by M. M. Kaye
The door of her compartment was ajar, and she pushed it quickly open and went in. It seemed very dark in there after the comparative brightness outside, and she groped for the electric light switch, but could not find it. Well, it did not matter, for she had lost all desire for a drink and could get back to bed quite easily in the dark.
The train rocked round a curve and Miranda’s foot slipped suddenly, and she stumbled and flung out a hand to feel for the edge of her berth.
But the berth appeared to be further from the door than she had imagined, and moving forward, she hit herself sharply against something hard and unyielding. Catching at the edge of it she discovered with surprise that it was one of the fitted basins with which each of the compartments was provided. But surely the basin had been on the opposite side of the carriage? Miranda took another cautious step and found herself touching a smooth wooden surface. Her berth seemed to have vanished.
And then suddenly she realized what had happened. She was in the wrong compartment!
The sleeping compartments on the Berlin train were in pairs, with a communicating door between each pair which could be opened if parents and children were travelling in adjoining compartments. The positions of berths and basins and light switches were reversed in each compartment, and Miranda, suppressing a strong desire to giggle, realized that she had invaded the bachelor sanctum of Brigadier Brindley.
Thank heaven for those sleeping tablets! thought Miranda fervently. At least she had not awakened him.
The door into the corridor was still ajar, and her eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness she could make out the Brigadier, lying imposingly upon his back with one arm hanging over the edge of the bunk and sleeping like the proverbial log. Miranda tiptoed to the door, and once in the corridor, closed it cautiously behind her.
A moment later she was back in her own compartment, sitting on the edge of her berth with the lights turned on and giggling helplessly.
What an idiotic thing to have done! How could she have been so stupid? How Stella would laugh!
All at once, and for the first time that night, Miranda felt relaxed and sleepy. She yawned largely and untied the sash of her dressing-gown. There was a wet smear on the velvet folds; she must have splashed some water on it from the basin in the next cabin. What a bore! thought Miranda, frowning. It was a new dressing-gown and its purchase had been an unwarrantable extravagance on her part. She brushed her hand over it. But it was not water …
Miranda sat very still, staring down at the stain on her palm.
The carriage rocked and swayed in time to the clattering cadence of the wheels, and the harsh light of the ceiling bulbs threw a black, swaying shadow across the lower berth.
‘It’s the dye,’ said a voice in Miranda’s brain. ‘It’s only the dye from the velvet.’
But no dye was so richly red. So sticky …
There was blood on the ruby-red folds of the dressing-gown. A wet, red patch of blood just above the level of her knee. Her stunned gaze moved slowly downwards towards the floor and her eyes widened incredulously, for there were marks upon the carriage floor that had not been there before. The dark, neat, damp prints of a shoe.
Miranda reached down with unsteady hands and pulling off her slippers sat staring at them in horrified unbelief. Both narrow leather soles were as wet and red as though they had walked through a pool of blood____
She dropped them onto the floor and stood up. There was only one possible explanation. The blood must have come from the Brigadier’s compartment, and that meant the Brigadier had had a haemorrhage or broken a blood vessel. He might be bleeding to death! She must go to his help at once—surely there must be a doctor on the train?
Miranda jerked open the door of her compartment and stood once more in the cold, empty corridor. There were more marks on the floor of the corridor. The dark prints of her slippers, leading out of the door of the Brigadier’s compartment.
This time she knew where to feel for the electric light switch, and it clicked under her hasty fingers.
The light seemed unnaturally bright and the clatter of the train wheels no more than a muted murmur like the sound of a sea shell held to the ear. The whole scene seemed to have taken on something of the detailed, lunatic quality of a Dali painting.
The train rocked and jolted and Miranda caught at the edge of the door to steady herself; staring, not at the silent figure on the narrow berth, but at the bright pool of blood upon the floor and the evilly stained knife that lay beyond it, half in and half out of the swaying shadow of Brigadier Brindley’s overcoat.
