Timetable of Death

CHAPTER SIX

Since their husbands had worked so closely together for a number of years, a friendship had grown up between Madeleine Colbeck and Estelle Leeming, and they tended to get together whenever their husbands were involved in a case that took them away from London. As it happened, the visit that Estelle made that afternoon to John Islip Street had been arranged a fortnight in advance. It coincided with the departure of both men to Derbyshire. Knowing that her guest would bring her two boisterous young sons, Madeleine had taken the precaution of inviting her father and it was not long before Caleb Andrews led the boys out into the garden to play. Their whoops of pleasure could be heard clearly inside the house.

‘It’s so kind of Mr Andrews to take charge of them,’ said Estelle. ‘It means that we can have a proper conversation for once.’

‘My father enjoys their company.’

‘They can be difficult to control sometimes.’

‘He manages somehow.’

‘When they’re not at school, finding something to do with them is always a problem. Separately, David and Albert would be no trouble but, as soon as they get together, the sparks begin to fly.’ More yells were heard from the garden. ‘I hope they don’t tire your father out.’

‘Don’t worry about him, Estelle. He’s much tougher than he looks.’

‘The boys can wear you down, Maddy.’

Estelle Leeming was a pretty woman in her thirties with a slim body and auburn hair that she’d passed on to both of her sons. Living in a small house, she was always rather intimidated by the Colbeck residence. After all the years as the wife of a policeman, she still worried about her husband whenever he went to work.

‘It was worse in the old days,’ she confided, ‘when Victor was still in uniform. I knew that he’d always come home with bruises or scratches on his face yet it always took me by surprise somehow. When he turned up with a terrible black eye one night, I had a job recognising him. He got it when he arrested a burglar he caught climbing out of a house.’

‘Robert always says that he’s bound to be injured from time to time. He never complains about pain. If he gets his coat torn in a fight, however, or if someone damages his hat, then he’s livid.’ They both laughed. ‘He cares far more about his appearance than he does about his safety.’

‘That’s certainly not true of Victor.’

‘What did he tell you, Estelle?’

‘All he sent me from Scotland Yard was a short letter saying that he was off to Derby for some reason. He gave no details.’

‘Then I can at least provide you with some information because Robert’s letter was more explicit. A director of the Midland Railway has been murdered. They were summoned by telegraph.’

‘I suppose that we ought to feel proud that they’re always in demand,’ said Estelle with a sigh, ‘but I do miss Victor. Apart from anything else, the boys are much more of a handful when he’s away. Still, you’ll find out the problems of being a mother when you have children of your own.’

‘I already have a child.’

Estelle sat up. ‘Do you?’

‘Yes,’ said Madeleine, pointing to the window. ‘He’s out there in the garden with the boys. Since he retired, my father’s entered his second childhood.’

‘I daresay that he’d like grandchildren of his own.’

‘That’s in the lap of the gods, Estelle.’

‘It’s certainly not something you can control,’ admitted the other. ‘We had to wait. When it happened, we were so grateful to have two healthy boys. It completed the family somehow.’

‘I’m sure that it did,’ said Madeleine, keen to get off the subject. ‘It’s time for tea, I think.’ She rang the bell for a servant. ‘They’ll have worked up an appetite by charging around the lawn.’

Victor Leeming was quietly elated. When he mistook Philip Conway for a potential suspect, he made a new friend and learnt a great deal about Spondon. The reporter had not only talked to several people in the village, he recalled details of recent crimes there, recorded in editions of his newspaper. Leeming was surprised to hear how much of it there had been. Apart from thefts from various premises, there had been a spate of vandalism, a drunken brawl that led to three arrests and a case of sexual assault. Beneath the even tenor of the village, there was clearly a worrying undercurrent. As he talked to the young reporter, Leeming came to understand the full meaning of serendipity. Chancing upon Conway had been a stroke of good fortune.

‘What about the murder of Enoch Stone?’ he asked.

‘That will never be solved.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Too much time has gone by and any clues have long since disappeared. I don’t think the killer was a local man. Stone was well liked here. My guess is that he was set on by a traveller of some sorts who battered him to the ground, stole his money then fled. They’ll never find him, Sergeant.’

‘Yet they’re still looking.’

‘They might as well chase moonbeams.’

‘I’ve arrested quite a few moonbeams in my time,’ said Leeming with a chuckle. ‘Just when you’re ready to abandon a particular case, something always turns up out of the blue to help you solve it.’

‘I’m glad you mentioned turning up,’ said Conway, glancing at the clock on the wall, ‘because that’s what my editor is expecting me to do. We’ve been here almost two hours. I’ll have to go, I’m afraid.’

‘That’s a pity.’

Conway got up. ‘I’ll probably be in Spondon again tomorrow.’

Leeming shook his hand warmly. ‘You know where to find me.’

