"Halloween 1861. A special train with two carriages steams across the Lake District at night on its way to a place notorious for its record of supernatural incidents. Most of those on board have been fortified by alcohol so the mood is boisterous. Lighting inside the carriages is poor and without warning, the lamp goes out in the last compartment of the second carriage, plunging it into darkness. When the special reaches the end of its journey, the...

"When Robert Pomeroy, a young undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, finds a letter slipped under his door in the early hours of a rainy day, he flies into a panic. Hastily readying himself and dashing off a few lines for the porter to summon his friend Nicholas Thorpe, he hurries to the railway station. But he doesn't reach his destination alive. Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming are called upon to investigate this tragedy on the railway....

1866. On a dark, brooding summer's evening, Agnes Lenham seats herself in an empty first-class compartment on the train to Portsmouth. She is joined by a naval officer and a middle-aged man, in high spirits after dining at his club, travelling to his home on the Isle of Wight. His name is Giles Blanchard - and within moments of the train leaving the station, the sailor strangles him... At Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Colbeck and Sergeant Leeming...