'I knew that you'd probably be driving this train,' said Colbeck. 'Madeleine always tells me what your shift patterns are.'

Andrews grinned. 'It feels as if I'm on duty twenty-fours a day.'

'Just like us,' said Leeming gloomily.

'Climb aboard, Sergeant. We're due off in a couple of minutes.'

'Is there any way to reduce the dreadful noise and rattle?'

'Yes,' said Andrews. 'Travel by coach.'

'At a conservative estimate,' observed Colbeck, 'it would take us all of sixteen hours to get to Crewe by coach. The train will get us there in just over four hours.'

'Four hours of complete misery,' Leeming groaned.

'You'll learn to love the railway one day, Victor.'

Leeming rolled his eyes. He was a stocky man in his thirties, slightly older than the inspector but having none of Colbeck's sharp intelligence or social graces. In contrast to his handsome superior, the sergeant was also spectacularly ugly with a face that seemed to have been uniquely designed for villainy rather than crime prevention.

'Let's find a carriage, Victor,' advised Colbeck.

'If we must,' sighed Leeming.

'When you catch the person who was travelling with that hatbox,' said Andrews sternly, 'hand him over to us.'

'Why?' asked Colbeck.

The engine driver cackled. 'That severed head had no valid ticket for the journey,' he said. 'We take fare-dodging very seriously.'

On that macabre note, they set off for Crewe.

It was a warm May evening but Reginald Hibbert was still shivering. Since the accident with the hatbox, he had been relieved of his duties and kept in the stationmaster's office. When a local policeman interviewed him, the hapless porter was made to feel obscurely responsible for the fact that a severed head had been travelling by train.