Skylark

by Sheila Simonson

  The train lurched and Milos fell against me. I let go of my skyhook and clutched at him, staggering back.

  "Bloody foreigners," said the woman with the Evening Standard.

  Chapter 2.

  "Stop, thief!" the Maggie Thatcher clone was shrieking. "The bugger stole my bag! Pull the emergency lever!"

  No one responded, but the murmurings grew louder. Newspapers rustled. The train sped on.

  I had regained my balance, but Milos was heavy. "Are you all right? What's the matter?"

  He said nothing at all, and he was slipping slowly to the floor.

  "Somebody help me! He's fainted." I went down on one knee, and then fell to my side, cracking my elbow, as the train rounded a curve. I fell with Milos on top of me.

  "Christ, missus, he's bleeding!" A male hand assisted me to sitting position.

  Various murmurs.

  "Pull the lever."

  "Better not, love. It'll just stop between stations. Wait for South Ken."

  "Give 'em air, please."

  "Back off."

  I heard the chatter, but I was staring at Milos's gray face. A thin trickle of blood seeped from one corner of his mouth. His eyes were half closed, the whites showing.

  "Oh God, let me through! What's wrong, Lark?" Ann fought her way to my side and knelt beside me. Her bag thudded to the floor. "Lordy, he's passed out."

  "He's in shock," I said tightly. "Skin's clammy."

  She drew in a sharp breath. Above me the Thatcher clone was telling everyone the thief had stolen a silver trivet she had just bought for her niece's wedding and wasn't it disgraceful. She'd had a good look at the villain, and she meant to report him to the police.

  "Is he dead, lady?" the kid in the gray blazer asked me. He spoke with an American accent. So much for Lincoln's Inn.

  Ann began chafing Milos's hands. "Oh, God, tell me he's not dead."

  I shifted so I could hold his head and torso in my lap, Pietá-fashion. "I can't find a pulse. Is he breathing?" It was too noisy to tell.

  The man who had helped me sit up was kneeling opposite me, by Milos's head. "He looks bad, love. Trouble with his heart?"

  I started to tell him I didn't have the faintest idea. Then we pulled into the South Kensington yard, edging toward the crowded platform.

  "Will somebody hold the door and call for the station master?" I looked up.

  Pandemonium. The doors opened and impatient commuters were pushing on as our lot--the uninvolved, at any rate--tried to slip away.

  "Let me off! Make way!" The Thatcher woman battled out the door, followed by the devotee of the Evening Standard.

  "Somebody do something," I ordered in my best basketball coach voice. I coach a women's team for the junior college at home. We had had a successful season. The helpful man--he was fiftyish and wore the cap and tweed jacket of an older working man--began urging the crowd to move back. The kid in the blazer stood wringing his hands.

  Ann got up and used her enormous bag as a battering ram. "Get back. A man has fainted. We need room here."

  Other voices joined the chorus. The doors stayed open. At last, the waiting horde parted, and a small white-haired man in the black London Transport uniform bustled up.

  "Here, now, what's the fuss?"

  The man in the tweed jacket began to explain. I concentrated on Milos. It couldn't be a simple faint. He should have come around. And why blood? Had he bitten his tongue? He didn't look like a heart attack victim, but I was not a paramedic, so what did I know?

  "We'll have to move him, missus. The train..."

  "Do you have a stretcher?"

  He looked blank, and I wondered what the right word was. Hurdle? Surely not. Gurney? "Uh, a litter to carry him on."

  "Right." The official stepped back to the platform and spoke into a walkie talkie. I heard him say something about a heart attack victim.

  I hugged Milos to me, and Ann chafed his hands. Eventually two uniformed men brought a stretcher and lifted him to it. The waiting crowd, now swollen by two trainloads from the opposite platform, and God knows how many from the Piccadilly Line below, milled about and murmured. No one shouted or made a fuss. They stood clear of the doors, but they had the same ghoulish curiosity in their eyes that crowds at a disaster showed at home. A group of uniformed schoolchildren swirled around the edge of the crowd, voices piping, until a stern woman rounded them up and removed them from the scene. They had probably been on a field trip to the Natural History Museum. There was a dinosaur exhibit.

