The Ghost in Roomette Four

by Janet Dawson

  When Jill reached the front of the Silver Dollar, she paused to say hello to the car attendant, then she answered questions for several coach passengers. She made her way to the second car, the Silver Rifle, where the conductor’s office was located at the rear of the car. Jill peered into the office, wanting to introduce herself to the Denver & Rio Grande Western conductor who had boarded the train when the crew was changed out in Salt Lake City. There were two men inside, both drinking coffee. One of the men had a familiar face. Jim Gaskill, a tall, rangy man in his forties, wore the typical conductor’s uniform, with a dark jacket worn over a white shirt, as well as a dark tie and vest. A watch on a chain was visible in his left pocket. d&rgw insignia decorated his lapels. His billed cap bore a shiny badge with a snowcapped mountain peak and the words Main Line Through the Rockies, surrounding the Rio Grande portion of the railroad’s name. Mr. Gaskill would be aboard the California Zephyr until the next crew change, in Grand Junction, Colorado.

  The second man was younger, with a muscular, wiry build, red hair and a face dusted with freckles. Jill had never seen him before. He looked at her with a friendly smile, a pleasant twinkle in his blue eyes.

  “Good to see you again, Miss McLeod,” Mr. Gaskill said. “Have you met Don Harding, our brakeman?”

  “No, I haven’t. Nice to meet you, Mr. Harding.” Jill offered her hand and the younger man grasped it.

  “It’s a pleasure, Miss McLeod,” he said. “It’s only my second trip on the Zephyr. I was in Southern Colorado before, based in Durango.”

  Mr. Gaskill took another sip of coffee. “The Western Pacific conductor briefed me in Salt Lake City. Sounds like we’re having an uneventful run so far. I’d sure like to keep it that way.” He glanced at Mr. Harding. “When Miss McLeod and I did an eastbound run last December, we had all sorts of shenanigans going on, including a sneak thief and a murder. Then there was that rockslide.”

  “I’d like to hear about that,” the brakeman said. He flashed his smile again.

  If that was a hint, he was being none too subtle about it. Jill was used to attention from the males aboard the train, both crew and passengers. From time to time she had to deal with the wolves, the men who figured the Zephyrette was fair game for their attention. Still, Jill admitted, romantic alliances between crew members were common. One of her fellow Zephyrettes was engaged to a dining car steward, and she herself was dating a man she’d met on that very same December run. A Zephyrette could not be married, though. Should she decide to take the step into matrimony, she’d have to give up her job, and she didn’t want to do that, at least not yet.

  Jill excused herself and continued her walk through the train. She went through the third chair car and entered the Silver Roundup, where the coffee shop was full of passengers having breakfast. She stopped briefly in her own compartment, then continued through to the Silver Crane. Perhaps she could take a moment to talk with Mr. Doolin. She wanted to find out what he knew about the ghost.

  But Mr. Doolin was busy, talking with the Pullman conductor, Mr. Grace, a tall, imposing man with dark chocolate skin and tight gray curls under his cap. Crew members like Mr. Gaskill and Mr. Harding, the engineer and fireman up in the locomotives, and the dining car crew, were employed by one of the three railroads that ran the CZ. Jill, as a Zephyrette, was considered an employee of the Western Pacific Railroad for payroll purposes. And the porters, who were overwhelmingly black, were employees of the Pullman Company, based either in Oakland or Chicago. During each run of the CZ, there was a Pullman conductor overseeing the porters.

  She greeted the two men and walked past them. The door to bedroom A opened and Mrs. Lombard, a passenger who was traveling from Oakland to Chicago, stepped out. Jill stopped to admire her outfit, a coat-dress of silky ivory rayon decorated with a coppery print. Her brown leather handbag matched her high-heeled pumps. “Thank you,” Mrs. Lombard said. “I got the dress at the City of Paris in San Francisco. Do you shop there?”

  “Sometimes,” Jill said. “I live in Alameda, so usually I go to Capwell’s or Kahn’s in Oakland. Did you finish that Raymond Chandler book you were reading last night?”

  “I did. How about you, did you dive into Agatha Christie?”

