barely sixteen.’
‘I met her briefly earlier on.’
‘Then you’ll have seen how meek and defenceless she is. Emily is still a child in some ways. She was running an errand for her mother when Joe Dykes cornered her in a lane. The sight of a pretty face was all he needed to rouse him. He grabbed Emily, pinned her against a wall and tore her skirt as he tried to lift it.’
‘Didn’t she scream for help?’ asked Colbeck.
‘Emily was too scared to move,’ said Newman, ‘let alone call out. If someone hadn’t come into the lane at that moment, heaven knows what he’d have done to her.’
‘Was the incident reported to the police?’
‘Nathan wanted to sort it out himself so he went looking for Joe. But, of course, he’d run away by then. We didn’t see hide nor hair of Joe Dykes for weeks. Then he turned up at the fair in Lenham.’
‘Were you there yourself?’
‘Yes, Inspector.’
‘Did you go with Nathan Hawkshaw?’
‘No,’ said Newman, ‘I rode over there first thing on my own. I’ve a cousin who’s a blacksmith in Lenham. A fair brings in plenty of trade so I helped him in the forge that morning. It made a nice change from the boiler shop.’
‘So you didn’t witness the argument that was supposed to have taken place between Hawkshaw and Dykes?’
‘I came in at the end. There was such a commotion in the square that I went to see what it was. Nathan and Joe were yelling at each other and the crowd was hoping to see a fight. That’s when I stepped in.’
‘You?’
‘Somebody had to, Inspector,’ Newman continued, ‘or things could have turned nasty. I didn’t want Nathan arrested for disturbing the peace. So, when Joe goes off to the Red Lion, I stopped Nathan from following him and tried to talk some sense into him. If he wanted to settle a score, the square in Lenham was not the place to do it. He should have waited until Joe came out of the pub at the end of the evening when there was hardly anyone about.’
‘So there would have been a fight of some sort?’
‘A fight is different from cold-blooded murder.’
‘But your friend was clearly in a mood for revenge.’
‘That’s why I had to calm him down,’ said Newman, scratching his beard. ‘I told him to go away until his temper had cooled. And that’s what Nathan did. He set out for Ashford, thought over what I’d said then headed back to Lenham in a much better frame of mind.’
‘Did he have a meat cleaver with him?’
‘Of course not,’ retorted the other.
‘One was found beside the body. It had Hawkshaw’s initials on it.’
‘It was not left there by Nathan.’
‘How do you know?’
‘To begin with,’ said Newman, hotly, ‘he wouldn’t have been so stupid as to leave a murder weapon behind that could be traced to him.’
‘I disagree,’ argued Colbeck. ‘All the reports suggest that it must have been a frenzied attack. If someone is so consumed with rage that he’s ready to kill, he wouldn’t stop to think about hiding the murder weapon. Having committed the crime, Hawkshaw could have simply stumbled off.’
‘Then where was the blood?’
‘Blood?’
‘I spoke to the farm lad who discovered the body, Inspector. He said there was blood everywhere. Whoever sliced up Joe Dykes must have been spattered with it – yet there wasn’t a speck on Nathan.’
‘He was a butcher. He knew how to use a cleaver.’
‘That’s what they said in court,’ recalled Newman, bitterly. ‘If he’d been a draper or a grocer, he’d still be alive now. Nathan was condemned because of his occupation.’
‘Circumstantial evidence weighed against him.’
‘Is that enough to take away a man’s life and leave his family in misery? I don’t give a damn for what was said about him at the trial. He was innocent of the crime and I want his name cleared.’
Gregory Newman spoke with the earnestness of a true friend. Colbeck decided that, since he had supervised the campaign to secure the prisoner’s release, he was almost certainly involved in the doomed attempt to rescue him from Maidstone prison and in the upheaval during the execution. For the sake of a friend, he was ready to defy the law. Colbeck admired his stance even though he disapproved of it.
‘You heard what happened to Jake Guttridge, I presume?’
‘Yes, Inspector.’
‘What did you think when you learnt of the hangman’s death?’
‘He was no hangman,’ said Newman, quietly. ‘He was a torturer. He put Nathan through agony. When she saw the way that her husband was twitching at the end of the rope, Win passed out. We had to take her to a doctor.’
‘So you didn’t shed a tear when you heard that Guttridge had met his own death by violent means?’
‘I neither cried nor cheered, Inspector. I’m sorry for any man who’s murdered and for those he leaves behind. Guttridge is of no interest to me now. All I want to do is to help Win through this nightmare,’ he said, ‘and the best way to do that is to prove that Nathan was not guilty.’
