Westmorland Alone

by Ian Sansom

  ‘I really am terribly sorry to disturb you,’ said Morley, ‘but it’s just … I’ve been thinking about what happened. And – well, I have come up with a little theory and I wondered what you might make of it?’

  ‘About what happened? What do you mean?’

  ‘On the day of the crash.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to the police and the investigator about all that.’

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s just – as you know – I am something of a railway enthusiast, so I wanted to be clear in my own mind. It may have some bearing on what I write in the second edition of my book about the Settle–Carlisle line. If you could help me and my readers understand the workings of the railways I’m sure we’d all be very grateful.’

  ‘Well,’ said George. ‘If you put it like that.’ Morley always knew how to put it like that. ‘I could make some more tea, if you’d like.’

  ‘No, no, thank you,’ said Morley. ‘That’s very kind. We are in a bit of a hurry. But I do wonder …’ He bent over and picked up a wooden toy train from the floor. ‘Might I? It might help me get clear in my mind exactly what happened.’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ‘Very fine thing,’ said Morley, admiring the toy train. It was painted in a bold purple and gold. ‘Very fine thing indeed. Did you make it?’

  ‘I think it was something Dora picked up from somewhere.’

  ‘Anyway. As I understand it, the train was approaching the station and the signal was in the all-clear position. Is that right?’ Morley ran the little wooden train across the oilcloth towards one of the enamel mugs.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But you changed the points at the last moment, without warning, because there were gypsy children on the line?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And the train ran on into the creamery.’ Morley changed the direction of the train towards the milk bottle, smashing the train into it, knocking it over and spilling milk over the oilcloth. ‘Oops,’ he said. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ George mopped up the milk with the tea cosy.

  ‘But that’s what happened?’

  ‘That’s about it, yes.’

  ‘So that’s what led to the death of the little girl and the injuries of many others.’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes.’

  ‘Indeed. Good. Just so I’m clear. Anyway, I wondered if there might perhaps be an alternative explanation?’

  George made a face. ‘I’m not sure what you mean, sir.’

  Morley set down the wooden train, drummed his fingers on the table and then stretched out his hands, as though he were a pianist preparing to play.

  ‘Well, I wondered,’ he said, ‘and this is just me imagining now, remember, I’m hardly an expert!’

  ‘Granted,’ said George.

  ‘I wondered, if it might be possible – under certain circumstances – for a signalman to become distracted?’

  ‘Distracted?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, let’s imagine you or some other signalman were entertaining a visitor, for example.’

  ‘A visitor?’

  ‘That’s right. Someone … I don’t know. Someone vivacious, shall we say. Someone like … Maisie Taylor?’

  ‘Maisie Taylor?’

  ‘That’s right. We know in fact that Maisie was out on the day of the crash delivering prescriptions and I suppose I just wondered if she could have been delivering a little something for you?’

  ‘At the signal box? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, let me be clear,’ said Morley. ‘And as I say, please forgive me if this is entirely wrong, it’s just me trying to work all this out in my head!’ He tapped his head with both index fingers, as if awakening some hidden, latent powers of thought. ‘So … when I was wondering about what might have happened I started to wonder whether a man might possibly become so caught up in his … attentions to an attractive young lady, like Maisie Taylor, that he might neglect to perform his professional duties.’

  George remained silent.

  Morley continued. ‘One might easily imagine – might one not? – a man caught in, shall we say, an intimate embrace, which might cause him to fail to switch the points as he should have done, and fail to send a signal, meaning that the driver carried along towards the creamery at perilous speed, derailing a train.’

  ‘You can imagine all you like, sir, but I’m afraid that’s not right. Maisie was never in my signal box.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Morley. ‘Was she not?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s strange, you see, because I have some soil samples that would most definitely connect Maisie to the area around the signal box on the day of her death.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about soil samples,’ said George.

  ‘Right. No, of course not.’ Morley paused for effect. ‘Oh! And we also have the photographs to prove Maisie was there,’ he added.

