by Maggie Joel
‘Half an inch for the first three months of mourning, certainly. After that the border decreases to one-third of an inch. At six months it decreases to a quarter of an inch then in increments of a tenth of an inch over the succeeding six months depending on the nature of the loss and one’s relationship to the deceased.’
Aurora gazed at her sister-in-law in silent fascination and for a moment was at a loss to know how to reply.
The shopkeeper, who had been hovering anxiously in the background since they had entered his shop, used this momentary pause in the conversation to jump in. ‘Madam, please forgive me, but am I to understand you seek notepaper and that a bereavement has latterly taken place?’
Aurora slowly inclined her head.
‘My services are at your disposal, madam, at this difficult time. Might one inquire as to the length of time that has elapsed since the tragic loss occurred?’
Meredith nodded in a ‘You see!’ sort of way.
‘Six months,’ said Aurora.
‘Ah, then madam will be requiring the purple-edged notepaper.’
Beside her, Meredith started. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The purple-edged border. It is quite the custom now, after the first mourning has been concluded. Then at nine months one graduates to navy or maroon, depending on—’
‘A purple border!?’ repeated Meredith.
‘Graduating to navy or maroon.’
‘My good man, I do not know from where you have gleaned your information, but I can assure you that all the books recommend gradations of black. There is no mention of purple whatsoever. Nor yet, of navy or maroon!’
‘Madam is most certainly correct. However the custom of Her Majesty—’
‘The Queen uses purple?’
‘Quite so.’
Meredith appeared stunned and again Aurora took a moment to regard her. As far as she could recall, her sister-in-law had had no occasion, at least during the twenty or so years that she had known her, to use black-edged notepaper. And yet she evidently found the subject worthy of a not inconsiderable amount of her time and energy. By contrast, Aurora, who had every reason to make a detailed study of the subject, found that her energy and her patience had both run out.
And she was fast going to join them. She turned and walked out of the shop.
‘Aurora! Your order!’
‘I will have whatever Her Majesty has,’ she said over her shoulder as she re-entered the chaotic stream of Bond Street shoppers.
It had been a mistake to allow Meredith to bring her here. She had done with mourning, there was no more mourning left in her. And yet her sister-in-law, no doubt with the best of intentions, seemed determined to prolong it, to revel in its intricacies.
Am I really going to grade my notepaper from purple to navy or maroon? Aurora asked herself, as she stood amidst the swirl of hurrying shoppers. It had all seemed possible yesterday. She had ordered the downstairs curtains and shutters to be opened, the covers over the mirrors removed (it was a shock to see oneself in each of the mirrors that hung above the fireplaces). She had made a number of calls and received a number of callers in return and the world, it appeared, had not changed so very much in six months. This morning Lucas had departed first thing for the North without a word to her so that she had come down to breakfast and had had to pretend to Dinah, to Mrs Logan, to know of his plans. She understood that the railway accident must be uppermost in his mind yet it was disappointing he must be absent. And yet they had made it, she and Dinah and the boys, through that first day, and no doubt they would make it through this second day and each day after that would be a little easier.
A carriage drew up at the kerbside and a mother and daughter got out, the mother a fussy-looking lady in masses of ivory tulle and a train that got caught in the door of the cab, the little girl perhaps nine or ten years old, who waited impatiently for her mother then got too close to the horse and shrieked in terror when it pawed the ground and snorted. Perhaps they had an appointment with their dressmaker.
Aurora felt a coldness seep up from the paving stones and spread rapidly through her body. ‘Have you thought about what type of dress you are going to choose?’ It was a moment before Aurora recognised these words as her own, spoken six months ago; that the words had sounded so clear and distinct yet no one could hear them but herself. That Wednesday afternoon in the final week of May, a strange, a foreboding day that had hung around longer than any day ought, when the sun had been cloaked the whole day by a queasy yellowish haze, not the usual London smoke but something altogether more menacing. It had been a day for staying in one’s room and peering down at the world through smoke-encrusted windows, for writing impassioned letters to people one had long ago lost touch with and would never meet again, for remembering all those who had passed. It was her youngest child’s ninth birthday.
