City of Silence (City of Mystery)

by Kim Wright

  “I must say I find that the most fascinating part of the whole business,” said Rayley. “Not the crime scene work, but the notion that certain character types are more likely to commit certain crimes.”

  “I hate to eternally play the devil’s advocate…” Tom said.

  “Oh go ahead,” said Emma. “You’re so good at it.”

  Tom ignored her and continued. “Has it occurred to any of these criminal psychologists that men who’ve been jailed for heinous crimes hardly make most reliable of interview subjects? They lie. Change their stories. The Ripper bragged about his exploits and I would imagine many criminals do. You know, build themselves up to seem more ferocious and dangerous than they actually are.”

  “They could prevaricate their way through one round of questioning perhaps,” Rayley conceded. “But repeated interviews, which were conducted by skilled psychologists? And if they were under hypnosis…”

  “Ah,” Tom said. “So Dr. Freud has found his way to Scotland Yard at last.”

  “Perhaps the applications of the tool will become clearer if we move on to an example,” Trevor said mildly. As usual, the group seemed to be split, with Emma and Rayley embracing the theoretical while Tom remained skeptical of any methodology that expanded beyond hard science. Judging by the look on his face, Davy was more inclined to agree with Tom and it was impossible to tell with Geraldine, who had merely attacked her second piece of tart. Trevor was not sure where he himself stood on the matter. As methods went, criminal profiling appeared to be the proverbial double edged sword, as capable as sending detectives down the wrong path as the right one.

  “Yes please, give us the particulars,” said Emma and there was a synchronized turning of chairs.

  “The case originates from Scotland,” Trevor said. “Three separate rapes, committed over a four month span of time all taking place near a railway depot in a small rural town. The assaults occurred in the afternoon, each within a hour of the time when the train is scheduled to pass through – twice just after and the last just before.”

  “What sort of train?” Rayley asked. “A commuter train which makes many stops or a direct route train, which does not?”

  “Please explain for us all why you are asking that question,” Trevor gently reminded him. The goal of the Tuesday Night games was for the thought processes of each member to become utterly transparent to the others, and then use the subsequent analysis to illustrate to the volunteers how the mind of a trained detective might work.

  “When you said that the rapes were occurring near a depot,” Rayley said, “my first thought was that the attacker was either arriving or departing by train, or both. That he wasn’t a recognizable local citizen, in other words, but rather using the railway to assault women who would be unable to identify him to the district police.”

  “Perhaps someone who rides the trains on a regular basis,” Davy added. “It is a pity that trains do not keep registers of their passengers as ships do.”

  “Indeed,” said Trevor. The ability to correlate suspects with the dates of their channel crossings had been an enormous benefit in the Parisian case they had just concluded. But trains kept no such records.

  “We could begin with eyewitness accounts,” said Davy. “Conductors or regular commuters might recall who traveled that route on a consistent basis, perhaps even on the dates in question. Did we ascertain if the train was a local or an express?”

  “Ascertain” was rapidly becoming one of Davy’s favorite words, Trevor noted with amused approval, and he had finally learned to put the emphasis on the last syllable.

  “No, we did not,” Trevor said. “But our conversation has run off the rails rather early this time, if you’ll all pardon the pun, and the full ramifications of Rayley’s question have thus remained unexplored.” He squinted down at his papers. “This train was a local, the route running between Aberdeen to Edinburgh with seven stops, three of them very close to the small town where the attacks occurred.”

  “So the man could have boarded the train at any point along the route,” Rayley said. “And gotten off at any of the stops as well.”

  “I find it most interesting that he must have for some reason changed his methodology,” Emma said. “You said the first two times the rapes occurred shortly after the train had passed through the depot. This seems to me quite the logical sequence. A man disembarks from a train in a small town and commits a crime. But then the last time the rape occurs just before the train is scheduled to leave, which implies that he was already in the town. In this final instance he was more concerned with using the train as a means of departure rather than arrival and timed his attack accordingly.”

