This young man would go far. “My housekeeper, Mrs. Sugden.”

She would arrange for Sykes to meet me at the station. We could make a start, come up with a plan of action.

While we waited for the taxi that would take us to The Savoy, my curiosity got the better of me. “Mr. Yeats, you’re young and new to the force I think.”

“I was at Exmouth a year before coming here.”

“How did you come to be assisting Mr. Woodhead?”

His expression was at once both bashful and droll, like the romantic but bumbling hero in an amateur play. “Oh he asked for me, after something came up in the briefing.”

I gave him an enquiring look, but he was a man who waited for a prompt. “Go on then. Let me in on it.”

He cleared his throat. “I happened to know a bit about what was in the sack, which had held potatoes. There were two spuds still in there. I identified the variety.”

“Which was?”

“Arran Victory.”

This is a shocking admission, but when he named the potato, we laughed, like giddy schoolchildren. It must have been a reaction against the distress of seeing that unfortunate man. All the same, I felt bad about laughing, and so did he. Our taxi came into view.

“We’ll make it up to the poor man. We’ll find out who did this to him.”

Chapter Three

As it happened, Annette Kerner had other plans than afternoon tea with a sister sleuth. She had left a note for me at The Savoy reception.

Kate, m’dear, Fiddlesticks to cream tea. Will you dine with me and a couple of embassy chums? Later, we’ll be at the tables. I feel sure you’ll have a newcomer’s lucky streak. Annette.

It was tempting, but work came first. I wrote a friendly refusal to the suggestion that I gamble away my Scotland Yard fee before earning it.

DC Yeats and I took a table by the window in the Thames Foyer, sufficiently far from the American jazz band so as to hear each other but not be overheard.

He opened his attaché case. “I have some documents for you.”

There was a copy of the map we had looked at earlier, additional copies of the watercolour of our unknown man, and a carbon copy of a closely typed sheet, noting the investigation to date, and listing the rhubarb growers.

In chirpy mood, the band played “Me and My Shadow”.

DC Yeats lit a cigarette.

As might be expected in an investigation involving the railway, timings were meticulously noted. The rhubarb was booked in between 3.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m., with a clerk and one porter on duty.

“And no one noticed the sack?”

“No. The sidings are extensive and there’s a small workforce at Ardsley, a clerk and a guard. They saw nothing unusual.

That might be true, or not. Word of a body on the train would spread quickly between stations. By the time railway police asked questions in the north, amnesia would reign. No railway worker would want to risk coming under suspicion, any more than they would want to lose time off work by attending an inquest.