The Body on the Train

by Frances Brody

  There is always a moment of excitement when seeing a picture emerge, as if by magic.

  Recently, I bought a second-hand but more up-to-date enlarging box. I can make postcard-size prints from my negatives, using the daylight method. Thanks to the cellar door that led to the garden, it should have been easy to go out into the light and time my exposure, but the day was dull and I am still getting used to it.

  There was something forlorn about the picture of the small heap of toys and shoes left behind after the closure and demolition of the children’s home. When my efforts were clipped to dry, I felt satisfied. That was enough for now.

  After clearing up, I turned to leave the room, and made to open the door. It was stuck. Perhaps because of this room being small, the door opened outwards. Or it would open outwards if I could do it. I pushed harder. No movement. Something was stopping it. I put my shoulder against the door and pushed as hard as I could.

  This was not just annoying, it felt humiliating. How could I end up fastened in a room without a lock?

  Milly knew I was here. Raynor knew I had come back. Alec would have seen my car.

  Someone would come.

  After listening for footsteps and hearing nothing, I began to knock. I knocked until my knuckles were sore. I shouted, took off a shoe, banged with that.

  And then I waited. It was hard to believe that I was trapped. I tried the door again, absurdly expecting it to move this time. Something was holding it firmly shut. Once more I banged, with the heel of my hand.

  I could imagine the conversation between Gertrude and Benjie. She has become very odd. Doing nothing but snap, snap, snap, ignoring the fact that she is a guest. Refuses church, goes with a servant to chapel, marches in procession to the prison. Snap, snap and snap again, taking over the cellar, treating the place as a hotel.

  And now, Benjie would know where I had been this afternoon. Raynor would have given him an account.

  A cellar is a terribly silent place. This felt like a tomb. It was reassuring to hear, briefly, the groan of pipes somewhere.

  There is nothing dangerous about the chemicals I use for developing my pictures. Yet the smell now seemed overpowering. I began to feel slightly dizzy, needing to sit down. The only place to sit was the floor. Once more I banged on the door, once more—no reply.

  This must be what it felt like to be buried alive. As a child, I read a story about such a horrible occurrence and it gave me nightmares. I willed myself to be calm. Just sit down for a moment.

  I sat down, with my back to the wall and my legs outstretched. Think. Think. This is what my cat would do. She would wait. Sit and wait. Listen for footsteps.

  Perhaps it was the lack of air in the room. In spite of the cold, I began to feel drowsy. The floor was cold against the back of my legs.

  After the longest time, I heard footsteps. I got to my feet, and yelled at the top of my voice while thumping again with my shoe. “Someone, open this door!”

  I have never been so glad to hear a voice as at that moment. It was Milly. “Mrs. Shackleton?”

  “Yes. I can’t open the door!”

  “Just a minute.”

  The minute stretched, and stretched.

  And then came a sliding sound outside. The door opened a crack.

  Milly spoke. “One more shove, Alec!” The sound again. “Doing it!”

  The door opened. A large chest had been pushed in front of it.

  Raynor appeared. “I came down for wine.” He picked up a basket. “What happened?”

  “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “That chest shouldn’t be here.” He turned to Alec. “Is this your doing?”

  “No, sir! Milly came, asked me to help.”

  Raynor bared his teeth in imitation of a smile. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Shackleton. I can’t imagine who would have done such a thing.”

  I was not in the mood for conversation with Raynor. I could certainly imagine who had done it. The person who followed me along the road to Rothwell, going several miles out of his way to post letters.

  This was a warning. Raynor and I both knew that.

  “What’s in it that it’s so heavy?” Milly asked.

  “Leave it!” Raynor said. “Mrs. Shackleton, let Milly help you upstairs. You look quite shaken.”

  “I’m all right now, thank you.” I moved to open the chest and find the answer to Milly’s question, but the chest was locked.

  * * *

  Back in my room, I could not stop shivering. Milly ran a bath for me.

  As I lay in the warmth of the bath, coming back to life, I thought how close I might have come to suffocation. Of course it would have taken days for me to die. I was being melodramatic. No one would have risked that. A warning, that’s what it was. The stables are round that side of the house. Alec, Benjie’s favourite, or to be blunt, Benjie’s son, must have told Benjie or Raynor about my interest in his railway notebook.

  It seemed unlikely that Benjie would have instructed Raynor to terrorise me. Why? As I lay there, feeling the bathwater grow tepid, I wondered what I had said, done, or uncovered that merited such a response. It made no sense, or none that I could fathom.

  I must be coming close to an answer. And the answer was here, in this house.

  * * *

  The library is at the bottom of the stairs and the door stood open. I paused, wondering if Benjie and Raynor were in there.

  Benjie was talking rather excitedly with a man who spoke calmly. Although the calm voice was low, it carried sufficiently for me to catch the drift. “Undercapitalised,” “overstretched,” and Benjie’s “It’s not going to come to that.”

  If Benjie had set Raynor to watch me, there was good reason to mistrust him, and yet Benjie was prepared to come to the aid of someone in trouble. Given the revelation about financial difficulties at the mill, perhaps he ought to consider putting his own house in order first.