  This was not entirely true. We didn’t have the photographs, unfortunately: the film was presumably utterly ruined and overexposed back at Taylor’s Pharmacy. But I had seen the photographs, just as I now saw a look of absolute terror flash across George’s face.

  Morley had seen it too.

  ‘You see, my assistant here,’ he continued, pressing home his advantage, ‘was on the train, taking photographs with the young girl who tragically died in the crash …’

  George shifted in his seat.

  ‘… and so, with the photographs and the soil samples, having pieced these various things together, I wondered if what actually happened – contrary to what you’ve been saying – was something more like this. You and Maisie were enjoying your fun, as it were, and the train crashed’ – Morley was illustrating all this for George’s benefit with his hands running around the oilcloth – ‘you rushed down to the scene of the crash, realised you were in terrible trouble and came back to the signal box to find Maisie distraught, perhaps hysterical. Does that sound about right?’

  George again made no comment.

  ‘Anyway, now is when it gets really interesting.’ He smoothed his moustache and again held out his hands. ‘I’m guessing it went something like this. You probably couldn’t have trusted Maisie to keep quiet – quite the chatterbox, wasn’t she? A garrulous sort of soul? But if it had got out that you had been negligent in the performance of your duties it would surely have cost you your job, not to mention your marriage and goodness knows what else. And so – reluctantly, of course, with no malice aforethought – you made up your story about the gypsy children on the line, and then made sure that Maisie wouldn’t be telling anyone anything. You then disposed of her body under cover of night, hauling her up to the dig at Shap. Possibly? Probably? What do you think?’

  It was an astonishing accusation. If Morley was right, George was responsible for the death of little Lucy. I could have reached out there and then and choked the life out of him. I could feel myself tensing. I could hear Miriam upstairs, reading to the boys.

  ‘Who have you told?’ asked George.

  ‘Who have I told? You, Mr Wilson. And you alone.’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Not yet. I think it would probably stand in your favour for you to go and confess directly to them, don’t you?’

  George sat looking at the spilled milk and at the toy train on the oilcloth.

  ‘Will you, Mr Wilson? Will you go and confess?’

  ‘I’ll confess to messing up the signals, and failing to secure the points, but I won’t confess to murdering Maisie, because I didn’t.’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘I’m happy to take the blame for what was my fault – it had to come out in the end. But I’m not to blame for Maisie. As soon as it happened I told her to sit tight and then I ran down onto the track, which is when I saw you, sir.’ He nodded towards me.

  ‘And when you returned to the signal box?’ asked Morley.

  ‘She was gone.’

  ‘Gone where?’

  ‘I don’t
know. It was … Everything was confused. I wasn’t thinking straight. And it was just as if she’d disappeared.’

  ‘Just as if she’d disappeared,’ repeated Morley.

  ‘Yes. Like she’d never been there.’

  Miriam entered the room with the three boys looking spruce – hair combed and ready for school.

  ‘How are we getting on then?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re all done here, I think,’ said Morley.

  ‘Can we play with the trains before school, Daddy?’

  ‘It’s probably time to go,’ said George.

  ‘Yes, time for us to leave as well,’ said Morley. ‘And you’ll definitely do as we agreed?’

  ‘I’ll get the boys off to school first.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Morley. ‘Yes. That’s the right thing to do.’

  CHAPTER 20

  DORA’S STATION CAFÉ

  ‘NOW WHAT?’ asked Miriam as we left the house, Morley having explained Mr Wilson’s confession to her.

  Morley checked a watch. ‘Time for breakfast, I think.’

  ‘Breakfast, Father? How can you even think of breakfast?’

  (Morley was a man with Victorian energies, Edwardian tastes, and eccentric tendencies, so he thought a lot about breakfast, but his thoughts could be rather peculiar. See ‘The Breakfast in History’, for example, in the Ladies’ Home Journal (1935), a short but commanding survey of the subject in which he recommends that the housewives of Britain adopt foreign and Oriental breakfast practices. Back in Norfolk, at St George’s, I was occasionally subject to some of his own outlandish breakfast experiments: spicy fish with mustard and Gentleman’s Relish, devilled eggs with bean curd, sour lassis, and all sorts of strange fermented concoctions.)

