The Body on the Train Read online

  The Body on the Train

  A Kate Shackleton Mystery

  FRANCES BRODY

  To Judith Murdoch and Rebecca Winfield

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Staff at Leeds and Rothwell Libraries and to Simon and Susan Bulmer, Stephanie Carncross, Sylvia Gill, Ralph Lindley, Janet Oldroyd-Hulme, Anthony Silson, Noel Stokoe and Roy Sumpner.

  Once again it’s a pleasure to thank Emma Beswetherick and the team at Piatkus as well as copy editor Robin Seavill. Jenny Chen and the team at Crooked Lane pulled out the stops to ensure a speedy passage across the Atlantic. Thank you.

  Eyes Only

  Riga

  15 February 1929

  A J Cook

  Miners’ Federation of Great Britain

  Fraternal Greetings Comrade,

  The time is ripe to work for the election of a British government that will lead to the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and solidarity between the working classes of our countries. Our emissary will make his way to Friends in the North. Ensure good use of gold. May the shade of your Vernal Parliamentary Election blaze the colour of the people’s flag.

  We salute you,

  Grigoriy Yevesyevich Radomyslskly

  Unloading The Rhubarb Special

  King’s Cross Railway Station

  Saturday, 2 March, 1929, 2.15 a.m.

  Steam, smoke in your eyes. Rattling, shunting engines, thundering in your King Lears. Fingers numb. Nice light boxes, lift ’em from the truck. Splinter of wood in the flesh of your thumb. Try to bite it out with your new gnashers and off it breaks. Daft how a tiny hurt can pain that much. Heard a story. Lad in the school hall, P.T. lesson, vaulting, spell in his finger from the vaulting horse. Turned septic. Lad died.

  Young. Old. Never know when your time’s up.

  Speedy job, unloading rhubarb. Perishable. Due at Covent Garden, due at Spitalfields, due, due, due. Always one eye on the clock. Who’d be a porter?

  He would. Railways in his blood. King’s Cross. Centre of the world. Stomp up from all corners of the globe. Bankers and country bumpkins. Penniless foreign royals. Swanking riff-raff.

  But he belongs, proud to belong. Known here. On York Street born. On York Street he’ll die.

  By two in the morning, he’d murder for a pint, murder for his bed.

  Best thing about this special? The smell. Lean into the truck and reach for the crates lined with blue paper, blue setting off the red of the rhubarb. Breathing in takes him back to the country. A boy again, on the hop-picking. Setting off for Kent with a slice of bread and marge sprinkled with sugar, a bottle of water.

  Magic to be here in the smoke and steam and in the same instant back in a field of hops, back in an orchard of English apples.

  Slam the door of the empty truck. Open the next one.

  Reach out. Touch what shouldn’t be there, not on the rhubarb special.

  The minute he touched it, he knew. Or that’s what he said afterwards, when he described the cold shiver. This didn’t grow in any farmer’s field.

  Chapter One

  No matter how many times I come to London, I still love to look about me, even if it is only at the shops and the risk-taking pedestrians on Gray’s Inn Road. Young DC Martin Yeats left me to my gazing, which I curtailed a little so as not to be classed as a country bumpkin. The driver wove in and out of the traffic until we drew up at the grand granite-faced building on the Embankment that is New Scotland Yard.

  Once inside, we exchanged the smoke of the city for a fug of cigarette fumes, mingled with fried bacon. Someone must have been sent to bring sandwiches.

  As befits a man of high rank, Commander Woodhead had his office on the top floor, reached by a juddering lift. I first met him and his wife when Mother and I were staying in London with Aunt Berta. As young men, he and Uncle played in the same rugger team. I remembered him as tall and broad, with a shock of dark hair.

  The man who stood as I entered his office was slightly stooped. His hair, though still plentiful, had turned white. He looked ancient beside the young detective constable.

  As my father often said, the war robbed institutions of a middle generation. Now old and young worked side by side, looking at each other across a sometimes incomprehensible divide. That absence of the men in the middle benefited youngsters like Martin Yeats. He surely must be entrusted with greater tasks than escorting a lady detective from King’s Cross.

  The commander came round to my side of the desk to shake hands. “You’ll have had refreshments on the train, Mrs. Shackleton?”

  If that was his polite way of telling me not to waste his time over tea and buns, it worked. “Yes, thank you.”

  He took a seat and motioned to DC Yeats to draw up a chair. In spite of his haste in wishing to jump to the business in hand, he observed the usual courtesies, asking about my mother and aunt.

  He had probably seen my aunt more recently than I had, but the less said of that the better.

  It did not take long for him to meander almost to the point. “How much do you know, Mrs. Shackleton?”

  “Only that you wish to talk to me about a special assignment, connected with a crime thought to have been committed in the West Riding.”

  He nodded. “That is so.”

  I waited. If this was a game of drip-dripping information, two could play. Let him start. He began by telling me something that I already knew.

  “The LNER runs a special express train from Ardsley to London during the forced rhubarb season. It carries up to two hundred tons of rhubarb to supply the London markets.”

