The Railway Viaduct

'Then we tackle the situation another way,' decided Colbeck. 'We have to catch the men who are behind all these incidents.'

'And how do we do that?'

'By having someone working alongside them. At the moment, we're trying to solve the problem from the outside. That's a handicap. What we need is someone inside the labour force who can sniff out these villains by rubbing shoulders with them.'

'Such a man would be courting grave danger,' said Brassey.

'Only if he were found out.'

'Navvies are very close-knit. They resent outsiders.'

'Not if the outsider can win their confidence.'

'Inspector Colbeck is right,' said Leeming, glibly. 'We've used this device before and it's always worked. If the right man is chosen, he could unmask the villains in no time.'

'I'm glad that you agree,' said Colbeck, putting a hand on his shoulder, 'because you are the person I had in mind.'

Leeming gasped. 'Me, sir?'

'Yes, Victor – you can start work this very morning.'

When light finally came, there was no shortage of volunteers to help in the work of clearing up the mess. The fires caused by the explosion had been swiftly put out but, ironically, another one now had to be lit to burn the remnants of the wagons. Two men had been badly hurt in the blast and half a dozen had sustained minor injuries. The dog was duly buried. When the work was finally done, the men stood in a circle around the railway lines that had been hideously distorted by the blast. Threats of violence were made against the culprits.

'They should be hung by their balls from the tallest tree,' snarled Pierce Shannon, 'then we could all throw rocks at the cruel bastards until they bleed to death.'

'I agree with the principle that they should suffer,' said Father Slattery, gently, 'though I'd express myself with more restraint.'

'That's because you're a priest. I can speak the truth.'

'You'll certainly speak something, Pierce, for I've never known a man with such a runaway mouth on him as you, but I'm not always sure that it's the honest truth that passes those lips of yours.'

'Whoever did this deserves to be crucified!'

Slattery bristled. 'And I'll not have you filching from the Holy Bible like that. Our Lord died upon a cross – he was martyred on our behalf. Never forget that. It would be sheer sacrilege to punish these evildoers in the same way.'

'What would you do to them, Father?'

'First of all, I'd ask them why they've been harrying us.'

'I can tell you that,' said Shannon, vengefully. 'They're swinish Frenchmen who can't bear the thought that we build better railways than they do. They want to drive us all away.'

'Well, I'm not going anywhere, Pierce.'

'Neither am I – whatever the dirty buggers do to us.'

Many of the navvies had been found accommodation in the surrounding farms and villages, but hundreds of them lived in the makeshift camp they had erected. Pierce Shannon was one of them, a short, compact, powerful Irishman in his thirties with a fondness for strong drink and a hard fight. Since there were so many people like Shannon on his books, Thomas Brassey had allowed a Roman Catholic priest to join them as a kind of missionary among the large Irish contingent, acting as a soothing presence and trying to turn their minds to higher things than merely satisfying their immediate needs.

Eamonn Slattery was a white-haired man in his sixties with a haggard face and an emaciated body. Respected and reviled alike, he loved the community in which he worked and did his best to master the names of as many men as he could. Instead of preaching at them from an imaginary pulpit, he came down to their level and talked in terms that they could understand. He disapproved of the fact that some of the navvies lived with common-law wives – sharing them openly with other men in some cases – but he did not respond with outright condemnation. Instead, he turned his persuasive tongue on the women, telling them how much deeper and more fulfilling their relationships would be if they were blessed by the Church. Since he had been in the camp, he had already performed two marriages.

'Why do you blame the French?' asked Slattery.

'Because they're behind all this trouble we've been having.'

'I see no evidence of it.'

'That's because you weren't here when we were working on the Rouen to Le Havre Railway,' said Shannon, pronouncing the names in a way that any Frenchman would find incomprehensible. 'Because the ballasting was done before the mortar was properly dry, the viaduct at Barentin fell down with a bang. Jesus! The way they turned against us, you'd have thought we'd raped every fucking nun in the country and set fire to that Notre Damn Cathedral.'

'Moderate your language, please,' rebuked the priest.

'They treated us like criminals, Father. It's as well I can't read French because the newspapers went for us with a cato'-bleeding-nine tails. Even when we rebuilt the viaduct,' continued Shannon, 'we got no credit for it. We were British scum, taking jobs off the French.'

'That's not the case here, though, is it? The majority of the work force is British but Mr Brassey has also engaged French navvies.'

'Yes, but he pays them only half what we get – quite right, too.'

'They do have cause for resentment, then.'

Shannon was aggressive. 'Whose bleeding side are you on?'

'If you could ask me more politely, I might tell you. As it is, I remain sceptical about your claim that Frenchmen were behind that explosion. I'll reserve my judgement, Pierce,' said the priest, meeting his glare, 'and I advise you to do the same.'

'My mind is already made up and the same goes for a lot of us. We're not going to sit back and let these bastards cause even more damage. When we come off shift this evening,' said Shannon, bunching both fists, 'we intend to settle a few scores with the French.'

'What are you going to do?'

'Well, we're not going to pray with them, I can tell you that.'

The visit to Mantes was a revelation. When he called at the house where Gaston Chabal had lodged, Robert Colbeck had to explain to the landlady why the engineer would not be returning. She was very upset to hear of the murder and had clearly been exceptionally fond of her lodger. Colbeck was allowed to inspect the man's room. The first things he found were some letters from Hannah Marklew, one of which set a date for their rendezvous in Liverpool. On his way to the assignation, her lover had been killed. It was clear from the missives that Hannah had never been involved in such a situation before. She was naive and indiscreet. She not only signed her Christian name, she gave her full address as well. Colbeck tore up the letters so that they would not fall into anyone else's hands.

Hers were not the only billets-doux he found in the room. A Frenchwoman, signing herself with the letter 'D', wrote with even greater passion from somewhere in Paris. She was more circumspect. No address was given in her letters, only the city from where the mail was dispatched. Colbeck checked the rest of the correspondence. Business letters showed that Chabal had built himself a reputation that brought in several offers of work. One person, from England, invited him to return there in order to give some more lectures on his work as a civil engineer. The fee was tempting.

Even when working on a railway, Chabal kept an extensive wardrobe and Colbeck found a jacket identical to the one that had taken an unfortunate dip in the Sankey Canal. There were many other clues to the character of the deceased and they helped to give the inspector a full portrait of him. When he went downstairs, he found the landlady in tears, stunned by the loss of her charming lodger and horrified at the manner of his death. Colbeck told her that, once Chabal's family and friends were informed of his demise, someone would soon come to claim his effects.