A Quiet Death (An Inspector Faro Mystery No.5) Page 17

  'How did you feel when you heard that Charlie McGowan was dead?' Faro asked coldly.

  'That was an accident, Wilfred told me.'

  'And you believed him. What about Polly?'

  'I thought she had committed suicide, because of Charlie. Perhaps she was in the family way.'

  She saw by Faro's expression that he didn't believe that either. 'You're very clever, Inspector. But how did you guess all this?'

  'I assure you I did not guess. Those are not my methods at all,' said Faro sternly. 'I observed and deduced and came to what I am far from happy to realise was the right one. The only conclusion I could make in the sorry mess you have made of your life.'

  With a grim smile, he added: 'But you very nearly got away with it. I was completely baffled. Oh, I had clues all right but nothing that fitted or made sense. You have your Uncle Willie to thank that you were found out.'

  'Uncle Willie? How on earth did he know?'

  'He didn't. But if we hadn't been invited to his performance at Holyrood the other evening—'

  'I don't see what—'

  'Of course you don't. But when I saw the magician's trick with the girl who apparently dived into the flaming tank and then saw her resurrected, unscathed, back on the trapeze, I realised that two girls were involved. That was the piece that had been missing all along from my calculation. Once it was in place, I knew exactly how Rachel's death had been stage-managed.'

  As they watched her led away, she turned to Faro a last time:

  'Will Uncle Willie and Aunty Jean be involved?' she asked anxiously. They have been so good to me. Like parents. I wouldn't want them to be hurt.'

  'I'll do my best.'

  Afterwards Vince said to him. 'Do you know, Stepfather, I think she was lying. That she knew he intended to kill Rachel but was prepared to look the other way. Her story is fairly thin in parts.'

  'I dare say we will have it all in detail before the trial is out.'

  'There must be some good in her. I mean, she was worried about the McGonagalls, about a scandal for them.'

  Faro suppressed a smile. 'Scandals never hurt an actor, lad, they thrive on it. Sensational news will simply add lustre to his notoriety. And notoriety is something always to be welcomed. Only being totally ignored can damage an actor like William McGonagall.'

  EPILOGUE

  The Deanes are fictitious but the tragic consequences to be paid for dubious dealings concerning the Tay Bridge is a true story.

  Sunday 28 December 1879 dawned unseasonably mild but with an unnatural stillness which amateur astronomers put down to the brief eclipse of the moon due just before sunset. At 4 p.m. it began to rain heavily and retired admirals and sea-captains who resided in handsome villas on both sides of the Tay disgustedly laid telescopes aside.

  Barometers were consulted and the sudden fall noted while in leafy avenues and parks, gardens were crushed as if a giant foot had stepped upon them and great trees bent under the weight of the rain.

  By 5 p.m. the east wind had increased to gale force. As the first roof slates and chimneys crashed to the ground those about to depart for evening service had second thoughts. Rattling windows and sounds of broken glass as conservatories were demolished recalled uneasy memories of the gale twenty years earlier. It had flattened entire forests and whisked out of the earth ancient trees of enormous proportions.

  In Edinburgh, although the weather had worsened considerably, the 4.15 'Edinburgh Express' left Waverley Station on time, reaching Granton twenty minutes later. After a particularly ferocious voyage across the Firth of Forth the passengers reached Burntisland where Engine 224 prepared to leave at 5.20. Relatively new, built in 1871, it pulled four five-compartmented carriages. One first class, one second and three third. Last of all came the luggage van.

  The description of 'The Edinburgh' as an express was optimistic since it stopped at every station. However the increasing gale did not slow down its leisurely progress across Fife.

  Meanwhile Dundee's Tay Bridge Station was in the full grip of the storm. There was consternation as the wind roaring through the tunnel had burst out with a violent explosion, carrying away part of the handsome glass roof and leaving a trail of destruction. A similar tale was being reported from Dundee's main streets, littered with plate-glass windows blown out of shops, while the normal Sabbath quiet of the suburbs was shattered by a crescendo of flying chimney pots, tiles and uprooted trees.

