Edward Marston - The Railway Detective

The meeting was not accidental. As she came out of the shop, Madeleine Andrews was confronted by Gideon Little, who pretended that he was about to go in. Since he lived half a mile away, and had several shops in the vicinity of his house, there was no need for him to be in Camden at all. After greeting Madeleine, he invented an excuse.

‘I thought of calling on your father again,’ he said, diffidently.

‘He is asleep, Gideon. It is not a good time to visit.’

‘Then I’ll come another time.’

‘Father is always pleased to see you.’

‘What about you, Madeleine?’

‘I, too, am pleased,’ she said, briskly. ‘I believe that any friend of Father’s is welcome at our house, especially if he is a railwayman.’

‘I am not talking about Caleb,’ he said, quietly.

‘I know.’

‘Then why do you not answer my question?’

There was a long and uncomfortable pause. When she walked to the end of the street to buy some provisions, Madeleine had not expected to be cornered by a man whose devotion to her had reached almost embarrassing proportions. She had tried, in the past, to discourage him as gently as she could but Gideon Little had a keen ally in her father and a quiet tenacity that drove him on past all her of rebuffs. Madeleine had the uneasy feeling that he had been lurking outside the house in case she came out.

‘Why are you not at work?’ she asked.

‘I was on the early shift today.’

‘Then you must be very tired.’

‘Not when I have a chance to see you, Madeleine.’ He offered a hand. ‘Let me carry your bag for you.’

‘No, thank you. I can manage.’

He was hurt. ‘Will you not even let me do that?’

‘I have to go, Gideon.’

‘No,’ he said, stepping sideways to block her path, ‘you have walked away from me once too often, Madeleine, and it has to stop. I think it’s time you gave me an answer.’

‘You know the answer,’ she said, seeing the mingled hope and determination in his eyes. ‘Do I really have to put it in words?’

‘Yes.’

‘Gideon — ‘

‘At the very least, I deserve that. It’s been two years now,’ he told her. ‘Two years of waiting, wanting, making plans for the two of us.’

‘They were your plans — not ours.’

‘Will you not even listen to what they are?’

‘No,’ she said with polite firmness. ‘There would be no point.’

‘Why are you so unkind to me? Do you hate me that much?’

‘Of course not, Gideon. I like you. I always have. But the plain truth is — and you must surely realise this by now — that I can never see you as anything more than a friend.’

‘ Never ?’ he pleaded.

‘Never, Gideon.’

Madeleine did not want to be so blunt with him but she had been left with no choice. Her father’s condition gave Gideon Little an opportunity to call at the house on a regular basis, and he would try to urge his suit each time. The prospect dismayed Madeleine. It was better to risk offending him now than to let him harry her and build up his expectations. Wounded by her rejection, Little stared at her in disbelief, as if she had just thrust a dagger into him. His pain slowly gave way to a deep resentment.

‘You were not always so cruel to me, Madeleine,’ he said.

‘You asked for the truth.’

‘We were real friends once.’

‘We still are, Gideon.’

‘No,’ he said, glaring at her. ‘Since Caleb was injured, something has changed. You no longer have any interest in me. A fireman on the railway is beneath you now.’

‘Let me go past, please.’

‘Not until we settle this. You’ve met someone else, Madeleine.’

‘I have to get back.’

‘Someone you think is better than me. Don’t lie,’ he said, holding up a hand before she could issue a denial. ‘Your father has noticed it and so have I. When you went to see Inspector Colbeck for the second time, I followed you. I saw the way you looked at him.’

Madeleine was furious. ‘You followed me?’

‘I knew that you wanted to see him again.’

‘You had no right to do that.’

‘Caleb told me how you behaved when the Inspector came to the house. He said that you put your best dress on for him. You never did that for me, Madeleine.’

‘This has gone far enough, Gideon,’ she asserted. ‘Following me? That’s dreadful. How could you do such a thing?’

‘I wanted to see where you were going.’

‘What I do and where I go is my business. The only reason I spoke to Inspector Colbeck again is that he is investigating the train robbery in which Father was injured.’

‘Yet you never even mentioned it to Caleb,’ said Gideon, hands on his hips. ‘When I asked him if you had been back to Whitehall, he shook his head. Why did you mislead him, Madeleine?’

‘Never you mind,’ she said, flustered.

‘But I do mind. This means a lot to me.’

Madeleine tried to move. ‘Father will be expecting me.’

‘You told me that he was asleep.’

‘I want to be there when he wakes up.’

‘Why?’ he challenged, obstructing her path. ‘Are you going to admit that you went out of your way to see Inspector Colbeck again because you like him so much?’

‘No,’ she retorted. ‘I am going to tell him that I do not want you in the house again. I’m ashamed of you for what you did, Gideon.’ She brushed past him. ‘I will not be spied on by anyone.’

‘Madeleine!’ he cried, suddenly penitent.

‘Leave me be.’

‘I did not mean to upset you like that.’

But she was deaf to his entreaties. Hurrying along the pavement, she reached her house, let herself in and closed the door firmly behind her. Gideon Little had no doubt what she felt about him now.

On the third night, Victor Leeming’s faith in the Inspector began to weaken slightly. It was well past midnight at the Crystal Palace and there had been neither sight nor sound of any intruders. Leeming feared that they were about to have another long and uneventful vigil.

‘Are you sure that they will come, sir?’ he whispered.

‘Sooner or later,’ replied Colbeck.

‘Let someone else take over from us.’

‘Do you want to miss all the excitement, Victor?’

‘There’s been precious little of that so far, Inspector. We’ve had two nights of tedium and, since the place is in darkness, we cannot even divert ourselves by looking at the exhibits. Also,’ he complained, shifting his position, ‘it is so uncomfortable here.’

Colbeck grinned. ‘I did not have time to instal four-poster beds.’

The detectives were in one of the massive exhibition halls, concealed behind Liverpool , a standard gauge locomotive designed for the London and North Western Railway by Thomas Crampton. Built for high speed, it had eight foot driving wheels and an unprecedentedly large heating surface. Having learnt its specifications, Colbeck had passed them to Leeming in the course of the first night, trying in vain to interest his Sergeant in the facts that the boiler pressure was 120 per square inch and that the cylinders were 18 by 24 inches. All that Leeming wanted was to be at home in bed with his wife, whose total ignorance of locomotives he now saw as a marital blessing.

‘I think that Liverpool has a chance of winning a gold medal,’ said Colbeck, giving the engine a friendly pat. ‘That would really annoy Daniel Gooch at the Great Western.’

‘I think that we deserve a gold medal for keeping watch like this,’ said Leeming, yawning involuntarily. ‘Mr Tallis had a feeling that we’d be chasing shadows.’

‘Try to get some sleep, Victor.’

‘On a floor as hard as this?’