The Case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste

by Malcolm Pryce

  She prised the hinged lid open and looked inside. It had a red velveteen lining in which rested a rectangle of something that looked like wood, but wasn’t.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s called Formica. It’s a modern luxury furnishing. It’s resistant to heat, abrasion and moisture and it’s printed with woodlike patterns using a rotogravure printing process.’

  ‘Looks just like wood.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it feels . . . all different, like . . . I don’t know . . . satin.’

  ‘The texture is very similar to satin. They use it in the sleeping cars of the Hiawatha trains on the Chicago, Milwaukee and St Paul Railroad. And on the Queen Mary. Although only in first class.’

  ‘What are you going to do with it?’

  The tea arrived and Jenny poured while I paused to consider the answer. How much should I tell her? Normally I tended to keep my cards close to my chest, but there was something about her. She was very pretty, of course, but there was something else. Gaiety with a bit of mischief, in a nice way. She was impish.

  Her gaze met mine. ‘Go on!’

  ‘You remember that picture in my office, of the man being chased by the goose? I said it was no one special, but that wasn’t true. It was Oskar Heinroth. He was the man who invented the Gosling process. Or, at least, the theory behind it.’

  She was about to lift the lid of the tea pot and give the leaves another stir. She stopped and her eyes sparkled.

  ‘I suppose the theory would be rather boring for you,’ I said.

  ‘Not on your nelly! But . . . I thought the Gosling process was supposed to be top secret.’

  ‘I’m not sure if it matters any more. The Goslings will be gone soon, I expect, once the railways are run by the common man.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You’ll notice they don’t polish the engines any more. They are all black. In the old days we had eight men to every engine cleaning and polishing through the night. All the bright colours, shining brighter than the buttons on a sergeant major’s tunic.’

  ‘It’s sad that they don’t polish the engines, but this is what we fought the war for, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘All those people who died. They didn’t lay down their lives so we could go back to being servants of the toffs, did they?’

  ‘No, they didn’t. And you mustn’t think I dislike the common man. I happen to be one myself. I was raised in the Railway Servants’ Orphanage. You probably pass it on your way to work. St Christopher’s.’

  ‘Yes, I know it.’

  ‘Oskar Heinroth discovered something called “imprinting” which means when a greylag gosling emerges from its shell it will regard the first thing it sees as its mother, even if it’s an umbrella stand.’

  ‘But that’s silly! How can a little goose think an umbrella stand is its mum? They don’t look remotely similar.’

  ‘That’s the point. How does the goose know what his mother is supposed to look like when he comes out of the shell? He’s never seen her before. He just assumes the umbrella stand is his mum.’

  Jenny giggled. ‘And a railway train was your mum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How exciting! Which one?

  ‘2904 Lady Godiva. She’s a 4-6-0 Saint class locomotive.’

  ‘I was born in Aunt Agatha’s front room. I expect my real mother is a postcard of Skegness. Or a half-knitted bed sock.’ She looked glum at that thought and then immediately brightened as another occurred: ‘Do you . . . ever see her?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid she was withdrawn in 1933.’

  A man walked in and strode past us to take a table near the other door opening on to Tanner’s Row. It was the chap who had been reading the newspaper in the car outside the station. I could see now that he was quite a young man, probably not quite turning twenty. His face was thin and long and the skin smooth and boyish, marked with bright red pimples and razor nicks. The coat was well worn without being shabby and it was slightly too big, which suggested it had been handed down. His trousers were a touch too short, the bottom of the turn-up not quite resting correctly on the black leather brogue. There was a look of mild hostility in his face: it was the look of a boy wishing to pass for a man, but self-conscious about it. I was pretty sure he had been following us.

  ‘So what does this have to do with your thingummy piece?’

  ‘My Formica?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oskar Heinroth left some money, £5,000, as a prize for the Goslings. I want to win it.’

  ‘What’s the prize for?’

