by Mary Nichols
He heard the distant train. It was a military freight train, loaded with guns and ammunition, he knew that because everyone along the line was forewarned because of the danger. He’d seen dozens go through and had become quite blasé about them. The more the merrier, he told himself, let the Hun have it. Yes, tomorrow he’d go into Swaffham and join up.
The train came into view around the bend. It was a long one and he couldn’t see the end of it. And then he noticed the first wagon was on fire. Flames licked at the tarpaulin that covered it. Frank didn’t stop to think. He slammed the points shut to prevent it entering the station and waved to the driver to stop, then he grabbed a fire extinguisher and skittled down the steps to the engine. ‘You’re on fire,’ he shouted, climbing up and squirting the extinguisher into the burning truck; it hissed but made no difference. ‘Reverse down the siding.’
The driver looked back and saw the flames. He jumped down and fled in the direction of the station, passing Bert on the way, who had come to see what was going on. ‘Get back!’ Frank yelled at him, while putting the engine into reverse. ‘Go and alert everyone. I’ll try and get it down the siding before it blows the whole village up.’
Slowly the train began to move. The flames were higher now, the tarpaulin gone. ‘I reckon it caught a spark from the engine,’ Frank said to the fireman as they worked. ‘You’d think they’d have more sense …’ He paused as the train hit the buffers at the end of the siding. ‘Better bale out.’
The explosion shook the village. The ground heaved and all the windows at the station, and those in every house within half a mile, were shattered. Tiles slid off roofs and crashed on the ground. Trees lost their leaves which swirled upwards and were carried away on the blast. It was followed by more bangs, one after the other.
At Nayton Manor they heard it and felt it. ‘What was that?’ Lucy asked, grabbing Peter and hugging him to her, remembering the bomb that had nearly killed them.
The children, who had been playing in the garden, ran indoors and rushed up to Annelise, who gathered them round her, trying to calm them, though she was shaking herself and worried about Charles who was outside somewhere.
‘Was it a bomb?’ Bernard asked her.
‘It might have been.’ She put her arms round Cecily, who was crying. ‘It certainly sounded like it.’
‘Or a plane crash,’ Raymond suggested.
But they had heard no aeroplanes, either friend or foe. The explosion seemed to come from nowhere.
Bernard, the most intrepid of them, went upstairs to look out of his bedroom window. He was soon back. ‘There’s a huge fire,’ he said, eyes alight with excitement. ‘You can see it above the trees. The flames are shooting into the sky. It looks as though the whole wood is burning.’
They trooped upstairs to see for themselves. Huge clouds of black smoke, licked by orange flames, reached skywards above the trees. And every now and again they heard another smaller explosion. They heard the sound of fire-engine bells as they stood there. Lucy took Peter downstairs and sat on the bottom step hugging him. It reminded her too much of being bombed out. She had nearly died, might have done, if Amy had not insisted she was under the rubble and might still be alive. Were there people buried in ruins in Nayton? Was anyone trying to get them out?
Charles came in the front door. He looked dishevelled but not hurt. ‘Is everyone safe?’ he asked her.
‘Yes, they are upstairs watching from Bernard’s bedroom window. Was it a bomb?’
‘No, an ammunition train.’ He ran upstairs to join his wife. Lucy followed to hear what he had to say.
‘Oh, Charles,’ Annelise said, disengaging herself from Cecily and going to touch his arm. ‘Are you all right? I’ve been so worried. I didn’t know where you were.’
‘I was in the church talking to the rector. I’m supposed to be reading the lesson tomorrow.’
‘Do you know what happened?’
‘An ammunition train approached the station with one of its trucks on fire, the engine driver told us. Frank Lambert switched the points so it couldn’t get into the station and then tried putting it out. He backed it down the old siding. There were a few people on the platform who witnessed it but they dived for cover when the first truck went up. It’s as well they did because that was a small one compared to the one that followed. The whole train blew up.’