She must fetch someone … Robert … Which was Robert’s compartment? She could not remember. The attendant—surely the attendant would be back by now?
Miranda turned and fled wildly down the deserted corridor.
A man appeared at the end of the corridor: a slight young man wearing a heavy military overcoat and walking quickly towards her, and she had run into him and was clutching at him before she could stop herself. It was the man who had returned her bag to her at Harwich after she had walked out of the Customs shed, leaving it behind on the counter among the jumbled piles of hand luggage.
‘Oh, it’s you! Do something—quickly! He’s dead!’
It seemed to Miranda that she had shouted the words aloud in the silent corridor, but to the man who steadied her with his arms against the sway of the train her voice was no more than a gasping whisper.
He put up his hands and caught her by her shoulders, his fingers gripping them painfully through the soft velvet, and stared down into her white, terrified face: ‘What is it? Who’s dead?’
‘The Brigadier____Oh, do come! Someone’s killed him!’
The man did not speak, but for a moment his fingers bit into her shoulders. And then he had released them and caught her by the arm and jerked her round, and they were running down the corridor. He checked abruptly at the sight of the footprints outside the Brigadier’s compartment, and pulled her to one side, his gaze moving swiftly from the prints to her bare feet, but he made no comment and pushed open the door.
Brigadier Brindley was lying as Miranda had left him: on his back and inclining slightly towards his right side, at the outer edge of the berth. His right arm hung down over the edge, the slack fingers touching the floor, and the blankets had been drawn back neatly as far as his waist.
The Brigadier had apparently worn dentures, and without them his face looked older and thinner. The breast of his lilac silk pyjamas was disfigured by a spreading stain, and blood from the wound in his chest had run down inside the sleeve on his right arm to form a pool on the floor.
The stranger stood quite still just inside the door of the small compartment. He appeared to have forgotten Miranda. He did not touch the body of the Brigadier or make any move to pick up the oddly shaped knife that lay on the floor, but his eyes, which were a queer pale grey that seemed to reflect the light like a cat’s, were wide and bright and alight with some emotion that Miranda could not understand. They ranged slowly about the small, brightly lit compartment, noting, calculating, summing up and storing away detail after detail. Once he reached out and touched the dead man’s cheek, but otherwise he did not move.
Miranda began to shiver, and her teeth chattered. It was a very small sound among the myriad noises of the train, but he must have heard it for he turned, and taking her by the arm went out into the corridor, closing the door quietly behind him.
Miranda spoke in a jerky whisper: ‘Aren’t you going to do anything? Get a doctor or—or something? He might not be dead.’
‘He’s dead all right. There’s nothing anyone can do for him. Which is your compartment?’
‘This one.’ Miranda laid her hand on the adjoining door and saw a sudden flare of astonishment in the intent eyes.
‘Who has the other berth in there?’ The words were still spoken in an undertone, but this time they were clipped and hard.
‘Nobody.’ Miranda was shivering again and she found it difficu
lt to speak. She saw her companion’s eyes go once again from her feet to the prints on the floor of the corridor, and suddenly realized what he must be thinking: ‘Those are mine,’ she said unsteadily. ‘But I didn’t do it. I found him like that.’
The man looked at her oddly but made no comment, and pushing open the door of her compartment, he propelled her gently inside and said: ‘Stay in there and don’t move out of it until I get back.’ He paused for a moment in the narrow doorway and glanced quickly about the small compartment as though assuring himself that there was no third person concealed there, and then without looking at her he closed the door softly and was gone.
Miranda sat down on the edge of her berth, her feet dangling just clear of the floor and jerking to the movements of the train and her hands locked tightly together in her lap.
A short time ago she had thought the compartment overheated. But now she was very cold, and she remembered that it was the first day of March. Outside the darkened windows the night air would be cold and sharp and tinged with frost, and that same cold air was seeping now through a hundred crevices into the warm atmosphere of the train, bringing with it a smell of wet earth and engine smoke.