  At 5.50 the local Newport train crossed the Tay Bridge. Carriages rocked alarmingly from side to side and seemed to lean over in the full blast of the storm. The sparks which flew from the wheels convinced the terrified passengers that the train was on fire. The guard assured them that this sparking effect was quite common in such weather, caused by the wind pushing carriages so that the flanges of the wheels ground against the guard rail.

  With sighs of relief from passengers and railwaymen alike the train safely reached the shelter of the now shattered Tay Bridge Station. The happy ending of one story was the prelude to tragedy, for the passing of the 5.50 had pushed the bridge to the very limits of its endurance.

  In the words of one observer there was 'a continuous roar punctuated at intervals by ferocious blasts' as the gale hurled itself upon the bridge. It tore and relaxed its grip momentarily, tore and relaxed again, a gruesome tug o'war over the iron girders and the battered, besieged columns.

  At 7.13 the 5.20 from Burntisland rushed towards the bridge. The gale pounced upon it, roaring like some savage animal devouring its helpless prey. The train see-sawed dangerously, trembling and the high girders hung by a thread.

  In Tay Bridge Station, a few intending passengers and railwaymen paced the platform impatiently. The Edinburgh Express had been signalled as it entered the bridge. It was now 7.23 and something was amiss. The telegraph was dead. The signalbox was over the Esplanade and a signalman rushed to meet them. Yes, there were still signal lights on the south end of the bridge where the train had entered. Perhaps it had stopped for some unknown reason but the telegraph lines were down.

  They ran back towards the station where two men said they had seen fire falling from the bridge at about 7.15. Another had seen great spumes of water rising from the river at about the same time. Two railwaymen set off to walk the bridge.

  At 9 p.m. the training ship Mars, which had been anchored near the bridge approached. A wave of expectation, a whisper of 'survivors' rippled through the now large crowd.

  A few bewildered crewmen came ashore. The deck watch had seen the train on the bridge, had observed its lights entering the high girders. His attention distracted momentarily by the storm, when he looked again, the moving lights strung out in a line had vanished and there was apparently a long break in the bridge's outline.

  The Newport ferry arrived. It had been grounded since 6 p.m. by low tide. Here was the first link with the south shore and the possibility of survivors but because of the storm and difficult currents, the ferry had been unable to get anywhere near the bridge.

  Mailbags had been washed up at Broughty Ferry, plus reports of debris along the shore all the way from Ladybank to Monifieth.

  Provost Brownlie shook his head. 'I'm afraid the bridge is down then; no doubt about it. And the train's gone too.'

  Dundee newspapers were already setting up tomorrow's headlines: Terrific Hurricane— Appalling Catastrophe—Tay Bridge Down—Passenger Train Hurled into River—supposed loss of 200 lives—'

  The scene at Tay Bridge Station tonight is simply appalling. Many thousands of persons are congregated around the building, and strong men and women are wringing their hands in despair...'

  As newspaper reports go, this was a restrained piece of journalism.

  On Monday 29 December the sun rose at 8.47 a.m. Slowly the bridge began to take shape, a giant monster unbending from sleep and a great sigh arose from watchers lining the shore from Broughty Ferry to Magdalen Green. All night long, praying that rumour lied, they had awaited this moment and the irrefutable evidence of
their own eyes.

  Now the cruel morning light revealed the central piers, 'like columns of some majestic ruin of antiquity', all that remained of the high girders.

  The Queen had sent a message. 'Inexpressibly shocked we feel most deeply for the two hundred passengers and all those who have lost friends and relatives in this terrible accident.'

  The agent, who had checked tickets at the last station before the bridge, arrived. He clutched fifty-seven tickets, told of two season tickets and perhaps a dozen more passengers travelling past Dundee, seventy-five dead was substituted for the estimated number who travelled regularly by that same train on weekdays.

