Standing in the middle of the room, Patrick Perivale did not even offer him a handshake. A smart, dark-haired, dapper man in his forties with curling side-whiskers, he wore an expression of disdain for lesser mortals and he clearly put his visitor in that category. The bruising on Leeming’s face made him even less welcome to someone who resented unforeseen calls on his time.
‘What’s this all about, Sergeant?’ he inquired, fussily.
‘The trial of Nathan Hawkshaw.’
‘That’s history. There’s no cause to reopen it.’
‘I simply want to discuss it, sir.’
‘Now?’ said Perivale, producing a watch from his waistcoat pocket and looking at it. ‘I have another appointment soon.’
‘You’ll have to hear me out first,’ said Leeming, doggedly.
‘Must I?’
‘Inspector Colbeck was most insistent that I should warn you.’
‘About what?’ asked the other, putting his watch away. ‘Oh, very well,’ he went on, going to the chair behind his desk. ‘I suppose that you’d better sit down – and please make this visit a short one, Sergeant.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Leeming lowered himself into a high-backed leather armchair that creaked slightly. ‘Are you aware that the man who hanged Nathan Hawkshaw was murdered recently?’
‘I do read the papers, you know.’
‘Then you’ll also have picked up the information that the Reverend Jones, the prison chaplain from Maidstone, was killed the night before last in a railway carriage.’
‘Is this some kind of test for me on recent news events?’
‘Both murder victims received death threats from someone.’
‘Not for the first time, I warrant.’
‘But it was for the last,’ stressed Leeming. ‘One of them heeded the warning but was nevertheless killed. The other – the chaplain – took no notice of the threat and lost his life as a result.’
‘I was truly sorry to hear that,’ said Perivale. ‘I met the chaplain once and he struck me as a fellow of sterling virtue – not always the case with Welshmen. As a nation, they tend to veer towards the other side of the law.’
‘Did you receive a death threat, sir?’
‘That’s none of your damned business, Sergeant!’
‘I think that it is.’
‘I refuse to divulge any information about what I receive in relation to my cases. It’s a question of professional confidentiality.’
Leeming was blunt. ‘I’d say it was a question of staying alive.’
‘That’s a very offensive remark.’
‘There’s a pattern here, sir. Two people have had—’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the barrister, interrupting him. ‘I can see that, man. When you deal with criminal law, you inevitably make enemies but that does not mean you let the imprecations of some worthless villain upset the even tenor of your life.’
‘So you did get a death threat.’
‘I didn’t say that. What I am telling you – if only you had the grace to listen – is that I am very conscious of the dangers appertaining to my profession and I take all sensible precautions. To be more precise,’ he continued, opening a drawer to pull out a gun, ‘I always carry this when I go abroad in the streets. It’s a Manton pocket pistol.’
‘Jacob Guttridge was armed as well but it did him no good.’
‘Thank you for telling me, Sergeant.’ He put the pistol away then stood up. ‘Now that you’ve delivered your message, you can go.’
‘But I haven’t asked the questions yet, sir.’
‘What questions?’
‘The ones given to me by Inspector Colbeck.’
‘I don’t have time to play guessing games.’
‘The Inspector used to be a barrister,’ said Leeming, irritated by the other man’s pomposity. ‘Of course, he worked in the London criminal courts where they get the important cases that provincial barristers like you would never be allowed to touch. If you don’t help me,’ he cautioned, ‘then Inspector Colbeck will come looking for you to know the reason why. And he won’t be scared off by that toy pistol of yours either.’
Patrick Perivale was checked momentarily by Leeming’s forthrightness but he soon recovered his natural arrogance. One hand on a hip, he gave a supercilious smile.
‘Why did your Inspector leave the bar?’
‘Because he wanted to do something more worthwhile.’
‘Nothing is more worthwhile than convicting criminals.’