  On the previous evening, Jill had encountered Mrs. Lombard in the lounge of the Silver Roundup, having a nightcap while she paged her way through The Lady in the Lake. They both had a love for mysteries, with Mrs. Lombard leaning toward the more hardboiled practitioners of the art.

  Jill shook her head. “I was so tired last night I didn’t read before going to bed.”

  “I’m sure being a Zephyrette keeps you quite busy,” Mrs. Lombard said. “Since I’ve finished my Chandler book I’m getting ready to start another one. It’s by an author who’s new to me, Ross Macdonald. It’s called The Way Some People Die.”

  “That’s certainly an intriguing title,” Jill said. “I’ll look for it. Enjoy the book.”

  Mrs. Lombard waved and headed forward, in the direction of the dining car. Jill walked toward the rear of the train, leaving the Silver Crane for the Silver Gorge. The porter, a young man named Mr. Webster, was making up a bedroom that had been vacated by a passenger who left the train in Provo. The space was reserved by another passenger who would board the train in Grand Junction, Colorado.

  “And the passenger traveling in roomette four?” Jill asked. “I understand someone was getting on the train in Salt Lake City.”

  Mr. Webster nodded. “That’s Mrs. Callendar, bound for Iowa.” He looked past her. “Here she is now.”

  Jill looked at the older woman who had appeared in the passageway, walking toward them. The woman was in her fifties, Jill guessed, dressed in a moss green gabardine suit and carrying a square gray leather bag. She had a pleasant face below her expertly coiffed brown hair.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Callendar, I’m Jill McLeod, the Zephyrette. Please let me know if there’s anything you need.”

  Mrs. Callendar smiled. “A lot of coffee, that’s what I need. And a good breakfast. I had to get up quite early this morning to catch this train.”

  “You’ll have plenty of opportunity to relax between here and your destination,” Jill said. “There’s lots of coffee and good food in the diner.”

  “I know. I’m an old hand at train travel.”

  “Despite the early hour, I hope you were able to get some sleep after we left Salt Lake City, without any disturbances.” Jill wondered if Mrs. Callendar had heard or seen anything in the short time she’d occupied the roomette.

  “I didn’t bother to have the porter make up the bed when I boarded,” Mrs. Callendar said, “but I did doze off after we pulled out of the station. I woke up about twenty minutes ago. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really do need coffee.” She stepped past Jill and the porter and continued walking forward.

  Jill left Mr. Webster and headed back through the train. It was the height of summer, a time when people took vacations, visited relatives and friends or just traveled somewhere they hadn’t been before, enjoying the broad tapestry of America from the Vista-Dome. As a result, the train was full. Many of the passengers were children. Most were well behaved but some treated the train as their moving playground, and their parents were content to take a break and let them. In the sixteen-section sleeper, where the daytime seats would be converted to upper and lower berths at night, two little boys were chasing one another down the aisle. Finally the mother of one of them stepped out of the women’s rest room at the end of the car and took her offspring by the arm, settling him in his seat with a sharp word and a stern look. Jill stopped to check on the little boy whose skinned elbow she’d treated the night before. He proudly showed off his scab and assured her he was fine.

  In the transcontinental sleeper, she talked with the Birnbaums, an elderly couple who were headed back to New York City after visiting their married daughter in San Francisco. Then she stepped through the vestibule into the dome-observation car, the Silver Horizon, which contained three dou
ble bedrooms suitable for two passengers each, and a drawing room that could accommodate three passengers. At this end of the car was a tiny compartment for the porter. Jill passed the bedrooms and the drawing room and took two steps down to the depressed level under the Vista-Dome. Here in the car’s buffet, or lounge, the porter, Ed Harvey, was behind the curved counter at the small bar, pouring cups of coffee for two passengers, a man and a woman. Jill waved at Mr. Harvey, then she walked up two more steps leading to the main level, where curved stairs led up to the dome. At the rear of the car, comfortable upholstered chairs, lined either side, five on one side and four on the other, where passengers sat with small, round metal tables that had recessed holders for glasses, with ashtrays in the middle.

