The Railway Viaduct

'I think so.'

'Do you know who Arnaud Poulain is, Inspector?' she asked.

'No, Madame.'

'He is a banker here in Paris, a wealthy and successful man. Gaston convinced him to invest in the railway between Mantes and Caen. My son-in-law was not simply an engineer,' she went on. 'If he could persuade anyone to put money into the project, he earned a large commission. Arnaud Poulain was one of the men he talked into it. As a consequence, others followed Monsieur Poulain's example.'

'Why are you telling me this?' wondered Colbeck, guessing the answer even as he spoke. 'Monsieur Poulain has a daughter.'

'A very beautiful daughter.'

'What's her name?'

'Danielle.'

Colbeck thought of the 'D' at the end of the letters. It seemed as if Chabal had used his guile to ensnare another woman in order to secure some investment for the railway on which he was engaged.

'We may be wrong,' cautioned Madame Rivet. 'I have no proof that Danielle wrote these letters and I will certainly not confront her with them. The girl will have suffered enough as it is. I doubt very much if Gaston mentioned to her that he was married. In a liaison of that kind, a wife must always be invisible.'

'The young lady must have read about his death.'

'The discovery that he was married would have come as a terrible shock to Danielle and, I suspect, to her father. Monsieur Poulain would no doubt have welcomed Gaston into his home. The daughter was used callously as a means of reaching the father. Now, Inspector,' she continued, 'even if Danielle is not the woman who wrote this letter, the fact remains that somebody did and that does not show my son-in-law in a very flattering light.'

'I should have destroyed those letters when I had the chance.'

'You had no right to do so.'

'It would have saved you unnecessary pain.'

'The letters confirmed what I already knew,' she said, tearing the paper into tiny pieces before tossing them into a wastepaper basket. 'So, please, do not hold anything back. What were the exact circumstances of the murder?'

'M. Chabal was on his way to visit a woman in Liverpool,' he said. 'I'm not at liberty to give you her name, but I can tell you that someone close to her was persuaded to invest money in the railway.'

'At least we know what they talked about in bed.' She raised both hands in apology, 'I am sorry, Inspector. That was a very crude remark and I withdraw it. I have been under a lot of strain recently, as you can understand. But,' she added, sitting up and folding her hands in her lap, 'I would still like to hear more about what actually happened that day.'

'Then you shall, Madame Rivet.'

Colbeck was succinct. He gave her a straightforward account of the murder and told her about the clues that had led him to come to France in the first place. What he concealed from her was the series of incidents that had occurred on the new railway that was being built. Hortense Rivet listened with an amalgam of sadness and fortitude.

'Thank you,' she said when he had finished.

'That is all I can tell you.'

'It was more than I expected to hear.'

'Then my visit was not wasted.'

'Catherine is heartbroken now but she will recover in time. She will always nurture fond thoughts of Gaston and I will say nothing to her of the other life that he led. It is over now. He died before his wife could learn the ugly truth about him.' She let out a long sigh. 'Who knows? Perhaps it is better that way.'

Colbeck got up. 'I ought to be going.'

'It was good of you to come, Inspector.'

'Your request could not be ignored, Madame.'

'You will understand now why I wrote to you.'

'I do indeed.'

'Have you learned anything from this conversation?'

'Oh, yes. I feel as if I know your son-in-law a little better now.'

'Does that help?'

'In some ways.'

'Then there is one last thing you should know about him,' she said, rising from her chair. 'The last time I saw Gaston was in this very room. He had come home for the weekend. He did something that he had never done before.'

'And what was that?'

'My son-in-law was a very confident man, Inspector. He had the kind of natural charm and assurance that always appeal to women.' She gave a faint smile. 'You have the same qualities yourself but I do not think you exploit them as he did. But that's beside the point,' she continued, hurriedly. 'When he got back that day, Gaston was upset. He managed to hide it from Catherine but he did not deceive me.' She pointed to the window. 'It was the way that he stood over there and kept looking into the street.'

'What did you deduce from that, Madame?'

'He was frightened,' she said. 'Someone had followed him.'

Luke Rogan felt sick. He had endured a rough crossing from England and was now being jiggled about by the movement of the train. Any moment, he feared, he would be spilling the contents of his stomach over the floor of the carriage. He tried to concentrate on what lay ahead. When he had visited France before, he felt that he had left everything in order. A deal had been struck and money had changed hands. He had no reason to suppose that he had been double-crossed. The discussion with Sir Marcus Hetherington, however, had robbed him of his certainty. He was no longer quite so confident that his instructions had been carried out.

If the men had betrayed Rogan, it would cost him a lot of money and he would forfeit Sir Marcus' trust in him. He did not wish to upset his most generous client especially as there was a prospect of further work from that source. Everything had gone smoothly for him in England. Rogan had to ensure the same kind of success in France. Failure was not acceptable. If the people he employed had let him down, he would have to find others to do the work in their stead and pay them out of his own pocket. The very notion was galling.

He had come prepared. Excuses would not be tolerated. Had the men in his pay not taken any action as yet, Rogan would not give them a second chance. In his bag, he carried a pistol and a dagger that had already claimed one victim. Punishment would be meted out swiftly. He had not made such a gruelling journey to be fobbed off.

Thomas Brassey was pleased to see Colbeck return to the site. Inviting him into his office, he poured both of them a glass of wine.

'One of the advantages of working in France,' he said, sampling the drink. 'England has much to recommend it, but the one thing that it does not have is a supply of excellent vineyards.'

Colbeck tasted his wine. 'Very agreeable.'

'Did you enjoy your visit to Paris?'

'One would have to be blind not to do that, Mr Brassey. It's a positive feast for the eye – though some areas of the city do tend to assault the nasal passages with undue violence.'

'We have that problem in London.'

'I'm all too aware of it,' said Colbeck. 'Madame Rivet wanted to know how the investigation was progressing. She seemed to have much more faith in us than in the French police. I suppose that I should blame you for that, Mr Brassey.'

'Me?'

'Yes, sir. You set a bad example.'

'Did I, Inspector?'

'Because a British contractor builds railways for the French, they will soon expect British detectives to solve their murders for them as well. But I'm being facetious,' he said. 'The visit to Paris was very profitable. It allowed me to see that glorious architecture again and I learned a great deal about Gaston Chabal's domestic life.'

'Did you meet his widow?'

'No, only his mother-in-law. What she told me was that he had a role beyond his duties as an engineer. Apparently, he helped to find investors for this project.'

'Gaston had great powers of persuasion.'

'For which he was rewarded, I gather.'

'A labourer is worthy of his hire, Inspector.'

'He was rather more than a labourer.'

'Nobody could dispute that.'

Colbeck went on to describe, in broad outline, his conversation with Hortense Rivet, exercising great discretion as he did so. There was no need for Brassey to know that some of the shares in his railway had been bought as a result of a relationship between his French engineer and the daughter of a Parisian banker.