Peril on the Royal Train (21 page)

Madeleine was alarmed. ‘Her Majesty the Queen and her husband will be on the royal train with their children,’ she said. ‘Is someone planning to harm them?’

‘I’m afraid they want to do more than that, Maddy.’

‘That’s appalling!’

‘There are some wicked people in this world. It won’t be the first time that one of them has tried to kill the Queen.’

‘Robert must be told,’ she cried. ‘I must get word to him somehow.’

‘There’s one sure way to do that,’ he said. ‘This is an emergency. Tomorrow morning, we’ll catch the first train to Glasgow.’

Nairn Craig was unfailingly polite to his visitors but doubts were beginning to form beneath the surface. When Colbeck and Leeming called on him in his office that morning, he hoped that they had some progress to report. Instead, they had to tell him that their belief that Lackey Paterson might have been involved in the crime had been unfounded. Cornered at last by the sergeant, he’d explained why he’d assaulted Laidlaw and why he’d had to flee from his job at the quarry. One more name could be crossed off the list of suspects. Craig was disturbed. The detectives he’d brought all the way from London had simply gone down a series of cul-de-sacs.

‘Will we ever catch the villains behind this?’ he asked, mournfully.

‘I remain sanguine, sir,’ replied Colbeck.

‘That’s more than I do,’ said Leeming to himself. Aloud, he tried to sound more positive. ‘These are still early days, Mr Craig. Other clues will soon come to light. They always do.’

‘The sergeant is quite right. An investigation like this is bound to be protracted. We can’t just wave a magic wand and solve the crime. We have to piece information slowly together.’

‘I understand that,’ said Craig, ‘but I’m bound to be worried when you keep arresting the wrong people.’

‘I didn’t actually arrest Paterson,’ said Leeming, defensively. ‘Once I’d got the truth out of him, there was no point in doing so. As for the man I earlier mistook for Paterson, he was wanted by the police so I was right to arrest him.’

‘We were equally right to apprehend the Usher brothers,’ argued Colbeck. ‘I regard their arrest as an incidental bonus. Had they not been caught, they’d have continued to plunder your freight unhindered. And while Paterson turned out to be innocent,’ he went on, ‘I think we should applaud Sergeant Leeming for his tenacity in tracking him down.’

Craig nodded. ‘Yes, yes, I’m full of admiration. What was the name of the place where you found him?’

‘It was a lodging house called Telfer’s,’ said Leeming. ‘It’s a hellhole for the poor and needy. There are plenty of those in this city, alas.’

‘It was ever thus.’

Though the general manager tried his best to hide it, Colbeck could see how disappointed he was in their work. He wished that he could talk about some more productive lines of inquiry but none had so far emerged. In time, he was confident, they would. He turned to the parallel investigation.

‘How is Inspector Rae faring?’ he asked.

‘No better than you, I fancy,’ said Craig, ‘though I daresay that he’ll have a laugh at your expense when he hears that Paterson had no link with the crime.’

‘A lot of people have had a laugh at our expense, sir.’

‘Most of them are now in prison,’ Leeming interjected.

‘That won’t be the case with the inspector, of course, but I think he’ll be more respectful of our efforts in due course. That article in the newspaper exposed us to derision as well,’ said Colbeck. ‘I was glad when they printed an apology.’

‘Yes,’ grumbled Leeming. ‘The trouble was that we were sneered at on the front page and the apology was tucked away inside the newspaper. They didn’t even mention that Superintendent McTurk had been dismissed.’

‘That’s another incidental bonus,’ noted Colbeck. ‘We got rid of a man who tried to wheedle that reward money out of you by false pretences. I think that the Caledonian will be far better off without him.’

‘I’ve already forgotten McTurk,’ said Craig, looking down at some papers on his desk. ‘I’ve got other things to worry about. There’s a whole pile of demands for compensation for goods stolen or damaged in the crash. Sadly, people are much more concerned about their freight than about the three men who died hideous deaths. Then I’ve got an estimate of how much money we lost when the line was blocked. It made my eyes water. There was also a loss of goodwill, of course, but you can’t put a price on that. Financing a railway company is a continuous nightmare. The crash has only made it worse. Never run a railway, gentlemen, unless you want an early grave.’

