The Tragedy on the London and Mid-Northern

The express is easing into Manningford when the porters see that the man leaning from the first-class window has not moved, and that the white door panels have gone a colour they should never be. He travelled alone. The guard locked the compartment himself at the London terminus, at the passenger's request, and the inspector took his ticket at Bridgeworth, ten miles back. The railway's men call it plain as daylight: four bridges stand between those stations, and one must have caught his head.

Thorpe Hazell reads the account over boiled rice and lemonade, decides it will not do, and catches the next train down, after ten minutes of dumb-bell exercise. The inquest sits tomorrow. Fiction's first railway detective, he knows the line better than the men who run it.