‘Goodbye, Sergeant.’

When the reporter went out, Leeming followed to wave him off. He then turned in the opposite direction and went in search of Walter Grindle. The moment he got within earshot of the forge, he could hear a hammer striking the anvil with rhythmical power. He arrived in time to see the blacksmith fitting a shoe to a shire horse. Bert Knowles was holding the animal’s bridle and smoking his pipe. Unable to understand more than a few words of what they were saying to each other, Leeming had to wait until the work was finished. As soon as he introduced himself, both men took an interest. Grindle demanded that the crime be solved quickly so that his children would stop fearing that a killer was stalking the streets of the village. He explained how distressed they both still were. For his part, Knowles had seen someone putting up a reward notice and, since he was barely literate, had got the man to read it out to him.

‘Two ’undred!’ he said, moving the pipe from one side of his mouth to the other. ‘I could sup a lot o’ beer wi’ a windfall like thar.’

‘Do you have any information that could lead to the killer?’ asked Leeming.

‘I might ’ve.’

‘What is it?’

‘Look arter Samson, will ter?’ said Knowles to the blacksmith, handing over the horse. ‘The sergeant’s gonna buy me a pint.’

Leeming was dubious. ‘Have you really got something useful to tell me?’

‘Yes,’ replied Knowles, indignantly. ‘I dug the bleedin’ grave where thar dead body turned up.’

As soon as he saw the window display at Brough and Hubbleday, Tailors Ltd, Colbeck’s heart lifted. Everything on show was of the highest quality. He entered the premises to be greeted by Simon Hubbleday, a round-shouldered little man in his sixties who had worked there since the day the shop had opened. Peering over the top of his spectacles, he took one look at Colbeck and clapped his hands in appreciation.

‘Nothing we could make for you would be an improvement on what you already wear, sir,’ he said, honestly. ‘The cut and cost of your attire tells me that you hail from London and keep a tailor in Bond Street or somewhere nearby.’

‘You have good eyesight.’

‘I only wish that Mr Brough was still alive to admire that cravat and that waistcoat. But my erstwhile partner — I am Simon Hubbleday, by the way — died a few years ago and left me alone with the task of making the gentry of Nottingham look both smart and respectable.’

‘Your window display does you credit, Mr Hubbleday.’

‘Praise from a man with your meticulous attention to detail is praise indeed.’ He beamed at Colbeck. ‘How can we be of service to you, sir?’

‘I’d like to say that you could make something for me Mr Hubbleday, but the truth is I come only in search of information. One of your customers, I believe, was Mr Vivian Quayle.’ The old man’s face clouded. ‘I see that you’ve heard the sad news about him.’

‘Mr Quayle has been a customer for many years and so, I may add, have both of his sons. What happened to him is quite appalling. A nicer gentleman does not exist in the whole of Nottingham. It was a privilege to serve him.’

Colbeck introduced himself and asked if they might have a word in private. After summoning an assistant from the inner reaches of the shop, Hubbleday took his visitor off to an office that was barely big enough to accommodate both of them.

‘Fortunately,’ said the old man, ‘Mr Brough was even smaller than me. The two of us could fit in here without any difficulty. Now, Inspector, what do you wish to know?’

‘Tell me about Mr Quayle’s top hat.’

‘It was something about which he was very particular.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t ask me why. We sell top hats by the dozen. Our highest price is five shillings and sixpence but most customers settle for something slightly cheaper. Mr Quayle, by contrast, paid even more for his because he wanted the very finest silk. It was, if I may say so, a top hat of top hats.’

‘In other words, it would be very distinctive.’

‘Any man of discernment would covet it, Inspector.’

‘That may explain why it disappeared.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Colbeck told him that the hat was missing from the open grave in which the dead man was found. Opening a drawer in his desk, Hubbleday took out a pile of drawings and began to leaf through them.

‘I’m inclined to agree with you that it was stolen rather than simply discarded,’ he said.

‘Did you sew Mr Quayle’s name inside it?’

‘Oh, yes, he insisted. Ah, here we are,’ he continued, plucking a drawing from the pile and passing it over. ‘That’s the hat we made for him.’

‘It’s highly individual,’ observed Colbeck, ‘and almost nine inches in height. That curly brim is a work of art.’

‘Mr Quayle wanted it to stand out in a crowd. Everyone wears top hats these days. You’ll see bargees on the river with them, and conductors on omnibuses. They used to be the sign of a gentleman,’ said Hubbleday, nostalgically, ‘but people of the lower sort get hold of them these days.’

‘This is very useful,’ said Colbeck. ‘I’d recognise that hat anywhere.’

‘Keep the drawing if it’s of any use, Inspector. I hate to say it but Mr Quayle will never be in need of a new hat.’