‘You could say the same of the police service, sir,’ said Leeming. ‘It’s full of danger. None of us can count on a long life.’

‘Policemen don’t have to cope with the financial burdens of the railway industry. Competition is intense and our rivals are merciless. It was only in recent memory, for instance, that we managed to knock some sense into the heads of those running the Edinburgh and Glasgow. Until then, they were conducting a ruinous price war against us.’

Colbeck had heard a different version of events. The Scottish shareholders of the two companies had looked on in despair as income slumped as a result of lower fares. In the end, tiring of the state of affairs, the English shareholders of both companies had convened a meeting in London and reached an agreement to work for a common purse for a period of ten years, the Caledonian taking over two-thirds of it. Craig was claiming credit for something forced upon him.

The general manager snatched up a letter from his desk.

‘And here’s another demand from the sabbatarians,’ he went on. ‘Their campaign has taken on fresh impetus. They’ve not only been daubing slogans on our rolling stock, they’ve used their artistry elsewhere.’

‘In what way?’ asked Leeming.

‘There are reports of things being painted on station walls, bridges and above the entrance to tunnels. They’ve even been busy with their spades. Apparently, there’s an embankment near Rutherglen into which they’ve carved
SAVE THE SABBATH
. They must have worked at night to cut that into the turf.’

‘Will it have any effect, sir?’

‘None at all,’ said Craig, stiffly, ‘beyond causing lots of annoyance, that is. We can’t entertain the idea of suspending our services on a Sunday. If you’re in business, you’re subject to the laws of supply and demand. Passengers
want
to travel on the Sabbath. In some cases, it’s the only day when they’re able to do so. If we don’t meet their needs, another railway company will.’

‘One has to admire the sabbatarians in a way,’ said Colbeck.

Craig grimaced. ‘Don’t ask me to applaud their activities.’

‘I’m not applauding them, sir. Apart from anything else, they’re trespassing on your property and defacing it with their slogans. But it takes courage to do that. While I don’t hold with religious militancy, I think we should remember that it’s prompted by a commitment to biblical teaching.’

‘Where in the Bible does it say that you have to paint your demands on walls or dig up embankments to make your point?’

‘Nowhere, sir,’ conceded Colbeck, ‘but the Good Book is full of inspiring stories about people who stay true to their faith even if they’re persecuted for it.’

‘The Caledonian is persecuting nobody.’

‘But I can see what the inspector means,’ said Leeming. ‘These people are not ordinary criminals. They’re devout Christians. We should remember that.’

‘The only thing
I
remember,’ said Craig with controlled vehemence, ‘is what it costs us to clean up after them. These people are a menace. They need to be caught and convicted before they do something really serious.’

Tam and Flora Howie were pleased with the way that their new disciple had behaved. Any doubts they had about him had been swept away. Ian Dalton had not only done exactly what was asked of him, he had – overcoming his initial nervousness – found that he had a flair for it. He’d been out with the paintbrush three nights in a row and had decorated pieces of railway property with relish. Even though his nocturnal absences upset his wife, Dalton pressed on. When they finally achieved their objective of stopping trains on the Sabbath, he believed, he would confide in her and she’d be proud of her husband. For the time, however, she was told nothing.

Over luncheon together, Howie raised the subject of their new recruit.

‘I think he’s ready,’ he decided.

‘It’s too soon to tell, Tam.’

‘You should see him at work. He loves it.’

‘But he hasn’t been asked to do anything really dangerous yet.’

‘We’re pioneers,’ said Howie. ‘That’s what Ian likes most. Others are following in our wake because they’ve seen what can be done. Someone has left a message on an embankment near Rutherglen, apparently, and station signs have been stolen from Edinburgh and Glasgow. A cross was painted on the windows of carriages belonging to the NBR. People have obviously heard what we’ve been doing to the Caledonian. We’ve started a movement, Flora.’

‘The more, the merrier.’

‘It’s not really merriment. We’re deadly serious.’