  When the other man spoke again, more clearly this time, I recognised the voice. It was Eliot Dell. This put a different slant on the conversation. One of them was in trouble, but which?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Gertrude was seated at the piano, picking out a melancholy tune. Abruptly, she stopped playing and came towards me. “Oh, Kate, I’m so sorry. Milly told me. What idiot pushed a trunk in front of your darkroom door?”

  I made light of it. “At least Milly had the sense to come looking for me.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Alec Taylor. He comes and goes through the cellar doors as if he owns the place. If I find out it’s him, it’ll be the last trick he plays.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Gertrude. I’m all right now. It was just a scare, that’s all. There’s no reason to suppose it was Alec.”

  I did not add that there was every reason to suppose it might be Raynor. Alec would not act off his own bat. Raynor would instinctively know how to protect Benjie. I was coming close to something, sufficiently close that I represented a threat.

  There were two glasses of sherry on a low table. We sat down and each took a glass. Gertrude sat by her embroidery frame. She loves embroidery and has produced some fine work. A lawn material was stretched across the frame, showing an unfinished garden, stitched with summer flowers.

  We made a little toast to each other.

  “There’s something I want to show you, Kate, because I don’t want you to think badly of me.”

  “Why would I think badly of you?”

  She did not answer straight away but picked up a large silken envelope, embroidered to look like a letter. The penny stamp in the top corner must have taken some careful stitching. Perhaps the item was intended for some sale of work because across the centre, where the address would be, she had embroidered “The Lady of the House”.

  I thought about how many hours she must spend in this room alone.

  She took a sheet of paper from her silken envelope. “There is more than one thing for you to look at, Kate, but see this first.”
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br />   It was a handwritten list of children’s names. Beside each name there was an age, a date and a name and address. “You see, there is a record of where the children from the home went, and they are all in good hands.”

  I looked at the list. “It must have taken you a long time to find places for them.”

  “Oh we had some help. Some childless couples are willing to take an infant. It’s harder to find apprenticeships, but a few of the boys and girls of working age have been placed. We paid a teacher to come in after school hours to train the boys as shoe repairers and the girls to cook and sew. They have that under their belts now.”

  “Eight children have gone to the same address, 112 York Street?”

  “Yes, that’s Stoneville. They’ll do well there. The Bluebell Home may once have been a desirable residence, but it was no longer. From the outside, it looked like a castle but there were three rooms and a kitchen downstairs and three up. The children are much better off in an urban setting. That’s where the opportunities are.”

  She had said there was something else. I waited. Perhaps she thought better of it and did not want to show me the “something else”. She refilled our sherry glasses. “We have had a lot to put up with, Kate. It is not easy having a large workforce and their families reliant on one. We have the mill, two old pits that need so much maintenance. We cannot be everything to everyone.”

  “I’m sure not.”

  “And yet since the strike, something has grown up in this area that makes me afraid. I am going to show you letters that were sent to Benjie. Vile letters.”

  “Will he want you to show them to me?”

  “Whether he does or no, you’re going to see them. He doesn’t want me to go to the police but something must be done.” She thrust the embroidered envelope at me. “They are in there. You look. I can’t bear to, not again.”

  I walked across to the writing table and chair by the window. If the letters distressed her, I would look at them here. I slid them onto the table and then thought to put on the gloves from the pocket of my dress. There would be fingerprints.

  The envelopes bore Benjie’s name, and the address.

  Taking each letter out of its envelope I set them side by side. There were six. One poison pen letter would be annoying. Six was worrying. A magnifying glass lay on the table, but the writing was large enough.

  The same hand wrote the envelopes in block print.

  The individual letters appeared to be written by different people. One was backhand, another neat, the third had childish writing, as if the person did not get beyond school at about age eight. Two of them were composed of cut out letters from a magazine, untidily pasted, bulging with too much glue.

  Postage stamps were neatly placed. Yet there were no postmarks.

  The brief messages had a unifying theme, some secular in tone, others vividly biblical.

  Snatcher of bread from kids.

  Unrepentant greedy thief.

  A certain rich man clothed in purple and fine linen fared sumptuously and a certain beggar full of sores laid at his gate.

  It be harder for a Brockman to barge into heaven than for a rhinoceros to thread itself through the eye of a needle.

  Repent or die, ye who are greedy of filthy lucre

  The meek shall inherit the earth.

  It was understandable that Benjie wanted to ignore the missives. If these messages were from the meek, I hope never to receive messages from the bold. Strictly speaking, they were not poison pen letters, more a cry of outrage, with some help from scissors and paste.

  I returned letters and envelopes to the embroidered case and put my gloves back in my pocket.

  I went to sit with Gertrude. “Any ideas who might have sent them?”

  “None at all.”

  “What do you think prompted them?”

  “I thought it might be to do with resentment about the children’s home, people who refused to believe it was for the best.”

