The Railway Viaduct

'Now, then,' said Praine, dipping Triggs in the water before pulling him out again, 'have I jogged your memory?'

'Yes!' cried Triggs, capitulating. The constable set him down again. 'It's under the tarpaulin. I was goin' to wear it on special days.'

'But it must have a hole in the back,' observed Colbeck.

'It's only a slit – and you can 'ardly notice the bloodstains.'

Samuel Triggs climbed aboard the barge and lifted the tarpaulin so that he could haul out the smart jacket. Like the black shoes, it looked incongruous against the rest of his apparel. Before he surrendered it, he put a hand to his heart.

'I swear to God there was nothin' in the pockets, Inspector.'

'Sam's right,' confirmed Micah. 'If there'd been a wallet or some papers, we'd have given them to the police. We're not criminals. If we had been, we'd have stripped all his clothes off and slung him back in the canal for someone else to find.'

Colbeck could see that they were telling the truth. He put out a hand. With great reluctance, Triggs passed the jacket to him. Colbeck turned it over and held it up. There was a neat slit where the knife had gone through the material and an ugly stain left by the blood. Its unexpected visit to the dark water of the canal made the jacket lose a little of its shape. Colbeck examined the front of it.

'This was not made by an English tailor,' he decided, studying the cut of the lapels. 'You'll not see this fashion in London.'

'Then where does it come from?' asked Leeming.

Colbeck checked the label inside the jacket then looked up.

'Paris,' he said. 'The murder victim was a Frenchman.'

CHAPTER FOUR

Superintendent Edward Tallis had dedicated himself to his work with a missionary zeal. Faced with what he saw as a rising tide of crime, he put in far more hours than anyone else in the Detective Department in the hope of stemming its menacing flow. With too few officers covering far too large an area, he knew that policing the capital city was a Herculean task but he was not daunted. He was determined that the forces of law and order would prevail. Tallis was not the only man to leave the army and join the Metropolitan Police, but the others had all retained their rank to give their names a ring of authority. The only rank that he used was the one confirmed upon him in his new profession. It filled him with pride. Being a detective superintendent was, for Tallis, like sitting at the right hand of the Almighty.

Accustomed to arrive first at Scotland Yard, he was surprised to find that one of his men was already there. Bent over his desk, Robert Colbeck was writing something in his educated hand. Spotting him through the half-open door, Tallis barged into the room.

'What the devil are you doing here, Inspector?' he said.

'Finishing my report on the Harrison-Clark trial, sir,' replied the other. He turned to face Tallis. 'If you recall, I had to postpone it.'

'You are supposed to be in Liverpool.'

'We came back to London last night.'

Tallis was astounded. 'Are you telling me that the murder was solved in the space of two days?'

'Alas, no,' said Colbeck, rising to his feet, 'but the investigation has reached the stage where our presence is no longer required in Liverpool. To be honest, I'm heartily relieved. It's an unlovely place and Victor Leeming was missing his wife badly.'

'Wives do not exist in the Detective Department,' said Tallis, acidly. 'Duty always comes before any trifling marital arrangements. Leeming knows that. He should have been ready to stay in Liverpool for a month, if called upon to do so.'

'That necessity did not arise, Superintendent.'

'I expected the pair of you to spend more than one night there.'

'So did I, sir,' said Colbeck, 'but events took an interesting turn. You'll find a full explanation in the report I left on your desk earlier on. I also took the liberty of opening a window in your office. When I got here, the stench of cigar smoke had still not dispersed from the room.'

'It's not a stench, man – it's a pleasing aroma.'

'Only to those who create it.'

Tallis glowered at him before stalking off to his office. Colbeck sat down again to finish the last paragraph then he put his pen aside. After blotting the wet ink, he picked up the pages and put them in the right order. When he took the report into the superintendent's office, Tallis was reading about the murder inquiry. Colbeck waited until his superior had finished. The older man nodded.

'Admirably thorough,' he conceded.

'Thank you, sir.'

'Though I'm not sure that it's altogether wise to accept the testimony of an artist at face value. In my experience, they're rather shifty fellows whose imagination tends to get the better of them.'

'I put my trust in Ambrose Hooper unreservedly. Those three witnesses on the barge confirmed everything that was in the painting.'

'Thieves and an artist.' Tallis sucked his teeth. 'Such men are hardly reliable.'

'It was only one member of the Triggs family who kept hold of property that did not belong to him, and he is not what anyone would describe as a thief. Samuel Triggs simply seized an opportunity.'

'That's what villains do,' said Tallis, crisply. 'This fellow stole a jacket and a pair of shoes, thereby impeding the investigation. I trust that you arrested him on the spot.'

'I left that to Constable Praine.'

'You mentioned him in your report.'

'A good policeman, sir – strong, quick-thinking and obedient. I told Inspector Heyford that I would be happy to see Praine in the ranks of the Metropolitan Police. It made the inspector look at the man through new eyes.'

What he did not tell the superintendent was that he had also been able to oil the wheels of Walter Praine's romance. Faced with the threat of losing him, Sidney Heyford had been at his most proprietary, offering all manner of blandishments for the constable to stay. At long last, Praine had been able to broach the sensitive subject of marriage to the inspector's daughter.

'I see that you resorted to the press again,' noted Tallis.

'Yes,' said Colbeck. 'I put the same advertisement in Liverpool and Manchester papers even though the victim is not a local man.'

'How do you know that?'

'Someone would have reported him missing by now, sir. There are not all that many young Frenchmen living in that part of the country, even fewer with this man's income and taste in clothes. We must remember that he was travelling in a first class carriage. Most people on that train settled for second or third.'

Tallis wrinkled his nose. 'I could never lower myself to either.'

'My hope is that our man was visiting someone in Liverpool without warning. Though he had no face, the description of him is very detailed. If he has friends there, he'll be recognised.'

'He could just have been on his way to the docks.'

'Why?'

'To sail home to France, of course.'

'From Liverpool?' said Colbeck. 'I doubt that, sir. He'd choose one of the Channel ports. No, he had another reason for visiting the place and we need to discover what it was.'

'Why didn't you stay there until someone came forward in answer to your request in the newspapers?'

'Because it might take days and I had no intention of sitting there and twiddling my thumbs. We did not exactly have the most cordial welcome from the local police. They felt – quite rightly – that we were treading on their toes.'

'Supposing that nobody responds to your plea?'

'Oh, I'm fairly certain that someone will, Superintendent.'

'What makes you so confident?'

'A reward was offered,' said Colbeck. 'The railway company is anxious for the crime to be solved as soon as possible. They want to assure their passengers that this is an isolated incident. That's only possible if we catch the killer.'