  The men bore Milos to the center of the platform, and the train we had ridden moved out. Commuters eddied about us. Two trains succeeded each other on the eastbound track. At last, the St. John Ambulance crew appeared and began to examine Milos in a thoroughly efficient, professional way.

  I had been answering questions more or less at random. No, he was not my husband. I didn't know his medical history. I told the London Transport officer what I knew about Milos, which wasn't much. Ann spelled his last name, Vlaçek, and a different transport officer took it down.

  Ann was very quiet, big-eyed, sad. She clutched her huge purse to her bosom and mourned.

  I was sitting on a bench by the stationmaster's little booth by then, with Ann and the Good Samaritan in tweeds sitting beside me. His name was Bert something, and he looked worried. The kid in the blazer was a Mormon missionary. I was too caught up in the wonder of that to register his name.

  For no reason at all, I started to think about Milos's umbrella. It must have fallen to the floor of the carriage. And where was my purse? Small flurry of anxiety. Ah, still in my raincoat pocket. Unlike Ann, who toted passport, traveler's checks, identification, and sundry household supplies around with her, I wasn't carrying much of value. I stood up and brushed my coat off--and found the bloodstain. I had opened my mouth to announce that interesting fact when one of the St. John crew came over to the policeman who had materialized at some point in the proceedings.

  "This man has been stabbed," the paramedic said with real distaste.

  All of a sudden, everyone was looking at me, Ann with her hand at her throat, as if she might choke.

  "Well, I wondered," I muttered. "He bled on my coat."

  The bobby whipped out his notebook. "You're a foreigner, miss?"

  "American."

  All of them but Ann nodded, as if my nationality explained everything. With a last accusatory glower, the paramedic strode back to his mates. Someone had wheeled in a gurney from the direction of the station.

  The policeman gave us a comprehensive scowl. "Stay where you are." He went over to confer with the ambulance crew, which was busy doing something to Milos's still form.

  "My bloody luck," Bert said. The kid in the blazer looked as if he was going to cry. Ann did.

  I sat back down beside her and put my arm around her shoulders.

  "I just wanted to go to a play," she wailed. "It's not fair!"

  Poor Milos had just wanted to go to the play, too. I didn't say that. I was trying to sort things out.

  It was all so puzzling. Where was the woman whose bag had been stolen? Had the thief also stabbed Milos? Why stab Milos at all? Especially on a crowded Underground train during the rush hour. It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense.

  I glanced around at the crowd, which was finally beginning to thin. Trains pulled in on one side of the platform or the other every two or three minutes, blotting up more people than they let off. Where was the lady whose trivet had been snatched?

  I patted Ann's shoulders and scanned the crowd. No sign of the woman. She had said her bag had been stolen, not bags. Which one? She'd been carrying a large one from Peter Jones and a smaller Harrods bag.

  Memory stirred. It was the Harrods bag. "Ann, do you still have that packet you were carrying for Milos?"

  "Y-yes. I'll have to return it to him." She sobbed harder. "I don't even know where he lives."

  "Let me see it."

  "What?"

  I took the handbag and pulled
the plastic sack out. It contained papers, all right--a rather messy typescript of fifty or sixty pages in a cardboard folder, the kind with fabric ties. The manuscript looked like a single document but I couldn't tell because it was in Czech.

  At least I assumed the language was Czech--I would have recognized German, French, or Italian, and Russian uses a different alphabet. Parts of it looked like a play, with names in boldface on the left margin. Maybe it was Milos's translation of Macbeth. At that thought, I teared up, blinked hard, and stuffed the bag back in Ann's purse.

  The policeman returned. He was wearing one of those tall black hats and looked to be about my age, which was thirty-three.

  He came right to me. "They'll transport him to St. Botolph's."

  "How is he?"

  "Breathing with difficulty, madam. Pulse slow and erratic."

  "But he's still alive?" I let out a long breath. I hadn't been sure. "Where's St. Botolph's?"

  "Near the Fulham Road." He told me the cross street. "You say you don't know the man well." He sounded skeptical. "Whom should we notify?" He had a characterless accent--not BBC and not cockney--and he persisted in addressing me rather than Ann. We had both explained that Milos was Ann's friend and that I barely knew him.

