The Body on the Train Read online

  “Do we know when the man died?”

  DC Yeats made the slightest of movements. There was something he wanted to say, yet he did not speak.

  The commander did. “We can’t say for sure. It would be guesswork. Do you need time to think this over? I shall understand if your answer is no.”

  What was the matter with him? Did he think I was not asking the right questions, or was I asking too many? Perhaps he was simply being clever, and challenging me to say yes.

  “If I may be fully briefed, and with the contract drawn up by the end of today, I shall start immediately.”

  That would please my bank manager.

  Was it my imagination or did he seem disappointed? Perhaps not disappointed in me as a detective, but as my mother’s daughter, my aunt’s niece. This was not a task for a “lady”. And yet, he had summoned me.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Shackleton. Welcome aboard. You will have my appreciation and that of the force for your efforts.”

  For my efforts! It seemed to me that he expected I would fall at the first hurdle.

  The commander took a file from his cabinet. “I’m so sorry but I have another meeting. May I hand you over to DC Yeats? He will give you all the information you need.” He passed the file to Yeats.

  I ignored his urgent wish to be elsewhere. “You want me to go undercover?”

  “Yes.”

  “The railway police and local detectives must have asked direct questions of the railway staff and the growers. There could have been no line of questioning without reference to a body and a train.”

  “That is correct. But we wish you to be discreet.”

  “Why the secrecy? Surely the people who have been questioned may be allowed to know my mission?”

  “Prefer this to be QT. You see, m’dear, there are influential men in the north, industrialists on whom our economy depends. It would not do for them to imagine Scotland Yard –” He paused, thinking of how to phrase this. “It would not do for them to think of Scotland Yard as grappling too long with unanswered questions and that we are bringing in outside assistance.”

  He did not want important people to think that Scotland Yard had turned to me.

  He smiled. “And Mrs. Shackleton, I have arranged for you to have afternoon tea at The Savoy with a lady who has similar interests to yourself. I hope you will enjoy that.” With apologies and polite remarks, he moved towards the door.

  There are not many female detectives. I quickly guessed who that person might be. She would understand that I wanted to go straight home and start work.

  “One more question, sir.”

  “Ah of course, you want the lady’s name.”

  “That wasn’t my question, Mr. Woodhead. I’m guessing the lady is Mrs. Kerner?”

  “Dashed clever, Mrs. Shackleton. And I wanted to surprise you.”

  “How best shall I communicate with you?”

  He nodded towards Yeats. “You and Yeats will come up with a way, I’m sure. Good day, dear Mrs. Shackleton.”

  He made his escape. He wanted me to take on the job, or he did not. He wanted me to succeed, or he wanted me to fail. I could not make up my mind about him.

  Chapter Two

  The chill in the cellar corridor of St Pancras Hospital seeped into my bones. Our footsteps made an unholy racket on the stone floor. DC Yeats needed no escort, having been here before.

  “Are you sure you want to view the body, Mrs. Shackleton? I can tell you all you need to know.”

  “I am not being ghoulish, Mr. Yeats. I owe it to the man, and to myself, to see him.”

  Of course, the man in question might have considered being viewed by a strange woman one more indignity to add to the rest. “I would be paying my respects.”

  With so little to go on from Commander Woodhead, my one-sided meeting with the deceased might help.

  I can count on one hand the people I trust completely. Mr. Woodhead was not one of them. Men of his breeding and generation err on the side of protecting female sensibilities. I needed to be sure that I started with knowledge of the facts.

  Yeats had telephoned in advance. The waiting mortuary attendant led us to a table by the wall. There was a dim light from the cellar window. A pale overhead gaslight cast a soft glow. With great gentleness, the attendant drew back the white sheet to the level of the shoulders, revealing the man’s marble features. The artist who had drawn the sketch of our unknown man had given him life and colour. There was no life or colour now.

  At a nod from DC Yeats, the attendant folded back the covering sheet.

