by Lear, James
I stuffed a hunk of bread and cheese into my mouth, ignoring the bulging eyeballs and tutting tongue opposite me, and wiped my mouth on a wet napkin. “If you will excuse me, your Royal Highness, I’m going to find out what the hell is going on. Unless you prefer to sit here all day stewing in your own juices.”
“Well! Charming! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. All Americans, even ones from quite good families, are painfully gauche when it comes to the finer points of etiquette…”
Her voice faded away as I marched out of the carriage. I was barely into the corridor when I saw Simmonds, the conductor, coming toward me.
“Mr. Mitchell! Please return to the dining car!”
“Whatever is going on, Simmonds? This is ridiculous. There are people hurt and frightened.”
“I’m well aware of that, sir. We have hit a problem with the switch. I must ask you to return to the dining car and sit down.”
“Why?”
“Because we are going to—”
The brakes screamed, and we stopped with another terrible jolt, which threw Simmonds against me. Thankfully, the lights did not go out this time. I braced myself with one leg and supported his weight; it was not an unpleasant situation, particularly as our faces were almost touching. I could smell tobacco on his breath.
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
“That’s okay, Simmonds.” I righted him, and we both cleared our throats and fingered our collars.
“We are obliged to reverse into the tunnel again, sir. It may be bumpy. Please go into the dining car and tell everyone to sit tight. Move anything heavy or breakable and stow it. Make sure the children are safe.”
“It sounds serious, Simmonds. Are we in any danger?”
He was pale, his mouth set in a grim line. “No, sir. You are in no danger. Just go to the dining car and stay out of harm’s way.”
I thought it best to do as I was told. Simmonds walked back down the train—and then suddenly stopped and gave a shout of fright.
I turned quickly on my heel and saw him standing frozen to the spot, just outside the lavatory.
“What is it, man? For God’s sake, what is it?”
“Look, sir.” He pointed to the carpet at the base of the door, where a dark red stain was spreading slowly through the pile. “Blood.”
Blood it surely was: enough blood to pool on the bathroom floor and soak outward into a patch approximately one foot in diameter. That was a lot of blood.
“Who’s in there?”
“I don’t know, sir.” Simmonds banged on the door, but we both knew it was futile. “Open up! Open up in there! What’s going on?”
“You’ll have to open it yourself, Simmonds. You have a passkey, don’t you? Bertrand said you did.”
“Of course.” His hands were shaking. “Oh, God, Mr. Mitchell, what has happened?”
“Someone is hurt. Badly, by the look of it. You must let me help them.”
“Please, sir—would you do it? The sight of blood… I can’t…”
I reflected for a moment that he had not been so squeamish when it came to beating up poor little Bertrand, but this was no time to bear old grudges.
“Okay. Hand over the key.”
But Simmonds was frantically twisting and turning, rummaging in his pockets, his jacket, looking around him on the floor.
“It’s gone!”
“What is?”
“The passkey, sir. The key that opens all the carriages and the toilets. I can’t find it.”
“You’ve lost it?”
“Oh no, sir. I’ve never lost a key, not in fifteen years working on the railway. It’s been stolen.”
The whistle sounded, and with a great hiss of steam we started to move again—backward.
VI
THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO BUT REMAIN ROOTED TO THE spot, staring at the growing stain on the carpet, a horrible crimson flower that was starting to look wet and—or was this my imagination?—starting to smell. I am familiar with the smell of blood; all doctors are. Simmonds was leaning against the corridor wall, horribly pale.
“You have to find that key, Simmonds. What happened? Where could you possibly have lost it?”
“I tell you, I didn’t lose it!” His voice was high, almost a scream. “Someone must have taken it.”
“But when the train jolted… Isn’t it possible that you fell over, that you somehow knocked it out of your pocket?”
“I keep it on this chain.” He twirled a chain from his waistcoat pocket. “It is impossible to drop it. Someone would have to have taken it off… Someone very light-fingered. I’d have seen them, surely. I’d have felt them. Unless… While we were…”
“I can assure you, Simmonds, that neither Bertrand nor I touched your key while we were in there together. We had other things on our minds.”
“But how can I trust you?”
“You’re right, Simmonds. You can trust nobody. You will have to decide for yourself. I, however, know that I did not take it, and I choose to believe that Bertrand didn’t.”
He looked suspicious. “Then who? When? And why?”
“Conductor! Conductor!’ We heard footsteps running up the passage, and Dickinson burst into view. “For God’s sake, what’s going on?”
“We’re reversing into the tunnel, sir,” said Simmonds, deftly positioning himself in front of the bloodstain, so that Dickinson should not see it. “I shall be making an announcement shortly. Please return to your carriage.”
“Not on your life. Daisy needs champagne. She’s become quite faint. And she needs that bloody pansy of a secretary. I presume he’s up there, fraternizing with his lady friends?”
“Yes, he’s there.”