  To the right of the stairs leading to the Vista-Dome was a writing desk, with stationery and postcards for the passengers. Jill frequently collected letters and cards during her walks through the train, mailing them at the longer station stops. Today, the next such stop would be Grand Junction, Colorado, at 11:46 a.m. There were also newspapers on the desk. Before the train had left the coach yards in Oakland the day before, multiple copies of the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner had been delivered to the train and distributed through the cars, including this one. And today, during the stop in Salt Lake City, current editions of the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune had been added, as would the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post when the train reached Denver this evening.

  Jill looked down at the newspapers on the desk. The headlines were full of news about the impending armistice in Korea, promising an end to the conflict. The Korean peninsula had been separated into two countries since the end of World War II. However, war began in June 1950 when North Korean troops crossed the border into South Korea. Later that year, in October, the Chinese army had entered the fray.

  Korea. Thinking about the war always caused a pang. She wouldn’t be riding the rails had she married her fiancé, Steve Haggerty, the man she’d met while attending college at the University of California in Berkeley. Her degree was in history and she was planning to teach while Steve fulfilled his military obligation, since he’d been in the Reserve Officers Training Corps while studying engineering. Four years of college in exchange for a commitment to serve, so Steve had been commissioned as an officer in the Marine Corps. After training at Camp Pendleton in Southern California, he’d gone to Korea the following year, as the war heated up.

  Steve died in December 1950, at a place called Hell Fire Valley at Chosin Reservoir. The battlefield was known as “Frozen Chosin” because of the terrible winter weather that year, with snow, wind and temperatures far below zero.

  Jill could still recall every detail of the night Steve’s Uncle Pat, a Western Pacific conductor, had showed up at the McLeods’ home in Alameda to tell Jill of Steve’s death. After months of grieving, she’d wrapped her engagement ring in a lace handkerchief and tucked it into her jewelry box. Then she went looking for a different direction for her life, one that left little time for wondering how things might have been. It was Uncle Pat who had suggested that Jill become a Zephyrette, telling her she’d be good at it.

  And she was. She enjoyed her job very much. She’d been riding the trains for over two years now. And there was a new man in her life, Mike Scolari. She’d met Mike last December on an eastbound run of the California Zephyr, and they had been dating ever since. Dating, no plans yet, just enjoying each other’s company. Mike, a World War II veteran, was using his GI benefits to go to school at UC Berkeley. He wanted to finish his studies and move on to his career before thinking about anything permanent, and Jill concurred. She wasn’t ready to give up her life on the rails.

  Korea, Jill thought, looking again at the headlines. Now the war that had taken Steve’s life, and those of so many others, was coming to an end.

  Chapter Four

  Jill left the newspaper on the table and took the steps up to the Vista-Dome. All twenty-four seats in the upper observation area were taken, with passengers looking at the mountainous terrain of eastern Utah. The CZ had gone over Soldier Summit and was heading down Price Canyon, toward the little town of Helper, where the train would stop briefly.

  “Why is the town called Helper?” The passenger in the nearby seat was Tommy Reeves, a fourteen-year-old who, with his family, was traveling on the sixteen-section sleeper. He was quite taken by the sights around him and since he’d gotten on the train in Sacramento, he had many questions for Jill.

  “There’s a steep grade here in the canyon,” Jill said. “So as the train went west up the canyon, it would take on additional engines, called helpers, to help with the climb.”

  Tommy leaned close to the window, looking at the canyon walls, then the buildings of the little town. The CZ stopped and started again a moment later, pulling out of Helper.

  “How soon will we be in Colorado?” another passenger asked.

  Jill consulted her watch. “Another hour or so. We join the Colorado River at Westwater, Utah, and follow the river for two hundred thirty-five miles. The state line is not far from there. Then we go through Ruby Canyon, which is really beautiful. We’re due into Grand Junction, Colorado at a quarter to noon.”

  She stayed in the Vista-Dome until the river came into view, then she went back downstairs, and made her way past the buffet and the sleeping accommodations at the front of the car. She headed back through the sleeper cars, pausing here and there to talk with passengers and answer questions.

  In the Silver Gorge, the door to roomette four was half-open, and she saw Mrs. Callendar inside her roomette, a book on her lap. “What are you reading?” Jill asked.