  A scar on the abdomen marked the place where a bullet had left its mark.

  Yeats drew my attention to the man’s hands. “There are no signs of his ever having done manual labour, but you’ll notice callouses on the thumb and forefinger of his right hand.”

  “Yes.”

  “And a trace of what might be ink.”

  Perhaps this gentleman had held a pen, wrote many letters, drew up plans and schemes. I said nothing, being reluctant to discuss the man in his presence—even though he was beyond hearing.

  His right elbow was slightly swollen, and also his knee. This was something or nothing. DC Yeats read my thoughts. “Not so much as an appendix removal, and no battle scars.”

  Perhaps he had led a charmed life to the very end.

  As I grew accustomed to the light, I altered my first impression of someone without colour. There was a suggestion of shading, of variation. He did not have those entirely pale legs that we English are blessed with.

  I indicated to DC Yeats that we could leave the man in peace. The mortuary attendant was close by. We waited until he had once more covered our gentleman, and then took our leave. There was a lift. Without discussion, we ignored it. That lift had carried too much tragic weight. Neither of us spoke until we reached ground level.

  Police and hospital staff are frequently on good terms with each other. DC Yeats was no exception. He and I sat in the staff canteen. Stewed tea steamed from thick white cups.

  Yeats took a drink. “I thought our man might be a writer, because of callouses on his thumb and forefinger. I took the head-and-shoulders drawing to publishers, and to bookshops, all along Charing Cross Road. No one recognised him.”

  “That was a good thing to try though.”

  “Yet he gives me the impression of being a fit man, someone who spent time outdoors, not a man who lived his life entirely at a desk.”

  That was my view too. “He has enjoyed sunshine, perhaps wearing shorts or a bathing suit.”

  Yeats nodded. “Still discernible, that difference in his skin colouring.”

  “He has been abroad then.” The puzzle was what brought him to the place he met his end, wherever that was. “You have thoughts on time of death?”

  “He was placed in the sack before rigor mortis set in. The pathologist examined him early on Saturday and thought he had been dead for less than twelve hours.” Yeats placed an attaché case on the table and gave it a tap. “There’s additional background material in here. Shall we find a more congenial place, The Savoy where you’ll be having tea?”

  “Yes, let’s. But I’ll telephone to Mrs. Kerner and we can re-arrange afternoon tea. She’ll understand.” I took one more drink from the thick cup.

  He did the same, but a much longer drink. “I don’t like to offend the kitchen staff. They occasionally oblige me with a late-night meal.” He smiled. “How did you know it was Mrs. Kerner that the commander wanted you to meet?”

  “I would love to say that female detectives are so numerous we have formed a club, but that wouldn’t be true.”

  The truth is that Annette Kerner introduced herself to me a couple of years ago. We got on very well. She dubs herself the Mayfair Detective, loves to take cases for people of high social standing, and also works with Scotland Yard. Mr. Woodhead must have had a word in her ear, and would expect her to pass on his insights. But since he had already made up his mind, and agreed a press embargo,
I thought it better to start from scratch.

  We pushed our chairs from the table and rose at the same time. “Mr. Yeats, depending on how long you and I need for the briefing, I’d like to catch a train to Leeds this evening.”

  He nodded. As we made our way back to the entrance, he took out a notebook. “I thought you might say that. There’s a 5.45 p.m. from King’s Cross to Leeds Central, with a restaurant car, arrives 9.35 p.m. I’ll ask the receptionist at The Savoy to make a booking. Is there anyone else you’d like me to ring?”

  This young man would go far. “My housekeeper, Mrs. Sugden.”

  She would arrange for Sykes to meet me at the station. We could make a start, come up with a plan of action.

  While we waited for the taxi that would take us to The Savoy, my curiosity got the better of me. “Mr. Yeats, you’re young and new to the force I think.”

  “I was at Exmouth a year before coming here.”

