‘Why should he do that?’
‘He was trying to impress you.’
‘What do you think of him?’
‘I wouldn’t trust him an inch,’ said Conway.
‘He insisted that the killer still lived in the village.’
‘Did you believe him?’
In the light of what he’d just heard, Leeming’s view of the cobbler had altered considerably. He’d been inclined to dismiss the man as someone of no practical use to him. Looking back, he remembered Hockaday’s size and obvious strength. Behind the lazy grin and the confident manner, there could be a more calculating person than he’d realised. Though unaware of the full details of the earlier murder case, Leeming had a strange presentiment.
‘I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I do now. He spoke with such certainty that he seemed to have definite proof. There’s one sure way that he could have got that, Mr Conway.’
‘Is there?’
‘Yes,’ said Leeming, voicing a possibility. ‘Hockaday knows that the killer is still here because the man looks back at him in the shaving mirror every morning.’
Lydia Quayle read the newspaper report with a mixture of interest and repulsion. Though she wanted to throw it aside, something made her read on. There were some outline details about the nature of her father’s murder but no new information about the likely identity of his killer. When she saw that Scotland Yard detectives had been called in, she wondered how deeply they would rummage into the family life of the man she’d grown to despise so much. In the end, she tore herself away from the article, folding the newspaper up and dropping it into the wastepaper basket.
There was a light tap on the door, then it opened to admit a short, plump woman of middle years with an enquiring smile.
‘May I come in, please?’
‘Of course you may,’ said Lydia. ‘This is your house.’
‘The house may be mine but this room is exclusively your territory. I made that clear from the start. Everyone is entitled to have a place that is solely theirs.’
‘I agree with that, Beatrice, and I’m deeply grateful.’
Lydia indicated a chair and her friend sat down opposite her. Beatrice Myler had been her salvation. She was a kind, gentle, sympathetic woman who made no demands on her. They had met in Rome when both of them were on sightseeing tours. In the wake of the discovery of Lydia’s secret romance, she had been sent off to Europe with her former governess in the hope that the trip would expunge all her feelings for Gerard Burns. In fact, it did quite the opposite. She thought about him constantly and blamed herself for getting him summarily dismissed from a job that he enjoyed so much. Lydia kept wondering how he would cope and if he was still thinking fondly of her. It was only when she’d bumped into Beatrice Myler in the crypt of a little Italian church that she found herself able to forget about her past life for a while.
They were two intelligent women with shared interests in music and literature. Beatrice also had a passion for Italian culture and she fired the younger woman with her enthusiasm. Neither was travelling with ideal companions. Lydia was partnered by the elderly governess who was, in essence, her gaoler, paid to watch her carefully and keep her well away from England. Beatrice was there with her uncle, a retired archdeacon in his seventies with an arthritic hip. He and the governess were quite happy to sink down on any available seating and leave the others to their own devices.
‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you,’ said Lydia.
‘You’d have won through somehow. You have an instinct for survival.’
‘It was more like desperation to get away from my home. I was suffocated there, Beatrice. They wouldn’t allow me to breathe properly.’
‘You did the right thing in striking out on your own.’
‘I was in a complete daze at first,’ admitted Lydia, ‘and very frightened. I thought that Nottingham was a big town, but it’s so small compared to London. I’d just never seen so many people.’
‘You were very brave to come here, Lydia. This is no place for a young woman by herself.’
‘I soon learnt that.’
Within her first week there, she’d found herself a target for unwanted male interest and had had to move from one hotel to another in order to shake off admirers. Lydia had money enough to look after herself but no anchor to her life. After months of loneliness in the capital, she’d plucked up the courage to take up the invitation given to her by Beatrice Myler to call on her if she was ever in London. When she entered the cosy house in the suburbs, Lydia had found her new home.
‘I had a letter from my uncle this morning,’ said Beatrice.
‘How is he?’
‘Oh, you know what he’s like. Uncle Herbert had to have his customary moan about arthritis. I think he feels rather cheated. Because he spent all of his working life in holy orders, he believes that God should have given him a special dispensation.’
‘He’s a dear old soul. I enjoy his company.’
‘As it happened, his letter was all about you.’
Lydia gaped. ‘Was it, really?’
‘Uncle Herbert is very fond of you. He wants you to know that you’re in his prayers.’ Beatrice smiled. ‘You’re in mine, too, of course. I haven’t said anything before because I knew that if you wished to talk about it, you’d already have done so. But I’ve seen the immense strain you’ve been under since … you heard the news. And this morning’s letter has made me want to speak out. Do you mind?’
‘No,’ said Lydia, squeezing her hand. ‘You’re entitled to speak out.’
‘You may not like what I’m going to say.’
‘It will be worth hearing, Beatrice. You’re always so sensible.’
‘Then my advice is this,’ said the older woman. ‘Go back home, Lydia. This is a time of trial for the whole family. Go back home and build bridges.’
Having had a meal at a public house in Spondon on the previous evening, Colbeck decided that he didn’t want to repeat the experience. Besides, it was only fair that Leeming should have some consolations for being shunted off to the village. The sergeant had therefore been invited to join him at the Royal Hotel for dinner. As well as guaranteeing the high quality of the cuisine, it gave them a chance to discuss the case in comparative luxury. Colbeck had, as usual, been assiduous. After the meeting with Donald Haygarth and Maurice Cope, and the visit to Melbourne Hall, he’d returned to Derby with the intention of calling on some of the other board members of the Midland Railway. But he did not need to go looking for them because three of them came in search of him. When he interviewed them separately, each had told him more or less the same thing. Vivian Quayle had the vision to be chairman of the company. Haygarth did not. Obliquely, they all hinted that the latter was more than capable of engineering the death of a rival. They also named Maurice Cope as his fellow conspirator.
‘Has anyone got a good word to say about Mr Haygarth?’ asked Leeming.
‘Yes, Victor, I do. He chose this hotel for me.’
‘I wish he’d chosen it for me as well. The Malt Shovel has its charms but the floorboards creak and my bed is padded with anthracite. Anyway, do go on, sir.’
‘Well,’ said Colbeck, ‘After talking to Mr Quayle’s colleagues on the board, I made a point of finding the man who’d performed the post-mortem, then — just in case he was missing me — I called in at the police station to see Superintendent Wigg.’
‘He’s been sniping at us behind our backs, sir. Philip Conway told me.’
‘Don’t take it too seriously, Victor. I rather like that kind of thing. It spurs me on. I asked him what he knew about the Quayle family and, to my amazement, he’d been collecting what information he could about them. He was actually helpful.’ He picked up the menu and ran an eye over it. ‘What about your day?’
Leeming gave him an edited version of events in Spondon. He told Colbeck about the effort of pushing a heavy wheelbarrow up a hill and about his meetings with Jed Hockaday and Philip Conway. He’d also spoken to the stationmaster in Spondon and learnt how many people had got off the last train on the night of the murder. Curiously, the cobbler had been one of them. The rest of Leeming’s day had been spent fending off people with lurid imaginations and an eye on the reward money.