  The news flashed across the nation by electric telegraph and swamped headlines on the Afghan war and the storming of Sherpur. It brought to readers everywhere a chilly sense of national betrayal and disbelief that Imperial Britain who ruled the waves and half the civilised world—with pretensions towards the other half—and could build anything better than any other nation, had been caught out.

  The desks of harassed editors were littered with indignant letters: how could Britain be let down in the eyes of the world by a bridge that dared to fall? Other letters from cranks believed it was God's judgement on people who used wheeled transport on the Sabbath.

  And so Hogmanay, the greatest day of celebration and inebriation in the Scottish calendar became just Wednesday 31 December, on which divers discovered the train. It had plummeted down with the girders, like a bird trapped in a cage. The engine's throttle was still open, the brakes unapplied, proof positive that the train had just entered the high girders when they fell. Any bodies would have been washed away towards the sand flats and five pounds reward was offered by the Council for every body recovered. Search parties patrolled night and day, their torches eerily pricking the darkness with pinpoints of light while whalers, superstitious to a man, shook their heads. Seven days must pass after a drowning before the river god would release his victims for Christian burial, on the eighth day.

  The body of one victim, Ann Cruickshank was recovered. A maid from Kilmaron, unimportant and obscure in life, at her funeral with every honour, Dundee buried all seventy-five of the Tay Bridge disaster victims.

  A Court of Inquiry decided that the bridge had been badly designed, badly constructed with shoddy materials and maintained with shoddy workmanship. Twenty men had died in its building and seventy-five men, women and children in its fall. The first contractor died before his contract could be taken up, the second went insane and died.

  The disaster fund had raised two thousand pounds, with a generous £250 from Sir Thomas Bouch. His bridge with its unlucky thirteen girders had got him a knighthood and brought death and disaster to Dundee. Elected scapegoat, it was with some satisfaction that the citizens learned the design of the Forth Bridge in Edinburgh was to be taken away from him, pending enquiries and all work upon it was to cease.

  Bouch survived only four months after the report destroyed him. His melancholia advanced into madness and when he died on 1 November the Tay Bridge disaster had claimed its last victim.

  One of the chief characters however had a surprising resurrection. Engine 4-4-0 No 224 was not permitted to end her days a rusting wreck, a constant memento of Dundee's greatest tragedy. She was gathered together, repaired, refitted and put back into service, where she remained for another forty-five years. Not without reason, she was known as 'The Diver'.

  The high girders too were lifted from the river bed. Sold as scrap to a company of locomotive engineers in England and made into railway engines, each bore a small plate recording the origin of its metal. Many continued into the twentieth century.

  The last word must go to William McGonagall, for Inspector Faro was right in his predictions. Long forgotten as a tragedian, dubbed by posterity 'Scotland's Worst Poet', he is remembered for his 'Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay'.

  Good Heavens! The Tay Bridge is blown

  down,

  And a passenger train from Edinburgh,

  Which filled all the people's hearts with

  sorrow,

  And made them to turn pale

  Because none of the passengers was saved to

  tell the tale

  How the disaster happened on the last

  Sabbath day of 1879

  Which will be remembered for a very long

  time.

  It must have been an awful sight

  To witness in the dusky moonlight,

  While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry

  did bray

  Along the Railway Bridge of the Silvery

  Tay,

  I must now conclude my lay

  By telling the world fearlessly, without the

  least dismay,

  That your central girders would not have

  given way,

  At least many sensible men do say,

  Had they been supported on each side with

  buttresses,

  At least many sensible men confesses,

  For the stronger we our houses do build,

  The less chance we have of being killed.

  ###

  There are fifteen titles in the Inspector Faro series available from bookstores and on www.amazon.co.uk. Available on Kindle:

  Enter Second Murderer

  Bloodline

  Deadly Beloved

  Killing Cousins

  A Quiet Death

  To Kill A Queen

  Also available on Kindle in the Rose McQuinn series:

  The Inspector’s Daughter

  Dangerous Pursuits

  An Orkney Murder

  Connect with Alanna online:

  Author's homepage: http://www.alannaknight.com