The Case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘Yes,’ I said, doing my best to sound cheerful. ‘It definitely has a . . . a sort of dirty green tinge.’

  The pub was the Seven Stars, and seemed as good as any and we ducked in gratefully. It was like entering a smoke-filled room. There was little colour and the drinkers were grey shapes. But the warm yellow lights and the bright fire in the hearth made it feel inviting and cosy rather than oppressive. There was an air of conviviality and camaraderie that one suspected had been partly fostered by the unusual circumstances of the evening, the way neighbours who do not normally exchange greetings will stop and talk on the occasion of a particularly deep snow fall. I bought two bottles of ale and we stood in the corner near the fire and wished each other good health.

  ‘What have you done with the letter?’ I said.

  ‘I can’t tell you that. I’m going away.’

  ‘Where to? Perhaps I could come and see you? I could bring Jenny—’

  ‘It’s best that you don’t know.’

  ‘You’re trembling.’

  ‘She’s back, you know.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That girl from the orphanage, remember, the one who was banging on the glass, pleading to be let in?’

  ‘You’ve seen her?’

  ‘Yes, still wearing my clothes.’

  ‘I must say we never really believed you at the time. Even when we went out to search the grounds, we never found anything.’

  ‘You were looking in the wrong place. She was in the mirror.’

  I blinked as I registered the puzzling explanation. Magdalena gave a thin laugh.

  ‘That’s a very strange thing to say. In the mirror?’

  ‘Yes, and sometimes there was no one in the mirror at all.’

  ‘That’s even stranger.’

  ‘That’s what the doctor from Harley Street said. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. He was quite excited about it. I was his first.’

  ‘It was kind of Mr Barker to arrange that.’

  ‘Yes, I always was his favourite, wasn’t I?’

  I peered at Magdalena and realised how tired she looked. ‘Mr Barker, was he . . . were you—’

  ‘I think they will kill me.’

  ‘No, Magdalena, why would they? Surely not. You don’t kill someone for stealing a letter.’

  ‘For reading it.’

  ‘Can’t you seal it up and tell them you didn’t read it?’

  ‘The seal is broken. And it wouldn’t matter anyway, they wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘I’m sure there is a way out of this. I suggest you approach His Majesty the King and appeal to his honour. Tell him, yes, you are a thief but you would never dream of stealing anything belonging to the King.’

  ‘But I did.’

  ‘Yes, but not intentionally. If you had known whose letter it was I’m sure you wouldn’t have taken it. If you explain that to him, I’m sure—’

  ‘No, Jack.’

  ‘Yes, just say you wish to apologise and return the letter. I expect he would be very grateful. The King is a good man. I’m sure he would be very kind to you.’

  ‘The King is an idiot.’

  It was as if she had kicked me in the shin. ‘Magdalena!’ I looked over her shoulder and around to see if anyone had heard. Magdalena was not well.

  ‘He couldn’t save me even if he wanted to. He does what he’s told, like everyone else.’

  ‘I find that hard to credit. A King does what he likes.’

  ‘Only in fairytales. In real life he’s like a stationmaster. He wears a smart uniform but only so long as he turns up at the station every day and waves at the passengers.’

  ‘I’m sure the King—’

  ‘He won’t help, he can’t.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Do you remember in 1917 when the King announced he was changing the name of the royal family?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Why did he do that? One moment they were the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and the next they said they were called Windsor.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s in it up to his neck. Jack, don’t get involved.’

  ‘But you know I have to. A letter stolen on the railway.’

  ‘It’s not worth dying for.’

  ‘Won’t you tell me what is in it?’

  ‘It’s from the missing nuns of 1915. They’ve written to the King. There are powerful people in this land, they were responsible for what happened in 1915. They are still around, still in power.’

  ‘Are they . . . are they Room 42?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But who are these people?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course it jolly well matters! I want to know. You can’t just have a room and no building. How on earth would the postman find them? It’s completely ridiculous.’

