The Excursion Train

'Yes, Inspector.'

'Good. You can talk to those three ladies tomorrow.'

'What about me?' said Butterkiss.

'I have two important tasks for you, Constable.'

'Just tell me what they are.'

'I want you to find Amos Lockyer for me.'

'I'll do it somehow,' vowed Butterkiss. 'What's the other task?'

Colbeck reached for his frock coat. 'I wonder if you could look at this sleeve for me?' he said. 'Tell me if it's beyond repair.'

Winifred Hawkshaw was on tenterhooks. Whenever she heard a sound from the adjoining bedroom, she feared that her daughter had woken up and was either trying to open the door or to escape through the window. After a sleepless night, she used her key to let herself into Emily's room and found her fast asleep. Putting a chair beside the bed, Winifred sat down and kept vigil. It was an hour before the girl's eyelids fluttered. Her mother took hold of her hand.

'Good morning,' she said, sweetly.

Emily was confused. 'Where am I?'

'In your own bed, dear.'

'Is that you, Mother?'

'Yes.' Winifred rubbed her hand. 'It's me, Emily.'

'I feel strange. What happened?'

'The doctor gave you something to make you sleep.'

'The doctor?' The news brought Emily fully awake. 'You let a doctor touch me?'

'You'd passed out, Emily. When the Inspector brought you down from that tower, you were in a dead faint.'

The girl needed a moment to assimilate the information. When she remembered what she had tried to do, she brought a hand up to her mouth. Her eyes darted nervously around the room. She felt trapped.

'We need to talk,' said Winifred, softly.

'I've nothing to say.'

'Emily!'

'I haven't, Mother. I meant to jump off that tower.'

'No, I can't believe that,' insisted her mother. 'Is your life so bad that you could even think of such a thing? It's sinful, Emily. It's so cruel and selfish and you're neither of those things. Don't hurt us any more.'

'I wasn't doing it to hurt you.'

'Then what made you go up there in the first place?'

'I was afraid.'

'Of what?'

'Everything.'

Emily began to sob quietly and her mother bent over to hug her. The embrace lasted a long time and it seemed to help the girl because it stemmed her tears. She became so quiet that Winifred wondered if she had fallen asleep again. When she drew back, however, she saw that Emily's eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling.

'Promise me that you won't do anything like this again,' said Winifred, solemnly. 'Give me your sacred word of honour.' A bleak silence ensued. 'Did you hear what I said, Emily?'

'Yes.'

'Then give me that promise.'

'I promise,' murmured the girl.

'Say it as if you mean it,' scolded Winifred. 'As it is, the whole town will know what happened yesterday and I'll have to face the shame of that. Don't make it any worse for me, emily. We love you. Doesn't that mean anything to you?'

'Yes.'

'Then behave as if it does.'

'I will.'

Emily sat up in bed and reached out for her mother. Both of them were crying now, locked together, sharing their pain, trying to find a bond that had somehow been lost. At length, it was the daughter who pulled away. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and made an effort to control herself.

'You need more time,' said Winifred, watching her closely.

'You need more time to think about what you did and why you did it.'

'I do.'

'But I'll want the truth, Emily.'

'Yes, Mother.'

'I have a right to know. When something as wicked and terrible as this happens, I have a right to know why. And I'm not the only one, emily,' she warned. 'The vicar will want to speak to you as well.'

'The vicar?'

'Taking your own life is an offence against God – and you made it worse by trying to do it from a church tower. The vicar says that it would have been an act of blasphemy. Is that what you meant to do?'

'No, no,' cried Emily.

'Suicide is evil.'

'I know.'

'We couldn't have buried you on consecrated ground.'

'I didn't think about that.'

'Well, you should have,' said Winifred, bitterly. 'I don't want two members of the family denied a Christian burial in the churchyard at St Mary's. You could have ended up like your father, emily. That would have broken my heart.'

Emily began to tremble violently and her mother feared that she was about to have another fit but the girl soon recovered. The experience she had been through was too frightful for her to contemplate yet. Her mind turned to more mundane concerns.

'I'm hungry,' she announced.

'Are you?' said her mother, laughing in relief at this sign of normality. 'I'll make you some breakfast at once. You need to be up and dressed before he calls.'

'Who?'

'Inspector Colbeck. He was the person who saved your life.'

A long sleep had revived Robert Colbeck and got him up early to face the new day. The stinging sensation in his wound had been replaced by a distant ache though his left arm was still rather stiff when he moved it. Before breakfast, he was outside the Saracen's Head, standing in the position that he had occupied the previous evening and trying to work out where the bullet might have gone. Deciding that it must have ricocheted off the wall, he searched the pavement and the road over a wide area. He eventually found it against the kerb on the opposite side of the high street. Colbeck showed the bullet to Victor Leeming when the latter joined him for breakfast.

'It's from a revolver,' said the Inspector.

'How can you tell, sir? The end is bent out of shape.'

'That happened on impact with the wall. I'm going by the size of the bullet. My guess is that it came from a revolver designed by Robert Adams. I saw the weapon on display at the Great Exhibition last year.'

'Oh, yes,' said Leeming, enviously. 'Because we saved Crystal Palace from being destroyed, you were given two tickets by Prince Albert for the opening ceremony. You took Miss Andrews to the Exhibition.'

'I did, Victor, though it wasn't to see revolvers. Madeleine was much more interested in the locomotives on show, especially the Lord of the Isles. No,' he went on, 'it was on a second visit that I took the trouble to study the firearms because they were the weapons that we would be up against one day – and that day came sooner than I expected.'

'Who is this Robert Adams?'

'The only serious British rival to Samuel Colt. He did not want the American to steal all the glory so he developed his solid-frame revolver in which the butt frame and barrel were forged as a single piece of metal.'

'And this was what they fired?' said Leeming, handing the bullet back to him. 'You thought that it came from a pistol.'

'A single-cocking pistol, Victor. Adams used a different firing mechanism from the Colt. I'm sufficiently patriotic to be grateful that it was a British weapon,' said Colbeck, pocketing the bullet. 'I'd hate to have been shot dead by an American revolver last night.'

'Who would own such a thing in Ashford?'

'A good point.'

'You were right to stay on the ground when you were hit, sir. If it was a revolver, it could have been fired again and again.'

'Adams designed it so that it would fire rapidly. What probably saved me was that the self-cocking lock needed a heavy pull on the trigger and that tends to upset your aim.'

'Unless you get close enough to the target.'

'We'll have to make sure that he doesn't do that, Victor.'

Having finished his breakfast, Colbeck sat back and wiped his lips with his napkin. Leeming ate the last of his meal then sipped his tea. He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket.

'You want me to talk to these three women, then?'

'Ask them why they signed that petition.'

'One of them lives in a farm near Wye.'

'Then I suggest that you don't go there by cart. Take a train from Ashford station. Wye is only one short stop down the line.'

'What will you be doing, sir?'