“Christ. Fucking useless bastard.” Dickinson was muttering under his breath as he barged past us into the dining car. Once again I smelled his distinctive scent, that citrus cologne that he wore—or was it a soap? A fresh smell, masculine… It made me think of blond hair and firm, set features…
“What am I going to do, Mr. Mitchell?” Simmonds pleaded. “If the first-class passengers see this, there will be full-scale panic.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll keep everyone in check. Trust me, Simmonds.” I put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Perhaps he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.
There was a scuffle in the doorway as Dickinson tried to push Frankie Laking back down the train, while at the same time grabbing a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket on the table. Lady Antonia kept up her usual disapproving commentary, the steward wrung a napkin in distress, and the Andrews family stared out the window as if nothing was going on. Frankie shot through the door, nearly knocked me to the floor, and whooped as he skipped down the corridor toward Hugo and Daisy’s private carriage. Dickinson came in hot pursuit.
“Keep your hands off me, you brute! I’m a virgin!”
“Shut up, you stupid fairy.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I announced, “we are currently reversing into the tunnel, as there is a problem with the switch up ahead. I am asked to tell you to remain in your seats in case of any—whoop! Jesus!”
A sideways jerk this time, and I was sent sprawling onto Bertrand, knocking the wine bucket into his lap. It was full of ice.
The children were sniveling continually now, and Mrs. Andrews, while trying to calm them, was sobbing herself. Even her husband looked a bit green around the gills, and the best he could muster was the occasional “Well, then, my dear” or “There, there.” We were all frightened; one read about rail accidents, and we seemed at every moment to be on the brink of a real-life disaster.
Bertrand swore (I assume) in French, stood up, and brushed the ice cubes from his lap. They hit the floor with a bump and a clang.
A clang?
“What’s that?” Something had fallen under the table; something that should not be in a wine bucket.
“It must be a knife, sir,” said the steward. “Allow me.”
I stopped him. There was a meta
l object poking out by Bertrand’s shoe, black and silver and shiny. I picked it up.
A key.
I ran back to the corridor, where Simmonds stood guarding the lavatory. The bloodstain was even bigger and steamed slightly in the cold air. I held up the key.
“Where the hell was that?” Simmonds asked.
“In there.”
“You found it?”
“You could say that.”
“Who had it?”
“Does it matter, Simmonds? For God’s sake, open the door.”
He covered his eyes, grabbed the key, and jiggled it in the lock until it turned.
Rhys lay on the floor, his feet resting awkwardly on the toilet lid, his head twisted at an unnatural angle, mouth distorted and eyes open. His left hand, which was reaching toward us, fell forward slightly as I opened the door, and a wave of blood gushed out into the passage.
The ring finger was missing. It was from this fresh, glistening wound that the blood had seeped out under the door.
The stump was still bleeding, as if the heart was still pumping, but David Rhys, the diamond merchant, was dead. And the ring that had caused so much discreet admiration and excitement was gone, as well as the finger that had worn it—severed, I guessed, with a knife that was not exactly of surgical sharpness. The cut was ragged, and the bone had been broken, rather than cut or sawn, as we would do in an operating room.
Simmonds retched.
“Put your head out the window for a moment, Simmonds. Breathe deeply.”
We had stopped again—back in the tunnel, the wretched black tunnel, where the air was far from fresh—but I really did not want Simmonds vomiting on the scene of the crime. It was already quite messy enough.
He didn’t puke, thank God, but when he pulled his head back into the carriage he looked ghastly. His knees were buckling, and I thought he was about to faint.
“I’ve never seen… Oh, God… A dead man…”
“Pull yourself together. This is an emergency. We have to get help.”
“Help… Yes… Help.”
“Stay there. Don’t move. Don’t look at the…body.”
“The body…”
“Just so. Look out the window. Say your prayers. Think of your mother. Anything. Just don’t go away, and don’t let anyone near the—”
Simmonds groaned and stared at his reflection in the darkened window.
I ran back and banged on the door of the dining car.
“Bertrand! Come here!”
“What is it?”
“Come quickly. It’s fine, everyone, nothing to see. The conductor is unwell, that’s all. Everyone here okay? Good, good. Come on, Bertrand.”
I grabbed him and dragged him through the door. He was complaining, as usual.
“Why should I worry about that pig of a conductor? He is nothing to me. He is—oh, mon dieu.”
He had seen the blood on the carpet, the horror-stricken face of Simmonds, and guessed the rest. “Someone is dead, oui?”
“Exactly so. Now stay with Mr. Simmonds and make sure that nobody touches anything. I’ll be right back.”
I hoped my instincts were right, and that I could count on Bertrand in a crisis. He had taken to fucking well enough; would he excel in that other sphere of interest, the investigation of crime?
Dickinson was just coming out of the movie stars’ compartment. He was still frowning; presumably Miss Athenasy was causing more trouble. I did not envy him his job, however glamorous.
“Just the man I wanted to see,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I’m sick to death of that mad bitch. God, whatever did the old man see in her? She’s as thick as two short planks. Come on, why don’t you and I go and make whoopee somewhere.”
“Something’s happened.”
“You’re telling me. This whole journey is a fucking disaster.”
“No. Listen. Something serious. Someone’s dead.”
“What? Dead? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Come and see.”
“You’re seriously telling me that there is a dead body on this train?” He looked amused; he was almost laughing.