  ‘I don’t think the room is in a particular building . . . or maybe it is. I don’t know. I know a chap . . . a sugar daddy. He looks after me sometimes. He knows someone who knows someone. They decide what happens.’

  ‘Is this sugar daddy Mr Barker?’ I felt rather impertinent saying it and expected a rebuff, but she just smiled, and nodded. She didn’t expand. There was a moment’s silence until I realised there was nothing more to say. What did it matter who it was? I said, ‘What do you mean, they decide what happens?’

  ‘The important things that happen, matters of state I think you’d call it.’

  ‘But that’s what the government is for, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really. Mr Barker says the government are just there to make it look respectable.’

  ‘Are they responsible for what happened to the nuns?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Jack, none of this matters. The point is, if the contents of this letter are published, the people from Room 42 will be lynched.’

  ‘It sounds to me like they jolly well deserve to hang.’

  ‘I’m sure they do.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘That doctor from Harley Street, he’s abroad now. He conducts research into neurological disorders at a famous hospital in . . . a city. Apparently he’s making quite a name for himself. He’s written to me a number of times offering to pay my fare and living expenses if I go out there and take part in his research. He wants to write a book about me. I’ve decided to go.’

  ‘The thing is, if you don’t give the letter to the Dingleman, he will do something bad to Jenny.’

  ‘No, he won’t. He’s just trying to scare you.’

  ‘He has succeeded in scaring me. I don’t think he makes idle threats.’

  ‘He’s not like that any more. He’s not violent. In the old days, when he took over that other chap’s territory, yes, he was. But not now.’

  I remembered the bloodstained false teeth and knew that she was wrong. ‘But if you give him the letter he will make sure everybody is safe. He knows how to handle these matters.’

  ‘You don’t negotiate with Room 42. They always double-cross you. Mr Barker told me not to trust them. He said I should get out of the country.’

  A gust of cold air told me the door had opened. Magdalena was staring over my shoulder. Her eyes widened. She put her glass on a window ledge then clasped my face in her hands and peered urgently into my eyes. She brought her face up close to mine; I could feel her hot breath. ‘I have to go. Promise me you’ll forget all about it. Promise me, Jack.’

  ‘But, Magdalena—’

  ‘Promise me, please . . .’

  She stopped pleading and kissed me before walking hurriedly towards the back of the pub and the rear door.

  I turned and saw the Dingleman’s man with the Plasticine nose. He spotted me and walked over. ‘Mr Dingleman sends his regards.’

  ‘That’s kind of him, but I must ask you to contact me some other time.’

  ‘Must you now? How very nice.’

  ‘I’m not sure you understand.’

  ‘I understand,
Jack. Mr Dingleman is anxious for news of Magdalena.’

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘These things take time.’

  ‘Of course they do. I saw you earlier with a girl. Luckily for you the fog was too thick to—’

  ‘It was Jenny.’

  ‘I see. Just gone to spend a penny, has she?

  ‘I really don’t think—’

  ‘Whoever it was seemed to leave quite hurriedly. Make a pass, did you?’

  My fist balled. ‘Look here, you . . .’

  He smiled, a cold smile. ‘You don’t want to start any trouble in here.’

  ‘It’s jolly lucky for you that I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, I know. You were a fireman on the Great Western and so you have a punch to the ribs that breaks the heart of the prizefighter and makes him kiss the canvas like a sweetheart. Isn’t that how it goes?’

  ‘Yes, and it’s true.’

  ‘Have you ever been on the receiving end of one?’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘Now’s your chance. I used to be a prizefighter. But the prizes were not big. We can step outside if you like.’

  I looked at him in disbelief.

  He flicked my lapel rather insolently with the back of his hand and said, ‘I’ll be going now, but not far. Next time we meet, I’ll expect you to have better news for me, that’s if you want to keep your teeth in your head. Good night.’

