Silent Nights (23 page)

At last she found her way upstairs and faced the too-familiar bedroom. Her own was at the back of the house; that is, it had been. She must not think like this: her own room was in the charming house of the villa in Fiesole, this place had nothing to do with her at all.

But it had, and the knowledge was like a lead cloak over her. Of course it had. She had returned to meet not Lucy, but her own childhood.

Old Mrs Inglis—how did she fit in?

Probably she had always been there, even when the woman who was now Isabelle Crosland had been a child. Always there, obscure, eccentric, wearing out a succession of companions until one of them brained her with the Chinese apple, the jade fruit, slung from a lady's scarf.

“Oh, dear,” murmured Mrs Crosland, “what has that old, that very old woman got to do with me?”

Her cases were by her bedside. She was too tired to examine them. Lucy had been scrupulous in putting out her toilet articles. She began to undress. There was nothing to do but to rest; what was it to her that a murderess was being hunted round Islington—what had Mr Teale said? The stations, the docks…She was half-undressed and had pulled out her wrapper when the front-door bell rang.

Hastily covering herself up, she was out on the landing. At least this was an excuse not to get into the big, formal bed where her parents had died, even if this was only Mr Teale returned. Lucy was already in the hall, speaking to someone. The gas-light in the passage illuminated the girl in the stone-coloured satin and the man on the threshold to whom she spoke.

It was not Mr Teale.

Isabelle Crosland, halfway down the stairs, had a glance of a sharp face, vividly lit. A young man, with his collar turned up and a look of expectation in his brilliant eyes. He said something that Isabelle Crosland could not hear, and then Lucy closed the heavy front door.

Glancing up at her aunt, she said:

“Now we are shut in for the night.”

“Who was that?” asked Mrs Crosland, vexed that Lucy had discerned her presence.

“Only a neighbour; only a curiosity-monger.”

Lucy's tone was reassuring. She advised her aunt to go to bed.

“Really, it is getting very late. The church is dark again. All the people have gone home.”

“Which room have you, Lucy, dear?”

“That which you had, I suppose; the large room at the back of the house.”

“Oh, yes—that—”

“Well, do not concern yourself—it has been rather a disagreeable evening, but it is over now.”

Lucy, dark and pale, stood in the doorway, hesitant for a second. Mrs Crosland decided, unreasonably, not to kiss her and bade her a quick good-night of a forced cheerfulness.

Alone, she pulled the chain of the gas-ring and was at once in darkness. Only wheels of light across the ceiling showed the passing of a lonely hansom cab.

Perhaps Mr Teale going home.

Mrs Inglis, too, would have gone home by now; the corner house opposite would be empty.

Isabelle Crosland could not bring herself to sleep on the bed after all. Wrapped in travelling rugs, snatched up in the dark, she huddled on the couch. Presently she slept, but with no agreeable dreams. Oppressive fancies lay heavily on her and several times she woke, crying out.

It was with a dismal sense of disappointment that she realized each time that she was not in Florence.

With the dawn she was downstairs. Christmas morning; how ridiculous!

No sign of Lucy, and the cold, dismal house was like a trap, a prison.

Almost crying with vexation, Mrs Crosland was forced to look into the room that once had been her own. The bed had not been slept in. On the white honeycomb coverlet was a package and a note.

This, a single sheet of paper, covered an opened letter. Mrs Crosland stared at this that was signed “Lucy Bayward”. It was a childish sort of scrawl, the writer excused herself from reaching London until after the holidays.

The note was in a different hand:

I promised to let you know my plans. I am away down the river with my accomplice. Taking refuge in your empty house I found this note. The whole arrangement was entirely useful to me. I left the Roman pearls for Lucy, as I had those of my late employer, but I took the gold. No one will ever find us. I leave you a Christmas present.

Mrs Crosland's cold fingers undid the package. In the ghastly half-light she saw the Chinese apple.

