The Case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘That’s very kind of you but I have company.’

  The men sniggered. Conversation in the pub had stopped and people were looking towards us. The landlady stopped halfway through pulling a pint, and stared.

  ‘It wouldn’t be polite to leave and welsh on your round, would it?’

  The others agreed.

  ‘Nothing worse than a man who sneaks out just as it’s his round. Worst type of chap that is,’ said one of them.

  Jenny, who had been observing keenly from across the bar, came over and stood by my side.

  ‘Are you ready to leave, Jenny?’ I asked. ‘Well, it’s been nice meeting you.’

  ‘Charming,’ said Andruis. ‘Would you like to leave a visiting card?’ He positioned himself between us and the path to the door.

  ‘Would you step aside please?’

  He looked at me with a cruel smile. ‘No, I don’t think I care to.’

  ‘I would prefer to avoid unpleasantness.’

  He made a comic face.

  ‘Andruis!’ The landlady’s voice rang out. He looked across. She didn’t say anything but gave him a look that said clearly that she didn’t want any broken furniture.

  ‘Who’s causing trouble?’ he asked.

  I turned to Jenny. ‘Please would you be so good as to go outside and wait for me at the end of the street?’

  ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  ‘Please, Jenny, I require you to.’

  ‘I’m not going outside until you do.’

  I moved my face closer to hers and whispered, ‘There might be blood and it would shame me for you to see it.’

  Her eyes watered. ‘Jack, if they hurt you—’

  ‘I don’t mean my blood!’

  I turned to Andruis. ‘Would you step aside, please, sir?’ I touched his arm to encourage him. He grinned again and screwed back his fist. This was quite a surprise. Given the manner in which he conducted himself, I expected him to be a better fighter than to signal his intentions so clearly. He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes fighting like that at the orphanage. When the punch came I stepped inside it easily enough and then gave him a sharp crack to the ribs above the heart. It looked quite casual but I well knew the power in that blow, the punch to the ribs that breaks the heart of the prize-fighter and makes him kiss the canvas like a sweetheart. The pain shivered through Andruis and made him gasp. He slumped to his knees, made an effort like a drunken man to get up and then fell backwards, flat on his back. There was a crash as he did, like a tree falling. His men looked down at him in disbelief. He lay still, staring wide-eyed but unconscious at the ceiling. A rattling noise came from his throat. This was not a safe position to leave him in. I knelt down and pulled his arm over and brought him on to his side, so that his tongue did not block his air passage. I looked up at the weasel. ‘Would you be kind enough to give me your coat?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To put under his head.’

  ‘I don’t want blood on it.’

  ‘There is no blood.’

  ‘But there will be if you finish him off.’

  ‘I’m not going to finish him off, I want to make him comfortable, he seems to have taken quite poorly.’

  ‘Give him the bloody coat,’ said one of the others. The weasel took off his coat and handed it to me in a bundle. I put it under Andruis’s head, then stood up. ‘I’m sure he will be all right in a little while. You might like to chafe his wrists to hasten his recovery, or some smelling salts would help too.’

  Jenny handed me my hat, which had fallen off in the fight. I placed it on my head and addressed the weasel. ‘You, sir, would you tell me what you meant by that remark about Barking?’

  ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  Another of them chimed in. ‘Magdalena’s sugar daddy is Joshua Barker, the chap who owns Barker & Stroud’s.’

  I thanked him and we left.

  Outside, we stood on the pavement and looked at each other. For once Jenny seemed lost for words. She looked at me with a strange mixture of expressions. Fear and excitement, and that soft look of shock one wears after treating a matter too lightly and being corrected by events.

  We stood in silence for a full minute and I reflected on how derelict of my duty it was for me to lead Jenny into danger like this.

  ‘Bravo, Jack,’ she said softly.

  I shook my head. ‘This is no place for bravos, Jenny. This has to stop now.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘You know very well. You cannot become embroiled in this case.’

  ‘I can if I want.’

  ‘Well then I shall have to forbid you.’