  “How often do trains pass through?” Tom asked.

  “And would you explain to us exactly why you raise that question?” Trevor asked in turn. He disliked his role as the stern schoolmaster of the group but if the games were to maximize their usefulness, he could not indulge great vaulting leaps of speculation in any of his team members, no matter how apt they might be. They must march together, step by step, through the entire bloody process if they were to emerge as a fully functioning unit.

  “Because Emma’s statement is quite right,” said Tom. “The change in modality seems a major clue to something or another, although right now I can’t think what. The first two times, yes, he steps from the train, finds his victim, and does the deed. But then what? He must wait around the town avoiding detection, until the next train arrives? It hardly seems a sensible plan, especially in light of the fact he is a rapist, not a murderer. His victim is presumably left quite capable of running about shrieking out her story, alerting both the police and any nearby brothers or husbands with a pitchfork. How long would he have to wait?”

  Trevor smiled slightly. The debates of Tuesday night were rapidly becoming his favorite part of the week. “Quite good, Tom and Emma, for this is precisely the first part of the puzzle the Scotland police latched upon. The trains run an hour apart in the mornings and early evenings when workers are commuting to and fro from Aberdeen, but makes only two stops at this particular small depot in the afternoon. One of them is scheduled at 1:25, the other at 2:40. From there, the next train does not pass until 5:15.”

  “And that is most likely the reason he changed his methodology,” said Emma.

  “Were the women who were attacked from the train too, Sir?” Davy asked. “Or did they live in the town where the crimes occurred?”

  “A reasonable question, Davy,” Trevor said. “But a bit premature. I shall give you particulars about the victims in a minute, but for now let’s stick to the question of how our criminal was using the trains.”

  “Here’s my notion,” said Emma. “The first two times he gets off the train in the afternoon, finding a deserted depot and a town full of women, most of the men either having long since commuted to work in the factories or else they’re laboring out in the fields. He finds his victim, rapes her, and is left, just as Tom suggests, with a sizable wait before the next train. I am happy to say that I don’t know how long it takes for an assault of this nature to be instigated and concluded, but I can’t imagine it would fill a block of time between 1:25 and 2:40.” She glanced around the circle, but the four men provided no further illumination, so she shrugged and continued. “Once the act is finished, our man must hide and somehow find a way to safely avoid detection until he can catch the next train. But this is risky in the extreme. They say that most women who are so attacked do not confess it, but if either of the first two women he raped had happened to tell, then Tom is quite right. He would have the whole village around his ears within minutes. People swarming about in pursuit of him and most obviously looking around the depot, the train being the only swift and anonymous way a stranger would have of getting out of town.”

  “Bravo,” Rayley said, taking off his glasses and blowing forcefully on the lenses. He had been in Paris when Emma had joined the group and initially he had been skeptical about the contributions a schoo
lmaster’s daughter could bring to the world of crime. But Emma had continued to impress him, one Tuesday night after the next.

  “Just so,” said Tom. “He has some sort of close call after the second rape perhaps, so he changes his methodology. This time he gets off of the train at some earlier time and hides before the rape, rather than after. He bides his time until he knows a train is due, then commits the rape and swiftly boards the train. He’s on his way well before his victim has time to alert her townspeople, if indeed she is inclined to do so.”

  “But his mere presence would be alarming,” Rayley said. “He’s already raped two women, who certainly know his face. Might he not encounter one of them, as he’s strolling about the limited streets of this tiny burg? A strange man in a city of women in the middle of the afternoon would be bound to draw attention.”

  “Good point,” Tom conceded.

  “So why would he keep returning to the same place?” Davy asked. “Detective Welles said the train made seven stops. After the first rape or at least the second, it seems the man would try a different town.”

  “You aren’t telling us everything,” Emma said, looking at Trevor with narrowed eyes. “You’re cutting the information into very small pieces, as if we’re babies who might choke on too large a bite.”

