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    Meet The Madisons
    Meet The Madisons
    Meet The Madisons
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    Meet The Madisons

    By S.D. Gripton and Sally Dillon-Snape

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    About this ebook

    A wife is murdered - the husbands leaps in front of a train. Murder/Suicide. An open and shut case for the police. But not for Jeffrey Madison. He believes it was something else - he believes it is a double murder. And he should know. For he is an unemployed ex-Railway Signalman with no experience in detection or crime-solving. His wife though, she is different. She is a Forensic Pathologist and she agrees with the police. Everybody thinks Jeffrey Madison is mad but he is so insistent that his wife listens and between the two of them they convince the real police that something else may have happened. Nobody thinks Jeffrey is mad any longer. A crime novel with a beginning/a middle/an end - and all in less than 30000 words. It is a book for people who don't like reading very much. Another innovation from the crazy mind of S.D. Gripton.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherS.D. Gripton
    Release dateOct 12, 2020
    ISBN9781005715175
    Meet The Madisons
    Author

    S.D. Gripton

    S.D. Gripton novels and real crime books are written by Dennis Snape, who is married to Sally who originate from North Wales and Manchester respectively and who met 18 years ago. I work very hard to make a reading experience a good one, with good plots and earthy language. I enjoy writing and hope readers enjoy what I have written. I thank everyone who has ever looked at at one of my books.

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      Book preview

      Meet The Madisons - S.D. Gripton

      Meet The Madisons

      An English Country Crime Mystery

      By

      S.D. Gripton & Sally Dillon-Snape

      © Sally Dillon-Snape & Dennis Snape (2023)

      The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with The Copyright Act 1988

      All characters and events in this publication other than those of fact and historical significance available in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living and dead is purely coincidental

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher

      Cover by Snape

      ***

      Chapter 1

      It was a mean November night.

      It was dark and starless; the wind was high, blowing at over thirty miles-per-hour, with freezing drizzle being driven ahead of it. Jeff Madison, Relief Signalman, was stamping his feet and swinging his arms though he was dressed warmly in his orange, watertight uniform and boots, baseball cap and gloves.

      He was ticket-working; that was when there was a problem on one railway line, like a cracked rail or a de-railed train, which was the problem on this dark night, and trains have to work the wrong way along the opposite line. Jeff had been summoned from the warmth of his bed, and the comfort of the embrace of his gorgeous wife to attend to the working. He had been called at 1:30 a.m.; it was now 3:00 a.m. and he was still standing at a signal with five members of a Track Team who were responsible for working points and he held a radio in his right hand with which to communicate with another Signalman who was standing in the same awful weather at another signal some three miles down the line.

      The job was relatively easy in its operation but the odds of a catastrophe were high. Problems had been caused on past occasions with loss of concentration, especially with trains working in the right direction. Imagine, if you can, the Signalman working signals in the right direction setting a route while one was moving in the opposite direction under Ticket instruction from Jeff Madison.

      Both trains moving in opposite directions on the same line.

      Bang!

      The nightmare of the Railway Signalman. One of the very few jobs where a person could go to work and before the end of his shift be in jail awaiting trial for manslaughter; it had happened, probably more than it should. Concentration was all, where a Signalman was concerned, there were no second chances.

      Jeff had a train standing at the signal he manned, the driver waiting patiently to move it along the line in the wrong direction; he was only awaiting confirmation from the Track Team that the points had been set in the appropriate direction…when the first stab of pain hurtled through his head from his left ear. As he lifted his hand to his ear, so he crashed backwards onto the bank. When he attempted to stand, he rocked and spun left and right, like a sailor on a ship in rough weather, and he was suddenly very sick indeed, turning back towards the banking to vomit. Everything spun around him. His world whirled as he fell to the left again and one of the Track Team grabbed him in a firm grip.

      ‘Are you all right, Jeff?" he asked.

      ‘I don’t know, Jackie,’ Jeffrey answered as he turned towards the banking and vomited again.

      ‘You’re not well, mate, are you?" Jackie Melrose asked again.

      ‘I don’t think I am,’ Jeffrey answered.

