Now Ingeborg spoke. “Oh, I hope not. This is made for someone with a figure. Were the others like this, pleated silk?”
“I got the impression they were. One was pink, the other blue.”
“If they weren’t his, and they weren’t his wife’s, they belonged to his dead friends,” Halliwell said. “It was a secret club for cross-dressers.”
“Get away,” Ingeborg said. “These were old guys.”
“Does that make a difference?”
“It’s grotesque.”
All this speculation wasn’t leading anywhere. “It may not be a bad idea to check the names and find if they really lived in those places,” Diamond said. “Gloucester Castle for a start. That was Edmund Seaton’s humble pad.”
“Doesn’t exist,” Ingeborg said at once. “I know Gloucester and there was a castle at one time but it’s long since gone.”
“I wonder if Edmund Seaton ever existed.”
“Shall we see if he’s listed on the Internet? May I use your computer, guv?”
“Be my guest.” He got up.
She draped the dress over her chair-back and sat in front of Diamond’s computer. “What were Seaton’s dates?”
He had a note of them. “1949 to 2013.”
Before using his keyboard she made a point of flicking dust from it with a Kleenex and wiping the screen. Nothing was said.
“Well, it’s not obvious,” she said after working the keys for some seconds.
“Nothing doing?” Halliwell said.
“What’s the local paper in Gloucester?” Diamond asked Ingeborg.
“The Citizen.”
“Is it online?”
She checked. “Good call, guv.” But after a few minutes she said, “Nothing here about an Edmund Seaton.”
“A funeral in 2013?”
She shook her head. “I tried that first. We could be making a wrong assumption here. Gloucester Castle is no more but it could be the name of a pub and it wouldn’t have to be in Gloucester.”
“Or a boat,” Halliwell said. “It wouldn’t be a bad name for a boat.”
“Thanks for that,” she said with a twitch of the lips. “We’d never trace a boat.”
“The others had fancy addresses, too,” Diamond said. “Oxburgh Hall-does that exist?”
Ingeborg tried again, and this time she said, “Bingo-it’s a National Trust property in Norfolk.”
“Good. Our man was Roger Matthew Carnforth, died 2014. Do these places have a live-in curator?”
Ingeborg had already found the website. “What a stunning place.”
They looked over her shoulder at a slideshow of a large building with features of a castle-a moat and battlemented tower and arched entrance-and the solid structure of a large country house.
“Generations of a single family have lived there since it was built in the fifteenth century,” she read aloud from the screen.
“The Carnforths?” Diamond said.
“The Bedingfields.”
“I’m starting to feel spooked.”
Ingeborg wasn’t giving up. “Our man could have worked there as a guide. I could phone the place and see if they’ve heard of him.”
Diamond nodded. “Do it.”
“What shall I say it’s about?”
“Part of an ongoing inquiry.”
But no one at Oxburgh Hall had heard of Roger Matthew Carnforth. The National Trust employee was adamant that nobody of that name had been employed there in her time, which stretched back twenty-three years.
“Another dead end,” Halliwell said.
“What was the last man’s address?” Ingeborg asked.
“Forthampton Grange,” Diamond said with resignation. “Tell me it’s a brand name for chocolate biscuits and I’ll trouble you no more. I’ve had enough of this game.”
She Googled the name, sat back and gazed at the screen as if she’d lost control. “You’re not going to like this,” she said. “All I’m getting is websites connected to the Great Western Railway.”
“Which was wound up seventy years ago when the railways were nationalised,” Halliwell said.
But Diamond was galvanized. “Bring up one of the websites. What does it say?”
“Something about a Grange class and some numbers: 4-6-0.”
“We’ve cracked it, then.”
“Have we?”
“These aren’t the places where these guys lived. They’re steam trains.”
The other two eyed him as if he’d finally flipped.
“It’s all connected to Pellegrini’s obsession with the railway,” he went on. “Each locomotive was given a name and the names were grouped in classes. Gloucester Castle was one of the Castle class, Oxburgh Hall was one of the Halls and Forthampton was in the Grange class. We can check and I guarantee that’s what we’ll find.”
“How do you know?” Ingeborg asked.
“Must be my age. When I was a kid I was given an electric train set and the engine was called Albert Hall.” He smiled at a long-buried memory that surfaced. “I grew up thinking it was a person’s name. Albert Hall, right? It was only when Pink Floyd held a gig there and got banned for firing a cannon and nailing the bass drum to the floor that I found out it was a concert hall.”
“You liked Pink Floyd?” Ingeborg said, eyes wide.
“Still does,” Halliwell said. “Haven’t you seen the CDs in his car?”
“That’s immaterial,” Diamond said. “Check the trains and see if I’m right.”
Ingeborg managed to contain herself and obey orders. Presently she said, “Gloucester Castle, yes, a 4073 class locomotive built in May, 1949.”
“Good. Now Oxburgh Hall.”
She located it almost at once. “The 4900 or Hall class, built 1943.”
“And Forthampton Grange?”
She didn’t keep them in suspense for long. “Found it. The Grange engines were a smaller-wheeled version of the Hall class. This one dates from 1937.”
“The year Jeremy Marshall-Tomkin was born,” Diamond said. “Do you see? Each of them is linked to a locomotive built the year he was born. Seaton, 1949, Carnforth 1943 and Marshall-Tomkin 1937.” He snapped his fingers. “And I’ve just remembered. There was a bloody great GWR name-plate fixed to the workshop wall. County of Somerset. No need to look it up. It will date from Pellegrini’s year of birth.”
“Neat,” Halliwell said. “Very neat. But where does it lead us?”
Ingeborg said, “My guess is that we’re talking arrested development here, eternal schoolboys who like playing trains and belong to some sort of club. Sad but less harmful than holding up banks.”
“And each of them chose a train as some kind of identity tie-in,” Halliwell said. “You could be right, Inge.”
“She is,” Diamond said. “She must be.”
“So where do the urns come in?” Ingeborg said.
“If you were a railway fanatic, where would you want your ashes scattered?”
“Somewhere along the tracks.” Then her voice became as shrill as a steam whistle approaching a station. “I’m with you, guv. The railway companies wouldn’t allow that. Dangerous for one thing and not very good for their image either. So the club has to do it in secret. Each time one of them dies and is cremated, Pellegrini gets on his trike and pedals out to some quiet spot along the main line to empty the urn. That’s what he was doing on the night of the accident.”
“Right. And in case he was stopped he had his cover story ready.”
“He was studying the wildlife?”
“In the company of his late wife. Hence the urn in the saddlebag.”
“Which we know didn’t contain her ashes, because she wasn’t cremated, she was buried,” Ingeborg said, picking up the narrative as if she’d known it all along. “We’ve cracked it, guys. When the urn was found, it was empty. Pellegrini had done the job. He’d already taken the ashes to the top of the footbridge at the end of Hampton Row and tipped them over. If he hadn’t crashed, he would have brought the urn back to the workshop and given it a label and a bright new sticker and placed it on the shelf with the others.”
Diamond was nodding. He couldn’t fault the explanation. The purpose of the night ride was accounted for.