  I knew about that train, timed to arrive in London before dawn, daily between Christmas and Easter. It doesn’t always do to begin by correcting a person who ought to be well informed, but that did not stop me. “The starting point is Leeds Central Station, Mr. Woodhead.” Ardsley was the major junction for the surrounding areas.

  He glanced at his papers. “Quite so.” He frowned and waited.

  When I didn’t give him a recipe for rhubarb pie, he continued.

  “When King’s Cross porters unloaded the train last Saturday morning, they found a body, thought to have been put on the train at Ardsley.” He picked up and handed me the only piece of paper on his desk: a watercolour head-and-shoulders artist’s portrait of a middle-aged male.

  The man’s features were refined but unremarkable. His hair was a mixture of dark brown and grey. He had a lined forehead neither too high nor too low, the usual number of eyebrows, deep-set pale blue eyes a little on the small side, a rather narrow nose and somewhat full lips. The lips made me guess, irrationally, that here was a man who loved his food. His chin jutted a little and yet his jaws so smoothly blended into his neck that it might have been called a weak chin.

  Was he some poor tramp who had stowed away, eaten poisonous rhubarb leaves and died?

  “Who is he?”

  “That is the question, or one of them. Who is he, and who put him there?”

  The commander gave DC Yeats the nod.

  The younger man leaned forward. “He is in his middle years, five feet seven inches tall and in possession of his own teeth.” The commander gave another encouraging nod to DC Yeats.

  “He was found without –” Yeats hesitated. “He was found without identification. He appears fit, well-nourished, probably a professional man, or a gentleman.”

  There was something neither of them wanted to mention. I had not come two hundred miles, rattling for over four hours on a train, to hear part of a story. DC Yeats had been going to say something else before he changed his words to “without identification”.

  Had the man been horribly mutilated?

  “What other details do
you have?”

  The commander scratched his ear.

  Yeats scratched his nose. Was there a flea in the room?

  Yeats said, “The gentleman wore only his underwear. He had been placed in potato sacks, tied with cord.”

  For a moment, silence held. The image gave me a shudder. I felt suddenly cold.

  The commander spoke first, looking at me with compassion, as if remembering when we first met and I was just a child.

  “Perhaps not at all the sort of case for you, m’dear. Though being local to that neck of the woods, and being that we need someone undercover –” He seemed ready to usher me from the room as if his summons to me might have been a foolish whim, a whim he regretted.

  I guessed his thoughts. How could that nice girl turn into a woman who does not turn a hair at such a story?

  I ignored his unwillingness to believe that even nice girls grow up.

  Someone must have thought that the man might be identified by his clothing, a tailor’s label, a bespoke shirt, or handmade shoes. “Was there anything at all to give a hint of his identity?”

  “The underwear was a type widely available.”

  “How did he die?”

  Now Mr. Woodhead spoke with a trumpeting pomposity that made me wonder what my lovely aunt ever saw in him. “Shot through the stomach don’t you know. Bad business.”

  So there would have been blood at the scene, but not as much as if he had been shot through the heart. The killer had taken no chances.

  “Mr. Woodhead, what is it that you think I might do that the railway police, Scotland Yard and the local CID cannot?”

  “You have a reputation for winkling out information.” He once more turned to his constable.

  “Up to two hundred growers from across the rhubarb growing area despatch goods on that train. That night, there were crates from just seventy-five growers—the season is drawing to a close. Officers from Wakefield and Leeds have questioned every grower, as well as railway staff. No one knows a thing.”

  Then somebody must be lying, or be very cunning. “Does the train stop anywhere after Ardsley?”

  The commander shook his head. “No scheduled stops, being an express. It was held up for signals outside Grantham, but the signalman saw no suspicious activity.”

  “And what about King’s Cross, might the body have been put on the train there?”

  “We have sworn statements from the porter who found the body, and from his fellow porter who was by his side within minutes.” He turned to his DC.

  Yeats handed me a photograph of the interior of a railway goods truck stacked with boxes, the sort used for oranges, and with a bulky sack in the foreground.

  Whatever the unfortunate man weighed in life, he would have been a dead weight once life ebbed. “It must have taken two strong men to put him on the train.”

  Yeats seemed reluctant to speculate. “There may have been a clumsy attempt to make the sack look like a sack of potatoes, which doesn’t suggest careful planning.”

  There had been nothing in the press. Here was an artist’s portrait of the deceased, and yet secrecy surrounded the death. That seemed odd. Somewhere in the back of my mind was a connection, evading me now, but it would come.

  “You must have questioned growers, and the railway staff, and showed the portrait.”

  The commander moved a cup from desk to windowsill. “There were the usual enquiries. It would be unwise to reveal the full facts. The portrait was shown to a few trusted individuals with a stake in the area.”

  “Then I need the names of these trusted individuals, and the full facts.”

  The commander lit a cigarette. “You will have all the information you need.”

  That was not the most satisfactory answer. “Mr. Woodhead, that might be interpreted as all the information you believe I would need.” I gave him a smile. “I need to be fully briefed.”

  Woodhead glanced at DC Yeats with what seemed to me to be a shifty look. “Yeats, you will ensure that Mrs. Shackleton is fully briefed.”

