The Victim in Victoria Station (3 page)

That wasn't quite true; the cats were furious rather than frightened. It was the dog that whined and rolled his eyes and tugged at his leash. Emmy had clawed his nose once, and dogs have long memories. Eventually Jane, reassured that I was unhurt, took him home, and I was left with the police.

They searched the house thoroughly, inside and out, but found no one. That endless four minutes had apparently been long enough for the burglar to get away. “The chap was pretty thorough,” said Sergeant Drew. “Tried all the ground-floor windows before he broke the glass in the back door. A good job you had the new locks put in. He couldn't unlock it even from inside without the key.”

“It's also a good thing Alan thought to give a key to you people, or
you
wouldn't have been able to get in, and I'd probably have stepped in all that glass. And it's just pure luck that the downstairs windows were closed. I thought it was going to rain, and I didn't want to have to mop up puddles in the morning. I do appreciate your getting here so fast. I was in a real panic.”

“We look after our own, Mrs. Martin. We were all sorry when the chief retired. He's a good man.”

“He certainly is.” I found I had to swallow a couple of times, hard. “What do we do now?”

“You'd best go back to bed. We'll see to cleaning up the glass. Because of the possibility of fingerprints or other evidence,” he added, seeing the query on my face. “We'll also look after boarding up the door, and we'll leave WPC Murray here to look after you.”

“Oh, I don't think that's necessary,” I said weakly. Woman Police Constable Murray, who was standing by Sergeant Drew, looked like the epitome of sanity and comfort, and in fact her presence would be very welcome. I was still shaking.

“It's standard procedure when a police family is threatened, Mrs. Martin. This was probably just a standard break-and-enter robbery attempt, but one can never be certain.”

“I can't imagine why anyone would think we had anything to steal, but you must be right. Unless—I suppose Alan must have made some enemies in all those years on the force. Has anyone gotten out of jail lately who hated him particularly?”

Sergeant Drew grinned. “Not likely, I shouldn't think. The wide boys usually blame the copper who collars them, or the judge, or even the jury. They don't know the chief constable exists. No, it'll be someone who thought this looked a nice house, worth a go. He'll be long gone, of course, but we'll keep an eye out.”

“Well then, I confess I'll be very glad of Constable Murray's company, if you're sure you can spare her. I get rather nervous when Alan's away.”

“Yes, of course. Now, do you have Mr. Nesbitt's telephone number where he's staying? We can find out, of course, if you don't have it handy—”

“Oh, I have it, but do you have to notify him? I'd rather he didn't know until I get a chance to tell him myself. I'm afraid he would worry, and he's doing such important work, I—I don't like to distract him.”

Sergeant Drew nodded soothingly. “Of course,” he said again. “I thought you might want him to know first thing in the morning, but as you wish. You do look tired, if you'll excuse my saying so. Miss Murray, can you see Mrs. Martin to bed?”

I felt, and probably looked, like death warmed over. I gratefully accepted WPC Murray's assistance up the stairs, told her to help herself to coffee or anything else she wanted, and fell into bed. This time my sleep was undisturbed, except by dreams.

It was shamefully late by the time I finally made myself get up the next morning. True, I had all kinds of excuses, and there was nothing in particular I had to do that day, but I've never been able to shake the notion that sleeping late is somehow discreditable. Too many years spent living up to the work ethic, I suppose. At any rate, I sent WPC Murray on her way, after making sure that she had indeed made herself some breakfast.

“Are you quite sure you'll not feel nervous alone?”

“Quite sure. I'm rested, and it's daylight, and I'd feel really guilty if I took up the time of a hardworking policewoman when you're so understaffed. Off you go!”

“Daylight” was something of a euphemism. It was one of the darkest summer days I'd ever known. True to my tibia's forecast, the rain was coming down in torrents, and the sky was dark bluegray. I would actually have liked to have a bite to eat and then go back to bed, but I was stern with myself. Old ladies do that sort of thing. Active middle-aged women face the day with alacrity.