  Mrs. Callendar lifted the book so Jill could see the cover. It was one of the earlier Edna Ferber novels, Cimarron, about the early history of Oklahoma. “I love historical novels,” she said. “How about you?”

  “I do,” Jill said. “Historical novels and mysteries. Agatha Christie is my favorite author. I really enjoyed Miss Ferber’s book Giant. Do you like Lydia Stafford’s books? Last December she was a passenger on the train.”

  “Oh, I love her books, especially the one about the California Gold Rush,” Mrs. Callendar said. “I hope she’s writing a new one.”

  Jill recalled how Miss Stafford had closeted herself in her bedroom during the journey from Oakland to Chicago, tapping away on her typewriter. “She is, or at least she was working on it the whole trip. She told me the book will be published next year. Just so you know, it’s about the building of the transcontinental railroad.”

  “I can’t wait,” Mrs. Callendar said.

  Just then, the older woman who was traveling in the roomette across from Mrs. Callendar stepped out into the passageway. Mrs. Abner had boarded the train in Winnemucca, Nevada. “Good morning, Miss McLeod. I trust you had a good night’s sleep.” After Jill assured her that she had, Mrs. Abner peered in at Mrs. Callendar. “Hello, I’m Brenda Abner. I’m headed for Glenwood Springs, Colorado, for a family reunion. We’re all going to soak in the hot springs there.”

  “Sarah Callendar,” the other woman said. “Nice to meet you. Hot springs sound lovely. I’m bound for Burlington, Iowa, to visit friends.”

  “Do you play bridge?” Mrs. Abner asked. “I’m trying to find a fourth for a game back in the observation car. I’ve got two other people lined up besides myself.”

  “I do play,” Mrs. Callendar said. “Though it’s been a while.”

  Mrs. Abner clapped her hands together. “Wonderful. How about meeting in the observation car at nine-thirty? The others are Mr. Lewelling, he’s from San Francisco, and Miss Pomeroy, from Davis, California.”

  “I’ll be there,” Mrs. Callendar told her.

  Jill left them chatting and walked forward through the sleeper, saying hello to Mr. Webster as the porter came out of a bedroom. She crossed the vestibule into the Silver Crane, where Mr. Doolin was putting sheets into that car’s soiled linen locker. “Do you have a minute to talk?” Jill asked.

  Mr. Do
olin nodded. “I had a feeling you’d be back.”

  “I’d like to find out more about this ghost.” She stopped and shook her head. “It feels odd talking about it, because I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “Many’s the person who’s said that,” Mr. Doolin said with a chuckle. “Only to change his, or her mind. You saw something last night. Something you can’t explain. And it still bothers you, I can tell. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…’”

  “Now you’re quoting Shakespeare at me.” She smiled.

  “I’m saying that sometimes we are not given to understand, Miss McLeod. We just have to accept.”

  Jill considered this, then she took a deep breath and expelled it, taking a tiny but still skeptical step toward acceptance. “Yes, I saw something. A flickering light.”

  “And you could see right through it. I told you, I’ve seen it twice, and it was just like that.”

  “There was something else. I went into the roomette and it was cold. Not just cold. Numbing. Then I heard taps. Four distinct taps.”

  “I haven’t heard any noises.” Mr. Doolin’s expression lit up with interest. “But last time I was working as porter on the Silver Gorge, I had a passenger in roomette four who kept complaining about the cold. He couldn’t get warm.”

  “There’s a passenger in roomette four now, though it was empty last night. I certainly hope she doesn’t experience any problems this evening.”

  “Time will tell,” he said.

  A passenger stepped out of a nearby compartment and beckoned to Jill. “Oh, Miss McLeod, just the person I want to talk to. Could you come here for a moment?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Sheffield. I’ll be right there.”

  As it turned out, Mr. Sheffield had several letters to be mailed. Jill carried stamps in her uniform pocket, so she took the letters and promised to post them during the brief station stop in Grand Junction. The train was nearing the point where it joined the Colorado River, traveling alongside that body of water for more than two hundred miles. It would be about an hour and a half before it reached the next stop.