Chapter 33
NIGHT. OCTOBER 31st, 1888
THE SPEEDING TRAIN ROCKETED THROUGH the station, much too quickly for Collingwood to read the name on the dimly lit platform signboard. A sudden lurching fear, irrational and illogical, that the train would drive on past St Margaret’s without stopping, that the train would not stop until it reached the far distant foam-wracked shores of Cornwall and so too late to prevent the vile atrocity about to be perpetrated on the body of his only daughter. This bright -bursting fear arced through his panicked brain, a bilious spasm searing his wrought stomach like acid.
‘Are we on the right train?’ he asked in sudden panic.
Yes sir, the 9.35.’
‘Stopping at St. Margaret’s?’ ’
You are certain of that?’
‘Yes sir,’ responded Flanagan, calmly, well aware of the
