Edward Marston - The excursion train

Victor Leeming was in luck. When he got to the venerable city of Canterbury, he discovered that Patrick Perivale was at his chambers, interviewing a client. The detective did not mind waiting in the gracious Georgian house that served as a base for the barrister. After a ride through the countryside with Constable George Butterkiss at his most aggravating, Leeming felt that he was due some good fortune. Taking out the piece of paper that Colbeck had given him, he memorised the questions by repeating them over and over again in his head. Eventually, he was shown into a large, well-proportioned, high-ceilinged room with serried ranks of legal tomes along one wall.

Standing in the middle of the room, Patrick Perivale did not even offer him a handshake. A smart, dark-haired, dapper man in his forties with curling side-whiskers, he wore an expression of disdain for lesser mortals and he clearly put his visitor in that category. The bruising on Leeming's face made him even less welcome to someone who resented unforeseen calls on his time.

'What's this all about, Sergeant?' he inquired, fussily.

'The trial of Nathan Hawkshaw.'

'That's history. There's no cause to reopen it.'

'I simply want to discuss it, sir.'

'Now?' said Perivale, producing a watch from his waistcoat pocket and looking at it. 'I have another appointment soon.'

'You'll have to hear me out first,' said Leeming, doggedly.

'Must I?'

'Inspector Colbeck was most insistent that I should warn you.'

'About what?' asked the other, putting his watch away. 'Oh, very well,' he went on, going to the chair behind his desk. 'I suppose that you'd better sit down – and please make this visit a short one, Sergeant.'

'Yes, sir.' Leeming lowered himself into a high-backed leather armchair that creaked slightly. 'Are you aware that the man who hanged Nathan Hawkshaw was murdered recently?'

'I do read the papers, you know.'

'Then you'll also have picked up the information that the Reverend Jones, the prison chaplain from Maidstone, was killed the night before last in a railway carriage.'

'Is this some kind of test for me on recent news events?'

'Both murder victims received death threats from someone.'

'Not for the first time, I warrant.'

'But it was for the last,' stressed Leeming. 'One of them heeded the warning but was nevertheless killed. The other – the chaplain – took no notice of the threat and lost his life as a result.'

'I was truly sorry to hear that,' said Perivale. 'I met the chaplain once and he struck me as a fellow of sterling virtue – not always the case with Welshmen. As a nation, they tend to veer towards the other side of the law.'

'Did you receive a death threat, sir?'

'That's none of your damned business, Sergeant!'

'I think that it is.'

'I refuse to divulge any information about what I receive in relation to my cases. It's a question of professional confidentiality.'

Leeming was blunt. 'I'd say it was a question of staying alive.'

'That's a very offensive remark.'

'There's a pattern here, sir. Two people have had-'

'Yes, yes,' said the barrister, interrupting him. 'I can see that, man. When you deal with criminal law, you inevitably make enemies but that does not mean you let the imprecations of some worthless villain upset the even tenor of your life.'

'So you did get a death threat.'

'I didn't say that. What I am telling you – if only you had the grace to listen – is that I am very conscious of the dangers appertaining to my profession and I take all sensible precautions. To be more precise,' he continued, opening a drawer to pull out a gun, 'I always carry this when I go abroad in the streets. It's a Manton pocket pistol.'

'Jacob Guttridge was armed as well but it did him no good.'

'Thank you for telling me, Sergeant.' He put the pistol away then stood up. 'Now that you've delivered your message, you can go.'

'But I haven't asked the questions yet, sir.'

'What questions?'

'The ones given to me by Inspector Colbeck.'

'I don't have time to play guessing games.'

'The Inspector used to be a barrister,' said Leeming, irritated by the other man's pomposity. 'Of course, he worked in the London criminal courts where they get the important cases that provincial barristers like you would never be allowed to touch. If you don't help me,' he cautioned, 'then Inspector Colbeck will come looking for you to know the reason why. And he won't be scared off by that toy pistol of yours either.'

Patrick Perivale was checked momentarily by Leeming's forthrightness but he soon recovered his natural arrogance. One hand on a hip, he gave a supercilious smile.

'Why did your Inspector leave the bar?'

'Because he wanted to do something more worthwhile.'

'Nothing is more worthwhile than convicting criminals.'

'They have to be caught first, sir,' said Leeming. 'Besides, you don't always see justice being done in court, do you? I've sat through too many trials to know that. I've watched guilty men go free because they had a clever barrister and innocent men convicted because they didn't.'

'I hope that you don't have the effrontery to suggest that Nathan Hawkshaw was innocent.'

'I don't know the facts of the case well enough, sir, but Inspector Colbeck has studied it in detail and he's raised a few queries.'

'He's too late. Sentence has been passed.'

'It was passed on the hangman and the prison chaplain as well.'

'Are you being frivolous, Sergeant?'

'No, sir,' said Leeming, 'I was just pointing out that this case is by no means over for those who feel aggrieved on Hawkshaw's behalf. Two lives have been lost already. We'd like to catch the killer before anyone else joins the list. To do that, we need your help.'

'What can I possibly do?'

'Tell us something about the trial. Newspaper reports can only give us so much. You were there.'

'Yes,' said the other with self-importance, 'and I regard it as one of my most successful cases. The reason for that is that I refused to be intimidated. I had to walk through a baying crowd outside the court and defy the howling mob in the public gallery.'

'The judge had them cleared out, didn't he?'

'Not before they'd made their point and weaker vessels would have been influenced by that. I was simply spurred on to get the conviction that Hawkshaw so obviously deserved.'

'And how did you do that?'

'By making him crack under cross-examination.'

'He maintained his innocence until the end.'

'But he'd already given himself away by then,' said Perivale with a note of triumph in his voice. 'He could not give a convincing explanation of where he was at the time of the murder. That was his undoing, Sergeant. He had no alibi and I taunted him with that fact.'

'He claimed that he walked away from Lenham to think things over and then returned in a calmer frame of mind.'

'Calmer frame of mind – balderdash! The fellow was in a state of sustained fury. He had to be to inflict such butchery on his victim. It was an assault of almost demonic proportions.'

'I know. I visited the scene of the crime.'

'Then you'll have seen how secluded it was. Hawkshaw chose it with care so that he'd not be disturbed.'

'But how did he persuade Dykes to join him there?'

'That's beside the point.'

'I don't think so,' said Leeming, remembering one of Colbeck's notes. 'Dykes would hardly agree to meet him in a private place when he knew that the butcher was after him. He'd have stayed drinking in the Red Lion where he was safe. And what proof is there that Hawkshaw was in that part of the woods, anyway?'

'He was seen there by a witness.'

'After the event. Yet there was no blood on him.'

'You're dragging up the same feeble argument as the defence,' said the barrister. 'Because there was no blood on him, they argued, he could not have committed such a violent crime. Yet there was a stream nearby. Hawkshaw could easily have washed himself clean.'