‘They have to be caught first, sir,’ said Leeming. ‘Besides, you don’t always see justice being done in court, do you? I’ve sat through too many trials to know that. I’ve watched guilty men go free because they had a clever barrister and innocent men convicted because they didn’t.’
‘I hope that you don’t have the effrontery to suggest that Nathan Hawkshaw was innocent.’
‘I don’t know the facts of the case well enough, sir, but Inspector Colbeck has studied it in detail and he’s raised a few queries.’
‘He’s too late. Sentence has been passed.’
‘It was passed on the hangman and the prison chaplain as well.’
‘Are you being frivolous, Sergeant?’
‘No, sir,’ said Leeming, ‘I was just pointing out that this case is by no means over for those who feel aggrieved on Hawkshaw’s behalf. Two lives have been lost already. We’d like to catch the killer before anyone else joins the list. To do that, we need your help.’
‘What can I possibly do?’
‘Tell us something about the trial. Newspaper reports can only give us so much. You were there.’
‘Yes,’ said the other with self-importance, ‘and I regard it as one of my most successful cases. The reason for that is that I refused to be intimidated. I had to walk through a baying crowd outside the court and defy the howling mob in the public gallery.’
‘The judge had them cleared out, didn’t he?’
‘Not before they’d made their point and weaker vessels would have been influenced by that. I was simply spurred on to get the conviction that Hawkshaw so obviously deserved.’
‘And how did you do that?’
‘By making him crack under cross-examination.’
‘He maintained his innocence until the end.’
‘But he’d already given himself away by then,’ said Perivale with a note of triumph in his voice. ‘He could not give a convincing explanation of where he was at the time of the murder. That was his undoing, Sergeant. He had no alibi and I taunted him with that fact.’
‘He claimed that he walked away from Lenham to think things over and then returned in a calmer frame of mind.’
‘Calmer frame of mind – balderdash! The fellow was in a state of sustained fury. He had to be to inflict such butchery on his victim. It was an assault of almost demonic proportions.’
‘I know. I visited the scene of the crime.’
‘Then you’ll have seen how secluded it was. Hawkshaw chose it with care so that he’d not be disturbed.’
‘But how did he persuade Dykes to join him there?’
‘That’s beside the point.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Leeming, remembering one of Colbeck’s notes. ‘Dykes would hardly agree to meet him in a private place when he knew that the butcher was after him. He’d have stayed drinking in the Red Lion where he was safe. And what proof is there that Hawkshaw was in that part of the woods, anyway?’
‘He was seen there by a witness.’
‘After the event. Yet there was no blood on him.’
‘You’re dragging up the same feeble argument as the defence,’ said the barrister. ‘Because there was no blood on him, they argued, he could not have committed such a violent crime. Yet there was a stream nearby. Hawkshaw could easily have washed himself clean.’
‘What about his clothing? He couldn’t wash blood off that.’
‘Quite right. That’s why his coat mysteriously disappeared.’
‘His coat
?’
‘Yes,’ continued Perivale, almost crowing over him. ‘That’s one little detail that you and the Inspector missed. When he went to that fair in Lenham, Hawkshaw was wearing a coat. A number of witnesses testify to that, including his son. Later, however, when he was observed by the youth returning to the farm, he had no coat on and was thoroughly dishevelled, as if he’d been involved in vigorous exercise. In other words,’ he said, coming to the end of his peroration, ‘he discarded his coat because it was spattered with the blood of his victim.’
‘Was the coat never found?’
‘No – he must have buried it somewhere.’
‘Then why wasn’t it discovered? The police searched the area.’
‘They were only looking for a certain part of Joseph Dykes’s anatomy that had gone astray – a fact that tells you everything about the mentality of the killer. Taken together, the missing coat and the absence of an alibi put Hawkshaw’s neck into the hangman’s noose. Hundreds of people were at that fair with more arriving every minute. If Hawkshaw really had walked off towards Ashford, somebody must have seen him but no witnesses could be found.’
‘So where do you think he was?’