‘And you’ve never designed a similar one for anybody else?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘What about Mr Quayle’s sons?’

‘Oh, they have very different tastes,’ said Hubbleday with a smile. ‘Lucas, the younger of the two, is something of a peacock and always leans towards ostentation. Stanley, his elder brother, is more conservative.’

‘I met Stanley Quayle earlier,’ said Colbeck. ‘He seems to have taken charge at the house. I gather that his mother is not in the best of health.’

‘Mrs Quayle has been ailing for several years, Inspector. Her husband was devoted to her. When you came down the street, you’ll have passed the florist. He told me that, because his wife was so fond of flowers, Mr Quayle placed an order for a fresh supply of roses or lilies to be delivered every Monday morning.’

‘I should have thought there’d be plenty of flowers on the estate.’

‘Those were only for show,’ said Hubbleday, ‘or so I was told. Mrs Quayle liked to sit in the window of her room and look out on them. Mr Brough and I were invited to a function at the house once. You’ll have seen the flower beds at the front but perhaps you missed the formal garden at the rear of the property. It is truly a thing of beauty.’

‘Unfortunately,’ said Colbeck, ‘I wasn’t there to admire the garden. I simply wanted to make contact with the family.’

‘Did you meet Lucas Quayle? He’s a delightful fellow.’

‘No, I only spoke to his elder brother.’

There was a significant pause. ‘Stanley Quayle is very single-minded,’ said Hubbleday, measuring his words. ‘He always seems much older than he really is. By repute, he’s an astute businessman.’ His frown melted into a smile. ‘Nobody would ever say that about Lucas Quayle. He’s always striking out in new directions even if some of them are ill-advised. Their father used to tell me that he had one reliable son and one irresponsible one. Curiously, he seemed fonder of the madcap.’

‘There are two daughters as well, aren’t there?’

‘Don’t ask me about those, Inspector. I sell nothing that they might want.’

‘I understand that one of the daughters was estranged from the family.’

‘I’m in no position to comment on that.’

‘When I called at the house, Stanley Quayle informed me that the elder sister might not even attend the funeral.’

Hubbleday was scandalised. ‘That’s disgraceful!’

‘The rift with the family must indeed be serious.’

‘Death has a habit of uniting a family, Inspector. I pray that it might do so in this case.’

‘So do I,’ said Colbeck. ‘I’d be very interested to meet the lady.’

Lydia Quayle sat alone at a table in a London tea room and read the item in the newspaper for the third time. She was a smart, shapely woman in her late twenties with brown curly hair framing a face whose unforced beauty was marred by an expression that veered between sorrow and anger. Putting the newspaper aside, she sipped her tea then took a first nibble out of one of the cakes on the plate beside her. It was afternoon in London and, through the window, she could see heavy traffic in the road outside. Lydia was distracted by the sight of a tiny bird perched on a stationary cart and hopping from one place to another. When the bird landed on the rump of the horse between the shafts, the animal took no notice. It was only when the creature hopped along its back and onto its mane that the horse shook its head violently and sent the bird flying into the sky.

Lydia picked up the newspaper and read the article about her father’s murder once more. Getting up abruptly from the table, she abandoned the tea and cakes, tossed the newspaper aside with disdain and left the restaurant.

The short time that Victor Leeming spent with the gravedigger gave him more amusement than information. Over a pint of beer guzzled down at enormous speed, Bert Knowles told him that on the night in question he’d been drinking with friends at the Union Inn and, when he rolled out of there, a sense of duty made him walk to the churchyard to make sure that the grave he’d dug for Cicely Peet was still sound and that none of the sides had caved in. When he got there, he claimed, he felt that somebody was watching him though he saw nobody even though he stayed in the churchyard for a long time. Knowles insisted that the invisible watcher must have been the killer, biding his time until it was safe to put the dead body into the ground.

Leeming felt sorry for the man. He earned a pittance as a labourer and work at the church was intermittent. But the sergeant was firm, telling him that the tale about a phantom in the dark was not worth one penny of the reward money. Knowles promptly burst out laughing, slapped him on the arm and said that his story, freely acknowledged as being fictitious, had been ‘worth a try’. Yet the purchase of a pint of beer for him had been a profitable investment. Thanks to Knowles, word of Leeming’s presence there would be quickly disseminated throughout the village. Those who felt they had something of importance to tell him would certainly do so when they read the reward notice. The sergeant was pleased with himself. In the space of a few hours, he’d befriended a reporter who’d given him a brief criminal history of Spondon, and a local character who was also a mine of information about the village.

Having walked back to the forge with Knowles, he waited until the labourer had taken the horse back to the farm then asked if he could speak to the blacksmith’s children. Walter Grindle agreed with the proviso that he had to be present. When he met Lizzie and Sam, Leeming realised that he’d get very little of value out of them. The girl kept collapsing in a flood of tears when she recalled her moment of discovery and her brother was paralysed with fear in the presence of a detective from Scotland Yard. The interview with the children was mercifully short for all concerned.

