‘In his mind,’ argued Colbeck, ‘there was no jeopardy at all. Sir Humphrey did not expect to get caught. That is why the crimes were planned with such precision.’
‘Balderdash!’
‘If you will not listen to us, I’m sure that Mr Mayne will.’
‘The Commissioner will tell you exactly what I do,’ said Tallis, jabbing a finger at him. ‘Sir Humphrey Gilzean has a position in society. He has neither the time nor inclination to commit crimes.’
‘I am persuaded that he had both,’ said Colbeck, unmoved by the Superintendent’s belligerence. ‘Like you, we had our doubts at first so we sought the opinion of someone else – someone who knew him in the army and who has been employed by him since then.’
‘And who was that?’
‘Harry Seymour.’
‘You questioned him again?’
‘No,’ replied Colbeck, ‘we simply confronted him with two names and watched his reaction. You saw for yourself how convinced he was that he would somehow be set free. So I told him that it could not happen because we had both Sir Humphrey and Thomas Sholto in custody.’
‘What did he say to that?’
‘Nothing, sir, but his face gave him away. He turned white.’
Tallis shook his head. ‘That could simply have been shock at hearing a familiar name from his days in the army.’
‘We repeated the process with Vernon Seymour. He was even more dismayed than his brother. Ask Sergeant Leeming,’ said Colbeck. ‘The look on Vernon Seymour’s face was as good as a confession.’
The news forced Tallis to think again. Unwilling to accept that anyone in Gilzean’s position would ever be drawn into criminal activity, he tried to refute the claim but could not find the arguments to do so. He had an ingrained respect for Members of Parliament that blinded him to the possibility that they might not always be men of high moral probity. On the other hand, Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming would not have plucked the name of Sir Humphrey Gilzean out of the air. And it did seem to have upset two of the prisoners in custody. Searching for a means of exonerating Gilzean, he finally remembered one.
‘No, no,’ he insisted, ‘Sir Humphrey would never contemplate such crimes – especially at a time like this.’
‘What do you mean, Superintendent?’
‘The man is still in mourning.’
‘For whom?’
‘His wife. I remember reading of the tragedy in the newspaper.’
‘What happened?’
‘Shortly before last Christmas, Lady Gilzean was killed in a riding accident. Sir Humphrey is still grieving for her.’
After placing a large basket of flowers in front of the gravestone, Sir Humphrey Gilzean knelt down on the grass to offer up a silent prayer. When he opened his eyes again, he read the epitaph that had been etched into the marble. He spoke in a loving whisper.
‘I will repay, Lucinda,’ he said. ‘I will repay.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
During the ten years of its construction, Robert Colbeck had been past the House of Commons on an almost daily basis and he had watched it grow from piles of assorted building materials into its full Gothic glory. However, he had never had an opportunity to enter the place before and looked forward to the experience. As he approached from Whitehall, he saw that work was continuing on the massive clock tower, though completion was not anticipated for some years yet. Until then, Members of Parliament would have to rely on their respective pocket watches, opening up the possibility of endless partisan strife over what was the correct time of day.
When he entered the building, he found the atmosphere rather cold and forbidding, as if a church had been stripped of its mystery and given over to purely temporal functions. Unlike those who filed into the Lower Chamber to take their seats, Colbeck was not there for the purposes of debate. All that interested him were the heated exchanges of an earlier year. Repairing to the library, he introduced himself, made his request then sat down at a table with some bound copies of Hansard in front of him. As he leafed through the pages of the first volume, he reflected that Luke Hansard, the printer who had started to publish parliamentary debates way back in 1774, must have felt that he was bequeathing a priceless resource to posterity. What he had not anticipated was that he might, one day in the future, help a Detective Inspector to solve a series of heinous crimes.
Colbeck was concentrating on the year 1847 for two principal reasons. It was shortly after Sir Humphrey Gilzean had become a Member of Parliament and he would therefore have tried to make a good impression by taking part early on in the verbal jousting that enlivened the Commons. In addition, it was the year when investment in the railways was at its height, reaching a peak of over £30 million before declining sharply when the bubble later burst with dramatic effect. Colbeck knew that, in 1847, a substantial amount of time had been devoted to the discussion of Railway Bills and that one of the most insistent voices in the debates would be that of George Hudson, M.P. for Sunderland, the now disgraced Railway King.
It did not take him long to find the name of Sir Humphrey Gilzean, Conservative, representing a constituency in his native Berkshire and sitting on the Opposition benches. His maiden speech, unsurprisingly, had been delivered on the vexed question of railways. Opposing a Bill for the extension of a line in Oxfordshire, he had spoken with great passion about the urgent necessity of preserving the English countryside from further encroachments by the Great Western Railway. It was not the only occasion when he had raised his voice in anger. Colbeck found several debates during which Gilzean had risen in defiance against those with vested interests in the railway system.
Gilzean’s speeches were not confined to the railways. As he flicked through the rhetorical flourishes, Colbeck learnt that the man had firm opinions on almost every subject, deploring the repeal of the Corn Laws by his own party, reviling the Chartists as dangerous revolutionaries who should be suppressed by force, and showing a special interest in foreign affairs. But his heavy artillery was reserved for repeated attacks on the railways. Since it mentioned his favourite poet, Colbeck was particularly interested in a speech that denounced the Great Western Railway.
William Blake, may I remind you – a poet with whom I will not claim any spiritual affinity – once spoke of building Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. He was fortunate to die before the industrial infidels made his dream an impossibility. Green pastures are everywhere darkened by the shadow of the railway system. Pleasant land is everywhere dug up, defaced and destroyed in the name of the steam locomotive. When Blake wrote of chariots of fire, he did not envisage them in such hideous profusion, scarring the countryside, frightening the livestock, filling the air with noise and smoke, imposing misery wherever they go. And who benefits from these engines of devastation? The shareholders of the Great Western Railway – vandals to a man!
Colbeck had read enough. With the words still ringing in his ears, he went off in pursuit of someone whose hatred of the railways amounted to nothing short of a mania. Sir Humphrey Gilzean was clearly a fanatic. Convinced that he had identified the man behind the crimes, Colbeck was ready to bring his parliamentary career to an abrupt halt. There was, he acknowledged, one problem. Abducted from her doorstep, Madeleine Andrews was being held by Gilzean and that gave him a decided advantage. The thought made Colbeck shudder. It also caused him to break into a run when he came out into daylight once more. He had to find her soon.
They kept her in a wine cellar this time. Long, low and with a vaulted ceiling, it seemed to run the full length of the house and contained rack upon rack of expensive wine. Minimal light came in through the small windows that looked out on a trench alongside the wall of the building. Even on such a warm day, the place was cold and damp. It was also infested with spiders and Madeleine Andrews, liberated from her bonds, walked into dozens of invisible webs as she tried to explore her new prison. It was one more source of displeasure for her.