This is the Railway Detective's puzzling new case. An exquisitely designed silver coffee-pot in the shape of a locomotive is on its way to Cardiff in the care of the young, talented silversmith, Hugh Kellow. It has been commissioned by wealthy ironmaster Clifford Tomkins for his acquisitive wife, who wants it to be the envy of all her friends - and enemies. But the coffee-pot is stolen. When a gruesome murder is committed at the Railway Hotel, Winifred...

Summer, 1858. Young Imogen Burnhope and her maid Rhoda board a non-stop train to Oxford to visit Imogen's Aunt Cassandra, who waits at the terminus to greet them. All the passengers alight at Oxford, but the two women are nowhere to be seen. When he learns his daughter is missing, Sir Marcus Burnhope contacts Scotland Yard for help and Inspector Colbeck is assigned to the case.

On the shocking discovery of a passenger's body on the Great Western Railway excursion train, Detective Inspector Robert Colbeck and his assistant, Sergeant Victor Leeming, are dispatched to the scene. Faced with what initially appears to be a motiveless murder, Colbeck is intrigued by the murder weapon --a noose.