11 - Ticket to Oblivion (3 page)

The inspector watched the fields of crops and green pastures scudding past.

‘We’d never have been able to get there so quickly by stagecoach,’ he said, turning to his friend. ‘Trains have revolutionised the way that we work.’

‘Not for the better,’ said Leeming, sourly. ‘All that trains have done is to give villains new ways to commit crimes. They’ve blown them up, robbed them, damaged them, assaulted women on them and done all manner of dreadful things. Stagecoaches were far safer and much more reliable.’ He folded his arms. ‘That’s my opinion, anyway.’

‘I respect it, Victor.’

Leeming bristled. ‘Are you mocking me, sir?’

‘I’d never do that.’

Colbeck was sincere. He was too fond of his sergeant to deliberately upset him by poking fun at him. The two
detectives were seated alone in a compartment of a jolting train taking them to Worcester. Having set out from London, their first port of call had been Oxford where they’d interviewed both the stationmaster and the porter who’d stood beside Cassandra Vaughan and her daughter awaiting what turned out to be phantom passengers. Neither man could offer any convincing explanation of how the two ladies had disappeared in transit. Unlike the train from London, the one on the OWWR was slow, jerky and inclined to stop at almost every station it came to. As they began to lose speed yet again, Leeming stared hopefully through the window.

‘Have we got there at last?’ he asked.

‘No,’ replied Colbeck, consulting the open copy of
Bradshaw
in his lap. ‘This will be Moreton-in-Marsh. The station was opened in 1853.’

‘I can live quite happily without that information, sir.’

‘Knowledge is power, Victor.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ grumbled Leeming.

‘Travel is an education in itself.’

‘That’s the main reason I prefer to stay in London.’

‘Doesn’t this investigation appeal to you in any way?’

‘Not when it involves spending hours on the railway.’

‘A real challenge confronts us,’ said Colbeck, enthusiastically, ‘and it’s one that’s brimming with interest. In the course of a non-stop train journey of just under sixty miles, two young women disappear as if in a puff of smoke. Surely that fact excites your curiosity?

Leeming grimaced. ‘To be honest, sir, it doesn’t.’

‘Why not, may I ask?’

‘It’s because we both know how this investigation will end.’

‘Do we?’ Colbeck was surprised. ‘Please enlighten me.’

‘Those women must have left the train while it was travelling at speed,’ said Leeming. ‘It’s only a matter of time before their dead bodies are found in the bushes somewhere along the line.’

‘Are you suggesting that they had a bizarre suicide pact?’

‘No, sir – I believe that they fell out by accident.’

‘In that case, the entire train must have been occupied by blind passengers. Evidently, they were also deaf. As the two women tumbled out of their carriage, nobody managed to see them or hear their terrified screams. And then there’s the guard,’ added Colbeck. ‘He’s paid to keep his eyes peeled for anything untoward.’ He pursed his lips. ‘I’m sorry, Victor. Your theory doesn’t hold water.’

Leeming was hurt. ‘What do
you
think happened?’

‘I prefer to keep an open mind. Strange things happen on the OWWR. It’s no wonder my father-in-law calls it the Old Worse and Worse. But then, of course, he’s biased. Until he retired, he drove locomotives for the LNWR and looks with disdain on rival companies. In his view,’ Colbeck went on, ‘the OWWR had a fatal defect.’

‘What was that, sir?’

‘In its early stages, Brunel was heavily involved.’

‘Mr Andrews has no time for Brunel, does he?’

‘Let’s just say that he’s yet to recognise Brunel’s undoubted genius. I suspect that you’d agree with him on that score, Victor.’

‘People who build railways have ruined this country,’ asserted Leeming.

‘I see them as far-sighted men who are pioneers of progress. The day will come when their achievement is fully
appreciated. Admittedly,’ said Colbeck, ‘the development of the railway system has attracted its fair share of rogues, men like George Hudson who sought to exploit it for his own ends and who was involved in all manner of financial malpractice. It remains to be seen if Sir Marcus Burnhope views railways as a priceless national asset or merely as a source of personal income.’

‘Why do you say that, sir?’

‘Read these telegraphs, Victor,’ said the other, extracting them from an inside pocket. Leeming took them and studied each one. ‘What do you notice about them?’

‘They tell us very little about his missing daughter,’ noted Leeming.

