Timetable of Death by Edward Marston
1859. St Mary’s Church, Spondon. A little girl playing hide-and-seek jumps into a freshly-dug grave to find a dead man already occupying it. It is the body of Cedric Norton, a senior director of the Midland Railway.
In the twelfth novel in the Railway Detective series, Colbeck and Leeming go to Derby to solve the murder of the man tipped to become the next Chairman of the Midland Railway. They meet resistance from the local police and all manner of serious problems, not least the reluctance of the family of the deceased to provide information. Matters are not helped when Superintendent Tallis turns up to keep an eye on them.
The investigation takes them all over the county but it is only when Colbeck’s wife, Madeleine, is involved that they make real headway. Appropriately, when Colbeck has a guided tour of the Derby Works, he unearths a vital clue that helps him, in due course, to identify the villains.