  The medics were wheeling Milos's gurney toward an elevator in the terminal building. Ann was still crying, though not as hard as she had been. I said, "I don't know who Milos's next of kin would be. You should call the Hanover. He works there and they probably have records."

  "Oh. Right." The constable made a squiggle in his notebook.

  "Here, mate, can I leave now?" Bert interjected. "My old lady's waiting for me at the pub. I don't know nothing, and I didn't see nothing till the bloke hit the floor."

  "You can't leave, Mr. Hoskins. Not until the detectives come. Nor you, Mr. Whipple." That to the wretched missionary who was probably composing a letter to Salt Lake City explaining why he had been wandering around London without his partner--Mormon missionaries are supposed to go in pairs. And how he had got himself embroiled in an assault case.

  Or would it be classified as attempted murder? I knew English law and American law were similar but there would be some differences. According to my husband, who was a cop for twelve years, American criminal law differs from one state to the next. Even the terminology of British law was bound to be different from the California Penal Code.

  I thought about Jay, not for the first time, with a surge of longing that almost brought me to tears again. He would straighten everything out when he got to London, but he wasn't coming for another week. I fumbled in my pocket for a tissue and blew my nose. The bobby was taking the missionary through the blameless account of what he had seen--nothing--and scribbling in the notebook. Far off the characteristic yip, yip, yip of a British ambulance siren faded on the air and a District line train pulled in on our side, bound for Ealing Broadway.

  A good fifteen minutes later two plainclothes detectives showed up. Ann had regained her composure, the missionary had lost his, and Bert Hoskins was fit to be tied. I began to feel sorry for Constable Ryan.

  I was sorry for myself. The Circle and District Line platform of the South Kensington Tube station lies above ground in semi-daylight, not underground. Rain sheeted down on the gleaming tracks. I was cold, my elbow ached, and I was beginning to tremble.

  Ryan introduced us to Detective Inspector Cyril Thorne and Detective Sergeant Richard Wilberforce and gave a summary of the incident couched in what sounded like official police jargon. They seemed to be able to follow him.

  Thorne was a nondescript man, fortyish--about Ann's age--with what I thought was a faint North Country accent, though I could not have said how far north. Not Scotland. Wilberforce was a young black man, well-tailored in a conservative way, and crisply London in his speech. Both men wore damp raincoats and Wilberforce carried an umbrella. Was Milos's umbrella circling London on the floor of the carriage? I wondered if Circle Line trains ever changed directions. The case of the revolutionary umbrella, I thought, on the edge of hysteria.

  Thorne took the two men briskly through their stories, had Sgt. Wilberforce repeat their addresses, and dismissed them. The missionary fled down the Piccadilly Line escalator. I stood up and shook hands with Bert Hoskins. When I tried to thank him for helping he looked embarrassed but gratified. Ann shook his hand, too, and launched into southern graciousness. A westbound train pulled in and Bert boarded it with red ears. He was a nice man. I hoped his wife was not the worse for waiting in the pub.

  "Now, Mrs. Dodge," Thorne began.

  I interrupted. "Inspector, our flat is only a few blocks away. I'm feeling shaky, and I need a cup of coffee." I eyed him. "And a visit to the loo. Can't we go to the flat? I know you still have questions for us."

  "It's irregular..."

  "If you cart us off to Scotland Yard, it will take forever. Traffic is bound to be heavy this time of day, and I really don't feel up to par."

  Thorne sighed. "Very well, but we were just going to take you to the Chelsea station, not the Yard. We'll drive you to your flat."

  I thought of mentioning the parking situation in our neighborhood. Of course they could park an official car anywhere. "I want to walk."

  Beside me, Ann squeaked.

  I ignored her. "I need fresh air." I gave him the address. "It's the basement flat. Blue door at the bottom of the stairwell. We'll meet you there in half an hour with hot coffee."

  The two men exchanged glances. "If you're ill, Mrs. Dodge, happen we should drive you to hospital." That was Thorne. Wilberforce watched me without expression.

  "I just need aspirin. In fact I'll pop into the chemist's on the Old Brompton Road and buy a bottle on the way home. Come on, Ann."