‘Searching the wood for a place to commit a murder.’
‘In the hope that Dykes would happen to pass by later on?’
‘He enticed him there somehow.’
‘I wouldn’t be enticed by an angry butcher with a meat cleaver.’
‘You never met Nathan Hawkshaw,’ countered the barrister. ‘He was an evil man and capable of any ruse. You never saw the murder dancing in those black eyes of his. When I had him in the dock,’ he said, raising a finger, ‘I showed the jury what he was really like. I put him under such stern cross-examination that this decent, kind, popular, reasonable man that all his friends claimed him to be suddenly turned into a snarling animal. I’ve never seen such a vivid expression of guilt on the face of any prisoner.’
‘You have no reservations about that trial then?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘What’s happened since has not alarmed you in any way?’
‘I’m upset that two men have died unnecessarily and in such a brutal way, but I have no fears at all for my own safety. When I led the prosecution in that trial, I was doing my bounden duty.’
‘And you believe that you convicted the right man.’
‘Without a scintilla of doubt,’ said Perivale, lapsing into his courtroom manner. ‘The evidence against Nathan Hawkshaw was quite overwhelming. Any other barrister in my place – including your Inspector Colbeck – would have done exactly the same thing as me and striven hard for a death sentence.’
‘I hope that you won’t make a habit of this, Inspector,’ said Gregory Newman with a laugh. ‘If you keep taking me away from my work, the foreman will start to dock my wages.’
‘I won’t keep you long.’
‘We could hardly talk in the boiler shop.’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Colbeck. ‘I’d have been interested to see more of what goes on in there.’
‘You really like locomotives, don’t you?’
‘They fascinate me.’
‘They fascinate lots of people, Inspector, but only if they’re running along railway lines. You’re the first person I’ve ever met who wants to see how they’re built.’
‘Very noisily, by the sound of it.’
Newman grinned. The two men were standing outside the railway works in Ashford. A train was just leaving the station, adding to the industrial uproar and sending up clouds of smoke into an overcast sky. Colbeck waited until it had rolled past them.
‘I like to know the way that things are put together,’ said Colbeck. ‘I come from a family of cabinetmakers, you see. As a boy, I was always intrigued at the way that my father could take a pile of wood and turn it into the most exquisite desk or wardrobe.’
‘There’s nothing quite so fancy in making a boiler.’
‘It takes skill and that impresses me.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you worked here,’ said Newman. His grin was inviting. ‘What can I tell you this time, Inspector?’
‘I’d like to hear how far you’ve got.’
‘In what?’
‘Your search for the man who did kill Joseph Dykes.’
‘Not as far as we’d like,’ conceded the other, ‘but we won’t give up. The trouble is that we have such limited time. That holds us back.’
‘Us?’
‘Me and the friends helping me.’
‘How many of them are there?’
‘A handful,’ said Newman, ‘and you can include Win Hawkshaw as well. Nobody is more eager to track down the culprit than Win.’
‘Do you have any suspects?’
‘Yes, Inspector. One, in particular.’
‘Why didn’t you mention him before?’
‘Let’s be frank about this. You didn’t come to Ashford because you thought Nathan was innocent, did you? You only came to find out who killed Jake Guttridge and now you have the murder of the prison chaplain on your plate.’
‘All three murders are closely linked.’
‘But only two of them have any interest for you,’ said Newman.
‘That’s untrue. If you have any new information relating to the murder of Joseph Dykes, I want to hear it.’
‘Why?’
‘I told you, Mr Newman. I like to know the way that things are put together, whether they’re desks, wardrobes, steam locomotives or crimes. I thrive on detail.’
The other man scratched his beard as he pondered. Like Winifred Hawkshaw, he had a deep distrust of policemen but he seemed to sense that Colbeck might be different from the general run.
‘His name is Angel,’ he said.
‘Your suspect?’
