by David Field
‘What?’
Percy tapped his nose as the coach stopped outside Kemble Police Station, then smiled his infuriatingly knowing smile.
‘Listen and learn, young Jack. Listen and learn.’
Inside the police station, Sergeant Oakley was about to finish for the day, but was more than happy to accommodate his prestigious guests from the Yard in the matter of passing Percy’s urgent cable message to Constable Jacks for immediate transmission, along with his second request — this time to Swindon — for all the clothing and possessions of the deceased to be transferred to Kemble.
‘I won’t keep you from your supper any longer than necessary, Sergeant,’ Percy assured him, ‘but could you tell me what time you got the urgent message about the body in the tunnel last Friday night?’
Sergeant Oakley consulted his notebook and read from it.
‘Constable Jacks hammered on the door of my house at twenty-five minutes after eleven in the evening. It’s two doors up from the station and he told me that Patrick Brogan had arrived, all out of breath and wide-eyed, yelling something about a body in the tunnel. I got dressed in a hurry and the two of us — Brogan and me, that is — ran down to the railway.’
Percy shot Jack a triumphant glance before seeking confirmation.
‘You’re quite sure that you were first alerted by Constable Jacks, who in turn had been alerted by Patrick Brogan running all the way up here?’
‘Quite sure, why?’
‘Well, Brogan claimed to have called in at the station ticket office and sent you an urgent telegraph from there. That’s not the way it was, according to you?’
‘Of course not — I just told you.’
‘Thank you, Sergeant. For the record, there’s no criticism of your actions — quite the reverse. We’ll be back in the morning, to get any reply from the cable to London, and to examine the deceased’s belongings more thoroughly. Until then, where’s the best place to eat in Swindon, or maybe here in Kemble?’
‘I don’t know about Swindon, but there’s a place down the road there called “The Coffee Tavern.” It’s across the road bridge from the station and you’ve probably seen it in your travels, but if not then your coachman will know it well, since all the coach drivers use it when they’re off duty. I’m afraid you’ll have to keep quiet about your identities, since it doesn’t have a licence, but the proprietor can let you have a pint of the best scrumpy cider you ever tasted and his wife cooks a delicious hotpot until late in the evening. Just tell Ted Bishop — he’s the owner — that Joe Oakley sent you and he’ll look after you.’
‘Excellent,’ Percy enthused. ‘What time do they close?’
Oakley smirked. ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah, forget that last question and I’ll forget that the local police sergeant’s turning a blind eye to an unlicensed establishment serving cider. Depending upon how good the cider is, that is. Come on, Jack, before they run out of hotpot.’
The next morning, looking slightly green around the gills, they were deposited outside Kemble Police Station and were more than ready for the hot sweet tea that Constable Jacks offered to make them while they awaited the arrival of the sergeant and examined the items that had arrived overnight.
‘I don’t think that poor constable’s ever off duty,’ Jack croaked as he tested his powers of speech again and vowed to give the local cider a definite miss in future. He was ignored by Percy, who was gloating over the return cable from London and chuckling quietly to himself. Then he tucked it into his waistcoat pocket and took Jack into the back room, where the items found with Marianne Ormonde’s body were laid out on a table.
‘Very well, young Jack, tell me what you can deduce from all these.’
‘Can I leave out the bloodstained clothing?’ Jack implored him. ‘My stomach’s all over the place after that cider you insisted that we try last night.’
‘Nothing wrong with the cider,’ Percy assured him. ‘If your tummy’s a bit gippy, blame the hotpot. Now, what can you deduce from the dear departed’s belongings?’
Jack tipped the contents of the purse onto the table and sorted through them.
‘The return half of the train ticket, plus about five pounds in coins, so robbery was obviously not the motive. The doctor assured us that she hadn’t been raped — at least, not recently — and then there’s this card from a London clinic.’
‘Show me,’ Percy requested, then chortled when he read it. ‘Devonshire Street, just around the corner from Harley Street, and part of all that medical quackery that Marylebone specialises in. I’d bet half my pension that this Dr. Weinberg does a nice line in abortions, for the right price of course. That’s probably not even his real name, and I’d hazard a further guess that any medical diploma displayed on his consulting room wall was purchased by him in Salzburg.’