It was very late. Soon they would reach Helmstedt, and after that the train would enter the Russian zone, where no window-blind might be drawn back, and guards would patrol the corridors. Miranda was seized with a sudden and passionate longing to be back in England; dear, safe, matter-of-fact England, where there were no Russian zones, sullen ex-Nazis or bullying ‘People’s Police’, and trains did not keep closely drawn blinds over their windows by night or permit their passengers to be murdered in their sleep.
‘… I want to go home … I want to go home … I want to go home,’ chattered the wheels. But this time it was for her they spoke, and not Stella.
Because she had gone into the Brigadier’s compartment would they think that she had killed him? It had been such a stupid thing to do. Would it sound like a story that she had made up … a very thin story? ‘I am so sorry, but I walked in by mistake____’
She wondered who that man was, and why he was going to Berlin? He appeared to be a person who knew what he was doing, and did it without fuss; an inordinately quiet-looking man. He had been on the boat, and on their train from the Hook. He had sat facing her, two tables away, in the dining-car, and she had thought that there was something about his face that was vaguely familiar. Once he had looked up, and encountering her speculative gaze, had smiled. Miranda had smiled warmly back at him; and had then been astounded and enraged to discover that she was blushing …
There were footsteps in the corridor outside and subdued sounds of movement in the next compartment. People came and went, but always quietly, and the cold minutes seemed to stretch into hours. Then at last the handle turned and the man of the corridor was standing in the doorway.
He came in and closed the door behind him and stood looking down at her.
‘Now, Miss Brand—that is your name isn’t it?—do you mind answering a few questions?’
His voice was quiet and impersonal, and his face, thought Miranda, looked like the windows of the train—as though it had a blind drawn down over it.
‘What were you doing in the next compartment?’
Miranda shivered.
‘You’re frozen!’ His voice was suddenly kind and no longer impersonal and he reached up and pulled down the folded blankets from the upper berth, and wrapping one warmly about her unresisting shoulders, lifted her feet up onto the berth and tucked the second one about them.
‘They’ll dirty the blankets,’ said Miranda childishly.
‘What will?’
‘My feet. They must be very dirty, because I took off my slippers. You see there was blood all over them and I…’ Her voice trailed away uncertainly.
He stooped and picked up the discarded slippers, and after examining them, dropped them back onto the floor.
‘Do you mind if I sit down?’ He took her permission for granted and seated himself at the far end of the berth, moving her feet over to make room; his head a bare inch from the low ceiling formed by the berth above them.
‘Suppose you tell me all about it. What were you doing in there?’ He jerked his head towards the locked door between the two compartments: ‘Did you go in that way?’
‘No, I went in by the door in the corridor. You see I couldn’t sleep and I was thirsty, but I’d spilt my drinking water, and…’ Miranda was suddenly aware that there was more than a touch of hysteria in her voice, and she bit her lip and stopped.
‘Go on.’
‘I’m sorry. I seem to be behaving very badly. It’s—it’s the shock I suppose.’
‘Don’t let that worry you.’ He smiled unexpectedly, as he had done once before on the train from the Hook. It was an extra-ordinarily pleasant smile that altered his face completely.
‘Alec Guinness!’ said Miranda abruptly. ‘I knew you reminded me of someone!’
‘Good God,’ said the man absently, and Miranda flushed hotly, conscious that she had been gauche and schoolgirlish.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he said mildly, ‘my name is Lang. Simon Lang. You were saying that you couldn’t go to sleep…’
Miranda took a deep breath and steadying her voice with an effort, told him exactly what she had done from the moment that she left her compartment in search of the sleeping-car attendant.
When she had finished Simon Lang said: ‘Are you quite sure that’s all? You don’t remember anything else? No sounds from the next compartment or anyone moving in the corridor for instance?’
Miranda’s eyes widened suddenly and she caught her breath in a little gasp: ‘Yes. There was something else. I heard a door being opened and then I heard someone moving about in there. I thought it was funny—“funny peculiar”, I mean.’