‘But they reveal something important about Sir Marcus himself.’

‘Do they?’

‘He’s very frugal with words until we reach his name. Then he feels obliged – in all three cases – to state that he’s on the board of directors of the OWWR.’ Colbeck gave a questioning smile. ‘What sort of man does that?’

Dominic Vaughan had been wrong about the Beckford sisters. Of the two, he’d found Cassandra infinitely more patient, intelligent yet submissive and therefore far more suitable as the wife of a husband drawn to the groves of academe. It was not that he thought Paulina unattractive. On the contrary, he willingly conceded that, in purely physical terms, she was unequalled but it was a glaring beauty that unnerved instead of enticed him. Paulina also had a patrician air that was much more at home in Burnhope Manor than in the cloistered world of the Oxford college where Vaughan had been a fellow at the time. While one sister would surely have rejected his proposal of marriage, the other had accepted it with muted pleasure and been – in the early years – exactly the sort of spouse he’d envisaged as his preferred partner in life.

Motherhood had wrought a profound change in both sisters. The arrival of Imogen, an only child, turned the serene Paulina into a nervous, ever-watchful chaperone,
determined to protect her daughter from what she perceived as the rampant wickedness of the outside world. Cassandra, too, had undergone a kind of metamorphosis. Having given birth to three children, she’d become more strident, more assertive and less ready to accept her husband’s decisions without first questioning them. Since he hated confrontation of any kind, Vaughan had given ground to her time and again. Even though he now enjoyed the elevated status of being Master of University – the oldest college endowment in Oxford – he lacked authority on the domestic front. Cassandra was always prone to challenge his judgement and advance her own plausible alternatives to his plans. Everyone at the college was aware of the marital imbalance in the Master’s Lodging. It had led to waspish comments from his detractors in the Senior Common Room.

‘Don’t just sit there, Dominic,’ she complained. ‘Do something.’

‘What am I supposed to do, my love?’

‘Anything is better than hiding away in your study.’

‘I need to check these accounts from the bursar.’

‘Heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘Must the safety of our niece take second place to the erratic mathematics of the bursar? Don’t you
care
about Imogen?’

‘I care a great deal, Cassandra,’ he said, rising from his desk, ‘and I’ve already been to the chapel to pray for her deliverance. But, in practical terms, all that was needful has already been done by your good self. You promptly set the wheels of the investigation in motion and I applaud you for that.’

‘Somebody had to do so,’ she snorted.

‘Are you insinuating that I would have failed to do likewise?’

‘Frankly, I am.’

‘That’s unjust of you.’

‘Is it? You couldn’t even be bothered to meet Imogen at the station.’

‘You and Emma formed a perfectly adequate welcoming party.’

‘Your presence would have given it more body and you’d have been able to remonstrate with the stationmaster and the driver of the locomotive. In your absence, I had to tackle them both.’

‘I don’t see that either of them could be blamed,’ he said, reasonably. ‘If you set on them, they have my sympathy. You can be unnecessarily sharp at times, my dear. I’ve mentioned it to you before.’

‘You’re doing it again!’ she protested. ‘You’re worrying about two mere railway employees instead of about your niece. What if she’s been killed or kidnapped? What if Imogen has been
ravished
? Supposing,’ she continued, voice soaring a whole octave, ‘that it had been Emma who boarded that train then disappeared? Wouldn’t
that
have engaged your attention?’

‘You know quite well that it would, Cassandra. You chastise me unfairly. I have the greatest concern for Imogen – and for her maid, of course. It’s a shared plight and we must remember that. But having no idea what happened to them, I’m determined not to fall prey to the wild imaginings that you have just listed. Let me finish,’ he went on quickly as she was about to speak. ‘All that we can realistically do is to watch, pray and rely on the goodness of our Creator. The situation may look baffling but there may well be a perfectly logical explanation.’

‘That is patently untrue.’

‘We must never surrender to despair.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Your words push me perilously close to it.’

‘That’s unkind and unwarranted, Cassandra.’

She had the grace to look shamefaced and even mouthed an apology. Anger then gave way to a moment of weakness and she allowed him to embrace her in his usual clumsy way. For all his faults – she’d enumerated them many times – she knew that she’d married a good, honest, conscientious Christian gentleman, wedded to scholarship and devoted to his family. When she pulled away and looked up at him, her ire had cooled.

