Wimborne, Dorset, 1860. Rebecca Tullidge is trapped in an unhappy marriage and has begun an affair with a railway officer. When she discovers her lover dead on the tracks, local ambitions and private scandal immediately complicate the investigation. Inspector Robert Colbeck and Sergeant Victor Leeming are called in to establish whether the railway merely provided the scene of death or was used deliberately as part of the crime.
The case unfolds while municipal electioneering encourages prominent townsmen to demand a quick solution. Colbeck must separate political pressure from evidence and reconstruct the victim's movements through the railway network, all while knowing that his own wife is close to giving birth. The mystery uses timetables, local rivalries and the social consequences of adultery to turn one death into a test of motive as well as method.
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