The Case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste

by Malcolm Pryce

  We shook. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Old, and you, Mr Young.’

  I paused and examined them both. There was an insolence in the manner of the boy that I did not greatly take to, but Goslings are not proud. Pride is a very unhelpful emotion for a detective to possess. A clear head is essential for solving mysteries, and nothing interferes with that more than the sort of rush of blood you get when someone upsets you.

  ‘Would you gentlemen care for a cup of tea?’ I asked.

  ‘That would be splendid,’ said Mr Old.

  ‘How do you take it?’

  ‘As it comes,’ he said. ‘As it comes.’

  ‘Four sugars, milk in first but just a drop, no more,’ said the young man. ‘Biscuits, too, if you’ve got them.’

  ‘I’ll see what’s there.’ I left them to it. The cubby hole with the kettle and pot was at the far end of the corridor next to the washroom, from where I collected water. The cleaner had left a third of a pint bottle on the shelf, and it was so cold up here there was no danger of it going off. In summer it was a different matter. I took my time, allowing the tea to brew correctly, and returned.

  ‘Sorry, no biscuits.’ I drew up another chair to the desk and sat down. I stirred and poured the tea. Mr Old half sat on the edge of the desk.

  ‘Would it be considered a trifle abrupt if I were to ask you gentlemen your business?’

  ‘Are you busy?’ said Mr Old. ‘We could always come back.’

  ‘No, but I am curious to know how I can assist you. Are you from the Railways Board?’

  ‘We’re from Room 42,’ said Mr Young.

  ‘I see. I’m not familiar with that place. Have you come with anything specific in mind?’

  ‘We have someone who would like to talk to you.’

  The young man gathered some letters from my in-tray and picked up the paper knife. He began to cut one open.

  ‘I must ask you not to do that,’ I said. ‘My correspondence is private.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have any secrets from us,’ he said without looking up. ‘We’re your friends.’

  ‘That’s for me to decide.’

  He put down the letters and picked up the photo of my mother, 4-6-0 Saint class locomotive, number 2904 Lady Godiva. ‘Choo-choo!’ he said.

  ‘Please be careful with that,’ I said. ‘It has some sentimental value for me.’

  The boy continued to be unpleasant. ‘Choo-choo,’ he said and pretended to drop the photo. ‘Choo-choo.’

  ‘Will you excuse me for a second?’ I stood up and walked out. At the end of the corridor was a cupboard where the cleaner kept her mop and bucket. Inside was a shovel. I picked it up and made my way back. We used it for shovelling snow but in former times it had seen much more glorious service. It was a Great Western Region fireman’s shovel. To the layman, a shovel is a shovel, but not to the fireman who wields it. The GWR shovel is considered to be the best, even by the men from the other companies. It has a deeper well where the blade connects to the handle and this makes it better for performing the one operation in the morning without which no train can start, namely cooking the driver’s breakfast in the firebox. All shovels can be used to do this, of course, but the GWR shovel is superior because of the well where the fat from the bacon collects.

  I took the shovel back into the office. Both men looked up expectantly. Although the shovels of the GWR, the LMS, the SR and the LNER all had their own peculiar characteristics, there wasn’t much to choose between any of them when it came to the purpose I now had in mind for it, the act of hitting a man on the head.

  ‘I hope you don’t intend using that for a violent purpose,’ said Mr Young. He stepped sideways away from me and towards the door.

  ‘Yes, I do. But first I am going to ask you both politely to leave.’

  ‘And what if we refuse?’

  The older man snorted. ‘Isn’t it obvious? He’s going to hit you with the shovel.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said the boy. He shrugged his shoulders and squared his stance.

  ‘This strikes me as most unnecessary,’ I said.

  ‘Me too,’ said the older man.

  I twisted the handle so that the blade became horizontal. ‘I was going to give you a cauliflower ear, but it seems that I shall have to remove your head instead.’

  ‘I’d step out of range if I were you,’ said Mr Old.

  The sound of the lavatory being flushed disturbed the moment and both men pricked up their ears at this, and seemed to wait. Footsteps resounded on the linoleum, approaching the office. The door opened and a man walked in. It was Lord Apsley. He wore an Ulster overcoat and his trousers below the coat showed a very sharp crease and his Oxford shoes had been meticulously polished. I judged it to be Kiwi ‘Dark Tan’.