‘How many casualties?’ Annelise asked.
‘Frank Lambert and the fireman. Bert Storey has been badly injured and not expected to live. I’m sorry, Lucy. I know you didn’t get on but …’ He paused. ‘A few people have cuts and bruises from flying glass and bits of wood, but no other deaths. Lambert must take the credit for that. But for him the whole village would have become an inferno. As it is, I don’t think there will be much left of the wood. At least it sheltered the Manor from the blast.’
‘Can I do anything to help?’
‘No, best stay indoors, all of you, and keep the windows shut, until the fire is put out and the smoke stops drifting.’
‘I wonder where Amy is,’ Annelise said. ‘She won’t be able to get home.’
The train had stopped soon after they left Swaffham and the passengers had been sitting in it for hours. No one knew why it had come to a halt; rumours abounded. There had been an air raid and the line had been bombed, there were those who swore they had heard an explosion; someone had been killed crossing the line; the train had run out of coal; there was a spy on board and the train was being searched for him, but there was no sign of any searchers, no sign of any railway employees either. Had they been deserted? No trains passed going in the opposite direction which was held to be significant. Several of the passengers had jumped out and were walking up and down the line.
Amy had been looking forward to being back home and telling Lucy and her parents her exciting news, but here she was stuck less than ten miles from home. Nayton was the next station along the line and if something had happened there to keep a train motionless for hours, then it must be something bad. It worried her. If only there was a habitation with a telephone nearby she could ring home and find out, and though there were telephone lines strung along the line as far as the eye could see, there was no way of making use of them. She was debating whether to try and walk when the guard made his way from carriage to carriage.
He had walked back to Swaffham, he told everyone, and tried to telephone Nayton station to find out why the signals were against them, but the lines were down. He had been instructed to escort the passengers back along the line to the road bridge where buses were being sent to pick them up and take them back to Swaffham.
There was a hue and cry over this, especially from two American airmen who were due back on their base at Nayton that evening and would be in trouble if they didn’t arrive on time. ‘I reckon we could make it across the fields,’ one of them said. ‘Count us out.’
‘Me too,’ Amy said. ‘I live in Nayton. I know the way.’
‘Then we’ll follow you,’ the airman said, hoisting his rucksack on his shoulder.
All three clambered down and set off along the track in the direction of Nayton, leaving everyone else to go in the opposite direction.
‘I’m John Housman,’ the taller of the two said. He had dark hair, soft amber eyes and a ready smile. He wore a sergeant’s stripes on his arm. ‘This is Gerry Bartrum.’
‘My name is Amy de Lacey.’
‘Nice name,’ Gerry commented. He was shorter and broader than John and he had a crooked nose.
‘Isn’t that the name of the family at Nayton Manor?’ John asked.
‘Yes, that’s where I live. My father is Lord de Lacey.’
‘Oh, my, a real live aristocrat.’
She laughed. ‘’Fraid so.’
They had come to an unmanned level crossing. With Lucy leading the way, they left the line and struck off up a narrow country road, hardly wide enough for a single car. On either side were tall hedges, enclosing fields. They kept up a lively conversation as
they walked and the miles didn’t seem too long. It was only when they reached the airbase they found out what had happened. Nayton station was closed while the line was checked and the damage at the station cleared up. The telephone lines were down and there had been a tremendous fire in the woods surrounding the Manor which still smouldered. They weren’t sure how many casualties there had been. Amy, more anxious than ever, was offered a lift home in a jeep and that was how she finally arrived. It was nearly midnight. Everyone had gone to bed. Amy let herself in and crept upstairs.
‘Amy is that you?’ Her mother came out on the landing in a dressing gown. She had evidently been listening for her.
‘Yes, Mama. Safe and sound. Is everyone all right?’
‘We are, but Frank Lambert is dead and Bert Storey not expected to live.’
‘No? Oh, my goodness. Was it the explosion?’
