The Best British Mysteries 3 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  Sens. They were halfway to Paris already. Why didn’t they stay with him and enjoy the pleasures of the capital? If they stayed on with him to the terminus, he would treat them to a meal at Maxim’s. And pay for a stay in a luxurious hotel for the night, if only they would stay on the train. Who wanted to finish their day in dreary old Sens? He would even offer to take their picture with his new camera - immortalise them on Dr Marey’s new celluloid film. His pleas boiled in his brain, but remained unspoken, and the elderly couple descended slowly from the carriage, and were gone. The heavy camera box felt like an unbearable burden on his lap.

  But their departure left him with an idea - a final defence. He surreptitiously turned the camera around on his lap until the two lenses in the front of the box pointed across the carriage at his tormentor. Though the stock inside the box was brittle, unlike the new celluloid, he had to hope it might work. He peered in the viewfinder set in the top, looking steadily at the image inverted in the little brass frame. Strangely, the intervention of the lenses between him and the man calmed him, as though the lens had captured and reduced the man to manageable proportions. He was able for the first time to look directly at him. No longer were his eyes so demonic, his posture so threatening. He was simply a tall, nondescript man sitting on a train, bored by the long journey, and anxious to return to his family in Paris.

  Boldly, he began to turn the brass handle set in the side of the oak box.

  * * * *

  The carriage was gradually emptying, as at each station the train stopped and people got up and left. He spoke to as many of his fellow passengers as possible within the limitations of his schoolboy French, and their reticence. Some of the people he spoke to travelled on the line regularly, but none could recall Le Prince as he described him - a tall, dark man with luxuriant Dundreary whiskers carrying a large box with brass fittings.

  ‘Six mois auparavant? Non, c’est impossible.There are times I cannot even recall my own wife’s name. Though that can be an advantage sometimes. Eh, monsieur?’

  Potter was glad when the toothless and odorous peasant who wished to regale him with his amatory exploits on market days finally reached his stop. He looked out at the station, wondering if Le Prince had got this far.

  Sens. An elegantly dressed man got on and sat opposite him.

  * * * *

  The rain was teeming down now, and heavy droplets of water tracked slowly across the window. First they ran diagonally, driven by the forward motion of the train. He was only half aware of them out of the corner of his eye, for his gaze was still mainly on the inverted image in the viewfinder. He cranked the handle knowing that the film would soon be finished, fearing that the spell might then be broken. There was a burning sensation in his mouth and throat, and he craved a drink to soothe it. His heart was pounding once again in his chest, and he felt faint. He glanced up, and the man’s eyes once again glowed murderously. He had to avert his gaze, and saw that the gobs of rainwater on the window were tracking almost vertically.

  The train was coming to a halt.

  * * * *

  The binding of the brakes woke Albert Potter from a doze, and he grasped the moquette-covered arm of his seat tightly as the carriage juddered to a halt. The elegant man opposite pitched forwards involuntarily.

  * * * *

  He held his arm protectively round his moving-picture camera as the train lurched to a stop. And in the viewfinder he saw the tall, thin man leaping towards him across the carriage, his Inverness cape flapping like the wings of a bat. There was only one more thing he could do.

  * * * *

  Potter looked out of the window onto darkness, seeing nothing more than his own reflection. On this occasion the image was of perplexity.

  ‘Monsieur. Please, why have we stopped? There is no station.’

  The elegantly dressed Parisian opposite, who had nearly been thrown into Potter’s lap by the motion of the train, brushed off the dust that had settled on his grey, fur-trimmed pilot coat from the rack above his head and smiled wearily. He explained with a resigned nod of his coiffured head that the train always stopped here.

  ‘It is for another train - where the lines cross. The driver knows he must stop, but it seems the signal always comes as a surprise to him. Hence the...’

  A vague Gallic wave of his wrist finished the sentence, describing with a twirl of the fingers the abrupt stop to which they had come. Potter could well imagine that it would have thrown an unwary passenger facing the rear of the train out of his seat. He was glad his fellow traveller had braced himself, and done nothing more than steady himself with a hand on Potter’s knee.

  It was as he settled back in his seat that he realised the Frenchman had said something quite important. Potter lunged for his travelling bag, and staggered to his feet just as he felt the train start up again. Under the astonished gaze of the man, he flung open the carriage door and dropped down into the darkness.

  * * * *

  He stumbled as he fell down onto the trackside, twisting his ankle. It buckled under him, and both his carpetbag and camera flew from his grasp, and disappeared into the darkness. He continued to tumble head over heels down the slippery embankment, bushes tearing at his clothes. His fall was broken by his landing on something soft in the damp gully at the bottom of the slope. It was his own bag, which had burst open to disgorge his clothes into the gully. A dress shirt drifted away from him on the rising water in the muddy channel. He sat up, wiped the rain out of his eyes, and watched the lights of the train gliding away from him. He was now committed to his course of action.

