The Body on the Train Read online

  I thought for a moment. The shop would be owned by Benjie and Gertrude. Everything in Thorpefield was their possession. Yet estate agents would be unlikely to pass on a familiar telephone number to Gertrude. She would not be dealing with such a matter herself. “Yes, you do that Mrs. Sugden.”

  I told them about my visit to the prison to talk to Stephen Walmsley. “I have a feeling we are onto something, but I don’t know what.”

  Mrs. Sugden made a note. “And did this fellow do it? Did he kill the shopkeeper?”

  “I don’t believe he did.”

  Sykes tried to disguise a sigh. When he is about to question my judgement for not rushing to a guilty verdict, he prefaces the comments with two words. I glared at him, waiting for the words: “With respect”.

  He thought better of it, adopting a position of patient thoughtfulness, making a steeple of his fingers. “Stephen Walmsley had blood on his hands. The puzzle is that he hasn’t been charged.”

  “Perhaps the puzzle is insufficient evidence. He went to Mrs. Farrar’s assistance, as he thought. Isn’t that a normal reaction from a young person who was close to her?”

  Sykes appeared to consider this, but said nothing.

  Eventually, he came round to what worried him. “A clumsy deadly assault and robbery is a different type of crime altogether from the man shot and put on the train. I’m not sure considering the shopkeeper’s case will take us closer to discovering our man’s identity.”

  “All the same I want us to find out more. Perhaps I’ll be in a position to do that at Thorpefield.”

  Sykes wore his Doubting Thomas face. “You said yourself Mr. Brockman is unlikely to confide in you. As deputy Lord Lieutenant of the County, he’ll have signed the Official Secrets Act. Suspicions about political activity will make it difficult for him.”

  “Gertrude hasn’t signed, as far as I know. And it’s the best way in that comes to mind.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this, Mrs. Shackleton. Wakefield CID and Scotland Yard have painted themselves into corners. Now they bounce you centre stage.”

  Sykes was right, but he can be a bit of a nay-sayer at times. He would have been more optimistic had he come back with some useful titbit from the rhubarb growers, or the golf club. “I want us to do well on this. It might be the biggest job we’ve had. If we succeed where others have failed, the credit will be greater.”

  Sykes had been looking again at the reports of Mrs. Farrar’s murder. Now he glanced up. “Stephen Walmsley. What’s he like?”

  That seemed like changing his tune, but it was how we worked when we came at a case with our different prejudices. I described Stephen, his youth, his quiet demeanour, his sincerity.

  Sykes spoke with infinite and annoying patience. “Did he say anything that would convince a jury that he was not guilty?”

  “None of us can answer that. It would depend on what sort of case can be made against him, or for him. He had been roughed up, yet he stuck to his story. I believed him.”

  “I’m sorry to say this, Mrs. Shackleton –”

  “No you are not.”

  “You would believe him, because you want that to be true.”

  Of course I wanted that to be true. I hated the thought that someone who seems perfectly decent and truthful could commit a violent act. “If you met him, I believe you would also doubt his guilt.”

  I knew what worried Sykes, before he said it.

  “You can’t bear the thought of some likeable young chap going to the gallows. That’s why you are a detective, and not a judge.” Rewarding himself for this magnificent insight, he took a gulp of tea.

  “There may be other reasons that I’m not a judge. If an appointment to the King’s Bench comes my way, I might just say yes.”

  Sykes laughed so suddenly that he spluttered his tea.

  “Meanwhile, I will presume young Walmsley not guilty, and so should you.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I drove the scenic route, through Rothwell. Beyond Carlton and Robin Hood, an old stone sign by the side of the lane announces THORPEFIELD. I turned up the lane.

  All this land was part of the Brockman estate. The family seemed never to make up its mind whether to give the area entirely over to coal, or go on with the agricultural uses that pre-dated mining.

  Suddenly finding myself in the wake of a horse and cart, I slowed. Horse, cart and rider turned off by the common.

  Thorpefield Manor came into view as I rounded the bend, and then disappeared and reappeared, in a game of hide and seek as the lane twisted and turned. There is a wood across from the house and grounds. With the promise of spring, the leaves had begun to turn green.

  The gates to the manor house stood open. A long and winding drive led to the house, which came into view as the drive made its final curve. It is an imposing early Victorian villa built of local stone. Weak sunlight cast the shadow of the house onto its forecourt. Slowly, I drove into the shadow. The stone balustrade had deteriorated since my last visit. Paint peeled from the door. This surprised me. Gertrude was such a stickler, conscious of her social position.

  Someone had heard the car.

  Moments later, as I was getting out of the car, a young man appeared. A slight young chap, he had black curling hair, the face of an angel, and the brightest of blue eyes. He brought with him the scent of hay and horses. Something about him was oddly familiar.

  “Mrs. Shackleton!”

  “Yes.”

  “I was looking out for you, madam. I’ll take your car to the garage.”

  “Thank you. We haven’t met before?”

  “I’m Alec. I look after the horses and I’m learning to be a mechanic.”

  He didn’t look old enough. “That’s a big responsibility for a young chap.”