‘Yes. I’ll tell you about it in the morning. Do you want a hot drink?’
‘No thanks, I had one at the American base.’
‘What were you doing there?’
‘They brought me home after we were stranded.’
‘Go to bed, then.’ Annelise kissed Amy’s cheek. ‘Goodnight, darling. We’ll talk in the morning.’
Chapter Sixteen
Bernard was first up the next morning and was out of the house before anyone else was awake. He wanted to see the damage for himself. He went down through the kitchen garden where the greenhouses had lost all their glass, crossed the paddock, kicking at charred remnants of he knew not what as he went, then down the estate road and into the wood. There was an acrid smell that caught in his throat and made him want to cough. The belt of trees came to an end and now all around him were blackened stumps and the ground was covered in wet black ash. The old cottage, the tryst of lovers, had gone, there was nothing left of it, not even one brick standing on another. He stood and stared, his mouth open in amazement. He had seen pictures of bomb damage in the newspapers, but it had given him no idea what devastation really looked like.
A few yards on he came to what had once been the railway siding. Blackened twisted metal pointed skywards. Everywhere were the scattered remains of what had once been a train, some of it huge lumps, some only tiny fragments. The trees closest to the line had been torn up, their roots exposed. Someone, the police or the army perhaps, had enclosed the site with posts and a rope and a sign saying, ‘Danger. Keep out.’ He ducked under the rope and walked warily forward. There was a hole in the ground filled with rubble as if the earth had heaved itself upwards and then subsided in on itself. He was awestruck.
And then he saw something else. A bony hand sticking out of the soil; a skeleton’s hand. He took a stick and prodded at it. A skull came to light; it seemed to be grinning at him. He turned and fled and he didn’t stop running until he reached the house and burst into the kitchen where Mrs Baxter was busy preparing breakfast.
‘Where’ve you been?’ she demanded. ‘You’re making black marks all over my clean floor.’
‘There’s a skeleton,’ he said, gasping for breath. ‘The other side of the wood, where the train blew up. I saw its hand and its head and its teeth.’
He didn’t wait to hear her reply, but dashed through the kitchen in search of Lord de Lacey.
Charles, who had always been an early riser, was coming down the stairs for his breakfast. Bernard repeated what he had told Mrs Baxter.
‘Calm down,’ Charles said, taking the boy by the shoulders. ‘Tell me slowly.’
Bernard said it again. ‘It was buried in the earth by the hole,’ he said.
‘Perhaps someone was walking in the woods when the train blew up. I hadn’t thought of that. We must find out who it was. Will you take me and show me?’
Bernard had regained some of his courage, and with Lord de Lacey beside him, led the way.
It was immediately apparent to Charles that the skeleton was not new. Whoever it was had not died as a result of the explosion; he or she had been dead long before that. ‘Run and tell Mr Bennett to call the police,’ he said. ‘And ask Mr Jones to come here at once. We’ll have to put a guard on it, until it’s taken away.’
It was impossible to keep a find like that secret and the discovery of the skeleton was the talking point of the village and there was much speculation as to who it could be. No one appeared to be missing. A post-mortem established that the body was that of a woman in her late twenties or early thirties and that she had died as a result of a blow to the head with a blunt instrument. It had become a murder investigation and everyone in the village was being questioned.
‘She need not necessarily have come from the village,’ Charles said, after the police sergeant had left them. They were all reeling from the revelation. ‘She could have been killed elsewhere and brought to the wood because it was a good place to hide a body. If it hadn’t been for the explosion, it never would have been found.’
‘How long had it been there?’ Lucy asked. She had been overjoyed when Amy told her that her grandmother was alive and wanted to see her, but disappointed that no one knew anything of her mother.
‘Years, so I was told,’ he said. ‘Too long for the body to be identified.’
‘I think,’ Lucy said thoughtfully. ‘It might be my mother.’
