Fatal Connections

Author(s): David J Boulton

Location(s): The Peak District

Genre(s): Crime

Era(s): Victorian

Synopsis. Fatal Connections

This compelling Victorian murder mystery is set against a background of the railways, quarries, canals and towns of the rugged Peak district. The story opens with a fatal rail accident in 1875.
In the mayhem of the accident Sam Spray an intelligent and honest sergeant in the Railway Constabulary, who is close by investigating a separate matter, recognises that one of the corpses has been murdered. He and his senior officer, the unimaginative but bluff and genial Superintendent Charles Wayland, persuade an unwilling Coroner, Jonah Walters, to accept that a crime has been committed. Spray establishes the identity of the victim as Arthur Oldroyd, brother law to his landlady, Lizzie Oldroyd. Spray, a reserved and self contained man, inexperienced in love, is disturbed by the passion she induces in him. Despite his reserve he is self confident, capable, humane and brave.
A discussion between a dishonest lawyer, Nathaniel Jones, and a ne’er do well, Edward Markham reveals, to the reader, a conspiracy to murder Albert Oldroyd.
Spray and his assistant, the intelligent, resourceful and emotionally more sophisticated Constable Archer, look for information about Oldroyd’s life. Spray uncovers a connection with the C&HPR (Cromford & High Peak Railway) where the original criminal investigation started. His rather prim personality has some difficulty coping with Oldroyd’s active homosexuality. Spray clandestinely enters Oldroyd’s office and discovers that he is involved in the original investigation which concerns the theft and resale of minerals from the quarries of the Peak District. A set of four numbered lithographs are an important thread throughout the story and the first makes an unobtrusive appearance at this point.
Meanwhile Archer, using a distinctive hat found not far from the corpse, establishes that Markham had stayed at Lizzie Oldroyd’s lodging house and was seen in the area around the presumed time of Oldroyd’s death. It seems likely that Oldroyd was lured by Markham to the wharf yard of the C&HPR and murdered there.
Markham, now the prime suspect is traced to his home town of Blackpool. Wayland, accompanied by Spray, persuades the local constabulary to mount a search. This proves fruitless but whilst in Blackpool Spray finds a lead to Markham. Pursuit of this alerts Markham and he escapes by secretly boarding a departing goods train. Unaware of its destination and with gin as sustenance he drinks his way through the journey. It terminates in Whaley Bridge where the murder took place. The next day Markham leaves the wagon and, finding his way to the centre of town, realises where he is. Weak, hung over and frightened he goes to the only place he knows, his previous lodgings.
With the investigation still ongoing Spray and Archer stay in Whaley Bridge over Christmas and attend, at Lizzie’s invitation, a family party where she and Spray begin to recognise their mutual attraction. When Lizzie returns home she finds Markham there. Spray arrives minutes later and she inadvertently exposes him as a policeman. In desperation, Markham takes a knife to Lizzie’s throat. With a cool intelligence that belies her well concealed passionate nature she persuades him to give himself up.
Markham claims to have found Oldroyd dead at the hand of another man and forced at gunpoint, assisted in transferring his body, on the back of a horse, to the remote spot where it was found. As he drags the body toward a line side shed the horse is spooked by an owl and rears, knocking the other man over, enabling Markham to escape.
The pathologist reports that Oldroyd died in a priapic state. He gives Spray a key found in the dead man’s clothing. Spray attempts to persuade a sceptical Wayland that Markham is telling the truth, citing the difficulty of one man loading and securing a dead body on the back of a carthorse and the improbability of a heterosexual man sexually arousing Oldroyd before murdering him.
News of a further, similar murder in Cromford arrives as the discussion is underway. The impossibility of Markham, now in custody, of committing it persuades Wayland that the murder hunt should continue.
During Markham’s interrogation he admits to the conspiracy with Jones who is interviewed again; though denying the allegation he lets slip that Oldroyd was in a relationship with a man named Jarvis Tarp. Spray had come across Jarvis and his father Fitzroy in his quest for information about Oldroyd’s connection with the C&HPR. A maid, Tilly Mutton, recounts Oldroyd’s frequent night time visits to the Tarp house. Another lithograph is found at Spray’s digs, property of the victim’s late brother, Albert, husband of Lizzie. A third appears at the premises of bankers Arbuthnot and Stein, (Managing Partner J. Tarp), visited by Spray as he returns from Blackpool.
Archer and Wayland investigate Tarp’s brief military career and find it had been blighted by violence and sexual indiscretion. At the murder scene Spray realises the victim, Stan Bardell, had been an Oldroyd associate in the mineral scam. Tilly reappears, saying she saw Tarp and Bardell together on the night of the second murder; Tarp disappears, and becomes a suspect. Motive is unclear, but probably comes from one of two strands in Oldroyd’s life, the theft and disposal of minerals or his equally illegal sexual liaisons.
Spay revisits Oldroyd’s office and with the key acquired from the pathologist opens a safe containing letters confirming Oldroyd’s relationship with Tarp and Tarp’s distress at its termination. Spray also finds information about a relationship between the late Albert Oldroyd and a Gerald Arbuthnot together with an address for Gerald.
Tarp and Arbuthnot turn out to be cousins and Tarp has bullied Arbuthnot into helping him escape. The fourth lithograph is found at Arbuthnot’s house, confirming a connection between the Oldroyd brothers and the cousins. With information from Arbuthnot, Tarp is traced to Whaley Bridge. Spray concludes that Tarp is intent on a further murder.
He considers Lizzie to be at risk and whilst securing her safety discovers that she has inherited Oldroyd’s ill gotten wealth. His passionately felt but barely expressed attraction for her is abandoned with a heavy heart in the face of the tarnished money. Almost immediately he and Archer discover Tarp, who is captured after Spray careers downhill on an out of control wagon into the wharf yard, helped by the quick thinking of a railwayman. By then Tarp has murdered another of Oldroyd’s associates, Obadiah Riggott.
Under questioning it emerges that Tarp murdered because of his refusal to accept the loss of his lover and the mistaken belief that Oldroyd was involved sexually with Bardell and Riggott.
Lizzie understands Spray’s reservation about the money and takes steps to dispose of it charitably, thereby offering the possibility of reconciliation.

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