  Yeats nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Something about this assignment did not feel right. Yet I have wages to pay.

  “Mr. Woodhead, you would have the usual contract drawn up, covering my time, my assistant’s time, and disbursements?”

  “Would you need an assistant for this task?”

  What a cheek, when he could draw on the entire resources of Scotland Yard!

  “Of course. As you know, I work with Mr. Sykes.”

  “Yes, I know the name. Reports speak highly of him.”

  Several questions came to mind. Murder cannot be kept quiet, and yet I had heard nothing about this. “How is it that there has been no report in the newspapers?”

  “To go public at this stage would bring us the usual deluge of letters and calls from cranks and people hoping to trace a long-lost husband, son or brother.”

  This did not make sense. Newspaper reporters sniff out a serious crime faster than my bloodhound picks up the scent of a squirrel.

  “You placed an embargo on the story.”

  “We asked newspaper editors to show restraint.”

  “Why?”

  He began a long explanation, the gist of which was that the less I knew, the more likely it would be that I could investigate with an open mind. There was also the hint of some threat to national security. The mention of national security must have allowed him to impose silence on the press. During this long explanation, I glanced at DC Yeats, to read his face. I could not.

  Yeats rested his hands on his thighs. Perhaps he had jittery legs and must keep them still. He stared steadily at his feet.

  “Mr. Woodhead, please tell me what you are thinking so that I don’t go into this investigation with one hand tied behind me.” This was risky, but I said it anyway. “We have known each other a long time. There are those who will vouch for my discretion, and that I can hold information while still keeping an open mind.”

  DC Yeats lost interest in his shoes. He sat up a little straighter. Perhaps he too had been kept in the dark.

  “The answer lies somewhere within the Yorkshire coalfields. I’d stake my reputation on that.”

  “The coalfields?”

  Looking relieved at having a reason to move, DC Yeats rose and crossed to a cabinet. He produced a map. After waiting for a nod of permission, he spread the map on the commander’s desk.

  The commander indicated an area almost like a triangle edged by Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield. It was full of blue and black dots. “This is an area of thirty square miles. Coal and agriculture, as you’ll know.” He tapped with his nicotine-stained finger. “There’s Leeds, where you boarded today. There’s Ardsley where we believe the man’s body was put on the train.”

  “What is the significance of the dots?”

  “Blue for every railway station that closed during the strike –”

  “But that was all of them, and it was three years ago.”

  “Black for every mine where men went on strike.”

  I did not trouble to point out that his dots must then represent every single pit. “You are pinpointing the coalfields and the railways, rather than agriculture?”

  “Indeed.”

  “What connection might there be between the 1926 strike and a body found on the rhubarb train three years on?”

  “Who was at the heart of the General Strike, Mrs. Shackleton?”

  “The miners held out longest.”

  “Quite so! Railway workers and miners tried to hold the country to ransom. They failed in their attempt at revolution.”

  “Revolution?”

  “The threat never goes away.”

  It occurred to me that if miners committed murder, they would be capable of making sure the body would never be been found. Railway workers would not put a body on a train. “Do you believe that disposing of the body in such a public way was deliberate, some kind of warning? If so, who was being warned by whom?”

  “I am privy to
intelligence the public will never be troubled with. Often that information is partial. The defeat of the General Strike was the end of a battle. It would suit foreign powers to foment unrest.”

  “You think the man on the train may have been a secret agent, murdered for money, or assassinated?”

  Mr. Woodhead frowned. His nose twitched disapproval. I had set off in the race before waiting for the starting pistol. “That is one line of enquiry. It does not help that in the aftermath of the strike, police are perceived as the enemy. We can expect no cooperation.”

  This did not surprise me. Miners and their families had been starved into submission.

  But rhubarb growers?

  He waited for my response.

  Did he imagine I might wave a dowser’s wand across his map and the tip of my wand would touch the place where some deadly deed originated? “Are there other lines of enquiry?”

  “We hope that is what you will uncover. Who knew he was coming, and why.”

  “The carriage where the body was found, do we know which growers’ produce it contained?” Of course, as I spoke, I realised that a guilty party would be unlikely to put a body in the same compartment as their own rhubarb.

  “DC Yeats will give you details. All the growers have been questioned. That might be a waste of your valuable time.”

  “What about the murder weapon?”

  “It’s thought to be a .25 calibre handgun.”

  DC Yeats folded the map and slid it into a folder.

  I took the folder. “There isn’t a great deal to go on.”

  “I think you might find a way, Mrs. Shackleton, if you agree. We are still following normal enquiry procedures, albeit with reduced resources. New lines of enquiry will emerge.”

  “I’ll need a list of growers whose produce was on that train, and of all who have used the train this year.” It seemed to me more likely that a grower who was not loading produce that night might have risked disposing of a body.

  Sykes would be good at questioning the growers. He might discover something that the police had missed.

  Although this particular suggestion of the commander’s smacked of the proverbial haystack and needle, the mystery intrigued me. More importantly, I hated the thought of this man—whoever he was, and whatever he may have done—losing his life, and in death being treated so ignominiously.