  * * * *

  Potter picked himself up out of the muddy ditch, and realised what a mad thing he had done. But he still reckoned it could be no less than Le Prince had done six months before. If the police had not been able to find any trace of him getting off at the stations down the line between Dijon and Paris, it stood to reason that this must have been the only possible place that Le Prince could have alighted. The elegant Parisian had said the train always stopped here. While it had stood waiting in the dark for the passage of another train on the down line, Le Prince must have, for whatever reason, jumped down from the carriage with his bag and moving-picture camera. Had he been fleeing from someone, and what had been his pursuer’s motive?

  Potter turned up the collar of his muddied overcoat, hefted his bag, and clambered out of the gully. He found himself on a rutted, country road, and stood at the roadside, debating which way to follow it. Where would Le Prince have gone? While he stood considering this dilemma, he was aware of a glimmer of light flickering through the trees to his left, and thought at first it was a carriage coming his way. He determined to hail it, and hoped the driver would stop for a mud-covered madman who had just jumped off the Paris train in the middle of nowhere. Then he realised the apparent movement of the light was caused by the swaying of trees, whipped back and forth by the driving wind. The yellowish light was coming from the windows of a large house set far back in thick woodland.

  He decided he needed to get out of the pouring rain, and walked along the road a few hundred yards until he found the driveway to the house. Two crumbling pillars loomed out of the darkness, both leaning at too precarious an angle to support the wrought-iron gates properly. These hung open, their bottom edges dug deep into the weed-covered driveway, clearly not having been moved for years. There was no indication on the pillars as to the name of the house, nor its owners. Potter hoped that, whoever they were, they would take pity on a damp and hungry traveller.

  The driveway was as unkempt as the gateway, and Potter’s only hope that the place was actually inhabited rested on the fact that he had seen lights in the upper rooms from the road. And as he approached the gloomy facade of the edifice, he was relieved to see at least one light still shining from one of the windows above the main portico. He was not so sure about wanting to place himself at the mercy of the inhabitants when he heard an unearthly scream emanating from the darkness above him.

 
; When Potter had asked Doctor Gaston whether a tall, dark-haired man had appeared on the doorstep of his asylum six months ago, much in the same way he had done this night, Gaston had stared pensively into space for a long time. His eyes, when they had returned to stare at Potter, glittered darkly.

  ‘I am afraid not. People very rarely choose to visit us voluntarily, you understand.’ He had smiled knowingly, and by way of further explanation waved his hand to take in the dark, desolate chateau. ‘The relatives of those patients who...’ He strove to find a suitable word, one not tainted with the stain of incarceration, ‘...those patients...residing with us, pay as much as they can. But the upkeep of the chateau is so crippling that it is difficult to maintain it to the standards of its former residents...’

  Potter, almost dozing off at the drone of Gaston’s monologue on the causes of madness, suddenly realised the doctor was making a suggestion about his search for Le Prince.

  ‘You know, it is no surprise to me that this man you are seeking...’

  ‘Le Prince.’

  ‘...Le Prince, disappeared. Little is known about the effects of cyanide on those who indulge in the science of photography.’

  Potter frowned.

  ‘What has cyanide to do with this case, doctor? Are you suggesting that Le Prince had been poisoned?’

  Doctor Gaston smiled. ‘Let me explain. About forty years ago, a man called Archer discovered that a substance called collodion made an excellent surface for photographic images. In order to fix this image, a solution was required, and most photographers used a weak solution of cyanide of potassium, silver nitrate, and water. Unfortunately, this solution is highly poisonous, and should not be allowed to touch broken skin, nor should the fumes be inhaled. Many people have died as a result of their interest in taking photographs.’

  Potter remembered Albert Le Prince’s comment about his brother’s use of collodion, and being immersed in chemicals.

  ‘What are the symptoms of cyanide poisoning?’

  ‘Initially, headaches, faintness, anxiety. Often the sufferer has a burning sensation in his mouth. Later, he will suffer attacks of excitement, anxiety, and increased heart rate.’

  ‘And finally?’

  ‘Coma, convulsions, paralysis...and death. Inevitably - death.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about the subject.’

  ‘Oh yes. I have been making a study of the progression of the symptoms, and have observed several research subjects in this very house.’

  Potter shuddered at the apparent callousness of the doctor, and his reference to the demented, poisoned souls as simply subjects for his research.

  ‘Then, if he did jump from the train that day, what were his chances?’

  The doctor sighed.

  ‘If he tried to hide somewhere, and the later stages of cyanide poisoning took effect - heart arrhythmia, respiratory depression - then he undoubtedly would have died a lonely and painful death.’

  ‘And I am wasting my time. Fancy imagining him pursued and murdered by rivals, when in fact he was simply being persecuted by his own deranged imagination.’

