The Excursion Train

'And did he?'

'No, Emily ran away before he came back. She sneaked out when we weren't looking. We were searching for her when we heard this noise from the churchyard. We got there in time to see it all.'

Newman started walking. 'Tell Win I'll be there directly.'

'Thanks,' said Hawkshaw, falling in beside him.

'Did Emily really mean to go through with it?'

'She didn't say. When she was brought down from the tower, she was in a dead faint. She came out of it later but she refused to tell us anything. Emily just lay on the bed and cried.'

'The doctor was right to give her a sedative.'

'I'm worried, Gregory,' said Hawkshaw, showing a rare touch of sympathy for his stepsister.

'So am I.'

'What if Emily tries to do that again?'

The suicide attempt was also being discussed over a drink at the Saracen's Head. Victor Leeming was astonished by what he heard.

'Why did she do it, Inspector?' he asked.

'I'm hoping that that will emerge in time.'

'A young girl, throwing her life away like that – it's unthinkable.'

'Emily had come to the end of her tether.'

'She must have been in despair even to consider suicide. I mean, it's the last resort. You're only driven to that when there seems to be absolutely no future for you.' He gave a shrug. 'Was she so attached to her stepfather that she couldn't live without him?'

'I don't know,' said Colbeck. 'What is clear, however, is that Emily Hawkshaw is consumed with guilt over something. She's nursing a secret that she's not even able to divulge to her mother.'

'Is there any chance she'll confide in you, sir?'

'I doubt it.'

'But you saved her life.'

'She may resent me for that. I brought her back to the very things she was running away from. We'll have to wait and see, Victor. However,' he went on, as Leeming drank some beer, 'tell me what you discovered. Did you find Constable Butterkiss at all helpful?'

'Very helpful.'

Putting his glass aside and referring to his notebook, Leeming described the people on the petition whom he considered to be potential suspects. Of the ten names that he had written down, six had acquired a tick from the Sergeant. All of the men lived in or near Ashford and had a close connection with Nathan Hawkshaw.

'Did you ask him about Angel?' said Colbeck.

'I did, Inspector, and there certainly is such a man.'

'Would he have been at that fair in Lenham?'

'Definitely.'

Leeming passed on the details given to him by George Butterkiss and argued that Angel had to be looked at as a potential suspect for the murder of Joseph Dykes. The man whose name had first been voiced by Gregory Newman had a long record of criminality. He had been in the right place at the right time to attack Dykes.

'But we come back to the old problem,' said Leeming. 'How could Angel have persuaded Dykes to go to such a quiet part of the wood?'

'He couldn't, Victor – and neither could Nathan Hawkshaw.'

'So how did the victim get there?'

'I can think of only one possible way.'

'What's that, Inspector?'

'Dykes had been drinking heavily,' said Colbeck, 'and probably looked to spend most of the day at the Red Lion. What was the one thing that could get him out of that pub?'

'A knife in his ribs.'

'There was a much easier way. A woman could have done it. When you returned from the scene of the crime, you told me that it was a place where young couples might have gone. I think that someone may have deliberately aroused Dykes's lust.'

'From what I hear, that wouldn't have taken much doing.'

'Once she had lured him to the wood, the killer could strike.'

'Yes,' said Leeming, warming to the notion. 'The woman was there to distract the victim. If that's what happened, it's just like those two murders on the train.'

'It's uncannily like them,' agreed Colbeck, 'and it raises a possibility that has never even crossed our minds before. Supposing that all three murders were committed by the same man?'

'Angel?'

'Hardly.'

'Why not?'

'I can accept that he's a legitimate suspect for the murder of Dykes but he had no motive to kill the hangman or the prison chaplain. No, it must be someone else.'

'Well, it absolves Hawkshaw of the crime,' observed Leeming. 'If the same man is responsible for all three murders, Hawkshaw must have been innocent. He couldn't have killed two people after he was dead.'

'There's another fact we have to face,' said Colbeck, taking a sip of his drink as he meditated. 'This is pure speculation, of course, and we may well be wrong about this. But, assuming we're not, then the man who butchered Joseph Dykes in that wood allowed someone else to go to the gallows on his behalf.'

'Then why did he go on to commit those revenge murders?'

'Guilt, perhaps.'

'Remorse over the way that he let an innocent man be hanged?'

'Perhaps. He may be trying to make amends in some perverse way by killing the people whom he feels made Nathan Hawkshaw's last hour on earth more agonising than it need have been.'

'It doesn't add up, sir.'

'Not at the moment, Victor, but it opens up a whole new line of inquiry.' He glanced down at the petition. 'And it suggests that someone on this list needs to be caught very quickly indeed.'

'Yes, he could have killed three victims.'

'Four,' said Colbeck. 'You're forgetting Nathan Hawkshaw.'

'Of course. He had the most lingering death of all. He was made to take the blame for someone else's crime.'

'That's what it begins to look like.' He picked up the petition. 'We must make our first calls this evening. And if we have no success with this part of the list, we must work our way through the rest of it – and that includes the women.'

'Wait a moment, sir.'

'Yes?'

'Would someone who let Hawkshaw go on trial for a murder that he didn't commit then sign a petition for his release?'

'What better way to disguise his own guilt?'

'That's true. Who do we start with, sir?'

'Peter Stelling. He's an ironmonger. We can rely on him to have a ready supply of wire. We'll have to see if his stock contains anything resembling the murder weapon we found near Paddock Wood.'

'Does that mean we cross Angel off the list?'

'For the moment. From what you've told me about him, we'd have the devil's own job tracking him down.'

'We'd need Amos Lockyer to do that, Inspector.'

'Who?'

'He was a policeman here for years,' said Leeming, 'and he helped Constable Butterkiss a great deal. Lockyer was dismissed for being drunk on duty and carrying a loaded firearm. According to Constable Butterkiss, he was a real bloodhound. He was the only person who ever managed to find Angel and arrest him.'

'Where is this man now?'

'Working on a farm near Charing, apparently. At least, that's what Butterkiss told me. He reveres the man though he was amazed to see his name on that petition.'

'I don't recall an Amos Lockyer there,' said Colbeck, studying the document closely. 'Where is he?'

'Right there,' said Leeming, pointing to the illegible squiggle in the first column. 'I couldn't read it either but that's definitely him. Lockyer's father used to be a watchman in the town. That's what got him interested in being a policeman.'

'You never mentioned him earlier.'

'That was because I'd crossed him off my list.'

'Simply because he was once a local constable?'

'No, sir. I'd need a better reason than that. We both know that there are bad apples in police uniform as everywhere else. I only crossed off Amos Lockyer when Butterkiss told me a little more about him.'

'Go on.'

'To start with,' said Leeming, 'he's no spring chicken. And he has a bad leg. A poacher he tried to arrest shot him in the thigh. I can't see him leaping out of a moving train, can you?'

'Yet you say he had great skill in finding people?'

'That's right. Lockyer was famed for it.'

Colbeck thought hard about what Madeleine Andrews had learnt in Hoxton. Jacob Guttridge had been followed by an older man with an unusual rolling gait. It was too much of a coincidence.