‘Yes. We don’t know his surname – he may not even have one – but he’s been through here a number of times over the years. I once shod a horse for him, only to discover that he’d stolen it from Bybrook Farm.’
‘Did you report it to the police?’
‘Of course, but Angel was long gone by then. I didn’t catch sight of him again for eighteen months. He moves around, Inspector. He’s half-gypsy. That type never settle.’
‘Why do you think that he was Dykes’s killer?’
‘He was at that fair in Lenham. I saw him going into the Red Lion with my own eyes. According to the landlord, he and Joe Dykes had a disagreement over something or other. When Joe left, Angel must have sneaked out after him.’
‘Do you have any proof of that?’
‘None at all. But we know how Angel can harbour grudges.’
‘Dykes was killed with a meat cleaver belonging to Nathan Hawkshaw. How could this man possibly have got hold of that?’
‘By stealing it, Inspector. The day before the fair, it went missing from the shop along with a number of other items. Nathan told them that at the trial,’ said Newman with a hint of anger, ‘but they didn’t believe him. That weasel of a prosecution barrister said that Nathan could have faked the burglary himself.’
‘Was this other man – Angel – mentioned in court?’
‘I raised his name but nobody would listen to me.’
‘You have no firm evidence, then?’
‘Not yet, maybe,’ said Newman, ‘but I’ll beat it out of Angel when he shows that ugly face of his in Ashford again.’
‘I should imagine he’ll have the sense to keep well clear of here.’
‘We’ll find him somehow, Inspector.’
‘And then?’
Newman grinned. ‘He’ll be passed on to the police.’
‘I hope so,’ warned Colbeck. ‘We don’t want anyone taking the law into their own hands. You said that a small number of you are looking out for this man.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Perhaps you’d give me their names, Mr Newman. And while we’re on the subject, I’d appreciate the names of everyone who supported the campaign to free Hawkshaw.’<
br />
‘I’m afraid that I can’t do that, Inspector.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because there are far too many of them to remember. In any case, some people simply gave some money to our fighting fund. They only did that if they could remain anonymous.’
‘I see.’
‘As for the handful I mentioned, you’ve already met one of them.’
‘Adam Hawkshaw?’
‘Yes. The others wouldn’t want their names to be known.’
‘Is that a polite way of saying that you won’t divulge them?’
‘I can see why you became a detective,’ said Newman with amusement. He became brusque. ‘If you want us on your side, you’ve got to help us in return. Angel is the man we want. Find him, Inspector.’
‘There are other suspects at the top of my list first.’
‘An innocent man was hanged. Doesn’t that matter to you?’
‘It matters a great deal, Mr Newman. Innocent or guilty, his death has already provoked two murders. What other crimes are there to come?’ He changed his tack. ‘How well do you know Emily Hawkshaw?’
‘As well as anyone, I suppose,’ said Newman, hunching his shoulders. ‘My wife and I were not blessed with children – Meg was struck down when she was still a young woman. Nathan let us share his family. Both of the children used to come and watch me at the forge, especially Emily. She was there every day at one time.’
‘Why has she drawn away from her mother?’
‘What makes you ask that?’
‘I spoke to Mrs Hawkshaw earlier,’ explained Colbeck. ‘She was upset at the way that she and her daughter seem to have lost touch. She traced it back to the assault made by Joseph Dykes.’
‘That put the fear of death into Emily.’
‘Then you’d expect her to turn to her mother. Yet she didn’t.’
‘I know.’
‘Have you any idea why that might be?’
‘No, Inspector,’ said Newman, sadly. ‘I don’t. As a matter of fact, I had a word with the girl yesterday and asked her why she spurned her mother at a time when they needed to mourn together. At first, Emily wouldn’t say anything at all. When I pushed her, she told me that she wanted to be left alone because she felt ashamed at Nathan’s death.’
The Railway Detective Collection: The Railway Detective, the Excursion Train, the Railway Viaduct (The Railway Detective Series) Page 45