  ‘Shouldn’t we be going to the police?’ I said.

  ‘Mr Wilson will be going to the police himself, Sefton.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘The crash investigators would be on to him soon enough anyway,’ said Morley. ‘We’ve just speeded up the process.’

  ‘But what about Maisie Taylor then?’ asked Miriam. ‘You say he claims he didn’t kill her.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Morley. ‘“Just as if she’d disappeared,” he said, Sefton, didn’t he?’

  ‘That’s right,’ I agreed.

  ‘“Like she’d never been there?”’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That is admittedly a problem.’

  ‘Admittedly!?’ said Miriam.

  ‘There’s something not quite right about it.’

  ‘To say the least,’ I said.

  ‘Anyway, a cup of tea and a bun might help, I think.’ (For all his more exotic proclivities he was partial to a railway bun for breakfast.) He checked a watch again. ‘Or coffee and cigarettes, obviously, in your case, Sefton. Come on. We’ve probably got time.’

  We walked the few hundred yards up to Appleby Station and to Dora’s Station Café. We’d almost made the door when a voice called out behind us.

  ‘Miriam!’

  It was Nancy.

  ‘Miriam!’

  ‘Oh drat,’ said Miriam.

  ‘I’ll go on ahead here,’ said Morley. ‘If you don’t mind.’

  ‘Stay with me,’ Miriam whispered, tugging at my arm. ‘Please. No games this time, Sefton, I promise.’

  ‘Miriam? Yoo-hoo? It’s me.’

  Morley went into the café and Miriam and I turned to face Nancy.

  With her suitcase and beret, and dressed in a light travelling suit, she reminded me of a young Brigader setting off to Spain.

  ‘You’re leaving?’ said Miriam.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nancy. ‘I’m not welcome on the dig any more, and I heard the trains are running again. So I’m heading down to London.’

  ‘Right, well, goodbye then!’ said Miriam, turning to go into the café.

  ‘Miriam? Don’t go! I’ve got a little something for you.’

  Miriam turned back. She looked alarmed. I leaned up against the wall of the station and lit a cigarette. I was intrigued. This could be interesting.

  ‘It’s a little gift,’ said Nancy.

  ‘It’s not my birthday,’ said Miriam.

  ‘No. But I wanted to apologise.’

  ‘Apologise for what?’ asked Miriam, rather nervously. She looked over towards me. ‘Really, you have nothing to apologise for.’

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ said Nancy. ‘I … wanted to apologise for … ringing the police last night.’

  ‘What?’ said Miriam. ‘You rang the police?’

  ‘Yes, it was me, I’m afraid.’ Nancy didn’t seem that apologetic, I have to say. But it made perfect sense. That’s why she was outside the pharmacy.

  ‘You?’ said Miriam.

  ‘Yes. I saw you breaking in with … him.’

  She gave me a feline glance and I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped was a sign of detached curiosity.

  ‘You followed us?’ said Miriam.

  ‘I couldn’t help myself. After I’d seen you in the hotel, I was just so … Anyway.’ She knelt down and opened her suitcase. ‘Here you are.’ She thrust a carefully wrapped parcel at Miriam. It was thick, round, cylindrical. A jar of something? Some sort of strange electrode? A large artillery shell? ‘I was going to send it. You can open it if you like.’

  ‘Thank you but no thank you,’ said Miriam. ‘I can’t accept it, Nancy, sorry.’ She offered it back. ‘I’m sure you can understand why.’

  ‘Please,’ said Nancy. ‘I’m … You should understand … Sometimes I get so lonely and I thought you might be a friend, because … Please. I made a mistake. And …’

  It seemed very likely that Nancy was about to cry. I knew there was no way that Miriam was going to put up with that and if preventing tears meant accepting the damned present … Miriam straightened herself up.