  “I’ll be sixteen next month!” Smiling, he picked up my camera bag.

  By now, someone else had heard my approach. The big oak door creaked opened. There stood the imposing figure of Benjie’s loyal, long-serving butler.

  “Hello, Raynor.”

  Alec deposited my camera bag on the top step and hared away without a word.

  Raynor picked up the bag with his little finger. He presents an imposing, almost formidable, figure. In the days when butlers were said to be paid according to height and breadth, he would have earned good money.

  Raynor inclined his large head. “Welcome back, Mrs. Shackleton.”

  I once saw a play based on the Dracula story. Raynor, with his, long pale face and deep-set eyes, looked so like the leading man that it was uncanny. On a previous visit, I had to repeat to myself: his name is Raynor. He is not Count Dracula.

  Gertrude came smiling down the broad staircase to meet me. Tall and slender, she wore a light jersey sweater and skirt ensemble in a combination of grey and pale green.

  “Kate! It’s been too long.”

  “Lovely to see you, Gertrude.”

  I hate to feel a hypocrite but it would be worse to tell the truth: it is good to see you, but what I really want is to solve the case and go.

  “I thought I would never entice you here again. Not that I blame you. We are as godforsaken and isolated as ever.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. What do you say, Raynor?” I shrugged off my motoring coat.

  Raynor was quick to take my coat. “We shall never compete with Piccadilly Circus, but people come and go. Only yesterday we had a person driving farm to farm, questioning the rhubarb growers.”

  Raynor looked at Gertrude, and then at me. It seemed as if he was warning her, or me.

  “Really? I hope it’s not someone else writing about the area, and beating me to it.”

  Gertrude had been about to say something, but Raynor walked away. Even in soft shoes, he has a way of making himself heard.

  It was a good thing that Gertrude did not press the butler for more information. I felt sure that if Raynor told us about the visitor and his odd enquiries, the stranger would turn out to be a man who drove a Jowett car,
wore black, and looked like a policeman. I say very little about my work as a rule, but over the years I may have mentioned my assistant.

  She led me into the music room. “Raynor can be a little odd these days. We make allowances. Benjie relies on him.”

  “Yes I suppose he would.”

  Raynor has been with Benjie since he was a boy.

  Sykes would be mortified to know that his discreet enquiries had become a focus for attention.

  We sat by the window, agreeing that it was not too early to have a cocktail, which Gertrude mixed. “And you have an important mission while you’re here?”

  “If you call a photographic essay important.”

  “Oh I do. And you hinted you might abandon me.”

  “Not abandon.”

  “Good, because I have such plans for us, Kate. And as soon as you’ve freshened up, you must tell me all about your exciting idea.”

  After we had chatted and finished our cocktails, Gertrude rang for the maid.

  A fair-haired young woman with a nervous manner came into the room, straightening her cap.

  Gertrude turned to her. “Milly, show Mrs. Shackleton to her room.”

  Milly thought about an answer and finally muttered a reply.

  “Milly’s looking forward to taking care of you.”

  This statement took Milly by surprise. She began to blink rapidly.

  I tried to put her at her ease as we walked upstairs, asking how long she had worked here. Not very long.

  It interested me that Milly was one of the names Stephen Walmsley had mentioned. His pals had come to the prison on the night he was arrested—his friends from the band, and Milly and Joan.

  There was jug and bowl in the room. As Milly hung my clothes, I washed the grime from my face and combed my hair.

  I took out the photographs I had brought to show Gertrude. There we were, at the age of twelve, with our ponies.

  In the photograph of their wedding, Gertrude and Benjie looked so well matched and happy.

  Milly stared. “Goodness, how could he have been at that wedding?” She was pointing to Benjie’s younger brother, who had been his best man.

  “I shouldn’t think it’s anyone you know. You weren’t born then.”

  Yet I guessed who she thought it was, and I was right.

  “He looks just like Alec Taylor. Or I suppose I should say Alec Taylor looks like him.”

  I whipped the photograph away. “You mean the stable lad who took charge of my car? Perhaps superficially, but I don’t think so.”

  She gave me an odd look, and why not? The resemblance was striking. Benjie’s brother, Michael, and the stable lad, Alec, could have been twins, or father and son. Except that Michael died young. He did not live long enough to father a child who was now going on sixteen.

  “I have a better one of Mr. and Mrs. Brockman’s wedding.” It wouldn’t do to remind Benjie of the brother he loved.

  Millie perked up when she saw the cameras.

  “You take photographs, Mrs. Shackleton?”

  “I do.” Might as well rehearse my story. “I’m going to write a piece about people who live in the area, how they spend their time, where they work, what hobbies and such like, and I’ll take pictures.”

  “I’d like my picture taking but there’s nothing interesting about me.”

  “That can’t be true. I’m sure of it, after knowing you for just a few minutes. What do you do on your day off?”

  “I’m a Sunday school teacher at the chapel.”

  “Well then, there you are. Very interesting. I’ll take your picture tomorrow in your Sunday best.”

  “Thank you.”