      Using the radio that had been dropped by the reeling Jeff Madison, Jackie Melrose called the Signalman standing at the other signal and explained the circumstances of Jeff’s illness. All movements in the wrong direction were halted, an Operations’ Manager was called for and arrived, only to discover Jeff Madison sitting on cold ballast with his head down, the only position he could take where he was neither vomiting nor falling over.

      Just over one hour later, Jeff was lying on a hospital bed where he was diagnosed to be suffering from Meniere’s disease, a severe ear infection. Six months later, he would be suffering from tinnitus, the continual ringing of the ear. He ‘d lost some hearing in the same ear which first gave the indication of illness, and his Railway career as a signalman was effectively over.

      ***

      Dr. Jeanetta Madison was sitting at a table in a hospital dining area with her pretty dark-haired friend Susie Watkins, a 35-year-old Senior Nurse who had met Jeanetta years earlier, during a Doctors and Nurses keep-fit session, and with whom she now shared an interest in the hospital choir. They were enjoying coffees and Danish delights and each was speaking about their own woes, rather than the hospital’s, attempting to keep the conversation as light as possible.

      ‘Ben; how is he these days?" Jeanetta enquired about Susie’s current boyfriend, as she sipped on her large coffee.

      Susie shrugged her slim shoulders and shook her head.

      ‘I have asked him to move out. I just can’t put up with it any longer. He follows me around the house all the time turning lights off, closing doors and moaning about how tired he is when he hasn’t worked for years. A nervous disposition he tells everyone; bloody idleness if you ask me. He insists on turning the heat off in rooms not being used, not turning it down but turning it off; half the house is freezing; he turns the heating off in the bedroom before we go to bed and closes the window when even you know I like one to be open. I can’t sleep properly for feeling constrained, trapped. I need a window open but he won’t listen.’

      ‘And how many years has it taken you to discover these facts?’ Jeanetta asked. ‘That Ben won’t listen, that he’s quite odd, and isn’t that something I’ve been saying for ages?’

      ‘Yeah, all right, Doctor, don’t preach. But we’ve lived together for two years, and in the beginning, it was fine; I worked, he didn’t; but when I arrived home it was to a cooked meal, the cleaning done, the washing and ironing all done, it was like having a live-in domestic. But, and I know I’ve told you this before, I love cooking, but I am no longer allowed to cook, he won’t let me do it. He cooks all the meals in pans he never washes saying it adds to the taste, he knows that to be a fact he says because he is the better cook, but you’ve eaten enough times at ours and what do you think?’

      ‘I am reserving my judgment for the trial judge,’ Jeanetta said with a laugh, Susie smiling and shaking her head again.

      ‘That’s right; his cooking is terrible, and when he does it the kitchen smells like a rancid chip shop, so the only decent meals I’m getting are here at the canteen. And the car, have I mentioned the car.’

      ‘His car?’

      ‘I’ve told you what a heap it is; his car; it cost him over two thousand pounds and when he purchased it, it went straight from the seller to the garage where it sat for two months while they fixed it. It came out of the garage to a great fanfare and within another two months it was back again, where it stood for a further four months. Now he won’t drive it; he says it isn’t safe and it stands on my drive rusting away and he wants to drive mine all the time, but he drinks, he goes to football matches and drinks, he sees his mates and drinks. and if he gets pulled over and breathalysed it will my insurance payments that will rise astronomically. I’d never be able to get to work. I told him he couldn’t drive it any longer and he went wild, screaming and shouting at me, banging doors and storming off. I genuinely thought he was going to hit me, which would have finished it immediately. I asked him to make an appointment to see a doctor, to see someone, anyone, to explain his obsessive behaviour but he doesn’t seem to think there is anything wrong with him. Anyway, he’s on his way out. But that’s enough about me and my problems; what about you and the lovely Jeffrey?’

      Jeanetta sighed loudly before sipping more coffee and nibbling on her Danish.

      ‘Oh, Susie, I have no idea what the future holds but there is no way I want him to develop into another Ben. Sorry to have such a low opinion of him, but you know it isn’t a new opinion. It’s only a month since Jeff was made sick-redundant by the Railway and so far, he seems all right; he keeps busy, he jogs every day, he plays squash with Bryn but Bryn is a busy man and he’s making time for Jeff. He has his balance back and the tinnitus is a lot better but it was so severe for such a long time that it finished him. He couldn’t be a Signalman any longer

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