‘The deceased had an appointment with him a few days after she died, according to this card,’ Jack observed. ‘Perhaps she and her brother argued over her getting an abortion?’
‘More than likely,’ Percy agreed. ‘The important question is whether he was in favour of it, or against it.’
‘My money’s on the likelihood that he was insisting, and she was resisting,’ Jack offered.
‘And you may be right. But if you’ve finished that tea, let’s go and get Mr Parsons out of bed, shall we?’
‘Why?’
‘Read this return cable from London and if you have to ask me a second time I’ll recommend your dismissal for incompetence.’
Jack read the cable, whistled softly and hastened outside to join Percy in the cab.
A bleary-eyed Michael Parsons lurched into the open rear doorway of the labourer’s cottage that he shared with his parents and looked accusingly at the two police officers. ‘I’d only just got to bed,’ he complained. ‘Can’t this wait until later?’
‘Perhaps if you step out into the fresh air, it might wake you up, Mr Parsons,’ Percy suggested as he gestured towards the centre of the rear yard, where several seats and a matching table sat paying silent testimony to someone’s skills with a wood saw and a large tree trunk. They took seats and Percy extracted the cable from his waistcoat pocket.
‘Just so that we understand each other, Mr Parsons,’ he advised him in a menacing tone, ‘I don’t take kindly to being lied to, any more than I imagine your employers do. So tell me again, how many people boarded the last train out of Kemble on Friday evening past?’
‘None — I told you.’
‘And it was running on time?’
‘Yes — like I said.’
Percy sighed audibly as his eyes narrowed like a hastily lowered portcullis. ‘Funnily enough, the guard on that train — a Mr Herbert Renshaw — advises me that the train was running ten minutes late that evening by the time it reached Kemble.’
Parsons’s eyes flickered nervously between Percy and Jack. ‘Well, I was speaking in general terms, you understand. Train guards are more particular.’
‘Also more observant, it would seem,’ Percy added acidly. ‘According to Mr Renshaw, a lady in her early to late twenties climbed into a first class carriage towards the rear of the train just before it moved off.’
‘I could have missed that, if I was collecting tickets at the time,’ Parsons suggested.
Percy sat back slightly and gave Parsons the benefit of a snarling look that Jack hoped never to see aimed at him. ‘According to you, nobody got off that particular train,’ Percy reminded him. When there was no answer, Percy added quietly, ‘You weren’t even there, were you?’
‘What makes you think that?’ was all that Parsons could offer in response, but Percy was all set for the kill.
‘Perhaps it’s the fact that you missed what happened next, Mr Parsons. While the train was in the process of moving off, a tall man in his mid thirties raced across the platform and dived into a first class carriage. So far as the guard could make out, it was the same carriage that the woman had got into seconds earlier. Mr
Renshaw remembers the incident particularly, because he was apprehensive that the man might fall between the carriage and the edge of the platform, and was all set to stop the train with his brake. If he had done so, we believe that Miss Ormonde would still be alive today.’
It fell deathly quiet and Jack was beginning to feel sorry for the young man when his response caused him to take out his notebook in sheer amazement. ‘Alright, you’ve got me. I wasn’t there that night. At least, not the whole shift.’
‘And where were you?’
‘Down at a place called “The Coffee Tavern”. It’s the other side of the bridge from the station.’
‘Yes, we know where you mean,’ Percy assured him. ‘Enjoying a mug of the local cider, were we?’
‘No, a card game. A few of us meet up there regularly and I’ve had a run of bad luck recently, so I owed a fair bit to several of the men who I play with. They insisted on me attending the game, else they’d tell my father about my debts, and well, to be honest with you, nobody’s really to know whether you’re on night duty or not. You’re supposed to check the tickets when they get off at Kemble, but nobody’s likely to complain if you don’t, and once you’re pretty certain that no-one needs to buy a ticket to board the last train, you can simply slip away, like I did that night. But I was back by one-thirty, honestly.’