As he strolled along the street Leeming heard the sound of running feet behind him. He stopped and turned so that a lanky, dishevelled man with unusually large and staring eyes could catch up with him. Leeming put his age close to forty.

‘Are you the sergeant?’ asked the man.

‘Yes, sir — who are you?’

‘My name is Barnaby Truss,’ said the other, breathlessly, ‘and I just had a word with Bert Knowles when he went past my shop. He’s an old friend and always stops if he sees me. I’m a glove-maker, sir, like many people in this village.’

‘What kind of gloves?’

‘Silk ones — the best you can buy.’

Leeming saw a chance to educate himself about local industry.

‘Someone mentioned a stocking frame. What exactly is that?’

‘Oh,’ said Truss, ‘you won’t find many of them in Spondon because this is a place for gloves. Happen you’ve heard the sound of our frames as you’ve walked along the street. They’re worked by hands and feet and make a lot of noise.’

Leeming was gratified to talk to someone who didn’t lapse into the dialect that he found incomprehensible. In every sense, Truss was a cut above Bert Knowles. The glove-maker read his mind.

‘Oh, I can talk the language as well as any of them, if I’ve a mind to,’ he explained, ‘but I’ve got ambitions, Sergeant. I want to go into local politics in Derby one day. That means a lot of public speaking so I’ve took lessons. You can probably tell.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Leeming without conviction.

The only thing he could tell was that Truss’s ambitions were doomed. Of the man’s sincerity he had no doubt, but Truss was altogether too tentative and subdued for the cut-and-thrust of political debate. Besides, the staring eyes would frighten away any potential voters. However, the man’s commitment had to be applauded so the sergeant passed a few encouraging comments.

‘What can I do for you, Mr Truss?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got something to report.’

‘I can see that Mr Knowles has told you about the reward.’

‘Oh, I’m not looking for any money,’ said Truss as if hurt by the suggestion. ‘I’d just feel guilty if I didn’t report something I saw. Of course, it may be nothing to do with the murder but, then again, it just might.’

‘Go on, sir.’

‘Well, Sergeant, what I witnessed was this …’

As he launched into his story, Truss began to wave his hands about in the air as if showing off a pair of his silk gloves. The gestures were so inappropriate as to be another deadly strike against his hopes of ever making his mark in local government and Leeming felt that whoever had been giving the man instruction in public speaking had no right to take a fee for his service. The glove-maker’s evidence was markedly more interesting than the cock-and-bull story invented by Knowles. On the night when the murder occurred, Truss had been returning home when he saw something that he first dismissed from his mind as being unimportant. In view of what had happened, he wondered if he’d instead accidentally bumped into the killer.

‘What time was this?’ asked Leeming.

‘Oh, it was well after midnight, Sergeant.’

‘That was rather late to be out, wasn’t it?’

The hands fluttered wildly like a pair of doves suddenly released from a cage.

‘I was … on my way home f-from a f-friend,’ said the other, introducing a stutter that had never been there before. ‘I was coming down Church Hill when I saw him.’

‘How far away was he, Mr Truss?’

‘It must have been twenty or thirty yards.’

‘Could you see him at all clearly in the dark?’

‘No, I couldn’t,’ replied the other, ‘but I saw enough to know that a man was pushing a wheelbarrow and that there was something in it covered with a cloth. I took no notice, to be honest, because it’s not an unusual sight in Spondon. We’ve had to wheel Bert Knowles home in a barrow more than once when he’s been drunk. But this barrow was heading for the church and the person pushing it was struggling as if he wasn’t used to doing anything like that. A dead body can be heavy. Suppose that’s what was under the cloth? I’ve been asking myself that ever since.’ His arms fell to his sides and he grinned inanely. ‘Was I right to tell you, Sergeant Leeming?’

‘You were indeed, Mr Truss, and I’m very grateful.’

‘Please don’t mention to anyone else that I told you. It could be … awkward for me, you see.’

Leeming suspected that the real awkwardness would be felt by the friend whom Truss had called on that evening. From the man’s behaviour, he guessed that the glove-maker had had a rendezvous with a woman and that he was anxious to protect her from any gossip and embarrassment. After reassuring him, Leeming sent him on his way and reviewed what he’d just learnt. As he did so, he recalled the old adage that bad news always came in threes. Could it be equally true that good news also came in triplicate? That’s what had happened to the sergeant. Since he’d arrived in Spondon, he’d met Philip Conway, recruited Bert Knowles to his cause and heard about the nocturnal adventures of a glove-maker. He’d had three pieces of good news to pass on to Colbeck.

Something told him that the last of them was by far the best.