  She looked far from pleased. Either a girl with mercurial moods or my mention of Sunday clothes upset her.

  She turned away, and began to inspect my clothing, pouncing on a skirt and blouse that she claimed would benefit from having an iron run over them. She would have dashed from the room. I stopped her with a question.

  “Where were you before you came to work here?”

  It would be too good to be true if she said she lived on a rhubarb farm, and last time she visited home, had helped put a body in a sack.

  “At home with mi mam and brothers, in Robin Hood.” She said that as if she would have preferred to stay there.

  “And what about the young groom, Alec? Where was he before coming to live here?”

  “He was in the children’s home. They fetched him out of it, or Mr. Brockman did.”

  Unable to admit that I had been snooping about the area, and seeing the deserted ground where the orphanage had stood, I said, “Are there many children there now?”

  “Oh no, madam. You see they all had to be moved.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Subsidence. There’s mine works all under that area. The children had to be moved away so that the earth wouldn’t swallow them.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Gertrude and I settled ourselves in wing chairs by the bay window in the music room. “Now tell me about this plan of yours, Kate.”

  I outlined my idea for an article about the area, illustrated with photographs of local people and places.

  “We’re rather dull here, not exactly National Geographic material.”

  “Nonsense! The minute Benjie comes home I want a picture of you in your place of choice—the lord and lady of the manor. I hope you can rustle up a dog and a gun.”

  “And country tweeds?”

  “Not necessary, but if you insist.”

  She sighed. “Not sure about a portrait. We’re looking a bit shabby just now –”

  “You are not!”

  “We might brush up well enough but the house isn’t at its best. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

  “In a house this age and this size, there’ll always be something to do.”

  “You’re right there. We took a hammering with the death duties, hanging over from when Benjie inherited.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Nothing to be done, Kate. One puts on a brave face but the strike added to our woes. We saved on wages of course. I can’t tell you how much we lost by having to leave coal in the ground. After the neglect there was a huge amount of maintenance. Royds pit was in no fit state to re-open, just not viable.”

  I felt a wave of sympathy for Gertrude. “It must have been hard to see your workers and their families struggling to survive.”

  “As Benjie likes to point out to me, they had donations and money from all over the place. Don’t start him on this. He’ll tell you all about a delegation of Labour women going to Russia.”

  “From here?”

  “From the Northeast, but it’s all the same to him. Of course Raynor is gung-ho along with him. They spent hours in the study, plotting against the plotters.”

  Much as I appreciated Gertrude and Benjie’s position, I felt greater sympathy for the miners and their families. “It’s a pity the miners had to look abroad for support.”

  “According to Benjie, they got support aplenty. He’ll tell you those women came back with vodka, caviar, Russian gold and instructions for sedition.”

  Russian gold. Where had I heard that before? Commander Woodhead and Benjie Brockman would get on very well. “And what do you think, Gertrude?”

  “I just wish that strike had never happened.” She poured tea.

  I changed the subject. It was too soon to start probing and arouse suspicion. “Do you remember this?”

  “Indeed I do!”

  It was a picture of Gertrude and me with our ponies, taken on my camera by our riding mistress. I brought out one of her wedding day. I had snapped her with her bridesmaids, a cousin and her little nieces. In another candid and slightly grainy snapshot—not one of my best—Gertrude was standing with her mother on their lawn.

  For a little while, we reminisced.

  When the right moment came, I asked her what had happened to the children’s home. “Milly said it was demolished?”<
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  “Yes. It turned out to be in danger of subsiding. We couldn’t take the risk of just leaving it.”

  “Where are the children?”

  “They’re in good hands. I saw to that.”

  “It was a grand old house. We used to look through the railings when we cycled out this way as children. Wasn’t it called the Bluebell Home?”

  “Everyone called it that, because of the Bluebell Wood nearby.”

  “Couldn’t it have been shored up in some way, to make it safe?”

  “Benjie had already looked into all the possibilities. And so did our fellow trustee, Eliot, but no. It would have cost more to preserve than to re-build. There wasn’t sufficient money in the trust fund to do either, unfortunately.”

  “So, where did the children go?”

  “To a very well run orphanage in Wakefield.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, Kate, you’re interested in adopting. I never thought, or I would have asked you over before the children left.”

  Adoption never occurred to me, and I said so. “I’ve semi-adopted my niece Harriet, that’s enough for me.”

  And then suddenly, without preamble, she said. “I’m barren, Kate. We have tried so determinedly to have a child, which has been a great pleasure for both Benjie and me, but there it is.”

  I was so taken aback by her sudden intimate confidence that I did not know what to say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You are in the same situation, childless, but with good reason.”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “Several, and the best. I stayed with an infirm old aunt in Surrey, taking care of her. She told me about the daughter of an acquaintance who went to a clinic run by a Harley Street chap, and I gave it a try.”

  “I’d no idea.” This was a side to Gertrude I had not seen. It surprised me to think of her taking care of an old aunt. As to children, she has always put herself and Benjie first. I suppose having an heir was important, but neither she nor Benjie had seemed to mind.

  “I’ve been poked and prodded and operated on, to no avail.”