  ‘I will follow you then. It’s my aunt, remember?’

  ‘You won’t have anything to follow. I have decided not to take this case.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Can’t I? I think you will find I have full discretion—’

  ‘Not take the case? We’ll see about that.’

  ‘And I must tell you that you are on no account to get involved.’

  Jenny stared at me, poised with pent-up anger, like an arrow about to be released. ‘Not get involved? Hmmph!’ She marched off into the night shouting as she went, ‘Not Pygmalion likely!’

  After she left, there was silence: the traffic seemed to have gone to bed. I looked down at my fist, still balled from punching Andruis. I slowly relaxed the fingers. During the war, when the army medics performing the physical examination read on your form that your occupation was GWR fireman, they waved you through.

  It wasn’t true, of course, that I was not going to work on the case. In fact, I did precisely as Jenny had suggested. First thing Monday morning I did three things. I put in a requisition for Cadbury Holt’s case files. Then I placed a telephone call to Barker & Stroud’s. The lady who answered told me Mr Barker was away on business in London and she was not sure when he would be back. She took my name. Lastly, I telephoned the Chinese laundry leaving a message for Cheadle. Half an hour later he returned the call. It was a bad line, his voice crackling in and out like a radio station drifting on the wireless. I pressed the Bakelite harder into my ear. At first, I did not realise it was Cheadle.

  ‘Jack? Jack? Is that you?’

  ‘This is Jack Wenlock.’

  ‘I tried ten minutes ago and couldn’t get through. I was worried you might have already been cashiered.’

  ‘Cashiered?’

  ‘Just over three weeks till new year’s eve, now. The end of the Great Western.’

  ‘Who is this, please?’

  ‘Don’t you recognise me? You used to. It’s Cheadle.’

  My grip on the telephone receiver relaxed. ‘Oh, Cheadle, yes.’

  We arranged to meet at the turntable in half an hour. I replaced the receiver and hurried downstairs to fetch my bicycle from the tool room in the yard. I cycled out to Wildernesse where the turntable lay on the south side of the engine shed. Some people wonder about the need for a turntable. Can’t steam engines operate in reverse, they ask. The answer is, yes, of course, they can, but the driver gets tired of looking over his shoulder for seven or eight hours. The biggest misconception among the general public, particularly among ladies, is that the turntable moves by clockwork. In truth it is either steam operated, in which case the driver attaches a pipe from the engine to provide the steam, or, as in the case of the one at Weeping Cross, it is manually operated, which means the driver and his fireman push it round. They put their backs into it to get it going, but after that it is fairly easy.

  The wind whistling across the siding was biting and sharp. I stood on the footbridge and looked south. There was a wail. The rails below began to sing, the air to quiver. A train approached. You could feel the rumble in the ground, as if beyond the horizon a herd of buffalo was stampeding in our direction. The old stone bridge began to hum, and my stomach quivered in expectation of the moment the thunder struck. Seen at a distance there was a curious disparity between the sedate progress and the fu
ry of the smoke chuffing out of the chimney. It disappeared when the train got closer. Suddenly all was violence. She was snorting furiously now, coughing fire and gobbets of smoke into the grey morning. Oh my! Her arrival slammed into the bridge like a giant hammer, throwing an earthquake into my lap. She slipped under the bridge like a whale blowing spume – a delicious fog that filled my nostrils and heart with the intoxicating scent of nursery smells: brimstone and smoke, coal and scorched steam, hot oil and cold ash. Sparks and smoke and screams everywhere. Then carriage roofs, studded and veined, grey, clattered past with the thundering clickety-clack of a giant’s printing press. Instinctively, like all small boys taken by their grandmothers to watch the trains, I turned and rushed to the other side, to watch her go.

  Cheadle approached quietly, almost sheepishly. I sensed his presence more than heard him. We shook hands. He smiled, a thin smile in a thin face, the sort of smile that did not reach the eyes and suggested life had been hard for him in the ten years since he blotted our copybooks.

  He turned and began to walk and I fell in lock-step although I had no idea where he was heading.