  Lord Apsley had been the proctor of the Weeping Cross Railway Servants’ Orphanage throughout my time there. Three times a day we would sit at long tables eating while he sat and looked down on us all from the high table, his eyes roving over us, searching for evidence of moral slippage that would require his correction. If he didn’t find it, he seemed disappointed. He had achieved renown serving in the Second Boer War, and upon his return in 1902 the War Office entrusted him an urgent task, that of reinvigorating the ‘pluck’ of the British people. The quality of British ‘pluck’ had shown itself to be sadly lacking during the First Boer War, when British arms had been humbled by brown men armed with spears. The deepest wound to our nation’s pride had been incurred during the battle of Isandlwana, in which two officers received Victoria Crosses for riding away on horseback while their men fought and died where they stood. Lord Apsley had been scandalised by this and taught us that for an officer to escape on a horse while his men fought to the death was cowardice of the first stripe. Some officers were shot in the back by their own men as they attempted to flee. He also took a dim view of the twelve Victoria Crosses awarded for the defence of Rorke’s Drift, since the recipients had fought like rats in a trap, unable to escape, and this could hardly be counted as an act of bravery since they had no choice in the matter. Isandlwana means ‘Day of the Dead Moon’ in the language of the Zulu people and this refers to the solar eclipse that occurred at half past two in the afternoon. At the orphanage they told us the sudden extinguishing of the sun in the middle of the day was God’s way of firing a warning shot across the bows of Britannia, telling us to pull our socks up. So Lord Apsley devised the Railway Gosling system to serve as a moral beacon to the children of the land, and to infuse a dose of moral cod liver oil into their hearts and sinews.

  Since then, another battle had consumed his life, the one against the ravages of lead. They call it the Old Soldier’s Colic. It has its origins in the eating of lead soldiers as a child. And then, later, amid the loneliness and confusion of the battlefield, the soldier chews lead bullets as a comfort and reminder of the warmth and safety of the crib. With time, it turns the gums blue and gives the skin of the cheeks a gun-metal pallor, something which in Lord Apsley’s case was heightened by the application of medicinal rouge.

  Lord Apsley took in the scene with a quick glance, then sat down. ‘Put the shovel away and sit down, Jack.’ I did. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a cigarette case. He offered me one and took one himself.

  The boy offered us both a light.

  ‘Quite a pickle you find yourself in, eh, Jack?’ said Apsley. ‘Lifetime’s loyal service to the Great Western and now, well! This government of Bolsheviks, pigeon-fanciers and cloth-cap demagogues are taking her into public ownership. What do you think of that?’

  ‘I rather think they will soon end my employment. Is that right?’

  ‘I rather think they will, Jack, I rather think they will. Another fifteen years and they will probably close the whole lot down to save money.’ He held the cigarette aloft in his right hand and rested the elbow in the palm of his left, and looked thoughtful. ‘The railways will now belong to the party of the working man, a chap who generally has low tastes. Railway Go
slings no doubt strike him as belonging to the world of the toffs, a breed of people who are the object of his contempt. He never stops to ask whence he takes the right to steal the railways. Whence he takes the authority to appropriate the property of his betters. The authority, of course, comes from Mr Marx. The railway will be run by Jacobins.’

  ‘I should be very sad to lose my position.’

  He seemed to consider that opinion and nodded softly. ‘Whose side are you on?’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Do you love England?’

  ‘Yes, sir, very much.’

  ‘Good man!’

  He remained silent for a while. The shrill wail of steam engine joined the ticking of my clock to fill the quiet.

  ‘Do you know what a bradawl is?’

  ‘It’s a woodworking tool, I believe.’

  ‘Exactly right. Ever done any carpentry?’

  ‘At the orphanage. I was rather good at it.’

  ‘That’s right, you were. Well, I’ve got another question. Do you know what a leucotome is?’

  ‘I’m rather afraid you have me there, Lord Apsley.’

  ‘Never mind, I didn’t expect you to know. A leucotome is also a bradawl, the only difference being it has a fancy Latin name.’ He turned his head to Mr Old. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Greek, sir. From leukos meaning white.’

