Nothing beats a good murder - at least in fiction. I have spent many a contented hour reading Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Raymond Chandler and, more recently, Anthony Horowitz. I have learnt that a key rule in police investigations of murder is that the first suspect is the last known person who admits to seeing the victim alive. I was such a suspect back in the 1970s, although I was unaware of the fact at the time.
This all began one afternoon after I had visited the University of Warwick to meet a former student colleague who was by then beginning a career that would eventually lead him to become Professor of Politics. This must have been in Winter, because I remember it was dark by the time I returned to the railway station in Coventry. While I was waiting for the express train to Birmingham, I went into the waiting room on the platform. This was quite full, and I remember one man of indeterminate age who sat with glasses and a trilby hat on his head looking straight ahead. The man radiated misery, and I remember thinking “He’s a miserable old bugger”. The train arrived and I got on a half-empty compartment. After the train had reached top speed, I saw the face of the miserable man looking through the window in the door to the vestibule at the end of the carriage. About five minutes later, I decided to go to the toilet, which I assumed would be in the same vestibule. Instead I found no toilet and the carriage door wide open. I rushed into the next carriage and asked if anyone had seen the man with a trilby hat return, but no-one had. I warned them of the open door and then ran up the train to the café to tell the train staff. They told me there was no point in stopping the train because it would reach Birmingham New Street station in less than ten minutes. The guard went to the open door to warn passengers. The train arrived in Birmingham New Street and was met by British Transport Police, who took my name and address and my account of what had happened.
After that, there were two events, although I can not remember in which order they took place. But the police visit may have happened first. I was staying with my parents at the time, and a one day a police detective called. I remember he was an avuncular man with a moustache who interviewed me carefully about what I had seen. It was only later that it occurred to me that he had interviewed me as a possible suspect, although I was not cautioned. After a while, he became less formal and told me about the deceased. The man with a hat had been a retired railwayman who had put his savings into running a shop with his wife. This was now near bankruptcy. Before retirement, he had worked on the line between Coventry and Birmingham New Street and sometimes took nostalgic trips between these stations. In those days, there was no central locking of carriage doors. Instead, passengers could open the door by pulling down the window, reaching outside and turning the door handle. It was therefore hard to open a door of this kind by mistake, and this all to me suggested suicide. Either way, death had been instantaneous. He had left a train travelling at about 100mph and smashed his head on the opposite track.
The inquest was held in the coroner’s court, which was also attended by the deceased’s widow, brother and other family-members. I reported what I had seen, and then the brother asked me angrily why I had not pulled the communication cord, inferring that this would somehow have saved the life of the deceased. Strange are the ways of anger (and possibly guilt). The coroner intervened to protect me from such hostile questions. The jury returned an open verdict, which is often used in England when suicide is suspected but not proven.
Some years later, I read that there had been some fatalities on the railways attributed to faulty carriage doors or doors not properly closed when the train left the station.
This all began one afternoon after I had visited the University of Warwick to meet a former student colleague who was by then beginning a career that would eventually lead him to become Professor of Politics. This must have been in Winter, because I remember it was dark by the time I returned to the railway station in Coventry. While I was waiting for the express train to Birmingham, I went into the waiting room on the platform. This was quite full, and I remember one man of indeterminate age who sat with glasses and a trilby hat on his head looking straight ahead. The man radiated misery, and I remember thinking “He’s a miserable old bugger”. The train arrived and I got on a half-empty compartment. After the train had reached top speed, I saw the face of the miserable man looking through the window in the door to the vestibule at the end of the carriage. About five minutes later, I decided to go to the toilet, which I assumed would be in the same vestibule. Instead I found no toilet and the carriage door wide open. I rushed into the next carriage and asked if anyone had seen the man with a trilby hat return, but no-one had. I warned them of the open door and then ran up the train to the café to tell the train staff. They told me there was no point in stopping the train because it would reach Birmingham New Street station in less than ten minutes. The guard went to the open door to warn passengers. The train arrived in Birmingham New Street and was met by British Transport Police, who took my name and address and my account of what had happened.
After that, there were two events, although I can not remember in which order they took place. But the police visit may have happened first. I was staying with my parents at the time, and a one day a police detective called. I remember he was an avuncular man with a moustache who interviewed me carefully about what I had seen. It was only later that it occurred to me that he had interviewed me as a possible suspect, although I was not cautioned. After a while, he became less formal and told me about the deceased. The man with a hat had been a retired railwayman who had put his savings into running a shop with his wife. This was now near bankruptcy. Before retirement, he had worked on the line between Coventry and Birmingham New Street and sometimes took nostalgic trips between these stations. In those days, there was no central locking of carriage doors. Instead, passengers could open the door by pulling down the window, reaching outside and turning the door handle. It was therefore hard to open a door of this kind by mistake, and this all to me suggested suicide. Either way, death had been instantaneous. He had left a train travelling at about 100mph and smashed his head on the opposite track.
The inquest was held in the coroner’s court, which was also attended by the deceased’s widow, brother and other family-members. I reported what I had seen, and then the brother asked me angrily why I had not pulled the communication cord, inferring that this would somehow have saved the life of the deceased. Strange are the ways of anger (and possibly guilt). The coroner intervened to protect me from such hostile questions. The jury returned an open verdict, which is often used in England when suicide is suspected but not proven.
Some years later, I read that there had been some fatalities on the railways attributed to faulty carriage doors or doors not properly closed when the train left the station.
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