The Excursion Train

'I haven't accused him of anything, Mrs Hawkshaw.'

'You suspect him. Why else are you here?'

'I wanted to eliminate him from my inquiries,' said Colbeck, levelly, 'and I did so by discovering if he had any acquaintance with the New Testament. Patently, he does not. The reason I wanted to see you is to ask a favour.'

She was suspicious. 'What sort of favour?'

'When your husband was arrested, several people rallied around you and supported your campaign.'

'Nathan had lots of friends.'

'Did you keep a record of their names?'

'Why should I do that?'

'Because you knew how to organise things properly.'

'That was Gregory's doing, Inspector.'

'I fancy that you were intimately involved in every aspect of the campaign, Mrs Hawkshaw. You had the biggest stake in it, after all. He was your husband. That's why you fought tooth and nail to save him.'

'Yes,' she said, proudly, 'and I'd do the same again.'

'I respect that.'

'Yet you still think Nathan was guilty.'

'Oddly enough, I don't,' he told her. 'In fact, having learnt more details of the case, I'd question the safety of the conviction.'

'Do you?' Winifred Hawkshaw regarded him frank distrust. 'Or are you just saying that to trick me?'

'Trick you into what?'

'I'm not sure yet.'

'All I want to know is who helped you in your campaign and how you funded the whole thing? There's no trickery in that, is there?'

'I can't remember all the names,' she said. 'There were far too many of them. Most people paid a little towards our expenses.'

'And what about the rescue attempt at Maidstone prison?'

'I told you before – I know nothing of that.'

'But you must have approved of it.'

'If I thought I could have got my husband out,' she said, 'I'd have climbed over the wall of the prison myself.' She looked at him quizzically. 'Are you married, Inspector?'

'No, I'm not.'

'Then you'll never understand how I felt. Nathan was everything to me. He came along at a very bad time in my life when I had to fend alone for Emily and myself. Nathan saved us.'

'But he wasn't your first husband, was he?'

'No, he wasn't. Martin was killed in an accident years ago.'

'In a fire, I believe. What were the circumstances exactly?'

'Please!' she protested. 'It's painful enough to talk about one husband who was taken away from me before his time. Don't ask me about Martin as well. I've tried to bury those memories.'

'I'm sorry, Mrs Hawkshaw. It was wrong of me to bring it up.'

'Have you finished with me now?'

'One last question,' he said, choosing his words with care. 'Your second husband had good reason to loathe Joseph Dykes. What impelled him to go after the man was the assault on your daughter, Emily. Can you recall what she told you about that incident?'

'Why you should want to know that?'

'It could be important. What precisely did she say to you?'

'Nothing at all at the time,' answered Winifred, 'because I wasn't here. I was visiting my mother. It was Nathan who had to console her. As soon as he'd done that, he left Adam in charge of the shop and charged off to find Joe Dykes.'

'With a meat cleaver in his hand.'

'You sound just like that barrister at the trial.'

'I don't mean to, Mrs Hawkshaw,' he apologised. 'Your daughter had just been through a frightening experience. She must have told your husband enough about it to make him seek retribution. Though I daresay that she reserved the full details for you.'

'No,' she confessed. 'That's the strange thing. She didn't.'

'But you're her mother. Surely, she confided in you?'

'If only she had, Inspector. I tried to get the story out of her but Emily refused to talk about it. She said that she wanted to forget it but there's no way that she could do that. In fact,' she went on as if realising something for the first time, 'that's when it really started.'

'What did?'

'This odd behaviour of hers. Emily pulled away from me. We just couldn't talk to each other properly again. I don't know what Joe Dykes did to her in that lane but I was his victim as well. He took my daughter away from me.'

Victor Leeming was in luck. When he got to the venerable city of Canterbury, he discovered that Patrick Perivale was at his chambers, interviewing a client. The detective did not mind waiting in the gracious Georgian house that served as a base for the barrister. After a ride through the countryside with Constable George Butterkiss at his most aggravating, Leeming felt that he was due some good fortune. Taking out the piece of paper that Colbeck had given him, he memorised the questions by repeating them over and over again in his head. Eventually, he was shown into a large, well-proportioned, high-ceilinged room with serried ranks of legal tomes along one wall.

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.'