  “No,” said Rayley, as bemused as she was irritated. “He is actually doling out the facts in small increments because that is how you learn things on a genuine police case. You aren’t handed a file of twenty pages of information, all neatly sequenced and categorized. You start with these very small bites of information and you progress.”

  “Please, kind sir, do give us a little more,” said Tom, reaching over to pour a splash of wine into his glass and then, without asking, into Trevor’s. “Your smile has become unbearably smug.”

  “Fair enough,” Trevor said. “But first let’s follow this bit about the train schedule to its logical end, for there’s one point that hasn’t yet been raised. When our man takes the train into town during the day, whether it is midday or early afternoon, he would be disembarking at a time and place where most passengers are embarking. That in itself might draw the eye, might it not?”

  “Is this town a rest stop?” Davy asked. “One of the places along the route where the train pauses longer to give the passengers time to find food or use the facilities?”

  “Precisely,” said Trevor. “That’s what I was hoping someone would ask. The town in question is Montrose, almost the midway point of the route between Aberdeen and Edinburgh. So I’m inclined to think that our man gets off with the throng of passengers and then simply does not get back on. Bides his time and finds his victim, just as Tom says, waiting until close to the time the next train comes through to strike.”

  “All right, so far you’ve avoided saying anything at all about the women,” Rayley said, stroking his wispy mustache as he gave Trevor a sidelong glance. “Were they passengers on the train or women from the town?”

  “Townswomen, all three.”

  “Assaulted near the depot?”

  “Relatively close.”

  “And what were local women who had no intention of riding a train doing so close to a depot?”

  “Selling things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Hot cross buns in one case,” Trevor said. “Fruit from a cart in another. And the first one attacked was offering amenities of an entirely different nature.”

  “So apparently the fact that a commuter train makes a rest stop there provides a large part of the livelihood of the town,” Tom mused. “A few businesses spring up around the depot or perhaps the merchants bring their wares down when the train is due. A wheelbarrow of fruit, a tray of pastries, even an enterprising prostitute looking for some midday trade. A flurry of people disembark, transact this minimal business, and then they reboard a few minutes later. So our criminal does not merely use the train to come and go but also as a means of drawing his victims – women who come down to the depot and who, when the train leaves, are abruptly alone.”

  “The first woman he raped was a prostitute?” Davy confirmed.

  Trevor nodded. “Are you wondering why a man would bother to rape a prostitute when a few coins might get him what he wanted?”

  Davy quickly shook his head, actually rather offended, although he took pains not to show it. “You’ve told us often enough, Sir, that we should view rape as a crime of violence and not just of sex. But I was thinking that perhaps he chose his first victim just because she’d be unlikely to tell the story. If a woman is known about town for conducting that sort of business, how serious would the local police treat her claim that she’d been raped? So she ‘d likely keep mum about what happened, wouldn’t she, Sir?”

  “She would indeed,” Trevor said. “The first victim did not come forward with her story at all until the second and third woman had made claims. Very apt of you, Davy.”

  “So he aims at an easy target with his first shot,” Tom said, not noticing that his analogy made both Trevor and Davy wince. “But then he gains a bit of confidence and expands his pool of potentials to include two tradeswomen, victims who we can only assume the town viewed more sympathetically. I would imagine rape to be a rather noisy sort of crime. Apt to draw attention if the woman puts up a struggle. Where did the assaults actually take place?”

  “The first in an edge of the woods, the second in a public woman’s washroom, the one used by the train passengers,” Trevor said. “For the third, the baker, he presumably followed the woman back to her place of business for she was attacked in her own kitchen.”

  “Did he use a weapon to subdue the women?” Rayley asked.

  Trevor hesitated. “He had a scarf.”

  “A scarf?”

  “Indeed.”

  Rayley frowned. “To choke or to gag them?”

  “Neither. He used it as a blindfold.”