A Problem in White

Nicholas Blake

Nicholas Blake was the pen-name under which Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972) wrote detective stories. Day-Lewis was a distinguished poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968. He turned pseudonymously to fictional crime in 1935 with
A Question of Proof
, which drew on his experiences as a schoolteacher, and introduced an appealing detective, Nigel Strangeways. Dorothy L. Sayers was among the critics who acclaimed the book, and Strangeways promptly returned in an even better novel,
Thou Shell of Death
.

Blake himself reviewed crime fiction for a while, and his fourth mystery,
The Beast Must Die
, is a classic of the genre which has been filmed twice, most notably by Claude Chabrol. “A Problem in White”, one of his few short stories, first appeared in the
Strand Magazine
in 1949, a few months before that legendary publication was forced out of the market after a long decline in circulation since the glorious days of Sherlock Holmes.

***

“Seasonable weather for the time of year,” remarked the Expansive Man in a voice succulent as the breast of a roast goose.

The Deep Chap, sitting next to him in the railway compartment, glanced out at the snow swarming and swirling past the window-pane. He replied:

“You really like it? Oh well, it's an ill blizzard that blows nobody no good. Depends what you mean by seasonable, though. Statistics for the last fifty years would show—”

“Name of Joad, sir?” asked the Expansive Man, treating the compartment to a wholesale wink.

“No, Stansfield, Henry Stansfield.” The Deep Chap, a ruddy-faced man who sat with hands firmly planted on the knees of his brown tweed suit, might have been a prosperous farmer but for the long, steady meditative scrutiny which he now bent upon each of his fellow-travellers in turn.

What he saw was not particularly rewarding. On the opposite seat, from left to right, were a Forward Piece, who had taken the Expansive Man's wink wholly to herself and contrived to wriggle her tight skirt farther up from her knee; a desiccated, sandy, lawyerish little man who fumed and fussed like an angry kettle, consulting every five minutes his gold watch, then shaking out his
Times
with the crackle of a legal parchment, and a Flash Card, dressed up to the nines of spivdom, with the bold yet uneasy stare of the young delinquent.

“Mine's Percy Dukes,” said the Expansive Man. “P.D. to my friends, General Dealer. At your service. Well, we'll be across the border in an hour and a half, and then hey for the bluebells of bonny Scotland!”

“Bluebells in January? You're hopeful,” remarked the Forward Piece.

“Are you Scots, master?” asked the Comfortable Body sitting on Stansfield's left.

“English outside”—Percy Dukes patted the front of his grey suit, slid a flask from its hip pocket, and took a swig—“and Scotch within.” His loud laugh, or the blizzard, shook the railway carriage. The Forward Piece giggled. The Flash Card covertly sneered.

“You'll need that if we run into a drift and get stuck for the night,” said Henry Stansfield.

“Name of Jonah, sir?” The compartment reverberated again.

“I do not apprehend such an eventuality,” said the Fusspot. “The station-master at Lancaster assured me that the train would get through. We are scandalously late already, though.” Once again the gold watch was consulted.

“It's a curious thing,” remarked the Deep Chap meditatively, “the way we imagine we can make Time amble withal or gallop withal, just by keeping an eye on the hands of a watch. You travel frequently by this train, Mr—?”

“Kilmington. Arthur J. Kilmington. No, I've only used it once before.” The Fusspot spoke in a dry Edinburgh accent.

“Ah yes, that would have been on the 17th of last month. I remember seeing you on it.”

“No, sir, you are mistaken. It was the 20th.” Mr Kilmington's thin mouth snapped tight again, like a rubber band round a sheaf of legal documents.

“The 20th? Indeed? That was the day of the train robbery. A big haul they got, it seems. Off this very train. It was carrying some of the extra Christmas mail. Bags just disappeared, somewhere between Lancaster and Carlisle.”

“Och, deary me,” sighed the Comfortable Body. “I don't know what we're coming to, really, nowadays.”

“We're coming to the scene of the crime, ma'am,” said the expansive Mr Dukes. The train, almost dead-beat, was panting up the last pitch towards Shap Summit.

“I didn't see anything in the papers about where the robbery took place,” Henry Stansfield murmured. Dukes fastened a somewhat bleary eye upon him.

“You read all the newspapers?”

