I did not trouble to point out that his dots must then represent every single pit. “You are pinpointing the coalfields and the railways, rather than agriculture?”

“Indeed.”

“What connection might there be between the 1926 strike and a body found on the rhubarb train three years on?”

“Who was at the heart of the General Strike, Mrs. Shackleton?”

“The miners held out longest.”

“Quite so! Railway workers and miners tried to hold the country to ransom. They failed in their attempt at revolution.”

“Revolution?”

“The threat never goes away.”

It occurred to me that if miners committed murder, they would be capable of making sure the body would never be been found. Railway workers would not put a body on a train. “Do you believe that disposing of the body in such a public way was deliberate, some kind of warning? If so, who was being warned by whom?”

“I am privy to intelligence the public will never be troubled with. Often that information is partial. The defeat of the General Strike was the end of a battle. It would suit foreign powers to foment unrest.”

“You think the man on the train may have been a secret agent, murdered for money, or assassinated?”

Mr. Woodhead frowned. His nose twitched disapproval. I had set off in the race before waiting for the starting pistol. “That is one line of enquiry. It does not help that in the aftermath of the strike, police are perceived as the enemy. We can expect no cooperation.”

This did not surprise me. Miners and their families had been starved into submission.

But rhubarb growers?

He waited for my response.

Did he imagine I might wave a dowser’s wand across his map and the tip of my wand would touch the place where some deadly deed originated? “Are there other lines of enquiry?”

“We hope that is what you will uncover. Who knew he was coming, and why.”

“The carriage where the body was found, do we know which growers’ produce it contained?” Of course, as I spoke, I realised that a guilty party would be unlikely to put a body in the same compartment as their own rhubarb.

“DC Yeats will give you details. All the growers have been questioned. That might be a waste of your valuable time.”

“What about the murder weapon?”

“It’s thought to be a .25 calibre handgun.”

DC Yeats folded the map and slid it into a folder.

I took the folder. “There isn’t a great deal to go on.”

“I think you might find a way, Mrs. Shackleton, if you agree. We are still following normal enquiry procedures, albeit with reduced resources. New lines of enquiry will emerge.”

“I’ll need a list of growers whose produce was on that train, and of all who have used the train this year.” It seemed to me more likely that a grower who was not loading produce that night might have risked disposing of a body.

Sykes would be good at questioning the growers. He might discover something that the police had missed.