  This last statement brought silence to the table. Trevor noted that Geraldine had not yet spoken at all. Although loquacious by nature, she often held back at the beginning of the Tuesday Night Murder Games only to spring forth at the end with a barrage of comments which were either profoundly insightful or astoundingly bizarre. To date, the ratio was about 20/80. But tonight she merely continued to sit thoughtfully, her evening cup of chamomile resting on the broad ledge of her bosom, her eyes fixed on the table before her.

  “Shall we summarize?” Trevor asked. Past experience had taught him that when the conversation lagged, a revisiting of the particular points was a good way to get it going again. “We have a man who most likely arrives in a town by way of a midday train. He disembarks and finds a bevy of women working in the area around the depot. After the train is gone and the crowd has scattered, he follows his selected victim and to a private place and assaults her, then catches a later train to leave the town. What would a forensic psychologist conclude about such a man? If we were to apply the basics of criminal profiling, what would they suggest?”

  “He’s organized,” Rayley said promptly. “At least enough to use the train schedule to his advantage and to select his victims along certain criteria.”

  “And in the same vein, he possesses at least some self-control,” Emma said. “He isn’t raping in a manic frenzy. He plans his crimes.”

  “Looks normal or at least fits in well enough to avoid attracting attention on a train,” Davy added.

  “Seems to select strangers,” Emma said. “This isn’t a crime of any personal vengeance or due to an obsession with a particular woman.” She looked up at Trevor, her eyes seeming darker in the candlelight, deepening from blue to navy. “Did the women have any similarities in terms of age or coloring or some physical characteristic? Were they acquainted or intertwined in any way?”

  He shook his head. “Quite the contrary. The only thing they seemed to have in common was proximity to the depot. The two tradeswomen knew each other, but only slightly.“

  “So it would appear at first reckoning that our fellow is an
entirely logical sort of criminal,” Rayley said. “But then we come to the business with the blindfold. It keeps the women from being able to identify him of course, and thus makes a type of sense, but it also strikes me as a rather grand sort of gesture. Theatrical, almost. Could any of the victims describe anything about the man?”

  Trevor shook his head, then reconsidered. “Well, that isn’t entirely true. One of them did say the blindfold he used felt like silk. Noteworthy it would seem in a rural town where most men wear scarves made of wool if they wear them at all.”

  “If that’s all the description three victims managed to collectively produce, then it would seem that blinding the women, even momentarily, served his purpose,” Tom said. “And, I’m sorry Rayley, but I don’t read anything symbolic or grand into the gesture at all. If you don’t intend to kill your victim, and there’s no evidence suggesting that this particular rapist is warming up to murder, then your most pressing task is to make sure she doesn’t see your face.”

  “But I quite know where Rayley is going,” Geraldine said, suddenly jerking to attention in the manner of a mechanical soothsayer at a traveling fair. “There are certain acts of dominance, are there not, which are designed to break the spirit? The binding of the hands is one, and taking away someone’s sight or hearing is another. I’ve seen it with the suffragettes.”

  “The suffragettes?” Trevor asked cautiously. It was a bizarre non sequitur even for Geraldine.

  She nodded and leaned forward to place her teacup on the table. “Do you all recall that dark day when I was arrested at the protest about allowing women to row on the Thames? You surely remember, Trevor, for that’s the very afternoon the two of us first met. And Emma, you and Gage had to come down and give them money so they would let us all out.”

  “They posted your bail,” Trevor corrected her. “You always make it sound like a bribe or some other sort of impropriety when you say it that way, Geraldine. You simply must try to remember the proper wording.“

  “Indeed,” said Geraldine. “Posted bail. Anyway, Emma and Trevor remember, but for the rest of you, there is this most ridiculous law that states women cannot take a boat out on the Thames and my committee for the expansion of women’s rights went down to the waterfront to protest. Only they sent out the coppers to arrest us and thus dear Trevor and I became intimates.”