“Yes.”

The atmosphere in the compartment had grown suddenly tense. Only the Flash Card, idly examining his fingernails, seemed unaffected by it.

“Which paper did you see it in?” pursued Stansfield.

“I didn't.” Dukes tapped Stansfield on the knee. “But I can use my loaf. Stands to reason. You want to tip a mail-bag out of a train—get me? Train must be moving slowly, or the bag'll burst when it hits the ground. Only one place between Lancaster and Carlisle where you'd
know
the train would be crawling. Shap Bank. And it goes slowest on the last bit of the bank, just about where we are now. Follow?”

Henry Stansfield nodded.

“O.K. But you'd be balmy to tip it off just anywhere on this God-forsaken moorland,” went on Mr Dukes. “Now, if you'd travelled this line as much as I have, you'd have noticed it goes over a bridge about a mile short of the summit. Under the bridge runs a road: a nice, lonely road, see? The only road hereabouts that touches the railway. You tip out the bag there. Your chums collect it, run down the embankment, dump it in the car they've got waiting by the bridge, and Bob's your uncle!”

“You oughta been a detective, mister,” exclaimed the Forward Piece languishingly.

Mr Dukes inserted his thumbs in his armpits, looking gratified. “Maybe I am,” he said with a wheezy laugh. “And maybe I'm just little old P.D., who knows how to use his loaf.”

“Och, well now, the things people will do!” said the Comfortable Body. “There's a terrible lot of dishonesty today.”

The Flash Card glanced up contemptuously from his fingernails. Mr Kilmington was heard to mutter that the system of surveillance on railways was disgraceful, and the Guard of the train should have been severely censured.

“The Guard can't be everywhere,” said Stansfield. “Presumably he has to patrol the train from time to time, and—”

“Let him do so, then, and not lock himself up in his van and go to sleep,” interrupted Mr Kilmington, somewhat unreasonably.

“Are you speaking from personal experience, sir?” asked Stansfield.

The Flash Card lifted up his voice and said, in a Charing-Cross-Road American accent, “Hey, fellas! If the gang was gonna tip out the mail-bags by the bridge, like this guy says—what I mean is, how could they rely on the Guard being out of his van just at that point?” He hitched up the trousers of his loud check suit.

“You've got something there,” said Percy Dukes. “What I reckon is, there must have been two accomplices on the train—one to get the Guard out of his van on some pretext, and the other to chuck off the bags.” He turned to Mr Kilmington. “You were saying something about the Guard locking himself up in his van. Now if I was of a suspicious turn of mind, if I was little old Sherlock H. in person”—he bestowed another prodigious wink upon Kilmington's fellow-travellers—“I'd begin to wonder about you, sir. You were travelling on this train when the robbery took place. You went to the Guard's van. You
say
you found him asleep. You didn't by any chance call the Guard out, so as to—?”

“Your suggestion is outrageous! I advise you to be very careful, sir, very careful indeed,” enunciated Mr Kilmington, his precise voice crackling with indignation, “or you may find you have said something actionable. I would have you know that, when I—”

But what he would have them know was to remain undivulged. The train, which for some little time had been running cautiously down from Shap Summit, suddenly began to chatter and shudder, like a fever patient in high delirium, as the vacuum brakes were applied; then, with the dull impact of a fist driving into a feather pillow, the engine buried itself in a drift which had gathered just beyond the bend of a deep cutting. The time was five minutes past seven.

“What's this in aid of?” asked the Forward Piece, rather shrilly, as a hysterical outburst of huffing and puffing came from the engine.

“Run into a drift, I reckon.”

“He's trying to back us out. No good. The wheels are slipping every time. What a lark!” Percy Dukes had his head out of the window on the lee side of the train. “Coom to Coomberland for your winter sports!”

“Guard! Guard, I say!” called Mr Kilmington. But the blue-clad figure, after one glance into the compartment, hurried on his way up the corridor. “Really! I
shall
report that man.”