‘Are you ready, darling?’ she had asked and she had glanced at the clock on the mantel for she and Sofia were to take a cab to her dressmaker in Bond Street and the traffic was bound to be tiresome, coupled with which she and Lucas had a dinner to attend that evening. They ought to have started the venture much earlier but there had been a series of callers that morning, making lunch late, and now here they were and it was mid-afternoon already. It was inconvenient and she had wanted to say, Do please hurry up, darling, but she had not done so for it was Sofia’s birthday and she had wanted the child to enjoy her day.
‘I wish to look as beautiful as you, Mama,’ Sofia had said and Mrs Logan had gone outside to whistle for a cab.
As one had drawn up, Jack had returned bloodied from a cricket match, Gus a step or two behind carrying cricket bats and pads and quick to apportion blame: ‘Mama, I did tell him not to stand there. I did warn him.’
‘That’s where you’re meant to stand!’ Jack had replied, indistinctly, cradling his injury, which appeared to be a tooth knocked out that caused a surprising amount of blood to spill down the front of this shirt. In the confusion of the next few moments Aurora had run to her stricken son, Mrs Logan had called to Annie to get hot water and a towels (‘He is not in labour, Mrs Logan!’) and Agnes had been dispatched to fetch Dr Frobisher. The party had moved indoors and the blood flow had been stemmed and Jack had been made to hold his head back though it was not, he had protested, a nose bleed at all. He had merely lost a tooth—not a very good tooth either, not one he actually needed—and Gus, who was nothing if not thorough, had produced the tooth in question, which he had retrieved from the cricket green.
Unsurprisingly the outing to the dressmaker had been abandoned. Too much time had passed, the traffic would be tiresome, they had a dinner to attend and now this! Her son with a cricket injury and blood on the drawing room carpet and Gus sporting the dislodged tooth like a gruesome hunting trophy! It was hard on Sofia but it could not be helped. ‘We will go to the dressmaker another day,’ Aurora had said, one eye on the clock and the other on a tiny spot of blood that had got onto her gown, and when Sofia had pouted and stamped her foot and eventually burst into tears Aurora had sent her out into the garden.
‘Madam? Is it you, madam?’
In Bond Street the mother and daughter had gone and instead the face of some opportunistic street urchin came into focus, the wretched creature thin and lank-haired, her face streaked and gaunt, on her head a bonnet minus its lace, and around her shoulders a shawl, patched and torn.
‘I fought it was you, madam. I seen ya from ’cross the street.’
Aurora experienced a moment of disorientation. It was the maid. Agnes. Annie. One of the maids who had quit. At once Aurora stood up straighter and inclined her head to acknowledge the girl’s presence. What did she want? Money, presumably.
‘I know I shouldn’t, madam,’ the girl went on, curtseying awkwardly then taking a tentative step closer, ‘but I’m desperate, see. I can’t find work. I’m a hardworking girl, madam, you know it’s the truth, but I can’t find no work.’
Aurora lifted her chin and addressed a plac
e just above the girl’s left ear. ‘I am sorry for your misfortune, Agnes, but you should not have been so hasty to leave our employ.’
‘Annie. It’s Annie. I tried to stay on after Agnes left, honest I did, but I couldn’t … I couldn’t, on account of …’ The girl stopped, her mouth working but no sound coming out. There was something half-pleading, half-fearful in her eyes. ‘On account of the ghost,’ she whispered at last.
And Aurora thought, surely I have misheard her.
She had not misheard. The coldness spread over her body a second time, creeping out along her limbs and it seemed, for a moment, that she could no longer feel her feet, her legs, her arms. It seemed that she must surely have invented the girl’s presence and put those words in her mouth. But she had not invented the girl. The girl was standing before her now, a look of dismayed terror on her face.
‘There is no ghost!’ Aurora whispered, grabbing the girl’s shoulder and holding it tightly. ‘How dare you say such a thing?’