  ‘I expect you think I’m a pretty poor sort of chap,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t rightly know what to think, Cheadle. None of us did.’

  ‘It’s not like how they describe it, in books and at the flicks. It’s downright Devilish a lot of the time, being with a woman.’

  ‘Did you really live in sin?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid I did. It was pretty ghastly. More like rotting than living.’

  ‘Rotting?’

  ‘I can’t think of a better word for it. Some might call it life. I was able to find work for a while as an insurance investigator. We rented a small room, and it was passable, but it was all rather . . . sordid. I missed the railways too. Then our landlady found out that we were not married and so we had to leave. They say you can’t outrun your past, Jack, and they are right. It’s like your shadow. Or the Mark of Cain.’

  ‘But Cain murdered his brother.’

  ‘Some people think what we did was worse.’

  ‘But what did you do? Why? Was she terribly pretty?’

  ‘She wasn’t really pretty at all, Jack. I expect that will surprise you. I was rather surprised myself to discover how it all worked. The things they taught us about taking a cold tub first thing in the morning, and doing physical jerks, and praying for strength, none of that made a blind bit of difference. There are things, you see, that happen . . . as I said, it was all rather Devilish and to tell you truly, well, I wasn’t terribly good at it. There, I’ve said it.’

  I nodded with what I hoped was a face of understanding, but the truth be told, I didn’t know what he meant. What wasn’t he terribly good at?

  ‘She began to mock me. I’m rather afraid I raised my hand to her.’

  ‘Oh, Cheadle!’

  ‘I know. It shames me to say this. But have you . . . I mean I doubt rather that you have . . . have you ever had relations with a girl? No, I can see that you haven’t. You’re lucky. Take my word for it. It’s Devilish. You probably can’t imagine anything worse than a man who raises his hand to a lady but a lot of them do it. I never imagined I could ever do such a thing.’

  Cheadle suggested we might like to take a glass of ale and I got the impression that he would like it more than me. He was quite choosy about the pub, though, and we passed the Railway, the Union and the White Horse before he settled for the King George. After we passed the third I formed the impression that he was avoiding pubs which were known to be popular with railway men. The George was still empty although they had built a nice fire in the grate and we took our pints of bitter and sat at a round table near the fire.

  For a while we did not speak but preferred to let our frozen limbs warm up in the heat.

  ‘Will they be keeping you on then?’ he said.

  ‘I haven’t heard anything, and to tell the truth, I don’t know who to ask. Or even whether I should.’

  ‘If it was me, I’d say nothing. They’ll probably forget about you.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s right,’ I said, although I did not believe it.

  ‘Haven’t heard from you for a long time, then this. You wanted to wish me happy Christmas, did you?’

  I looked up from my pint and our eyes met. I felt a pang of guilt. There was no avoiding the issue. ‘I rather hoped you could tell me about Cadbury.’

  He looked as if this piece of news confirmed his own presentiment.

  ‘Got the bug, have you? Everyone does eventually.’

  ‘Bug, Cheadle?’

  ‘The nuns. It comes to every Gosling.’

  ‘I was just curious, that’s all.’

  ‘Is it all?’

  ‘Aren’t you curious?’

  ‘There’s enough trouble in my life without that.’

  ‘You were closer to Cadbury than anyone. Is it true what they say? That he found them?’

  He didn’t answer immediately. It was as if he were reluctant to broach the subject but knew in his heart that he was going to.

  ‘I saw him. Just once. Ten years ago now, just after I moved to Hereford. A boy came to my digs and told me there was a man outside who wished to speak with me who wouldn’t give his name. We went outside but there was no one there and then the boy led me to the railway viaduct where a man was waiting under the arches. It was dark, as you can imagine, and I was a bit unnerved. He stood in the shadows and refused to come into the light where I could see his face. I challenged him directly on the matter and he said, “I cannot let you see my face, Cheadle. Be content that it is me, the brother that loves you.” Those were his exact words. I remember them precisely.’