  ‘For solving the greatest mystery in all the annals of railway lore. It happened in 1915—’

  ‘Oh, Jack!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was a special excursion train containing twenty-three nuns travelling from Swindon to Bristol Temple Meads. The nuns disappeared. Vanished into thin air. The train arrived at Bristol without them. They searched everywhere, all over the country, but not a trace of them was found. They’ve never been seen since.’

  ‘Oh . . . why, yes. The newspapers called it—’

  ‘The “Hail Mary” Celeste.’

  ‘You seem to know quite a bit about it.’

  ‘Of course I do. Everyone does.’

  ‘I thought it was just we Goslings.’

  Jenny rolled her eyes as if I were being especially stupid. ‘There isn’t a person in the whole country who hasn’t heard of the “Hail Mary” Celeste.’

  ‘All the other Goslings tried, you see. They went off in search, but . . . they never came back.’

  ‘How many Goslings are there?’

  ‘There were twelve in all, born at the orphanage between 1902 and 1914. I’m the only one left.’

  ‘Are they all dead?’

  ‘Some are definitely dead, some are insane, some are missing and one . . . one . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Cheadle Heath is still around, I occasionally see him. But he’s not a Gosling now. He had to . . . he left.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘He blotted our copybooks, you see.’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘Actually, I would prefer not to talk about Cheadle.’

  ‘Did none of them find a trail?’

  ‘Some people think Cadbury Holt did. He’s officially listed as “missing, presumed eaten by a lion”. He went to Africa. He never came back, although Cheadle got a postcard from him. Cadbury was the editor of the missing 1931 Gosling annual, you see. Some people say he wrote about his adventures in that.’

  ‘So is that why no one has seen it?’

  ‘I expect so.’

  ‘Did they print it?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘In that case, you should talk to the printers. Do you know who printed them?’

  ‘A place called Master Humphrey’s Clock. They don’t have any copies. The chap promised to ring me if he ever gets one.’

  ‘No, but they might have the thingybob plates. They have to keep them in case they want to print some more.’

  ‘Thingybob plates?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what the name is. My auntie wrote a book about ointment making so I’ve seen how they do it. The letters are all back to front, but you could read them with a mirror.’

  Our eggs arrived and we ate in silence broken only by the click-clack of cutlery and, from outside, the hum of passing traffic. The waitress took the boy a pot of tea, but he made no attempt to drink it. Instead he took the newspaper out of his pocket and held it in a way that suggested he was observing us from behind it. He ordered no food and I suspected he must have been on expenses, but not very big ones.

  ‘So what will you do with the money if you win the Heinroth Prize?’

  ‘I will use it to find my mother.’

  Jenny looked up from her boiled egg and studied my face. ‘You mean, your real . . . I mean, y
our flesh and blood mother.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where she is?’

  ‘None at all. She delivered me, and then left on the number 27 bus never to be seen again.’

  ‘How do you know what bus she caught?’

  ‘Because I see her in my dreams.’

  ‘What does she look like?’

  ‘Her face is concealed by a headscarf, but you can tell she is young, perhaps no more than eighteen, and big with child. She’s scared, too. Or at least I sense she is. She always steps off the bus and stares up at the portico of the orphanage as if she has no business being there and she knows it.’ I paused and thought for a while. Then I said, ‘When I find her I will use the money to buy her a fitted kitchen. Do you know what they are?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen one in a magazine. I thought it was the cat’s kimono.’

  ‘I saw one at the Daily Mail Ideal Home exhibition.’

  ‘I’ve never been to London.’

  ‘Oh you should! It’s very gay. That’s where I got the Formica. I want to make the kitchen out of Formica.’

  ‘That sounds lovely. I wish I had a man who would do that for me.’

  I called for the bill.

  ‘You know what I would do if I won £5,000?’ Jenny said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘I would buy a Biro!’

  It was my turn to look impressed.