  Ann started to protest, took a look at my face, and shouldered her wretched bag. Thorne and Wilberforce escorted us past the ticket booth, which was fortunate because Ann couldn't find her pass.

  The arcade that forms the main entry to the station is a wide covered walkway, open at both ends and crammed with vendors of flowers and newspapers. A young violinist from the Royal Conservatory of Music poised by a florist's stand playing something baroque. Coins littered her open instrument case. We parted from the two detectives there--they said they had parked their car in the Exhibition Road by the French consulate. I led Ann across the wonky traffic island to the south side of the Old Brompton Road.

  "Whatever were you thinking of, Lark? It's raining pitchforks and hammer handles." Ann was getting her second wind, and indignation sharpened her soft Georgia drawl.

  I trotted past the chemist's and into the stationer's next door, pulling her inside with me. The small shop stayed open until seven for the convenience of the thousands of tourists in the area. There were no other customers by then, and the shopkeeper was closing up.

  "Give me Milos's papers," I hissed.

  "What?" She fumbled her purse open.

  "Yes, madam?" The proprietor was a Pakistani man, middle aged and dapper.

  "Will you please photocopy this document?" I removed the papers from the folder and thrust them at him.

  "It will take much paper."

  "Fine. Do it. Fast, please. We're in a hurry." To my surprise, because London retailers seem bent on thwarting customers whenever possible, the man didn't argue with me. Of course I had been rolling around on the floor of a subway carriage, and my tan raincoat was smeared with blood. I must have looked like a madwoman.

  The man was back with the stack of papers within ten minutes, and he only charged me six pounds ten. Ann and I made it to our flat, used the loo in sequence, and heated up the kettle with five minutes to spare.

  I hid the extra copy of Milos's papers in my suitcase and put the originals in the hall closet, dashed into the bathroom, and scrubbed my face free of grime. I was running a comb through my hair when the doorbell rang. Though I hadn't had time to change clothes, the raincoat had absorbed the worst of the damage. There was a run in my pantyhose, but my wool suit looked presen
table.

  I met Ann in the hallway. The whites of her eyes showed. The kettle was shrieking.

  "I'll make the coffee," I said, "if you'll let them in. Cheer up. We're going to be open as day, except about the photocopies."

  "I'll follow your lead, Lark, but you're crazier than a coot."

  I patted her arm. "Don't I know it."

  Chapter 3.

  I set out a tray with four cups and the cafetière, ignoring an ancient percolator that had come with the furnishings. The coffee itself was the standard grind Americans buy in cans, a short step up from the beastly powdered instant the English use. If the water was very hot, the pressée pot made passable coffee. The percolator did not.

  I could hear Ann being hospitable in the foyer. I set the cream pitcher and a bowl of demerara sugar beside the pot and added a stack of paper napkins. Ann's voice grew louder. I carried the tray three steps into the "parlour"--it was also Ann's bedroom--and stopped dead as she entered, with Miss Beale trailing her and directing a vague smile my way.

  The police were practically on the doorstep and here was the landlady, a woman of exquisite, even oppressive, gentility, from whom we were renting the flat by the week. Lord love a duck.

  "Mrs. Dodge," she murmured when I had greeted her. I had asked her to call me Lark several times, to no avail. Apparently the rulebook in her head forbade such an intimacy between renter and rentee. What her rulebook had to say about cops in the living room I didn't dare think.

  Miss Beale--no Ms. about her--went on murmuring. She was a tall, indefinite woman with vague gray eyes and a taste for misty tweeds. She had brought me the iron I asked for when I discovered my linen suit had creased itself into permanent wrinkles in my suitcase. She hoped it would be satisfactory and would we take a glass of sherry with her that evening? Nineish? Her niece and nephew would like to meet the Americans.

  I abhor sherry. I thanked her for the invitation.

  Ann's eyebrows were signaling Distress. She was tired. She was sad. She wanted to go to bed with a hot water bottle. Tough.

  Without saying anything so grossly direct, Miss Beale had intimated that we were in her house on sufferance. Ordinarily she did not let the flat to foreigners. I suspected we were paying twice what she would have charged two Englishwomen. Even that outrageous sum was less than the tariff at hotels with a minimal degree of comfort, however.