‘What will Marcus do?’ she asked, softly.

‘I should imagine that he’ll take care to say nothing to alarm your sister when she is unwell. Secondly, he’ll curse the railway company and wish that he never got involved with the enterprise. The OWWR has presented him with an unbroken series of shocks and disappointments, the culmination of which is that it now appears to have mislaid his daughter.’

‘It’s done more than simply mislay her, Dominic. They should be prosecuted.’

‘We must first establish what offence – if any – they committed. But,’ he went on, ‘to return to your original question about what action he’ll take, Marcus will do what he always does in a crisis. He’ll find the ideal person to pour oil on what are extremely troubled waters.’

Unlike the cab driver who drove them to Burnhope Manor, Colbeck refused to be cowed by the presence of aristocracy.
It was an article of faith with him that a police investigation merited the utmost respect. When the driver unthinkingly took his passengers to the servants’ entrance, therefore, Colbeck insisted that they went instead to the front door. It gave the detectives an opportunity to appraise the house. Built towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, it had been designed by someone who was enthralled by the sumptuous Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. Indeed, the manor was conceived as a smaller version of it with the same bold lines as Hardwick and the same stunning expanse of glass. There were so many windows in the front elevation that the whole edifice seemed to glisten in the afternoon sunshine.

Victor Leeming looked up at it in dismay. After the ordeal of rail travel, he’d enjoyed the comparative luxury of a horse-drawn vehicle and it had helped him to relax. The sight of Burnhope Manor made every muscle tense instantly. Colbeck, on the other hand, was not intimidated. When they stood outside the front door, he pulled on the bell rope with conviction. The butler soon answered the summons, looking askance at Colbeck but reserving his most disapproving glance for Leeming. On learning who the visitors were, he conducted them along a corridor lined with gilt-framed portraits, then took them into the library. Left alone, they looked around the long, well-proportioned room with its leather-bound tomes stacked neatly on oak shelves covering three walls. A large globe stood in a corner.

Colbeck’s primary interest was in the books and he took a quick inventory of their titles. Leeming, however, was transfixed by the full-length portrait of Sir Marcus Burnhope that hung above the magnificent marble fireplace. One admonitory finger in the air, he looked as if he were
addressing a large audience and the fierce glint in his eye made Leeming flinch slightly. Sir Marcus exuded a sense of wealth, breeding and power. The real-life version was even more daunting.

‘Ah, there you are at last!’ he said, sweeping into the room like a gust of wind. ‘What on earth kept you?’

‘Part of the blame must lie with the railway company on whose board you happen to sit, Sir Marcus,’ said Colbeck, evenly. ‘The journey from Oxford to Worcester was punctuated by an inordinate number of stops.’

He introduced himself and the sergeant. Sir Marcus deigned to exchange a handshake with Colbeck. To his relief, Leeming escaped with a perfunctory nod from him. The detectives were offered seats but their host remained on his feet so that he could strut and dominate. He gave them all the information he had, then he demanded immediate action.

‘Some has already been taken, Sir Marcus,’ said Colbeck. ‘We’ve questioned the stationmaster and a porter at Oxford station and spoken to the man who loaded your daughter’s luggage at Shrub Hill station. What we need now is more detail than you were able to include in your telegraphs.’

‘What sort of detail?’

‘Why was your daughter going to Oxford? Had she made the same journey many times before? How long did she expect to be away? What might she be doing during her stay?’

Sir Marcus answered the questions with suppressed irritation. Since he was unsure how long Imogen and her maid would remain in Oxford, it was clear that he’d taken little interest in the arrangements. He explained that his
wife was indisposed and thus unable, for the very first time, to accompany their daughter. Catching Leeming’s eye, Colbeck saw that he’d registered that important fact. When he finished, Sir Marcus struck a pose with his hands on his hips.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Is there anything else you wish to know, Inspector?’

‘I did wonder why you felt it necessary to describe your relationship with the OWWR in your telegraphs.’

‘I wanted you to know that I don’t only speak as a concerned parent. I felt that my presence on the board would secure the attention of the Railway Detective and not,’ he added with a scornful look at Leeming, ‘of some blundering nonentity.’