“I am. What’s so funny, Dickinson?”
“It’s incredible.”
“Well, you’d better believe it. I’m telling you that there is a dead man in the first-class bathroom—”
“And I have something to tell you that you may find equally hard to believe.”
What was he going to confess? That Daisy Athenasy, in a drug-crazed frenzy, had murdered poor David Rhys just to get her hands on that big sparkler?
“And what is that?”
“I’m a policeman.”
Dickinson assumed control with extraordinary speed and efficiency. He dispatched Simmonds to the conductor’s car, there to recover with a brandy and a cigarette, and sent Bertrand down the train to prevent any approach from that direction. He tore up the ruined carpet, rolled it up, and stashed it in the bathroom with the body, then locked them away with the conductor’s key, which Simmonds had left in the lock.
“And now,” he said, joining me in the dining car, coolly wiping his bloodstained hands on a napkin, “we must do our best to find out what has happened. Ladies and gentlemen, please return to your carriages. There has been a terrible accident, and until we have taken stock of the situation I need to know exactly where everyone is.”
“By what authority, might one ask?” said Lady Antonia, looking at Dickinson through her eyeglasses.
“By the authority, madam, of the Metropolitan Police Service, in which I am a detective superintendent.” He fished in his jacket pocket. “Here is my warrant card.” He waved it under her nose; she waved it away.
“I do not need to see it. I have every respect for the forces of law and order. You may carry on with your work as you see fit.”
“Thank you so much, Lady Antonia. That’s very good of you. Now, if you would not mind returning to your carriage…”
“Yes,” she said, rising to her feet, “come along everyone. You heard what the superintendent said. Now then, young ladies. Let’s look lively.”
She took charge rather splendidly, and within moments an orderly line was making its way down the train, dispersing through the carriage doors. They passed the fatal lavatory without a murmur; there was nothing to betray its gruesome cargo.
Dickinson and I remained in the dining car. The steward flitted in and out of the kitchen.
“The time is two-fifteen P.M.,” Dickinson observed. “How long has Rhys been dead, Dr. Mitchell?”
“The wound was still bleeding when we discovered it. I estimate that he was killed this side of one-thirty.”
“In that case, we must ascertain everyone’s whereabouts at the time of the attack.”
“We were here, with Lady Antonia and her companion, Chivers. No. Wait. She had been sent down the train to take care of the luggage.”
“Ah, when was that?”
“Just after we—oh, come on, Dickinson. You’re not seriously suggesting that someone like Chivers—”
“I’m suggesting nothing at this stage, Mitch. I am simply trying to put together the pieces of the jigsaw.”
“Okay. First of all we need to write down what happened, and approximately when. We left Edinburgh at ten o’clock.”
Dickinson handed me a pencil, and I wrote on the back of a menu.
“Then we stopped at York station…”
“Yes,” said Dickinson, rubbing his crotch, “just as I was preparing to give your little friend the fucking of a lifetime.” He put a hand on my knee. “When was that, would you say?”
This was no time for fooling around, I thought. “Well, what time would you say that was?”
“I wasn’t looking at my watch, Mitch.” His hand ran up my leg.
“And we were there for maybe twenty minutes,” I said, shifting my position to dislodge his hand. “I was talking to the soldiers for a while, then Bertrand saw something in the shed—”
Dickin
son was not interested in details. “Twenty minutes, as you say. Write that down.”
I must have been staring at him, for he suddenly stopped speaking and held my gaze.
“What is it, Mitch?” His hand went to his crotch. “Want some of this?”
“No,” I lied. “It’s just occurred to me that I know nothing at all about you. Who are you? Why are you on this train? What is your position with Daisy and Hugo?”
“I see. You begin to suspect me. Good. That’s exactly how it should be.”
“Well?”
“I am, as my warrant card suggests, Detective Superintendent Peter Dickinson of Scotland Yard.”
“And that other card? British-American Pictures?”
“That, my dear Mitch, is what’s known as working undercover.”
“Why?”
“Can I trust you?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose I can. I mean, I know enough about you to put you behind bars for a few years, don’t I? So you wouldn’t want to piss me off, would you?”
“That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.” He was still rubbing his crotch, and the outline of his cock was quite visible through his pants. “But then again,” I said, “that’s a two-way street, isn’t it? I don’t imagine that our sort of person is exactly welcome in the Metropolitan Police Service.”
“Not officially, no. Although I could tell you a few tales about the young recruits, the kind of training we put them through… You’d enjoy it, Mitch. I could show you if you like.”
“I don’t think this is the time or the place.”
“Good. Well done. You’ll make a good detective. I can trust you to keep your head in a tight spot, and not be distracted by—” He ran his fingers down the considerable length of his hard cock, which was straining at the fabric of his pants. “This.”
In truth, I would have liked nothing better than to kneel before him and start sucking him off, and had it not been for the occasional presence of the steward, I might have done so.
“So, you want to know why I’m on this train in the first place, I suppose,” he said.
“I do.”
“I’m investigating a drug smuggling operation.”
“Ah,” I said. “Daisy Athenasy.”