‘What was peculiar about it?’
‘Oh, nothing really, except that he had taken sleeping pills.’
‘What’s that?’ Simon Lang’s quiet voice had a sudden edge to it. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Because I saw him take them. We all did. He had dinner with us at the Families’ Hostel in whatever the name of that place was, and he took them with his coffee. He said he couldn’t sleep in trains unless he did. Mademoiselle and Stella took some too.’
‘You say you all saw him take the pills. Who do you mean by “all”?’
‘Well, all of us. That is, Robert and Stella—I mean Major and Mrs Melville, and the governess—Mademoiselle Beljame—and Lottie, Charlotte—she’s only seven. But everyone else was having coffee in the hall too, and people were wandering in and out of that little office-cum-reception-desk thing in the hall, paying their bills and so on. I should think almost everyone must have seen him. He gave us a long lecture on sleeping tablets; apparently he had tried every known brand.’
‘Let’s have some names, please. Who else would you say was actually in the hall at the time?’
‘Why? What does it matter?’ Miranda was suddenly angry and completely exhausted. She had slept little during the crossing from Harwich and not at all during the past day. It was long past midnight, she had been subjected to a violent and horrible shock and she was very tired. So tired that she wanted to lean her head back against the wall behind her and sleep … and sleep …
Simon Lang said: ‘I think we shall find that it matters rather a lot. Whoever killed the man in there must have known that he had taken a sleeping draught and was unlikely to wake. You can’t just stab blindly at people in the dark. Or if you do, the chances are about a hundred to one against your hitting them in a vital spot. This was a quick stab straight to the heart, and whoever delivered it must have either turned on one of the lights or carried a torch. And known that it was safe to do so.’
‘There was a light,’ said Miranda tiredly. ‘Mine was off, so I could see it at the edge of the door. It wasn’t on for more than half a minute.’
‘When was that?’
‘I don’t know. Bu
t only a few minutes before I went out in the corridor. I remember thinking “so much for the Brigadier’s sleeping pills”. And then I heard someone in the corridor and I thought it must be the sleeping-car attendant, so I got up and went out. But there wasn’t anyone there…’
‘This person you heard in the corridor—which way did they go?’
Miranda wrinkled her brow, and then shook her head. ‘I can’t remember. I don’t think I knew at the time. It was such a soft sound; more an impression than anything else. Perhaps there wasn’t anyone there after all.’
‘Unfortunately we know only too well that there was,’ said Simon Lang grimly. ‘Now about the people who were in the hall of that hostel, please—and then you can go to sleep. Who else would you say was there at the time that the Brigadier took those sleeping pills?’
Miranda pondered the question. She tried to tick them off on her fingers as she spoke, and their faces seemed to float in front of her. Sally Page with her wild-rose face and her pretty shallow laugh, smiling that revealing smile at Robert. Andy Page, with his red hair and angry blue eyes. Elsa Marson, black-haired, dark-eyed, with her unmistakably foreign voice. Harry Marson, red-faced, cheerful, pugnacious and Anglo-Irish. Colonel Leslie, thin, tall and grey-haired, with an expression of dreamy boredom and a clipped military moustache. Mrs Leslie—dark hair streaked with grey, brightly coloured tweeds, Welfare and ‘My wives’—who had looked at her, Miranda, with such hate … No, not at her … at someone else, surely? Who? She could not remember____
Who else? Mrs Wilkin, a bedraggled hedge-sparrow coping with a brood of unruly fledgelings. Wally, with his plain, freckled, pugnosed face and his endearing grin. A German waiter—several German waiters. And then there was Brigadier Brindley. Of course: he had been there too. But why had he forgotten to put back his teeth? He looked very odd without them. Odd and old and pathetic …
Another face floated in front of her and blotted out the jumble of different faces. A strange face, and yet somehow familiar. It was someone she did not recognize, and yet felt that she had known all her life.