He speared the last potato with his fork and popped it into his mouth. They ate in silence for a while. A grandfather clock chimed in the hall.

‘I must hurry,’ he said. ‘I promised to be back in the office at two.’

‘What about Ian Dalton?’

‘He’s coming here tonight at the usual time.’

‘Do we tell him?’

‘Of course – he deserves fair warning.’

‘What if we frighten him off?’

‘He’s gone too far to pull back now, Flora. My guess is that he’ll jump at the opportunity and we do need him. If we went ahead without Ian, I think he’d be very upset. He’s like us. He’ll want to see the report of it in the newspapers.’

‘Publicity certainly helps our cause.’

‘It’s been the making of it.’

‘Until people know what we’re doing, they can’t copy us. It’s only since they started to write about us in the newspapers that we’ve built up a following.’

‘Momentum is vital.’

‘That’s why we must keep it up,’ she said.

‘We’ll go on shouting at the railway companies until they finally listen to us. It’s a contest between profit and the prophets,’ said Howie, pleased with the phrase that tripped off his tongue and vowing to use it again. ‘They want to make money – a laudable objective for any businessman – and there are six days in which to do it. That’s enough for anybody. Set against the ungodly, there are people like us, who hold with the law of the prophets. We must protect the Sabbath and maintain Christian values in Scotland.’

‘When do we strike?’ she asked.

‘Very soon.’

Flora rubbed her hands with glee. ‘I can’t wait.’

No expense was spared. Since they’d be in a train for over twelve hours, Madeleine and her father travelled first class. Leaving the bustle of Euston station, they went off on a journey that Andrews had taken many times when he worked for the LNWR. It made him highly critical of the driver, complaining that the man should have learnt to ease the train smoothly into a station instead of bringing it to a sudden halt that jolted them out of their seats. Madeleine had brought a book to read and was soon lost in the ordered world of Jane Austen. Though her father had bought a newspaper at the station, he fell asleep before he had time to finish it. The early morning departure that had taxed him somehow refreshed Madeleine. Dying to be reunited with her husband and to pass on their information to him, she remained fully awake.

When she took a break from a novel, there was always something interesting to see out of the window. Some of the countryside that scudded past was inspiring to a Londoner trapped in an urban landscape all day. But it was not a continuous story of scenic delight. There was ugliness as well. As on a previous visit, she was revolted at the sight of the thick industrial haze over Birmingham and its environs yet she experienced a thrill of joy when the train stopped – more gently, for once – in the station. It was the city in which Colbeck had proposed to her and where, in its justly famed jewellery quarter, he’d bought her a beautiful engagement ring. She looked down at her left hand to admire it once more, nestling, as it now did, against the solid gold band of her wedding ring. Her father chose that moment to wake up.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘We’re in Birmingham,’ she replied.

‘Is that all? If I was on the footplate, we’d be pulling into Preston.’

‘Don’t be silly, Father!’

‘I know how to get the best out of an engine.’

When it resumed its journey, the train powered north with occasional stops of longer duration so that passengers could make use of station facilities and buy some refreshments. Because they always had travelling companions, it was impossible for them to discuss the reason that put such urgency into their desire to reach Glasgow. It did not stop Madeleine from thinking about the perceived threat to the lives of the royal family. She hoped that her father had misinterpreted the information about the burglary and that her husband, considering the evidence, would dismiss their fears as groundless. If that were the case, she’d be very relieved and heartened by the fact that she had at least got to see Colbeck and would be able to spend the night with him. Yet she had the unsettling sensation that there was no mistake. She and her father were in possession of evidence about a potential assassination of the Queen.

After changing trains at Carlisle, they found themselves alone in a compartment at last and were able to talk freely. Andrews, too, had been dwelling on the subject.

‘It’s happened before, you know.’

‘What has, Father?’

‘Attacks on the Queen,’ he told her. ‘The first one was soon after she was married. You were too young to remember it, Maddy. The Queen and Prince Albert were travelling in an open carriage when a young man rushed forward with two pistols. Luckily, he missed with both shots.’

‘I remember reading about that somewhere,’ she said.

‘He was sentenced to death and should have been hanged but he wasn’t.’