Timetable of Death

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This is a work of fiction and I have had to bend certain facts to make them fit into the narrative. I had to create a vacancy for the post of chairman of the Midland Railway and take a few liberties with the publication of the Derby Mercury and with the policing arrangements in Spondon in 1859. At the time, St Werburgh’s church was known as St Mary’s. It was rededicated to St Werburgh in the early 1890s. When I visited the church, a wedding was taking place. By contrast, the novel begins with a funeral. The murder of Enoch Stone in 1856 was an actual event. The case remains unsolved.

Spondon, 1859

Perched on the top of a hill, the parish church of St Mary looked down on the people of Spondon with the fond and caring eye of a doting parent. When it was built at the end of the fourteenth century it had been an imposing Gothic structure that seemed too large and grandiose for a small Derbyshire village and, even though it now served a parish of over fifteen hundred souls, its pre-eminence, architecturally and spiritually, remained. Among its multiple functions, it was the social centre of the village, the place where the faithful gathered every Sunday in their best attire to mingle with their friends and neighbours, to exchange news, to share confidences and to develop stronger bonds.

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