Free 11 - Ticket to Oblivion by Edward Marston Page A

for all, Miss Vaughan,’ said Colbeck. ‘When I first heard Mr Tunnadine voice it, I thought it lacked credibility. Your brother is exonerated. He has no reason at all to abduct his cousin. However,’ he added, looking at the sergeant, ‘it won’t do any harm for you to meet the gentleman, Victor. I’msure that he’d like to be made aware of the predicament in which his cousin finds herself and – based on his knowledge of her – he may be able to offer a suggestion as to what might have happened to her.’
    ‘I’ll give you George’s address,’ volunteered Emma. ‘He ought to be told about this terrible situation. Underneath all that wildness, he’s a very caring person.’
    ‘Then he’ll want his cousin found.’
    ‘And so will Percy. He should be told as well. In fact, Percy should be the first to hear about Imogen’s disappearance.’
    ‘Why is that?’
    ‘Well,’ she explained, ‘it’s something of an open secret. Percy would never admit it, of course, but I’m his sister and I can read his mind. George will tease Imogen and laugh at her expense but Percy wouldn’t dream of doing that. In his own quiet way,’ she said, ‘my elder brother has been in love with her for years.’

CHAPTER SIX
    Caleb Andrews was never satisfied. When he was working as an engine driver, he was always complaining about the long hours, the attendant dangers of hurtling around the country at speed and the inevitable grime he picked up in the course of a normal day. Now that he’d finally retired, he moaned about having nothing to do and nowhere to go. Eager to leave the London and North West Railway after a lifetime’s service, he was equally eager to be back on the footplate. Ideally, he’d have liked a halfway stage between work and retirement but the LNWR didn’t employ part-time drivers or cater for the individual demands of someone as capricious as Andrews. When he called on his daughter that evening, he brought his usual list of grievances. Madeleine gave him no chance to unpack his heart.
    ‘I’m afraid that Robert won’t be joining us,’ she explained.
    ‘Why is that, Maddy?’
    ‘He’s involved in a case that’s taken him to Worcestershire.The note he sent mentioned two passengers who’d disappeared on a train journey to Oxford.’
    ‘That’s hardly surprising, is it?’ he said, contemptuously. ‘They must have been travelling on the OWWR and it has no right to call itself a railway company. It’s a disaster. The person I blame is Brunel. He was the chief engineer when the project was first started. No wonder they had problems.’
    ‘Robert thinks that Mr Brunel is in a class of his own.’
    ‘Yes – it’s a class of fools and village idiots. The man is a menace.’
    Madeleine Colbeck had achieved her aim of deflecting him away from his regular litany of woes but she had to endure a diatribe against Brunel instead. It went on for a few minutes. Since her husband was unlikely to return that day, she was glad of some company and had long ago learnt to tolerate her father’s impassioned lectures on anything and everything concerning the railway system. He was like a cantankerous old locomotive, pulling into a station and filling it with an ear-splitting hiss of steam. The noise slowly subsided and Andrews’ rage cooled.
    ‘Don’t ask me for details,’ she said, ‘for I have none.’
    ‘You don’t need any, Maddy. I can tell you what happened. If two people vanished on the Old Worse and Worse, it means that they were so horrified by the way that the train shook and rattled that they jumped off in a bid for safety.’ He wagged a finger. ‘You need to make your will before you travel on that line.’
    Madeleine laughed. ‘You will exaggerate.’
    ‘I know what I know.’
    Andrews was a short, wiry man of peppery disposition.Approaching sixty, he was showing signs of age, his back bent, his hair thinning and his fringe beard in the process of turning from grey to white. Madeleine, by