The girl’s dismay was palpable yet she clung doggedly to her story. ‘Swear to God, madam, we ’eard it! Agnes and me, we both ’eard it.’
Aurora let go of the girl’s shoulder and reeled away and she had almost reached Piccadilly by the time Meredith finally caught up with her.
‘Really! The Times has surpassed itself!’ exclaimed Sinclair, shaking that morning’s edition of the newspaper with unsuppressed rage. ‘“Amidst the mangled wreck of carriages the anguished cries of the sufferers could be heard long into the night, rendering the scene most terrible to behold.’’ Is it a piece of journalism, one wonders, or a passage from some lurid Gothic fantasy?’
Lucas did not answer. Unlike his colleague he was not reading about the aftermath of the company’s worst accident in three years in the pages of The London Times, he was viewing it right now first-hand.
They had arrived at Wolverhampton mid-afternoon and, with the line still closed, had hired a carriage to take them the rest of the way to the accident site. Sinclair had been silent most of the journey. The vivid accounts of the crash clearly infuriated him yet it was more palatable than witnessing it in person through the carriage window.
As they drew alongside the track Lucas saw a bridge straddling a canal—the remains of a bridge: its abutments on one side were utterly destroyed. The engine, tender and a third-class carriage of the ill-fated train lay on their sides some distance from the line, the mangled remains of a goods wagon now hardly distinguishable from the engine that had ploughed into it. Further down the embankment a gang was working with ropes and pulleys and a team of horses to remove two other carriages from the canal into which they appeared to have rolled. The remaining carriages, the luggage van and the brake-vans had been removed from the site but all around was a littering of broken glass and twisted metal and fragments of bricks. Over it all was a thin covering of frost and Lucas shivered.
Their carriage had stopped. The driver got down, pulled open the door and lowered the steps but for a moment neither of them got out. The foreman of the work gang and another man in a frock-coat buttoned up against the cold had seen them. The foreman stopped work and regarded them from a distance, not coming over, but the frock-coated man began to pick his way over the frozen ground towards them.
‘Mr Jarmyn and Mr Sinclair, is it?’ he inquired, offering them his hand as though they were meeting outside church after Morning Prayer. ‘I’m Standish, district superintendent of locomotives. Pardew is my foreman.’ He indicated the foreman, who gave a brief nod and returned to his work.
Lucas descended the steps and shook the man’s hand, ashamed of his reluctance to leave the carriage.
‘What is the situation? Our last communication indicated that salvage work had commenced and I can see that much has been achieved already.’
‘Indeed. I arrived here myself just a few hours after the accident occurred and a most dreadful sight it was then, sir, as you can well imagine. Needless to report, the work of recovering and tending to the injured and the dead went on into Sunday night and through Monday but by lunchtime all had been removed, the more seriously injured being transported by a fleet of hired carriages and by special train to the Royal Infirmary at Wolverhampton. Others to the Red Lion Hotel and the Queens Arms Hotel, both at Dawley. Work continued through the night and into this morning to clear and repair the line so that it may be in use again at the earliest opportunity.’
‘And the deceased?’ said Sinclair, looking beyond Standish towards the horizon where the smoke and chimneys of a small village could just be seen.
‘The bodies were secured in a van and held overnight at Dawley Station. They now reside, as I understand, at the infirmary, awaiting identification. We know who they are, it is a formality only. The driver and fireman being listed on that day’s duty roster, it made identification a straightforward matter. The father was with the child when it died but he was rendered insensible by the shock and was unable to make formal identification straight away.’
‘What news of the injured? We had heard upwards of thirty, some gravely?’
‘Yes. The more serious cases are at the infirmary. The injuries are mostly compound fractures, concussions and internal bleedings. There has been at least one amputation. Some poor souls remain insensible and are not expected to recover. There was a Sunday school party in one of the carriages but, by God’s grace, the party escaped, for the most part, unscathed. You are here to attend the inquest?’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Sinclair. ‘It is scheduled for nine o’clock tomorrow morning though no doubt it will be adjourned. With any luck we shall be on the noon train and home again by evening. Tell me, why are the constables here?’