  The lord nodded and continued. ‘Why take a tool as old as Noah and give it a bright new name? I’ll tell you. Because if a man tried to stick a bradawl in your eye I rather fancy you would give him a bunch of fives. But if that same man wore a white coat and called himself a neurological scientist and told you he was going to perform a transorbital lobotomy on you, I imagine you would be rather excited. It’s the eye socket, you see. The bone is thinner than the shell of a sparrow’s egg.’

  ‘You stick it in a man’s eye?’

  ‘Above it, really. I saw it on the Pathé Animated Gazette at the flicks. You stick the leucotome between the eye and the bone of the socket. Then five sharp blows with a mallet and the sharp end pierces the bone and drives home into the brain. You bang it in for three inches and then – and this is the bit that they tell me takes seven years at medical school to learn – you sort of wiggle it about. What do you think of that?’

  ‘I think it sounds rather unpleasant.’

  ‘There’s a lot of blood I’m told.’

  ‘But what for?’

  ‘To cure him. A transorbital lobotomy can cure a man of any number of ills. What the neurological scientist calls delusional states of mind. It cures the facetious man, and the chap given to a love of beastliness. There was a time when God took care of these things. But nowadays it seems God has run out of ammo and we are left to attend to such matters ourselves. With a bit of carpentry we can cure the beast in man and all the other moral termites. We can cure the man who does not love England. Do you follow?’

  ‘Yes, Lord Apsley, I do and I can assure you I love my country.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it. You received a visit from a lady yesterday. She does not love her country. Do you understand?’

  ‘I’m not sure that I do.’

  ‘I’m sure she seemed perfectly normal to you. But do not be deceived. The ways of the serpent are subtle. You heard Mr Churchill’s speech? From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia. You can add Weeping Cross to that list. Russia has gone. China is on the brink. Two of the most populous nations on earth. The tide of history is sweeping by borne on a sea of yellow people. It could happen here, Jack. Is that what you want? The yellow man does not have time for the finer feelings like love or charity. There is no pity in his heart, no joy. You never hear laughter in China, Jack. We had a scripture master at the orphanage before you were born, Mr Gunner. He’d been there as a missionary, he told me about it. He said, you can travel the length and breadth of the country and never once hear a chuckle, never see a baby smile. Can you imagine such a thing? The yellow man is an unfeeling brute, and the same goes for his Tartar cousins to the north and west, the Ivans. You thought they were our friends, didn’t you? For six years we fought alongside them in pursuit of a greater foe but the Ivan is not to be trusted. When he took Baghdad, Genghis Khan filled nine sacks with human ears.’ He paused and addressed the boy. ‘Go and fetch more milk, there’s a good chap.’ The boy left without a word and the lord resumed.

  ‘My aunt was a ward sister in the British Military Hospital in Bowen Road, Hong Kong when the Japanese arrived. Christmas Day. Black Christmas they called it. Those Jap soldiers were in the hospital three days. My aunt survived those three days. Later she hanged herself. The Jap soldier fancies that his conduct is animated by a lofty code of chivalry, “bushido”, but this is a nauseating hypocrisy.’ Lord Apsley’s voice dropped in register as he recalled these horrors. ‘It could happen here, too, is that what you want?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Good man. They could never defeat us by force of arms, but there are other ways to bring a chap down. I saw it in the Transvaal. You undermine the stout oak of a man’s heart with the woodworm of beastliness, facetiousness and the creed of Mr Marx.’ He paused as another thought struck him. ‘And poems that don’t rhyme.’

  The boy returned with the milk and poured some into the tea.

  ‘Ever heard of Mad Jack Mytton?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘In 1826, barely nineteen, he rode his horse up the steps into the Bedford Hotel in Leamington Spa, into the entrance lobby, continued up the grand staircase on to the balcony and then leapt, still on horseback, into the restaurant below. He studied at Cambridge and took two thousand bottles of port and three books. He had a thousand hats and seven hundred boots. He had two thousand dogs, many of whom wore livery and dined on steak and champagne. His horse lived in the manor house with him, along with the dogs. He drank eight bottles of port a day and his horse drank one and died. He won four thousand pounds at the Doncaster races and lost them all when the wind blew the money away. He attempted to cure his hiccups by setting fire to his shirt. He died in 1834 at the King’s Debtors’ Prison in Southwark. Tell me, Jack, was this man a great Englishman or a facetious man?’