  I stared at him as he left. Most people who know would say I am far from being a coward, and I don’t consider myself one. But the chap’s words evoked an icy slither in my insides. My hand in my pocket felt the slip of paper with the telephone message. I walked out into the night to visit Mr Dombey.

  A small courtyard separated the garage from the back kitchen at the bookshop. The walls rose like the faces of a cliff. By craning my neck I could see high above a lozenge of mauve drizzle-filled sky. The interior of the garage was gloomy. Inside, an ambulance gleamed like a fish in a dim pond. It was the colour of butterscotch with big shiny bells attached to the front either side of the radiator. It took up almost all the space in the small garage. Mr Dombey’s face was still obscured by gauze.

  ‘You see,’ he said, ‘the vehicle in which the manuscript of the 1931 Gosling annual arrived. Soon I will leave by the same means, but first I need you to help me with my suitcase.’

  ‘Are you going to drive it?’ I said.

  ‘I am still looking for a driver.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘All I can tell you is my time has come. You have no doubt noticed how I have aged in the few days since we met.’

  ‘I am rather surprised to hear you ask such a thing since your face both now and when we first met has been entirely covered by bandage.’

  ‘But I have shrunk. My suit, don’t you see?’ He held an arm out, the cuff reached as far as the knuckles of his fingers. ‘I am like a boy in a man’s suit, is it not so?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, some men prefer a looser fit.’

  ‘You do not need to spare my feelings. I have shrunk and will continue to do so. And my hair, too. Does it not now seem disproportionately large for my face?’

  ‘I am unable to see your face.’

  ‘Would you like to?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I would not recommend it. It is disfigured by carbuncles. They are spreading. It is impossible for me to serve customers with such a frightening face. Soon I will leave this shop for good. I shan’t be sorry.’

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

  ‘I have seen many, but there is no remedy. I was warned many years ago that one day this would happen.’

  ‘Where is your suitcase?’

  ‘I have no idea. Why do you think I sent for you?’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to help you with it.’

  ‘That is true.’

  ‘Is it particularly heavy?’

  ‘No, it is very light compared to the suitcases that the travelling public generally prefer. Where do they get all the things to put inside?’

  ‘Then perhaps it is placed somewhere too high for you, on top of a wardrobe.’

  ‘How can you possibly know such a thing?’

  ‘Because I am wondering why you need my help.’

  ‘I want you to find it, otherwise I will be unable to travel.’

  ‘So you have lost it?’

  ‘Oh yes. Assuredly. I last saw it on the Paddington to Taunton express, the one that left at half past seven in the evening on the twenty-third of January 1938. I got out at Reading and clean forgot my suitcase.’

  ‘That was ten years ago.’

  ‘Almost to the day. Naturally I applied to the Lost Property department. They said they couldn’t find it, but that can’t be true. It has to be there somewhere. There is no other place it could be. You will find it for me. A small pigskin case, not much bigger than a briefcase. It is unremarkable but for one thing. The leather bears a small motif: a ship’s anchor much like a sailor might have inked on his bicep; and the name of a ship, the Laura Bell. It shouldn’t be hard to find, but you must be quick.’

  ‘I would be very happy to inquire, but I would not wish to encourage your hopes of a speedy—’

  ‘No, no, you must find it quickly. Don’t you understand? Don’t you see? Without it I cannot travel. I have not long left now.’ He peered into my eyes, as if urging me to share his vision. ‘Don’t you see? I have heard it . . . twice now in the night watches, while sitting alone in my shop, I have heard it.’

  ‘What? What did you hear in the night?’

  ‘The beating, and I felt the breeze waft, from nowhere it came, there was no door ajar nor window open, but still it came. I saw it lifting the papers on my desk. And I shuddered.’

  ‘But what was it?’

  ‘It was the beating of . . . angel wings.’