You've got to be kidding
, said an inner voice.

Well, if alacrity wasn't in the cards, I'd try to muster something more positive than sleepy gloom, anyway. I made fresh coffee, very strong, and after a couple of cups had pumped some life into my system, I sat down with the papers. Half an hour later there was enough adrenaline in my system to make the caffeine redundant.

There was no mention of my dead man in either paper.

I hadn't expected headlines, but surely a dead American, found in rather unusual circumstances, was worth a small paragraph! I felt insulted, personally and patriotically. Okay, London is a big city, and people die there every day, but not foreigners, not in a train, not of a heart attack at age thirty or so. How could they just ignore it?

Would CONNEX, the railway company, be any help? It seemed unlikely. Since the demise of British Rail and the privatization of what used to be England's admirable rail system, I've almost never found any railway official to be of the slightest help about anything. It was, however, worth a try.

Several phone calls later, my opinion of the railway bureaucracy was left unchanged. Nobody knew of a dead man in any train that had called at Victoria Station. Nobody thought it at all likely that such a thing had occurred. Nobody considered that anyone, much less an American, would have the temerity to die in any train operated by CONNEX. Thank you, madam.

Very well. I hadn't wanted to bother the police. It was, in any case, highly unlikely that the Metropolitan Police would release to me the name of the young man. However, there was no point in being married to a very important, if retired, policeman if one didn't use the connection now and again.

I picked the phone back up and put in a call to Detective Chief Inspector Morrison, the most senior police officer I knew. He called back in five minutes.

“This is a pleasure, Mrs. Martin. Not found another body for us, have you?”

The Inspector and I had first met over a body in the town hall.

“Not really,” I said with a rueful laugh. “This time it's more a case of my wanting you to find one for me.”

“Yes? An unusual taste, if you'll forgive my saying so. But to each her own.”

“Maybe I phrased that badly. Let me explain.”

I did so, detailing the circumstances, the day and time the train got to Victoria, and a description of the dead man for good measure.

“I do understand that it's really none of my concern, but I'd feel a lot better if I knew who the man was and how he died. I keep thinking there ought to have been something I could do. I know you're busy, but I didn't think Scotland Yard would listen to me.”

“You might be surprised,” he replied, rather cryptically, I thought. “But I can speed things up. I've rather a lot on my plate, as usual, but I'll make a few inquiries and report back.”

I puttered around the kitchen, cleaning up bits of glass that the police had missed. I should call someone to replace the window in the back door. The piece of wood that covered the gaping hole was not only unsightly, it darkened both the kitchen and my spirits. I'd never had my house broken into before, and the shattered window was a disquieting reminder. Last night I'd been afraid of the intruder. This morning, I was pleased to discover, I was angry, a much more useful emotion. My house had been invaded, or nearly invaded, and damaged in the process. I had been terrified. How dare someone do that! How DARE they!

The last straw was the tiny overlooked shard of glass that had somehow flown across the room to the kitchen counter, where I managed to run it into the pad of my thumb as I tidied up. That did it. For five minutes I was simply, gloriously furious, indulging in language I hadn't known I knew.

Pounding my fist on the counter, however, was the final gesture of my tantrum. It jarred the sliver of glass in my thumb, which hurt—a lot. The pain jolted me back to my senses. I looked around a little guiltily for the cats. They had fled when the storm broke. My wrath hadn't seemed to be directed at them, but a cat can't be too careful. I had the fleeting, foolish thought that I was glad they didn't understand enough human speech to know what I'd been saying. Then I went up to the bathroom to find the tweezers.

I'd managed to pry the sliver out of my thumb when the phone rang. I picked it up in the bedroom. It was Inspector Morrison's secretary.