‘Supposing – just supposing – that he was?’
Newman looked at him as if he had just suggested something totally obscene. There was a long silence. Pulling himself to his full height, he looked the detective in the eye.
‘Then he was not the person I’ve known for over forty years.’
Colbeck was impressed with the man’s conviction but he was still not entirely persuaded of Hawkshaw’s innocence. He did, however, feel that the conversation had put him in possession of vital information. If the butcher had been wrongly hanged, and if Colbeck worked to establish that fact, then Gregory Newman would be a useful ally. Though the boiler maker had little trust in policemen, he had talked openly about the case with the Inspector and made his own position clear. There was much more to learn from him but this was not the time.
‘Thank you, Mr Newman,’ said Colbeck.
‘Thank you for taking me away from work for a while.’
‘I may need to speak with you again.’
‘As you wish, Inspector. Do you want my address?’
‘No, I think that I’d rather call on you here at the works.’
Newman grinned. ‘Are you that fond of locomotives, Inspector?’
‘Yes,’ said Colbeck, smiling. ‘As a matter of fact, I am.’
Unable to hire a trap, they settled for a cart that had been used that morning to bring a load of fish to Ashford and that still bore strong aromatic traces of its cargo. When it set off towards Lenham and hit every pothole in the road, Victor Leeming could see that he was in for another painful ride. His companion was George Butterkiss, one of the constables in the town, a scrawny individual in his thirties with the face of a startled ferret. Thankful to be driven, Leeming soon began to regret his decision to ask Butterkiss to take him. The fellow was overeager to help, even in a uniform that was much too big for his spare frame, and he was desperately in awe of the Metropolitan Police. He spoke in an irritating nasal whine.
‘What are our orders, Sergeant?’ he asked, whipping the horse into a trot. ‘This is wonderful for me, sir. I’ve never worked for Scotland Yard before.’
‘Or ever again,’ said Leeming under his breath.
‘What are we supposed to do?’
‘My instructions,’ said Leeming, keen to stress that they had not been directed at Butterkiss, ‘are to visit the scene of the crime, examine it carefully then speak to the landlord of the Red Lion.’
‘I know the exact spot where Joe Dykes was done in.’
‘Good.’
‘Sergeant Lugg showed it to me. He and his men came over from Maidstone to arrest Nathan Hawkshaw. There was no point, really. They should have left it to us.’
‘Did you know Hawkshaw?’
‘My wife bought all her meat from him.’
‘What sort of man was he?�
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‘Decent enough,’ said Butterkiss, ‘though he wasn’t a man to get on the wrong side of, I know that to my cost. Of course, I wasn’t a policeman in those days. I was a tailor.’
‘Really?’ said Leeming, wishing that the man had stayed in his former occupation. ‘What made you turn to law enforcement?’
‘My shop was burgled and nobody did anything about it.’
‘So you thought that you could solve the crime?’
‘Oh, no, Sergeant. There was no chance of that. I just realised how horrible you feel when your property has been stolen. It was like being invaded. I wanted to save other people from going through that.’
‘A laudable instinct.’
‘Then there was the other thing, of course.’
‘What other thing?’
‘The excitement,’ said Butterkiss, nudging him. ‘The thrill of the chase. There’s none of that when you’re measuring someone for a new frock coat. Well, I don’t need to tell you, do I? You’re another man who loves to hear the sound of a hue and cry.’ He gave an ingratiating smirk. ‘Would someone like me be able to work at Scotland Yard?’
‘Let’s talk about the case,’ insisted Leeming, wincing as the wheel explored another pothole with jarring resonance. ‘Do you think that Hawkshaw was guilty?’
‘That’s why they hanged him.’
‘He wouldn’t have been the first innocent man on the gallows.’
‘There was no doubt about his guilt in my mind,’ attested the driver. ‘He and Joe Dykes were sworn enemies. It was only a matter of time before one of them did the other in. Joe broke into the butcher’s shop once, you know.’
‘Then why didn’t you arrest him?’
‘We couldn’t prove it. Joe used to taunt Nathan about it. Boasted that he could walk in and out of any house in Ashford and nobody could touch him.’
‘I’d touch him,’ said Leeming, ‘good and hard.’
‘We gave him warning after warning. He ignored us.’
‘What was this business about Hawkshaw’s daughter?’
‘It was his stepdaughter, Emily. Pretty girl.’
The Railway Detective Collection: The Railway Detective, the Excursion Train, the Railway Viaduct (The Railway Detective Series) Page 39
