Stephen Done

The Signalman's Daughter : 11 Stephen Done

The Signalman's DaughterWhining its way into steam's Indian summer comes The Difference Engine, a gas turbine locomotive flashily showing the future of rail transport in 1956. But it's the past this gleaming white machine stirs up; tearing lives asunder as it thunders through sleepy middle England, its heat haze distorting what appeared to be reality. Not least for Laura Green, the signalman's daughter, who has proudly followed in her beloved father's footsteps.

And just as The Difference Engine proves not to be the paragon of progress it promises, so David Green, the archetypal quiet family man, is revealed to have hidden faults of his own. Rewind to one glorious May day in pre-war England. Two inebriated teenagers engineer an encounter with Rosie, the village beauty, which ultimately ends in tragedy.

All that remains is one small tangible item loaded with such dark emotion it causes decades of resentment. DCI Vignoles muses that this case's complexities have a metaphor in the intricacy of wires, levers, pulleys and rods, which when activated by the signalman's daughter all conspire with one result... ...a signal warning red for danger!