  “How did you come to be assisting Mr. Woodhead?”

  His expression was at once both bashful and droll, like the romantic but bumbling hero in an amateur play. “Oh he asked for me, after something came up in the briefing.”

  I gave him an enquiring look, but he was a man who waited for a prompt. “Go on then. Let me in on it.”

  He cleared his throat. “I happened to know a bit about what was in the sack, which had held potatoes. There were two spuds still in there. I identified the variety.”

  “Which was?”

  “Arran Victory.”

  This is a shocking admission, but when he named the potato, we laughed, like giddy schoolchildren. It must have been a reaction against the distress of seeing that unfortunate man. All the same, I felt bad about laughing, and so did he. Our taxi came into view.

  “We’ll make it up to the poor man. We’ll find out who did this to him.”

  Chapter Three

  As it happened, Annette Kerner had other plans than afternoon tea with a sister sleuth. She had left a note for me at The Savoy reception.

  Kate, m’dear, Fiddlesticks to cream tea. Will you dine with me and a couple of embassy chums? Later, we’ll be at the tables. I feel sure you’ll have a newcomer’s lucky streak. Annette.

  It was tempting, but work came first. I wrote a friendly refusal to the suggestion that I gamble away my Scotland Yard fee before earning it.

  DC Yeats and I took a table by the window in the Thames Foyer, sufficiently far from the American jazz band so as to hear each other but not be overheard.

  He opened his attaché case. “I have some documents for you.”

  There was a copy of the map we had looked at earlier, additional copies of the watercolour of our unknown man, and a carbon copy of a closely typed sheet, noting the investigation to date, and listing the rhubarb growers.

  In chirpy mood, the band played “Me and My Shadow”.

  DC Yeats lit a cigarette.

  As might be expected in an investigation involving the railway, timings were meticulously noted. The rhubarb was booked in between 3.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m., with a clerk and one porter on duty.

  “And no one noticed the sack?”

  “No. The sidings are extensive and there’s a small workforce at Ardsley, a clerk and a guard. They saw nothing unusual.

  That might be true, or not. Word of a body on the train would spread quickly between stations. By the time railway police asked questions in the north, amnesia would reign. No railway worker would want to risk coming under suspicion, any more than they would want to lose time off work by attending an inquest.

  “What about the inquest?”

  “Opened and adjourned.”

  I quickly read through the progress report, which amounted to no progress at all.

  The last pages indicated who had been shown the sketch of the unknown man, mainly mining officials, and mine managers.

  “Why have so few people been shown the artist’s sketch?”

  “The investigation may be widened.”

  “What were the criteria for deciding who sees the picture?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer that, not being party to the decision.”

  “Oh, come on, Mr. Yeats, give me a helping hand.”

  He hesitated. “If you’d met Mrs. Kerner, I believe she may have told you that she has been asked to keep an eye out for gentlemen from Russia, Bolsheviks. She moves in embassy circles.”

  “I see, well actually no I don’t. Why would a murdered Russian Bolshevik be put on a train in Yorkshire?”

  The band struck up “I’m Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover”.

  “If, for instance, he was trying to foment unrest, bringing Russian gold.”

  The document’s pages had been hole-punched and were held together with a metal clip. At the back, there was a scrap of paper attached to the clip, where there had been another sheet.

  “Mr. Yeats, don’t you want me to succeed?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The missing pages?”

  “Ah.”

  “Who typed this?”

  “I did.” He fished in his pocket and produced a flimsy folded sheet of paper. It was a pale carbon copy. “They are the sort of people the commander wouldn’t want bothered, and whose word can be trusted. They have already given full cooperation.”

  From this list of important people in the locality, one name jumped out at me.

  I placed the documents in my satchel.

  “Mr. Yeats, just so that we are all clear, would you please pass my message to Mr. Woodhead? I accept the assignment.”

  “I hoped you would.”