  THE BOY’S OWN RAILWAY GOSLING ANNUAL

  Vol.VII 1931 Price: 1/-

  Replies to our readers’ letters

  P. T. MILLS, HULL—You are thinking of Christian Friedrich Schönbein from Switzerland who discovered the remarkable qualities to which you allude when his apron exploded in 1846. He was working in his kitchen and happened to spill nitric acid on his kitchen table. He used his apron to mop up the mess, unaware naturally of the remarkable effect of combining concentrated nitric acid and cotton. When he hung his apron up to dry it exploded and this became the beginning of the gun cotton munitions industry. We are given to understand that the best gun cotton can be obtained from Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills, although we emphasise they have a strict policy of not selling their wares to small boys.

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

  My Headstone Ordered from Mozambique

  Our gunwales were weighed down with the rolls of cloth, boxes of beads and rolls of wire that would be our means of purchasing the supplies we would need. In addition we had one double-barrelled breech-loading rifle, one elephant gun, two American Winchesters and various side arms. Although Mr Gape devoted a great deal of attention to the purchase of these weapons he affected not to greatly care whether we took them along or not. Bullets were useless these days, he told me, since the savages had long ago learned the way to tackle the white man’s ‘thunder-spouts’ was to remain invisible and not present a target. He gave it for his opinion that we would, as a matter of course, be attacked with poison arrows from archers hidden in the foliage along the river banks. The steam whistle attached to the funnel was a far better means of frightening them off.

  ‘I never met one yet who wasn’t afraid of the whistle,’ he said and tamped the tobacco down into his pipe bowl with a thoughtful air. As he did this he kept the wheel holding our course with his knee. I offered to take the wheel while he prepared his pipe, but this offer elicited a look of withering contempt.

  ‘Would you offer to sleep with a man’s woman while he f
illed his pipe?’ he asked.

  The question was so absurd and impertinent that it left me tongue-tied.

  ‘I rather expect you wouldn’t. In this part of Africa, though there may be circumstances in which it would be deemed appropriate to sleep with a man’s wife, you touch his boat at your peril. Even making eyes at it will result in your skull being emptied of those dear sweet warm brains that mean so much to you, and the space used for storing manioc.’

  ‘Mr Gape, I can see you are going to be champion company on this journey because your capacities as a fabulist are really first rate.’

  ‘Do you doubt me, sir? Then perhaps you would be kind enough to examine the sugar bowl aft and see if there is not something disturbingly familiar about its smooth white curves.’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Gape, I entertain no doubts about a man’s head being turned into a sugar bowl. I was rather doubting your infamous remark to the effect that a man might sleep with another chap’s wife round here. They don’t strike me as being the understanding types.’

  ‘What bliss it is to be a child and have a child’s understanding of the world. Of course you cannot simply sleep with a wife uninvited but if you are a guest in one of the villages then your host as a matter of courtesy will offer you one of his wives to sleep with. It would be deemed insulting to refuse, even if she is not comely. Insulting and dangerous. I tell you this as a warning since it strikes me as precisely the sort of wrong-headed, bumbling mistake someone like you would make.’

  ‘Tell me about the poison arrows.’

  ‘There are numerous poisons: the sap of the Gaboda Tree, the gall bladder of the green-toed frog, the thorax of the black widow ant . . . the savages are spoilt for choice. All the poisons are deadly and death occurs within hours or at most days. The only difference is in the agony of the death. If they like you, the suffering can be mercifully short.’

  ‘How short?’

  ‘Two, maybe three hours.’

  ‘That doesn’t strike me as short.’

  ‘That’s because you have never had to listen to the dying moans of someone with black widow ant poisoning. According to the Arab slavers whose libraries in Khartoum hold many mysteries, there is only one pain that can compare and that is the pain of crucifixion, although a particular form of crucifixion: not the one where they put the nails through your hands, but the variety where they hammer them through the ulnar nerve in the wrists. You are familiar with the ulnar nerve, it is the one that gives you such discomfort when you strike your funny bone.’