  ‘I really don’t know, Lord Apsley.’

  He stood up. ‘I don’t know either, and it bothers me. The man was a famous son of Shropshire. You are named after him. Did you know that?’

  I was too astonished to reply and Lord Apsley continued by taking a letter from the pocket of his coat and proceeding to read from it.

  ‘. . . in honour of his big heart I wish my son to be named Jack. And since you have told me his surname must be a railway station I choose for him the name of those wild green and darling hills where, after a picnic of raspberry jam sandwiches and wasp-tormented tea, Jack began his journey with a gasp of joy, in the place they call Wenlock Edge. In Saxon times, Wena meant hope, and Lock meant stronghold. I wish my son’s heart to be such a stronghold of hope, for with hope we can face all trials, and without it we have a foretaste of death, and I say this as one for whom all hope has run out.’

  He refolded the letter with one hand and thrust it roughly back into his coat pocket. ‘These are the words of your mother. You never met her, but it still behoves you to honour her memory. Think on these things.’ He strode to the door, followed by the other two, and said just before he left, ‘You know where your duty lies.’

  Chapter 4

  For a while I sat in my chair and trembled. At the orphanage Lord Apsley had expressly forbidden us to ask questions about our mothers. We had been given the impression that no information was available. That he could so casually slip a letter out of his pocket like that was, well, I’m not sure what it was. Was it even a real letter from my mother? Would Lord Apsley lie? He had always responded to liars with fury.

  The sand of the desert is sodden red,

  Red with the wreck of a square that broke; />
  The Gatling’s jammed and the Colonel dead,

  And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.

  The river of death has brimmed his banks,

  And England’s far, and Honour a name,

  But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks,

  Play up! play up! and play the game!

  This is what we were taught. We boys were the future of England, her growing backbone, and England did not lie. ‘Red with the wreck of a square that broke.’ How often had we sung these words. Why did the square break? Because of the moral termites that had infested the stout oak of an English heart. Beastliness, facetiousness and the one they would never reveal, the shame deeper than beastliness. A boy who lied would not quibble to resort to beastliness.

  It’s possible that you walked past the red-brick Victorian building behind the gas works many times without ever realising it was an orphanage. The sign saying St Christopher’s Home for the Children of Railwaymen was hidden by the sycamore tree and we were not allowed to play in the front garden. But even if you missed the orphanage you probably patted Kipper the collecting dog. He was a Border Collie with a brass collecting tin strapped to his back. He also had a small piece of cloth on his rump, like a saddle, on which were pinned pewter brooches which you took after you put a penny in the slot. It was an honesty system, but it worked because only a cad would steal from a dog.

  Only once did Kipper return with his badges gone and no money in his tin. Tumby Woodside was found to have chocolate on his mouth that he could not explain; or rather, his explanation that a gentleman had given it to him for no reason was not believed; and lying according to Lord Apsley was a darker sin than even stealing from a dog and Tumby had to be punished accordingly. I took my place in the assembly hall for the thrashing of Tumby. We flinched with each stroke of the birch but after a while we stopped and watched in silence longing for Lord Apsley to tire, but he was like a man possessed and his face as he thrashed came to wear an expression, almost of joy, like the one on the faces of the women kneeling at the foot of the cross in stained-glass windows. After it was over we all sang, ‘Play up! play up! and play the game!’ We did not know Tumby was dead. His body was locked overnight in the infirmary. That night Ron Dingleman, Magdalena, Cadbury and I broke in and we each dipped a finger into the chocolate crumbs still stuck in the corner of Tumby’s mouth because we longed to know of what it tasted. Some time after midnight, as I walked across the cold yard to the lavatory cubicles leaning against the kitchen wall, I saw a figure in white in the room where Tumby lay, taking the boy into his arms. I thought for a while it must be Jesus and was bitter in my envy of Tumby. But after I had finished my business and pulled the lavatory chain I saw that the noise disturbed him and he rushed to the window. I hid in the shadows until the light upstairs went out. Then I returned to the dormitory and climbed into bed.