  “They don’t seem threatening, more someone’s attempt to get something off his or her chest.” I thought of Alec, confined to living above the stable, not allowed to enter the house. Milly taught at the Sunday school, and must be steeped in biblical language, and Joan had earned her reputation as a rebel. “They weren’t posted. If someone came up the drive six times, they would have been noticed, wouldn’t they?”

  “I’m glad I showed you them, Kate. I’m probably making too much of it.”

  “Leave them with me. Let me think on this overnight.”

  Who would be sufficiently rash to pay for postage stamps and then hand deliver?

  Most of her staff would know their Bible, but would everyone know how to spell rhinoceros? It occurred to me that she might set her staff a spelling test.

  I had already discovered that the story about the children’s home being blighted by subsidence was not true. Others may have uncovered the lie. In an area teeming with experienced miners, people would know about such things.

  For the first time, I felt anxious for Gertrude. In spite of her faults, I felt sure she always tried to do her warped best. I had seen that this morning at the mill. Much was out of her hands, and yet she tried to do something.

  Someone from this area had killed the unknown man. Perhaps the question I should be asking was, Who next?

  “Gertrude, why did you have the Bluebell Home demolished?”

  She took her time to answer.

  “It wasn’t my choice.”

  “There was no subsidence.”

  “If we don’t open another seam, Benjie will end up filing for bankruptcy. The mill will close. It will be the end of Thorpefield.”

  “So Benjie created an explosion in Bluebell Wood, to make it seem that there had been some disturbance underground. The earth quaking, followed by ‘subsidence’. The kind of thing that people are so afraid of.”

  “Benjie didn’t light the touch paper himself, of course. The story about subsidence could have been true. And now we are being threatened.”

  “Do you suspect a member of staff sent these letters?”

  “It’s a possibility. And Kate, there’s something else.”

  “Oh?”

  “The chest that was pushed in front of the darkroom door, I asked the housekeeper to find a key and see what was in it.”

  “What?”

  “Dynamite. We could all be blown to kingdom come. Whoever did that could be the same person who is sending the letters.”

  At that moment, Benjie came in. “I have some good news!”

  “Benjie, darling, did you know there is a chest of dynamite in the cellar?”

  “Oh yes.” He placed a sheet of paper on the table. With great care, and careful use of tweezers, he produced a postage stamp from a small packet. He set the stamp down in the centre of the paper.

  Raynor followed, bringing a magnifying glass.

  Gertrude and I looked at the stamp. I thought she might burst into tears. She was a woman dredged of patience.

  “Benjie, this is not a good time to be adding to your stamp collection.”

  “Don’t you see the significance? I have the largest collection of Penny Blacks in Great Britain, possibly in the world.”

  “You are sleepwalking through our lives.”

  Benjie put his postage stamp back in its packet. “I said Dell could join us for supper, discuss what we’re to do about the mill and so on.”

  “Have you forgotten we have a guest?”

  Before Benjie had time to answer, I stood. “Gertrude, you’re being the perfect hosts, and I’m the less than perfect guest. I’m not inclined to go in the darkroom again. If you’ll forgive me, I’ll drive into Wakefield and take the rest of my film in to the chap at Picture This for developing. Then you can have your discussion in peace. We’ll chat when I get back.”

  She was about to protest, but I insisted.

  As I reached the hall, I heard Gertrude say, “I suppose you’ve heard. This morning that wretched employee of yours was ch
arged with murder.”

  My camera bag was in the hall. Gertrude’s embroidered letter case, with its poison pen contents, fitted easily inside.

  It was perfectly true that I would visit Picture This and leave my film to be developed.

  I did not mention that I would also call at police headquarters.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I climbed two sets of stairs and turned right. Dad, Chief Superintendent at Wakefield Police HQ, has a view of the street through permanently grimy windows, but sits with his back to the view, facing the door.

  He was not surprised to see me since he is the official go-between for me and DC Yeats.

  “Kate! I wondered when I’d see you.”

  “Hello, Dad.”

  He closed a thick manila folder and pushed it to one side. “Cup of tea?”

  “Thanks, but this is a flying visit. It’s been a strain, playing the part of a photographic journalist, but I might be getting somewhere.”

  “How can I help?”

  “Would you see if you can get hold of Mrs. Sugden for me? We should have arranged carrier pigeons. I want to know how she and Sykes are getting on.”

  He picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect him to my home number. He listened. “Well as soon as you’ve a line then.”

  While we waited, I brought out the silk document case. Dad stared at the embroidered stamp. “Gertrude?”

  “Yes.”

  “She must have a lot of time on her hands.”

  I put on my soft gloves. “Benjie has been receiving odd—I can’t call them letters—more notes of accusation of some wrongdoing. He doesn’t want to make a fuss, but it’s upsetting Gertrude.”

  I spilled the notes onto the desk between us. Dad took a pair of gloves from his drawer and examined the letters. “Is that how you spell rhinoceros?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Have them checked for fingerprints.” I took the sherry glass from my bag. “Gertrude’s prints are on here. I swiped it when she wasn’t looking and refilled a different glass.”

  Dad picked up his internal phone and dialled.

  “Come through, Harker. Bring a pair of gloves.”