  ‘You’ve no doubt it was him?’

  ‘I knew it was him, in a way I cannot explain to you. I knew that he was greatly changed from the man I had known. Almost as if he had died and been reborn, but that is just a figure of speech. I do not mean it except as a way to try and explain the difference I discerned. He felt much older, too, for some reason his presence recalled a phrase to mind from one of the hymns we used to sing, the Ancient of Days. His voice was the voice of a man at the end of his life. He told me that his life was in constant danger, that he lived in the shadows of this world, scarcely ever remaining in one place for more than one night and that he was taking a great risk in coming to see me. I asked him if this danger had to do with his quest for the nuns and he agreed that it did. He told me he had after years of searching discovered the answer to the riddle, he had seen the nuns. “So they are still alive, then?” I said. He said they were very much alive although not in a fashion commonly understood by that expression.’

  ‘What way then?’

  ‘I really couldn’t tell you. Cadbury told me it would be dangerous if he were to reveal to me what he had discovered. I’m telling you this, Jack, to warn you. Sometimes it is better not to know things. They call it forbidden fruit, don’t they? That’s what happened in the Garden of Eden, isn’t it? They ate the apple from the tree of knowledge and everything went wrong after that. I did the same. I found out what it would have been better for me not to have known. And so did Cadbury. It seems to me that you of all of us have a good life. You strike me as a happy man. And happiness is something that once lost is never entirely repossessed.’

  ‘How can a Gosling live happily not knowing the answer to the great mystery of the nuns?’

  ‘With a steadfast determination not to know that which being known will do him no good. If you can know in advance that certain knowledge will bring only suffering and sully your soul’s tranquillity for ever, what good can there be in pursuing it? Just for the satisfaction of a curiosity that will lead to your doom? An itch that you cannot resist to scratch?’

  ‘Can the truth really be so very terrible?’

  ‘Can it be so very wonderful? You do not possess the truth, but what is missing from your life?’

  ‘Did he tell you nothing about the mystery?’

 
‘He told me some things. He said no man would find them, until he learned to look in a fresh way. He said he had found them but it had taken many years and it required him to forget all that he thought he knew. Finding them was a task beyond the wit of most men, he said, but he did and he lived among them for a while. But harder than finding them was finding the way back.’

  ‘Is it so very far away?’

  ‘I do not think he meant it like that. It could be in the next street, but a man having uncovered the truth of their fate would never again find peace in his soul.’

  ‘It seems to me he said a lot without actually saying anything that a man could grasp with his two hands.’

  ‘I did not doubt the truthfulness of what he told me. But some of it struck me as a bit . . . well, to be frank I didn’t understand much of it. He said they had committed a crime, they stole something . . . something very ancient.’

  ‘The holy sisters?’

  ‘Yes. It was a map, they stole it from a library. I don’t know where. He said the map showed the location of the River Pishon. Do you know what that is, Jack?’

  ‘It’s the fourth river of Eden.’

  ‘That’s right. He didn’t say any more. The week after we met, he sent me a chit of paper. He didn’t even sign his name to it, it was just a paragraph of hastily scribbled words. It said, if I truly wanted to understand, I should go to London Zoo. There was a fellow there, Mr Clerihew in the ape house – he spent some time in Africa and saw the nuns with his own eyes.’

  ‘Mr Clerihew at the zoo?’

  ‘Yes, those were his words.’

  ‘And did you go?’

  ‘I’m rather afraid I didn’t. I never seemed to find the time, and to be honest, the errand struck me as rather foolish.’ He laughed without mirth and pushed his glass away as if to indicate our time together had come to an end. We both stood up to leave.

  For a few seconds we stood in the doorway of the pub, preparing to part in different directions. ‘We must do this again some time,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I would like to.’

  A cold wind blew a piece of newspaper along the pavement and wrapped it round Cheadle’s legs. He made an ineffective attempt to kick it away. We said goodbye and then he grabbed me by the arm. ‘Jack, if you ever find yourself a girl, will you promise me something?’