  ‘Not in the least. Our chance meeting has provided you with the most likely fate for the unfortunate Monsieur Le Prince. Break it to his wife gently.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Please, there is a village a kilometre down the road, Monsieur Potter - Pont-sur-Vanne - I will arrange for my assistant to take you there in the carriage.’

  When Potter made a token protest at the inconvenience, Dr Gaston brushed it aside.

  ‘It is better you do not stay here tonight. My patients can be...unsettled by strangers.’

  So it was that Potter readily agreed to the doctor’s offer of transport as he now felt his search was over. He thought it likely that Le Prince, doped with accidental cyanide poisoning, had fallen from the train and been killed. At the very least, he would have been seriously injured, and perhaps had crawled away into the woods only to succumb to cyanide and the elements soon afterwards. He shivered at the thought that Le Prince’s fate could easily have been his own.

  It was thus with some relief that he took his leave of the doctor and his forbidding residence, looking back only briefly to see the man standing in front of the portico, lit by the flickering lantern he held above his head. Then Potter sighed and settled back in his seat, looking forward to finding a warm dry hotel in the nearby village.

  * * * *

  Dr Gaston, lantern in hand, waved goodbye to the Englishman, then mounted the steps back into his domain. He closed the creaky front door of the asylum against the elements. Taking a bunch of keys from his pocket, he carefully locked the door, turned, and crossed the vast, echoing hallway. The darkness hung heavy, like the cobwebs that adorned the upper of the high ceiling, but the lantern cast enough light for the doctor to see his way. Besides, he knew the house like the back of his hand now. To one side of the still imposing staircase that curved up into the darkness of the upper floors there was a secret door made to resemble the wall in which it was cut. He fumbled another key on the ring into the lock and stepped through the door, closing it behind him.

  He heard a very familiar shriek. Descending the stairs that took him down to part of the warren of cellars under the chateau, he stopped at another locked door. The moaning came from behind this door. There was a shutter in the upper part of the door, and he slid it gently back. He looked at his latest research subject, and felt firm in his resolution to harbour the secret of his existence. The worth to science, and to Gaston’s reputation, would be inestimable. He watched as the lunatic repeated his strange compulsion over and over again.

  The man with the bushy Dundreary whiskers, now somewhat obscured by the full growth of beard on his chin, stared wide-eyed in terror at the illuminated square cast on the wall of his cell. He appeared transfixed by what he saw. In the corner of the room lay an oak box, bound with brass. Unfortunately, the brass had not saved the contents of the box from destruction in some sort of accident. One that Gaston now knew as the man’s leap from the Paris train. The box rattled when shaken, but the man refused to relinquish it.

  The occupant of the room screamed, and the doctor slid the shutter closed. He knew the cycle was now going to be repeated over again. And he longed to know what the man saw on the wall, where there was only a feeble square of light cast by the lamp he insisted on keeping burning all hours of the day and night. A blank patch of yellow light that terrified him. The doctor shook his head in bewilderment.

  * * * *

  Louis sat mesmerised by the projected image of his persecutor on the wall. It was as real as reality itself. Like so many times before, the tall, thin man in the Inverness cape was sitting opposite him on the train, fixing him with his steely eyes. They were alone in the carriage. Slowly, that eternal, predatory leer formed on his face, and his silent lips formed the words, ‘Give me the camera, Monsieur Le Prince.’ Louis’s heart sank. He could not take his eyes off the man, trying as he had done so many times to fix the man’s features with his gaze. But the image was blurred, and lost in shadow, like a poorly developed photograph, sitting hopelessly in a tray of fixative. The only hope was to add more cyanide of potassium to it. He stared, knowing what was coming next, anticipating the inevitable.

  The image shook, just as the camera had when the train had braked sharply, and the tall, thin man threw himself at Louis. The man’s face filled the screen as Louis swung the camera at his head, a sickening crunch jarring him to the elbow. Then the image shifted jerkily to a shot of the carriage door, swinging open, and he was enveloped in the flapping wings of the man’s cape. Under the dead weight of the body, Le Prince plunged into the darkness. He screamed.

  <>

  * * * *

  Michael Z. Lewin

  Cigarettes

  I should stop smoking. I’m sure I should. I know I should. Smoking is bad. And it can lead to bad things.

  On the other hand, there is a good side to smoking, especially these days. It’s a social thing
. And that’s it. Smoking is social, and I don’t just mean lighting up and sharing a cig after you-know-what.

  Smoking has always been social, associated with parties, drinking, fun. But these days there’s a new dimension. I’m talking about the way all us smokers gather in doorways outside office buildings and factories, the places where we’re sent now we’re banned from the insides. So those of us who persist, who resist, who continue, we’re all bound to bond. When you’re huddling together from the cold, you make friends.

  And together we have common cause to complain. Fat people aren’t sent out to eat. Idiots don’t have to go make their dumb mistakes in the rain. Parents aren’t sent to the bike shed with the bore-the-knickers-off-you pictures of their bloody children. I’ve known people who pretended to be smokers just to get away from all that.