  ‘I saw one in Barker & Stroud’s,’ she said. ‘It cost fifty shillings!’

  ‘By Jove! That sounds like rather a flash sort of pen. I should very much like to have a Biro myself.’

  Jenny reached her hand across and rested it on mine. ‘You can share mine.’

  I walked her back to the tram stop. She wouldn’t let me take her further and only allowed me that far after extracting a promise that I would go with her to visit her aunt Agatha the following evening. We arranged to meet at six outside the National Milk Bar. The parting was slightly awkward. We stood facing each other, saying how nice it had been. The thought crossed my mind that I should kiss her but that would have been extremely bold. I had never done such a thing with a client before. All the same, it felt that the hour we had just passed together had been too enjoyable to be strictly business. I was surprised to discover how quickly the time had flown. We shook hands and when the tram arrived Jenny said, ‘Abyssinia.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘ABYSSINIA!’

  ‘What about it? They’ve got a narrow gauge line from Addis Ababa to French Somaliland. Three foot three-eighth inches. I went on it once. I’ve still got the ticket.’

  I stopped speaking and observed the look on her face. She giggled and shook her head gently. Then the tram stopped with a shrill ding. Jenny jumped forward and kissed me on the cheek. Before I could react she had jumped aboard the tram which was already moving off with a ding, ding, ding. As it turned the corner she waved and shouted again, ‘Abyssinia.’

  ‘Abyssinia,’ I said.

  I wandered back through the deserted streets to the railway station. Lamps still glimmered on the platforms and along the track but all else in the building was in darkness. The clock of St Bede’s chimed seven. I took out my key and entered the side entrance, not bothering to put on the lights, preferring to fumble my way in the dark to the wire cage lift. The hum as I ascended was soothing to my nerves. At the top, as was my habit, I paused on leaving the lift and stared through the window at the street outside. Across the way was the five-storey department store, Barker & Stroud’s. The building style was ornate, the sort they called neo-gothic. For many years the striking feature had not been the unnecessary crenulations and spires but a hand-painted advertisement for Lindt, the Swiss chocolatier. It was on the end wall and gave a fine prospect to passengers arriving from the north on platform 7. The painting was still there but had faded so much over the years that you would not be aware of it if you did not know where to look. I saw it every day: the ghost of a Swiss maid in an alpine meadow, holding a pail of milk. Moreover, I knew the girl who had posed for the painting: it was Magdalena from the orphanage.

  I entered my office and picked up the post that had been left just inside the door. The message boy had been late today; I did hope everything was all right. Perhaps they would be getting rid of him, too, now the common man was going to take charge of the railways. I took the small pile to the desk where I could read it under the lamp. The room was cold and I did not remove my coat. There was a note about my expenses, an inquiry concerning a stolen postal order and a note from Mr Lambert asking if I had made any progress with the mysterious death of Driver Groates. My eyes flicked to the folder lying in my in-tray. It had been there a while now, and so far I had been unable to penetrate the mystery. I had no particular desire to re-open it tonight. I suspected Mr Lambert merely enquired for form’s sake so if anyone should look into the matter he could say that he had been following the case closely. There was nothing of great urgency. I cycled home to my lodgings on Devil’s Curtsy, and said as I cycled, to no one in particular, ‘Abyssinia!’

  THE BOY’S OWN RAILWAY GOSLING ANNUAL

  Vol.VII 1931 Price: 1/-

  Replies to our readers’ letters

  C. P. RUPERT, HEREFORD—The reaction of the Thomas Cook clerk which you describe is called Exasperation. Rest assured, he did not refuse to sell you the ticket because you are a Jew, but simply because no such ticket exists. The railway line you claim to have found on your atlas linking Penzance with New York is almost certainly a submarine telegraphic cable.

  J. ELDERFLOWER, EDGBASTON—The artery to which you refer is the carotid and has nothing to do with carrots.

  DEIRDRE R., STENHOUSEMUIR—Yes, conceivably, if it were a very large boa constrictor and a very small hippo.

  THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF RAILWAY GOSLING CADBURY HOLT – ON THE TRAIL OF THE MISSING NUNS!

  An Audience with the Consul

  ‘What I don’t understand, Mr Holt,’ said the consul, ‘is why you don’t just buy a boy from the market like anybody else.’

  ‘It really is far less trouble for us,’ added the consul’s assistant, as he waved vaguely into the air with his pipe. ‘And you can obtain any predilection your heart desires . . .’

  ‘Clean, too,’ said the consul. ‘Fresh as you like.’

  ‘So long as you are willing to pay,’ added the pipe smoker. ‘Of course you get what you pay for. It’s no different to the markets back in England.’

  I turned my gaze upon the pipe smoker, and fought hard to control the fury erupting within my breast. ‘I advise you, sir, to withdraw these infamous insinuations.’

  ‘My dear chap,’ he said.

  ‘No, I am not your dear chap. Withdraw your calumny or you will leave me no choice but to challenge you to a duel. These are not words I use lightly.’

  ‘I withdraw it on his behalf,’ said the consul with an air of weary resignation. ‘I can’t afford to lose another assistant.’

  ‘I withdraw the remark,’ said the pipe smoker. ‘All the same, I consider your plan as evidence that you are in need of the services of a good brain doctor. Even if you are a Railway Gosling, which I rather doubt.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the consul. ‘What sort of name is Cadbury Holt? Sounds a rum sort of name to me. More like the name of a cake. Well, you’ll need more than sugar and spice in your guts if you are serious about this plan of heading off into the desert in search of nuns. Especially with this . . . this . . .’ He indicated the prisoner who stood before his desk and who would act as my guide. The wretch really was the sorriest, most louse-infested rogue imaginable. He wore a grin of permanent insolence and in his eye was a leer that would shame a pickpocket at a funeral. ‘We will keep his brother in jail and if you do not return within a month, or send word that you are safe, we will shoot him.’

  ‘Try not to forget to send us word.’

  ‘Frankly,’ said the consul, taking the top off his fountain pen, ‘I resent the fact that I will be landed
with paperwork for your funeral.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the pipe smoker. ‘Personally I wouldn’t entrust him to look after a rhubarb patch, let alone a Christian soul.’

  Chapter 3

  When I arrived at the station next morning the light was on in my office. The door was ajar. There were two men inside. One of them was the young man who had followed Jenny and me to the Lyons tea shop. He was sitting in my chair, which I thought was slightly impertinent. He also sat rather untidily with his ankle resting lazily on one thigh. He was not exactly slouching but not sitting properly upright either. Posture is usually a good indicator of a man’s character, as is the diligence with which he polishes his shoes. The other man was standing, half facing the window, and turned as I entered. He was much older and gave off an air of authority. He was relaxed without being slovenly. He had a bald head that shone with health and the hair on the sides had been fiercely trimmed with clippers; in the dim morning light I could see individual bristles glinting.

  ‘Ah, Mr Wenlock!’ he exclaimed, and then made an exaggerated arm movement to consult his wristwatch. ‘Bang on nine. I knew you would be. Your clock is five minutes fast. I was going to adjust it but knowing your reputation I thought perhaps you had a reason for it.’

  ‘I think the cleaner must have changed it.’ I went over to correct it. The glass was still ajar from when Jenny had opened it.

  ‘The cleaner, yes, I expect it was her. I hope you don’t mind, she let us in. She said you wouldn’t be long.’

  ‘Not at all, she has my permission to do that.’

  ‘Bit parky out this morning, isn’t it? Looks like snow.’

  ‘Oh yes, snow before the end of the week I’d say. May I ask you gentlemen your names?’

  ‘Young,’ said the boy. ‘Mr Young.’

  The older man stepped forward and offered me his hand. ‘My name’s Old.’