‘Oh, my dear girl,’ Annelise said, putting her arms round her. ‘Do you really think so?’
‘Pa often lost his temper and hit her. Perhaps …’ Her voice trailed off as she pictured the scene. It didn’t need much imagination.
‘I’d better go after the sergeant and see what he has to say,’ Charles said and left the room.
Two days later they were told that Bert Storey, at death’s door, had confessed to killing his wife with a poker in a fit of temper and getting Frank Lambert to help him carry the body into the wood and bury it. The news was broken to Lucy by Lord de Lacey.
‘I’m sorry, Lucy,’ he said gently. ‘This must be a terrible blow to you.’
‘It is and it isn’t,’ she said. She was quiet, but not distraught so much as numb. ‘When I think back, it becomes obvious. No one ever saw my mother alive after Pa said she left and he refused to have her searched for. She was a loving mother. She didn’t take me with her because she never left.’
‘What do you want to do about it? Do you want a funeral? We could arrange one, if you like. That way you can say goodbye to her properly.’
‘Yes, please. I wonder how this will affect my grandmother? I was going to see her the day after tomorrow, it’s all been arranged. I had hoped it would be a happy time, but now … Do you think I ought to postpone it?’
‘No, she will have to be told and it would be better coming from you. And you will have such a lot to tell each other.’
‘I must write to Jack. Do you think he could get some leave for the funeral?’
‘I’m sure he’ll try.’
Jack, whose squadron had moved from Newmarket to Tempsford, knew about the explosion and the loss of life; it was in all the newspapers. Frank Lambert was a hero, saving the village of Nayton from total destruction, and everyone said he deserved a medal. It just went to show, Jack thought on reading it, that even the most unpleasant character could have some good in him. But there were also reports of a murder. Funny that, Bernard had been right about Bert Storey, though he had the victim wrong. Poor Lucy, it was hard to imagine how she must be feeling. He had always said she was of gentle stock and he had been proved right. Not that it made a blind bit of difference to him; Lucy was Lucy and that was all that mattered. At least now she knew the truth, not only about what happened to her mother, but what had gone before.
He had had a long letter from her, telling him about the explosion and the discovery of the body and meeting her grandmother for the first time. ‘She is exactly how I remember my mother,’ she had written. ‘We got on like a house on fire and she adores Peter. We are going to have a funeral for my mother and Lady de Lacey has invited her to come and stay. I hope the press leave us alone for
that. Darling Jack, I love you dearly and always will, but I can’t help wondering if all this nastiness will make a difference to how you feel about me …’
He started to write a reply, but screwed it up and instead applied for leave on compassionate grounds and it was granted.
The arrival of Jack seemed to open the dam behind Lucy’s eyes and she flew into his arms and burst into tears. He held her close, letting her cry. ‘Shush, sweetheart,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right. Come and sit down in the drawing room and tell me all about it.’ He put his arm about her and took her to sit beside him on the sofa. He gave her his handkerchief. ‘Talk when you’re ready.’
She stopped crying, mopped her eyes and gave him a watery smile. ‘Silly me.’
‘No, you are not silly. You are you and I wouldn’t have you any other way.’
‘The funeral is tomorrow. You will come, won’t you?’
‘Of course. That’s why I’m here, to be beside you.’
‘Pa has already been buried in Swaffham. I couldn’t bring myself to go.’
‘That’s hardly surprising after what he did.’
‘He nearly got away with it.’
‘Don’t think about it. Think about the good things. You have a grandmother, and perhaps there are other relatives you never knew about. And there’s our wedding. You are looking forward to that, aren’t you?’
‘Oh, Jack, need you ask? It’s all I’ve ever dreamt of. We’ll have to wait for all the fuss to die down, though. I don’t want it spoilt by gossip and nosy newspaper reporters. They’ve hardly left me alone. I’ve been doing my best to protect Peter, and your father kept the press at bay while he was here, but he had to go back to London.’