“The chief inspector asked me to say he's sorry he couldn't ring you back himself, Mrs. Martin. He's been called away to an incident.” Which could mean anything up to murder. “However, he was able to talk to the Metropolitan Police. They state that no bodies were found in trains coming into London yesterday, nor for months. They checked all stations for good measure. There were no such reports. In fact, it was a quiet day at the stations; the police were called to two pickpocket incidents and one stolen luggage. That was the extent of it.”

“But that can't be true! I saw the man myself! And the doctor told me he was going to report it to the police right away.”

“Perhaps the man was only comatose, Mrs. Martin. To the layman—”

“But the doctor wasn't a layman, and he quite definitely said the man was dead!”

A silence fell, a silence that became, imperceptibly, quite heavily tactful.

“I see,” said the secretary finally. “Quite a mystery. When Inspector Morrison returns—”

I pulled myself together. “No, don't bother. He's busy. I expect I made some sort of mistake. Thank him for me.”

I hung up before I lost my temper. On the whole, I thought it was a good thing I'd expended all that emotional energy on the sliver of glass and my intruder. I was left with less to waste on an impervious Scotland Yard.

Mistake! Of course I hadn't made a mistake. That man had been dead as—as a coffin nail, Dickens would have said. So why didn't the police know about him?

Because they weren't notified
, said the other half of my brain calmly.

But the doctor said—

What doctor? Do you believe everything you're told?

My temper deflated rapidly. I had, hadn't I? Oh, my, how naive of me. At my age, and with my somewhat unusual background, one would have thought I'd be more critical. The respectable-looking man had called himself a doctor. I'd believed him. He had said he was going to call the police. I'd believed that, too.

He'd also said the dead man was the victim of a heart attack. That, I was beginning not to believe at all.

I went slowly downstairs, picked up the telephone pad, and sat down at the kitchen table. What did I know about the dead man? I started to make a list.

I knew his first name.

Bill?
went down on the list.

American.

First time in England.

Here on business.

Here I paused. What kind of business? He'd told me, I was sure. It's one of the standard set of questions strangers ask each other—where are you from, what do you do, are you married, do you have children, et cetera. He was from California. I remembered that, because I have family there. And he worked in—

Of course! He worked in Silicon Valley somewhere, and he worked with computers! My memory grudgingly released details, a few at a time. Bill's concern was, specifically, computer software. He was a partner in a small but growing company. That much I had understood. He had told me in great detail exactly what his company's software did, and why it was so wonderful, and how the tiny two-man operation had grown so rapidly into an international concern. That part hadn't made sense to me even at the time, so of course I couldn't remember much. I know very little about computers, which fascinate and scare me at the same time. I did remember, though, that he had told me he'd come to England to look into problems in the London office. Had he used the phrase “growing pains,” or was that simply the impression I'd gained from what he did say?

I sat back, rather pleased with myself. I not only had a few facts in front of me, dredged up from my uncooperative mind, but I had an idea. Its name was Nigel Evans.

Nigel Evans was a graduate student at Sherebury University and a good friend of mine. I'd met him my first Christmas in Sherebury, when I'd been instrumental in saving him from something pretty unpleasant. He'd often said he wished he could do something for me. Well, now was his chance.

For Nigel, at age twenty-something, was a shark at computers. He was doing research in history, but he also worked part-time in the university's Computer Centre. He had at one time told me exactly what he did there, but of course the jargon had gone in one ear and out the other. I did know, because his delightful young wife, Inga, had told me, that Nigel subscribed to virtually every computer magazine known to man, and knew more about what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were doing than he did about their neighbors. Inga, greatly to her amusement, had had to explain who Gates and Jobs were.

Nigel was my source of information. And Nigel was the son-in-law of my favorite pubkeepers, the Endicotts at the Rose and Crown, just on the other side of the cathedral. I looked at the kitchen clock. Nearly noon, and I'd had no breakfast. All right, there was no time like the present. I picked up my umbrella and my purse, plucked a rainproof hat off one of the pegs in the hallway, and headed for the gate at the end of my street that led into the Cathedral Close.