Henry Stansfield, going out into the corridor, opened a window. Though the coach was theoretically sheltered by the cutting on this windward side, the blizzard stunned his face like a knuckle-duster of ice. He joined the herd of passengers who had climbed down and were stumbling towards the engine. As they reached it, the Guard emerged from its cab: no cause for alarm, he said; if they couldn't get through, there'd be a relief engine sent down to take the train back to Tebay; he was just off to set fog-signals on the line behind them.

The driver renewed his attempts to back the train out. But, what with its weight, the up-gradient in its rear, the icy rails, and the clinging grip of the drift on the engine, he could not budge her.

“We'll have to dig out the bogeys, mate,” he said to the fireman. “Fetch them shovels from the forward van. It'll keep the perishers from freezing, any road.” He jerked his finger at the knot of passengers who, lit up by the glare of the furnace, were capering and beating their arms like savages amid the swirling snow-wreaths.

Percy Dukes, who had now joined them, quickly established himself as the life and soul of the party, referring to the grimy-faced fireman as “Snowball”, adjuring his companions to “Dig for Victory”, affecting to spy the approach of a herd of St Bernards, each with a keg of brandy slung round its neck. But, after ten minutes of hard digging, when the leading wheels of the bogey were cleared, it could be seen that they had been derailed by their impact with the drift.

“That's torn it, Charlie. You'll have to walk back to the box and get 'em to telephone through for help,” said the driver.

“
If
the wires aren't down already,” replied the fireman lugubriously. “It's above a mile to that box, and uphill. Who d'you think I am? Captain Scott?”

“You'll have the wind behind you, mate, any road. So long.”

A buzz of dismay had risen from the passengers at this. One or two, who began to get querulous, were silenced by the driver's offering to take them anywhere they liked if they would just lift his engine back on to the metals first. When the rest had dispersed to their carriages, Henry Stansfield asked the driver's permission to go up into the cab for a few minutes and dry his coat.

“You're welcome.” The driver snorted: “Would you believe it? ‘Must get to Glasgow tonight.' Damn ridiculous! Now Bert—that's my Guard—it's different for him: he's entitled to fret a bit. Missus been very poorly. Thought she was going to peg out before Christmas; but he got the best surgeon in Glasgow to operate on her, and she's mending now, he says. He reckons to look in every night at the nursing home, when he goes off work.”

Stansfield chatted with the man for five minutes. Then the Guard returned, blowing upon his hands—a smallish, leathery-faced chap, with an anxious look in his eye.

“We'll not get through tonight, Bert. Charlie told you?”

“Aye. I doubt some of the passengers are going to create a rumpus,” said the Guard dolefully.

Henry Stansfield went back to his compartment. It was stuffy, but with a sinister hint of chilliness, too: he wondered how long the steam heating would last: depended upon the amount of water in the engine boiler, he supposed. Amongst the wide variety of fates he had imagined for himself, freezing to death in an English train was not included.

Arthur J. Kilmington fidgeted more than ever. When the Guard came along the corridor, he asked him where the nearest village was, saying he must get a telephone call through to Edinburgh—most urgent appointment—must let his client know, if he was going to miss it. The Guard said there was a village two miles to the north-east; you could see the lights from the top of the cutting; but he warned Mr Kilmington against trying to get there in the teeth of this blizzard—better wait for the relief engine, which should reach them before 9 p.m.

Silence fell upon the compartment for a while; the incredulous silence of civilized people who find themselves in the predicament of castaways. Then the expansive Mr Dukes proposed that, since they were to be stuck here for an hour or two, they should get acquainted. The Comfortable Body now introduced herself as Mrs Grant, the Forward Piece as Inez Blake; the Flash Card, with the over-negligent air of one handing a dud half-crown over a counter, gave his name as Macdonald—I. Macdonald.

“A fine old Scots name,” said Mrs Grant.

“I for Ian,” said Mr Dukes. “Or would it be Izzy?”

“Irving, if you want to know,” replied the young man. “Any objection? You like to make something of it?”

“Keep your hair on, young shaver.”

“So I'm a Yid, am I? That's your idea, uh?”

“If you get steamed up any more,” said Mr Dukes, “it'll ruin that permanent wave of yours.”