  Our taxi reached King’s Cross with time to spare. Mr. Yeats came onto the train, to see me settled in the carriage. My trusty satchel held the precious notes. I would not take it from my shoulder for the whole journey.

  “Is there anything else I should know, any other titbit of information we may have missed?”

  “I can tell you that the body on the train has baffled our department. At first some officers treated the incident as comical, absurd. ‘If this body came in on the rhubarb train, who might we find on the liquorice train and the coal train?”—that sort of thing.” He hesitated. “There must be people who cared for him, who will want to lay him to rest. He has a look of my Uncle Bob, and so I really would like to know that he will be identified.”

  “So would I. I will need to show the sketch to more people than have seen it so far.”

  His bright blue eyes looked troubled. He ran his hand through his neatly oiled hair. “I believe the prohibition is on telling his story.”

  “I don’t know his story. None of us do. But by now hundreds of people will know how he was found. It won’t remain a secret.”

  He did not answer, simply looked through the window at the station master taking up his position. We shook hands. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Yeats.”

  I went with him to the door. Stepping out onto the platform, he made way for an American couple, excusing themselves, hurrying to catch the train. I stepped aside to let them on.

  DC Yeats waited. I stayed by the door, with the feeling that he was not quite ready to say goodbye. Was there something else he wanted to tell me?

  “Wouldn’t it be interesting, Mrs. Shackleton, if a dead person could utter just one more sentence?”

  “That depends on the sentence.”

  “He might have accused the man who killed him.”

  It was an intriguing thought. There may be something he had left undone. He meant to change his will, pay back a loan, or return a borrowed book.

  The train began to move. I expected Yeats to wave and turn away, but suddenly he was trotting alongside the carriage. I leaned forward to hear what he wanted to say.

  “As well as the spuds there were gold coins in the sack—two spade shield George III guineas.”

  We gave a last wave. Not wishing to be decapitated as the train left the station, I ducked back. Perhaps what our man had left undone was the start of a workers’ revolution, fu
nded by Russian gold of British origin. Two guineas wouldn’t go very far.

  Had Yeats forgotten, until now, to tell me about the coins? Unlikely. This must be one more titbit of information that Commander Woodhead had intended to keep from me.

  He was not to know that Yeats and I would forge a bond over an unseemly fit of the giggles.

  * * *

  Martin Yeats stepped from the fug of the station. He wished he was going north with Mrs. Shackleton, to follow her lines of enquiry. She put him in mind of his mother and sisters, women who stood no nonsense. Women who earned their place in the world. He was glad he had told her about the potatoes, and the coins. Mr. Woodhead was growing forgetful.

  Chapter Four

  The American couple, who had caught the train at the last minute, were to be my companions for the journey. Their name was Loomis. They were from Connecticut, here for the Ryder Cup Golf Tournament.

  Mr. Loomis offered to put my satchel on the rack, in a rather persistent way that made me determined to keep it close. Had I been alone in the carriage, I would have looked through the papers.

  I escaped to the restaurant car and requested a table for one, where I could look through the documents privately.

  In the description of the victim, there was no mention of callouses to the thumb and finger, those marks of a persistent scribe that DC Yeats thought might mark him out as an author who wrote by hand.

  The disposal of the body on a train was so bizarre as to seem an act of stupidity, or panic. Yet someone had taken the time to strip him of his clothing. If I wanted rid of a body, I wouldn’t put it on a train to one of the busiest stations in the Empire.

  Yet perhaps there was symmetry. If the man had come north from the capital, was he simply being sent back like an unwanted parcel, possibly as a warning? But if so, a warning to whom? And who had lifted and carried such a dead weight without being noticed?

  Gold coins in the sack made an interesting addition to the mystery. If Mr. Woodhead’s theory about an envoy bringing Russian gold was correct, had someone interrupted the transaction, kept the lion’s share for himself, and sent two gold coins back with the messenger?