‘My achievements, such as they are,’ said Colbeck, modestly, ‘would have been impossible without the help and expertise of the sergeant. Essentially, we operate as a team, deserving equal credit.’ Leeming shot him a grateful smile. ‘We have two requests, Sir Marcus. The first is that we’d like to interview the coachman who drove your daughter and her maid to the station.’

Sir Marcus was dismissive. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said. ‘I’ve already spoken to Tolley. You won’t learn anything from him that I haven’t already told you.’

‘Nevertheless, we would like to meet the fellow. We’re likely to ask him questions that might never have occurred to you.’

‘What sort of questions?’ asked the other, suspiciously.

‘If you wish to know that,’ said Colbeck, ‘you’re welcome to be present.’

There was a considered pause. ‘Very well,’ said Sir
Marcus, grudgingly. ‘You can speak to Tolley, if you must. But you said that you had
two
requests.’

‘The second is of a more delicate nature, Sir Marcus.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well,’ said Colbeck, ‘I wondered if we might be permitted to take a look at your daughter’s bedchamber.’

‘Indeed, you may not!’ exploded Sir Marcus. ‘I find the very notion both impertinent and distasteful. My daughter disappeared on a railway line, Inspector. You’ll not find her hiding upstairs in a wardrobe.’

‘If my suggestion was offensive, I apologise.’

‘It was offensive and wholly improper.’

‘Then I ask you to forgive me,’ said Colbeck, getting to his feet and signalling that Leeming should do likewise. ‘You have a beautiful library, Sir Marcus. I see that you’re an admirer of Shakespeare’s sonnets.’

‘I never have time to read poetry,’ snarled Sir Marcus with something akin to disgust. ‘Whatever gave you the idea that I did?’

‘That chair by the window is placed to catch the best of the light. I assumed that it’s your chosen place for reading. On the table beside it is a copy of the sonnets.’

‘Well, I certainly didn’t put it there – and neither did my wife. Lady Burnhope has even less interest in poetry than I. Really, Inspector,’ he chided, ‘I wish you’d ignore our reading habits and concentrate on finding our daughter.’

‘We’ll speak to the coachman at once,’ said Colbeck.

Sir Marcus tugged at a bell pull. ‘One of my servants will take you to him.’

‘Thank you, Sir Marcus – and thank you for putting your trust in us. I have no doubt that we’ll find out exactly
what happened to your daughter and her maid. Oh,’ he added, meeting the other’s glare, ‘there is one last question.’

‘What is it?’

‘Would you describe your daughter as happy?’

‘Damn you, man!’ bellowed Sir Marcus. ‘Of course she’s happy. Imogen has everything that she could ask out of life. Apart from anything else, she’s due to get married soon. It’s a positive love match. Our daughter has never been happier.’

Edward Tallis had had a particularly busy day, attending a lengthy meeting with the commissioner, deploying his detectives on new cases, sifting through interim reports on existing investigations, berating anyone within reach and trying to ensure that Scotland Yard avoided making the sorts of mistakes that newspapers loved to seize on and mock. Satire could be a cruel weapon and Tallis had felt its searing thrust far too often. After hours of constant activity, he retired to his office and rewarded himself with a cigar, puffing on it with satisfaction and filling the room with a haze of smoke. His pleasure was short-lived. Knuckles rapped on his door, then it opened to admit a tall, dark-haired, fleshy man in his thirties with a prominent nose and a jutting chin. His manner was brusque.

‘Superintendent Tallis?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ replied the other, stubbing out his cigar.

‘I am Clive Tunnadine. I wish to know what you are doing in relation to the disappearance of the dear lady to whom I am betrothed. I speak of the daughter of Sir Marcus Burnhope. How many men have you engaged in the search and what results have they so far reported?’

Tallis was on his feet at once. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, stoutly, ‘but you have no right to force your way into my office and make demands.’

Tunnadine inflated his chest. ‘Do you know who I am?’

‘I do – you’re a person who should learn to control his vile temper.’

‘I’m an elected Member of Parliament, serving in Her Majesty’s Government.’

‘You’d oblige me by moderating your voice,’ said Tallis, pointedly. ‘You’re not addressing a public meeting. If you would care to take a seat, I’ll endeavour to offer you an explanation. If, however, you try to browbeat me any more, I’ll have you removed from the premises – by force, if need be.’