  ‘Well, that’s really very kind of you, thank you.’ She took the proffered package. ‘Perhaps we’ll run into one another in London.’

  ‘I’d like that,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miriam. Meaning – clearly – no.

  Nancy walked round the station onto the platform and over the bridge to wait for the train.

  ‘Well!’ said Miriam, as we entered Dora’s Station Café. ‘The cheek of her! At least we avoided tears.’

  She spoke too soon.

  The café was deserted. It was a determinedly bright sort of place, though rather muggy with ancient tea and coffee fumes lingering beneath the sharp stinging rinse of recent disinfectant. Pot plants and vases and displays and posters advertising Wyman cigars and Capstan cigarettes obscured the autumn light at the windows. Rows of shiny tin teapots and thick white china were lined up behind a counter on narrow shelves, the clinically clean counter itself being framed by deep red damask curtains, giving the whole place the feeling of an intimate theatre or a fairground sideshow – or perhaps a rather opulent operating theatre providing tea, coffee, sandwiches, cakes and ‘quick lunches’.

  Morley was sitting at a corner table with Dora. She was dressed in a pinny with her wild hair up tucked up under a scarf, but with a blood-red blouse and a blazing silver locket around her neck she still looked as though she might at any moment burst into her habanera, were it not for the fact that she was silently weeping. Morley held her silver-ringed and braceleted hand and was offering her his handkerchief.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ said Miriam.

  We approached the table.

  ‘Father?’ said Miriam. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘Yes, I was just talking to Dora here, about her husband.’

  ‘I see,’ said Miriam.

  ‘Sefton, I wonder if you would you be so kind as to change the sign on the door?’ asked Morley. ‘We don’t want any customers coming in and finding Dora like this, do we?’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Morley,’ said Dora, through her tears. ‘Thank you.’

  I walked over and flipped the cardboard sign. Dora’s Station Café was now officially closed.

  M
iriam and I pulled up two chairs and joined Morley and Dora at the table.

  ‘I didn’t know anything about her, Mr Morley,’ said Dora. Her mascara had run: in her bright red lipstick and red blouse she looked rather grubby and menacing. ‘Honestly. Not until after the crash.’

  ‘When did he tell you?’

  ‘Maybe the day after – when her body was discovered. He was acting so strange, you see. And at first I thought it was just the shock of the crash … But, I don’t know, a woman somehow knows these things, Mr Morley.’

  ‘Female intuition?’

  ‘That’s right. You just … know when something’s not right between you. And George is usually such a good man and a loving husband, he’s … He probably went with her more out of politeness than anything.’

  ‘Out of politeness?’ said Miriam.

  ‘You know what men are like, miss. They’re such silly buggers. They’re like children.’

  ‘Mmm,’ agreed Miriam.

  ‘But he claims he didn’t kill her,’ said Morley.

  ‘She was on at him to own up because of the crash,’ said Dora. ‘He knew he’d lose everything. His job. Everything. So he panicked. He was thinking of me and the kids. He didn’t want us to lose everything—’

  ‘He told you all this?’ I asked.

  ‘And so then he took the body and buried it at the dig.’

  ‘As I thought,’ said Morley. ‘You poor thing.’

  ‘How did he know where to take her body?’ I asked.

  ‘He heard me talking about the dig, I suppose. He must have thought it was as good a place as any.’

  ‘Where there were lots of people digging? Why would he bury her there? A bit risky, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Go easy there, Sefton,’ said Morley. ‘Dora’s upset.’

  ‘It’s OK, Mr Morley,’ said Dora. ‘I’m not saying it was clever of him. George is a signalman, he’s not an archaeologist.’

  ‘And how did he get her to Shap?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t say any more.’

  ‘That’s enough, Sefton,’ said Morley. ‘You really don’t deserve any of this, Dora.’

  There were people banging on the door of the café, keen for a cup of tea and a bun.