Lucas had noticed them too. A small contingent of uniformed constables patrolled the fringes of the crash site.
Standish nodded. ‘There were pickpockets in the immediate aftermath of the crash. People came at once when they heard what had happened. By the time I myself arrived the place was swarming. Many were tending to the injured but others came simply to stare, as you can well imagine, and into this swarm a number of miscreants inevitably were drawn. The crowd caught one man red-handed and, by the time they had finished with him, I believe he would have been glad to have been handed over to the constables.’
‘It is the worst sort of crime,’ observed Sinclair.
‘Indeed, sir.’ Standish shifted from one foot to the other then back again. ‘There was a second incident though of a different nature late on Sunday. A crowd had gathered at the station and they had got hold of a rumour that the engine of the ill-fated train was faulty or the track poorly maintained or both. All strenuously refuted by myself and others, naturally, but once they had got hold of the idea the crowd would not be dissuaded. There was some ill-feeling. The stationmaster was jostled and knocked down. A window was smashed.’
‘There was nothing in The Times about it,’ Lucas replied.
‘They dispersed soon enough when the constables were called and things have remained quiet since. I trust it was merely a result of high emotions in the heat of the moment.’ Standish gave a quick smile. ‘Do you wish to see the site of the collision, gentlemen?’ he offered, seeming anxious to change the subject.
They began to pick their way across the ground towards the bridge and when he looked down at the frozen, uneven ground Lucas saw a man’s shoe, crushed and soiled, before him. A little further on was a chain from a man’s watch, a scrap of a lady’s handkerchief, a third-class ticket stub, the stem of a clay pipe, and an unidentifiable item of clothing, mangled and torn and darkly stained along one edge though whether from the damp or from blood he could not tell. So intent was he on the dark stain that he missed his footing and tripped, putting out a hand to steady himself, and looking down he saw a small cylindrical pinkish-grey object at his feet. At first he could not make out what it was, so incongruous did it look amongst the twisted chunks of metal and the splinters of wood and the rubble, and he crouched down and went to pick it up. Then he saw that
it was a human finger, sliced clean off and frozen solid. A woman’s finger, the nail neatly trimmed, the skin puckered but clean.
He stood up and lurched away from it, keeping his eyes on Standish who was ahead of him.
‘Here,’ Standish was saying, indicating with his arm the point of contact with the goods train. They walked wordlessly up the line in the Dawley direction until they had reached the final signal before the bridge. It was in the ‘danger’ position. They stood beneath it and observed it for some minutes.
‘This signal has been changed since the accident?’ inquired Lucas finally.
‘That I cannot say, sir. I have not spoken to the signalman who was on duty at the time, being more concerned with the salvage operation, as you see. The government official, a Captain Greenaway, was here yesterday and spoke to the man, I believe, as well as to the head guard and the stationmaster at Dawley, but I cannot say what the outcome of these discussions was. No doubt we shall hear at the inquest.’
‘If the signal was in the “danger” position and the driver failed to spot it and to stop in time then clearly it was driver error that caused this accident,’ pronounced Sinclair, turning to head back down the line.
‘And if the signal was frozen in the “clear” position and has since unfrozen it is not driver error,’ Lucas countered.
‘Look around you,’ said Sinclair, pausing to wave his arm at the icy scene of destruction before them. ‘There has been a frost each day since the accident. Do you think this signal would have unfrozen when the air temperature has not got above freezing these last three days? It is driver error, mark my words.’
‘Convenient for us if it is,’ remarked Lucas, when they were out of the hearing of Standish.
Sinclair rounded on him angrily. ‘Contrary to what you evidently believe, Jarmyn, I am just as concerned about finding out the truth of this matter as you are. It does not assist matters if we hide from the truth, however ugly it may prove.’
‘Knowing the truth privately and acknowledging it publicly being two very different things, Sinclair. Do you share my views on both points, I wonder?’