‘Do not pay too much attention to what you read,’ he counselled. ‘Newspapers do not always have the full facts at their fingertips and some of them appear to take pleasure in baiting us. I can assure you that we have made more headway than they would lead you to believe.’
‘We were horrified to learn that there had been two murders. Is it true that they may possibly be related to the train robbery?’
‘Undeniably so.’
‘Why were they killed?’
‘The murder victims were accomplices who had to be silenced.’
‘How terrible!’
‘Except for the young woman, that is. She was an innocent person who happened to be in the wrong company at the wrong time.’
‘Yet they still cut her throat?’
‘We are dealing with ruthless men, Miss Andrews.’
‘Father discovered that.’
‘How is he, by the way?’
‘He gets better each day,’ she said, brightening. ‘Unfortunately, he also gets angrier and louder. I have difficulty in calming him down.’
‘I refuse to believe that. You know exactly how to handle him.’
His fond smile was tinged with disappointment. Madeleine met his gaze and held it for some time, trying to read the message in his eyes while sending a covert signal in her own. Colbeck was strongly aware of the mutual interest between them but he did not feel able to explore it. His visitor eventually broke the long silence.
‘I had a more personal reason for coming, Inspector,’ she said.
‘Indeed?’
‘Yes, I feel that I owe you an apology.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘My behaviour when you called at our house.’
‘I saw nothing that could warrant an apology, Miss Andrews.’
‘My father spoke out of turn.’
‘He does seem to have an impulsive streak.’
‘It led him to say something that he had no right to say,’ explained Madeleine, ‘and I did not wish you to be misled by it. The person that he mentioned — Gideon Little, a fireman — is a family friend but, as far as I am concerned, he can never be more than that. Father thinks otherwise.’
‘Your private life is no business of mine,’ he said, trying to ease her obvious discomfort. ‘Please do not feel that you have to offer either an apology or an explanation.’
‘I just wanted you to understand.’
‘Then I am grateful that you came.’
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ he confirmed.
Madeleine smiled with relief. ‘Then so am I, Inspector Colbeck.’ She got to her feet. ‘But I must let you get on with your work. What am I to tell my father?’
‘That he has a very beautiful daughter,’ said Colbeck, letting his admiration show, ‘though I daresay that he already knows that. As for the train robbery,’ he went on, ‘I can give him no hope of an early arrest. Indeed, I think you should warn him to brace himself.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the man behind the robbery will be back. In my view, he is conducting a feud against the railway system and he will not rest until he has inflicted more serious damage upon it.’
‘What do you mean?’ roared Sir Humphrey Gilzean, striking the side of his boot with his riding crop. ‘The attempt failed?’
‘It was only a partial success,’ said Thomas Sholto.
‘How partial? Was there no explosion?’
‘Yes, Humphrey.’
‘Then what went wrong?’
‘The gunpowder, it seems, was not in the ideal position. All that it did was to dislodge the brickwork on one side of the tunnel.’
‘It was intended to block the entrance completely.’
‘That did not happen, alas.’
‘Why ever not, Thomas? I gave orders.’
‘They were disobeyed,’ said Sholto. ‘The men decided that they could achieve the same results with a smaller amount of gunpowder than you had decreed. They were proved wrong.’
‘Damnation!’
‘They’ve been upbraided, believe me.’
‘I’ll do more than upbraid them,’ snarled Gilzean, slapping the back of a leather armchair with his crop. ‘I gave them precise instructions. Had they followed them to the letter, the train that was coming from the opposite direction would have crashed into the debris and put the Kilsby Tunnel out of action for a considerable time.’
‘That did not happen, Humphrey. Damage was limited.’
‘I knew that we should have done the job ourselves.’
‘Jukes and the others have never let us down before.’
‘They’ll not get the chance to do so again,’ vowed Gilzean, prowling vengefully around the hall of his house. ‘I know that. Instead of disrupting the railway, we simply gave them a salutary warning. The Kilsby Tunnel will be guarded by an army of policemen from now on.’ He flung his crop onto the armchair. ‘We lost our chance through sheer incompetence.’