1854 Victorian England and DI Robert Colbeck has been requested to travel from Scotland Yard
to investigate a head found in a hatbox in luggage at the railway
station in Crewe. Colbeck is to take his sergeant, Victor Leeming with
him.
The hatbox leads them to Lord Hendry, but Colbeck is
suspicious of the answers he receives to questions he put to Hendry. He
sends Leeming off to Cambridge to check out the hotel that Hendry
claims to have stayed in. Meantime, Colbeck is off to Ireland, despite
Superintendent Tallis' discomfort.
In Ireland, Colbeck finds out
that the victim was a horse groom with aspirations of being a jockey.
The head was intended as a warning to the owner of a racehorse. Colbeck
surmises that the owners of the three main contenders of the Derby are
being placed in positions so that they will blame each other for
anything that happens.
Colbeck and Leeming continue to put
pressure on the three men in hopes that one will slip up. However,
Colbeck also feels that someone else is influencing the situation. The
problem is, he doesn't know who.
Author Edward Marston throws a lot of action at the reader in the last few pages of this Victorian murder mystery. A good read.
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