‘I got nothing to say to you,’ she told him.
‘All I ask is a chance to speak to you briefly,’ he said, removing his top hat so that she could see him properly. ‘You’re not in any trouble, I assure you. I just need to ask a few questions.’
‘The other one did that. You’ll get no more from me.’
His voice hardened. ‘I’m making a polite request, Miss Murlow,’ he warned. ‘If you spurn it, I’ll have to get a warrant to enter your premises and, if you refuse to speak to me then, I’ll have no option but to place you under arrest.’
‘I done nothing!’ she clucked, indignantly.
‘Then you have nothing to fear.’
Josie’s eyes were fully open now and she was able to take a better look at the man on her doorstep. He was far more handsome than his predecessor from Scotland Yard and he had none of the other’s diffidence. What worried her was his rank. Josie had had enough brushes with the law to know that someone who had risen to the level of an inspector would not bother with trivial offences. He was there in connection with a serious crime.
‘Well,’ he called up to her, ‘are you going to let me in?’
The fact that he was willing to come into the house set him immediately apart from Leeming. She had unsettled the first detective. Josie could see that she would not have the same effect on the second one. After weighing up the possibilities, she capitulated.
‘Wait there,’ she said at length. ‘I need to dress.’
Colbeck stood patiently outside the door. When it eventually opened, Josie was wearing a voluminous gown of pink satin, badly faded and speckled with food and other stains. Her feet were bare, her face flushed and her red hair was an unkempt torrent surging over one shoulder and disappearing down her cleavage like water gurgling between two giant boulders.
He could see why Leeming had found her overwhelming. At a glance, he was also able to make certain assumptions about Dick Chiffney. Only a hefty man with boundless energy and strength of character could partner such a forbidding creature for any length of time. Lids narrowed, Josie regarded him suspiciously.
‘There’s nothing I can tell you,’ she said, stubbornly.
‘May we talk inside, please?’ asked Colbeck.
‘What are you after?’
‘I think you know that.’
‘Dick is not here.’
‘I’d still like to speak to you.’
After looking him up and down, she stood reluctantly aside and let him step into the house. The first thing he noticed was the stink, a compound of rancid food, household filth and the reek from the vast unwashed body of Josie Murlow. The room was small, cluttered and sparsely furnished. A tattered carpet lay over the flagstones. Colbeck had to duck under the cobweb-covered beam.
‘Well, now,’ she said, tossing her hair back over her shoulder to expose her new necklace, ‘you are a fine gentleman and no mistake. Josie Murlow doesn’t have many like you under her roof.’
‘When did you last see Mr Chiffney?’
‘I told the sergeant that – it was over a week ago.’
‘Did he give any indication where he was going?’
‘I’d have stopped the bastard if he had. Dick was my man.’
‘Had he ever gone off before?’ said Colbeck.
‘He wouldn’t have dared to,’ she said, huffily, ‘because he knew what would happen when I caught up with him.’
‘Yet he had the courage to go this time. Why did he do that?’
She became defensive. ‘Well, it wasn’t because of anything I did or said, Inspector,’ she insisted. ‘I gave him everything a man wants. We lived here as close together as any man and wife – a lot closer, judging by some of the miserable faces on the men I see in this part of the city,’ she went on, meaningfully. ‘Their wives keep a cold bed. My bed is as warm as toast.’
‘Did Mr Chiffney always work on the railway?’
‘When he could get a job,’ she replied. ‘Dick worked for a lot of different railway companies over the years. He’s good at what he does, Inspector, there’s no two ways about that. But he hates taking orders and always has a row with someone or other. Dick is a bit too ready to use his fists. Mind you,’ she stipulated, ‘he was always provoked.’
‘How long had he worked on the Brighton line?’ said Colbeck.
‘I think it was a year or more.’
‘If he had such a record of violence, why did they employ him?’
‘He knew someone who got him the job,’ she explained. ‘Dick liked the work so he was on his best behaviour. It was only when that foreman hit him that Dick lost his temper.’
‘Has he tried to work on the railways since then?’
‘Nobody would touch him now the word’s got round about him looking for a fight. Listen,’ she said, squaring up to him, ‘why are you and that Sergeant Leeming so interested in Dick Chiffney? What’s he supposed to have done?’
‘He may have done nothing at all,’ Colbeck assured her. ‘We just need to eliminate him from our enquiries. That’s why we’re so anxious to speak to him – as I’m sure you are.’
‘I’m very anxious, Inspector.’
She spoke with feeling but with none of the raging fury that Victor Leeming had reported. Colbeck wondered what had brought about the change in her manner. Josie Murlow had softened in a way that could not wholly be attributed to the effect of gin, the fumes of which he could still detect. He moved slightly so that he could look into the kitchen, noting the cheese left on the table along with two plates. Somebody else had been there recently.
‘May I ask you a favour?’ he said.
‘You can ask anything you like, Inspector,’ she replied, running both hands over the contours of her body, ‘and it won’t cost you a penny. I’d have charged the sergeant but he ran away. I’ve got a flagon of gin upstairs if that takes your fancy.’
‘As it happens,’ said Colbeck, meeting her bold gaze, ‘I never touch it. You’re obviously a woman of experience in these matters so I don’t need to remind you of the penalty of offering blandishments to a member of the Metropolitan Police.’
She was defiant. ‘They don’t all refuse, I can tell you!’
‘The favour I wish to ask is this. If and when Mr Chiffney does return, please advise him that it’s in his best interests to get in touch with me at Scotland Yard. That way, his name can be cleared.’
‘You still haven’t told me what you think he’s done.’
‘It’s a railway matter.’
‘Has Dick been punching another foreman, then?
‘No,’ answered Colbeck, ‘it’s a little more serious than that.’
Dick Chiffney loaded the pistol again and took careful aim at the empty bottle standing on the tree stump. When he pulled the trigger, there was a loud report then the glass exploded into a thousand shards. Birds took wildly to the sky in an unrehearsed symphony of protest. Chiffney grinned at his success and set another bottle on the stump.
He was deep in the woods, far away from the nearest human habitation and therefore free from the possibility of any interruption. This time, he stood a few yards farther away from his target. Apart from his companion, his only witnesses were the birds. When he had loaded the weapon again, he took aim, peered along the barrel then fired. The bullet struck its target a glancing blow, detaching a small piece of glass and causing the bottle to spin crazily round before falling on to the ground. Chiffney was annoyed at his failure.
The man who had been watching him handed over a rifle.
‘Try with this next time,’ he ordered. ‘You may not get close enough to use the pistol.’
Robert Colbeck arrived back at his office to find Victor Leeming waiting there for him. The sergeant described his second interview with Matthew Shanklin and added what he felt was a telling detail.