‘What am I to tell Father?’ she asked.
‘Tell him that you were abducted by a handsome stranger.’
‘He’ll worry about me, Robert.’
‘You’ll be safely back home long before he finishes work,’ said Colbeck. ‘I’m only taking you as far as Peterborough. You can catch the next train back to London from there.’ He indicated the book she’d brought. ‘You can finish Cranford on the return journey.’
‘Father will hate the fact that I travelled on the Great Northern Railway. You know how much he complained when you took me on the GWR. He called that an act of treason. According to him,’ she said, ‘the only company who should be allowed to take passengers is the London and North Western.’
‘I admire his loyalty to the LNWR,’ said Colbeck with a grin, ‘but it’s not as faultless as he thinks. Captain Huish, the general manager, has stooped to all kinds of machinations to keep rivals at bay. Take this very line, for instance. Huish had wanted to preserve the LNWR’s monopoly between London and Edinburgh. He did all he could to starve this eastern route of traffic. Every company touched by the Great Northern was coerced into the so-called Euston Confederacy whose sole aim was to undermine the GNR. I’m pleased to say that his skulduggery failed,’ he went on. ‘Four years ago, Huish got a royal slap in the face when Her Majesty abandoned his company’s route to Scotland and went to Balmoral by means of the GNR instead.’
‘I wouldn’t dare say that to Father. He idolises Captain Huish.’
‘Then he’s worshipping a false god, Madeleine.’ He squeezed her arm and pulled her closer. ‘But why are we talking about railways when we have so many other things to discuss?’
‘You haven’t even mentioned the investigation yet.’
‘I was enjoying this short-lived break from it.’
‘How much longer will you be away, Robert?’
‘Ideally, the murder will be solved by Monday.’
‘That’s wonderful!’ she cried, nestling closer. ‘Are you so near to making an arrest?’
‘The truth is that I don’t know, Madeleine. Ideally, everything will become clear in the next two days. If it doesn’t, Superintendent Tallis will resume control and that will slow the whole process down.’ He pulled a face. ‘I want to avoid that at all costs.’
‘Is he really the ogre that Sergeant Leeming says he is?’
‘No, he’s a dedicated man with a firm belief in the importance of law and order. Everything else in his life is subordinate to his work.’
‘Is that why he disapproves of marriage?’
‘I’d rather not go into that now, Madeleine.’
‘You haven’t told him, have you?’
He took a deep breath. ‘No, I haven’t.’
‘It’s not like you to be afraid, Robert.’
‘It’s a question of being diplomatic. At the moment, he’s so caught up in the horrors of this case that he can think about nothing else. I have to take matters slowly.’
She searched his eyes. ‘Is that the real explanation?’
‘What other explanation is there?’
‘Some people might say that you’re too ashamed of me to tell the superintendent that we’re engaged to be married.’
‘That’s absurd!’ he said, enfolding her in his arms. ‘And you must never think that, Madeleine. I love you and I’m proud of you. When you accepted my proposal, I couldn’t wait to put details of the engagement in the newspapers. Had it been left to me, it would have been in headlines on the front pages.’ She laughed with gratitude. ‘How could I be ashamed of you when you’re the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me?’
‘Is that what you’re going to tell the superintendent?’
‘Well…maybe not in exactly the same words.’
‘Why didn’t you mention it to him this morning?’
‘It would have been the worst possible time.’
‘You mean that he’s too distracted?’
‘No, Madeleine,’ he said, ‘that’s only part of the reason. The one marriage that Mr Tallis admired was that between the colonel and his wife. When he was with them, he really understood the true value of holy matrimony. Without warning, he’s confronted with the fact that their marriage might not have been as happy as he’d assumed. One of them is murdered and the other commits suicide. All sorts of secrets are being unearthed and that’s shaken him.’
‘I can see why you’d rather wait now, Robert.’
‘When this business is over, I’ll tell him immediately.’
‘Thank you. I’ll say no more on the subject.’ He kissed her then pulled her close. It was minutes before she spoke again. ‘You said that secrets are being unearthed.’
‘That’s right, Madeleine.’
‘What sort of secrets?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘one of them concerns Doncaster.’
‘What happened there?’
‘That’s the trouble – we don’t know. I’m hoping that Victor will be able to find out. I told him to go there today.’
He was wrong. Because it was a flourishing railway town, Leeming had assumed that it would be covered in industrial grime and that, in fact, was the aspect that first presented itself to him. Alighting at the station, he found it swarming with passengers, waiting to go on the main line north or south or on the branch line to Sheffield. A goods train carrying coal went past on the through line. Other wagons were being loaded with coal in a siding. A strong breeze whipped up the coal dust and sent it flying through the air in clouds, mingling with the dense smoke from departing locomotives. The din was continual, its volume increased by the turmoil from the railway works nearby.
Yet when he went into the town itself, Leeming realised that it was a charming place with a pleasant situation on the River Don. Many of the vestiges of its time as a coaching town still remained. Its long, wide high street was an impressive thoroughfare, lined with houses, shops, inns, eating houses, banks and business premises. As he explored the town, Leeming found much to admire. Doncaster had a mansion house, a town hall, fine churches, a theatre, schools, a hospital, almshouses and other institutions for promoting the welfare of its inhabitants. New terraced housing had been built by the railway company for its employees but the serried ranks didn’t detract from the weathered graciousness of the older buildings.
Leeming’s problem was that he didn’t know where to begin. In a town with a population of several thousand, he could hardly knock on every door in search of anyone who’d known Colonel Tarleton. By the time he’d finished his initial stroll around the town, he could think of several reasons why the colonel had visited it. Many of the larger residences might have been the home of friends from the same social class. Leeming sought out one of the town constables for advice.
Claude Forrester knew exactly who the colonel was.
‘It was him what was took mad,’ he said, darkly. ‘Him what threw himself in front of that train. It were in the newspaper.’
‘That’s right,’ said Leeming. ‘Are you aware that he used to come to Doncaster quite often at one time?’
‘Lots of people do that, Sergeant.’
‘But they’re not all as distinctive as the colonel.’
‘He’d be lost in the crowd. Know your trouble? You’re searching for a grain of sand on Blackpool beach.’
Forrester was a lugubrious individual in his forties whose days in uniform had convinced him of the existence of criminal tendencies in most human beings. As they talked, his eyes flicked suspiciously at every passer-by.
‘There’s two reasons why the colonel came,’ he said.
‘He could have had friends here.’
‘That’s a third reason but I think there’s two main ones.’
‘What are they?’ asked Leeming.
‘I can see you’ve never been to Doncaster before,’ said Forrester, mentally frisking an old woman who waddled past. ‘We have one of the finest racecourses in the country on Town Moor. Come here in September when the St Leger is run and you’ll find the world and his wife in this part of Yorkshire. I know,’ he added, ‘because I’m always on duty there. Last year, almost a quarter of a million people came to Doncaster during the week of the St Leger.’