‘That explains why Mr Brogan had to run all the way to the police station in order to report the finding of the body, because you weren’t at your post to telegraph it, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Parsons agreed with a shamefaced look. ‘But if she was already dead, what harm did it do?’
‘Irreparable harm to your career with the Great Western Railway, anyway,’ Percy sneered back as he began to rise to his feet.
‘Please!’ Parsons begged him. ‘I really need that job and Father will throw me out on my ear if I’m dismissed for dishonesty.’
‘You wouldn’t believe how many times I hear that from people I’ve run in for fraud,’ Percy advised him with a cold smile as he looked down at him. ‘And my answer’s always the same — you should have thought about that before crossing the line. Quite literally, in your case, of course.’
‘I did see the woman, if that helps!’ Parsons all but yelled in desperation and Percy resumed his seat.
‘You saw her on the platform, getting on board the train, you mean?’ he enquired.
Parsons shook his head. ‘Not then — just before the last train arrived. I’d closed the booking office and was walking through the forecourt when I saw this young woman come walking quickly down the road from Kemble. She called out to me, asking if the last train had gone, and I told her no and asked if she needed a ticket. She told me that she had a return to London and so I bid her good evening and went on across the bridge to the Tavern.’
‘What did she look like?’ Jack enquired, pencil poised over his notebook.
‘Like your colleague just said — twentyish, wearing a light coloured cloak of some sort and a long skirted light coloured costume. I knew her by sight anyway, since she comes through Kemble most weekends with a man, presumably her husband. They always come and go in the coach that old Bert Gregson drives, so I reckon she must be one of those who bought the old farm the other side of Tarlton, where Bert works.’
‘But you didn’t see any man with her this time?’ Percy pressed him.
‘Not then, no. There was a man — or at least, I think it must have been a man, to judge by the weight of his footsteps. I heard him running in the same direction from which the girl had come, but I couldn’t see anyone because of the dark and the rain. Anyway, since he’d have been too late to buy a ticket and I could hear the up train approaching from down near the signal box, I just kept walking.’
Jack had been listening intently and in the hope that he hadn’t misheard he kept probing. ‘The man who normally travels to Tarlton with the girl — you said that you didn’t see him “then”. Do I take it from what you said that you saw him sometime later?’
Percy shot Jack an appreciative smile and looked invitingly back at Parsons, who nodded.
‘Yes, but it was much later that same night. We’d finished our card game when he came into The Tavern looking for Tom Bedder. He’s a carrier who runs a local business and he’d been one of those playing cards with us. He normally gives us a lift back into Kemble from The Tavern but the man we’re talking about offered Tom three quid to take him to Tarlton.’
‘What time was this?’ Percy enquired eagerly and Parsons screwed up his face in concentration.
‘It must have been after one in the morning. I was dropped off back at the station and I remember that it was one-thirty, or near enough, when I got back into my office.’
‘Just a bit more information and then we might consider not telling your employers what you were up to that night,’ Percy offered. ‘The next station north of here where you can alight from a London-bound train is Swindon, yes?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And are there any trains that stop at Swindon coming back south — that is, away from London — that stop in Kemble after midnight?’
‘No — why?’
‘Follow me through this,’ Percy urged him. ‘If I caught the last train from Kemble to London, then for some reason decided to get off at Swindon and come back, is there a train I could get on?’
‘Not at that time of night, no. The first train south from Swindon would depart Swindon at around five am, so far as I can recall — certainly not midnight, or even one am.’
‘So, if it were you, stuck in Swindon at midnight, how would you get back to Kemble?’
‘I’d hire a cab. There’s an all-night cab rank in the station forecourt at Swindon. It wouldn’t be cheap, mind you.’
‘Thank you, Mr Parsons.’ Percy smiled for the first time. ‘You’ve been most helpful — eventually. So helpful, in fact, that you may rest secure in your duties at Kemble Station unless you’re foolish enough to be absent from duty on a future occasion.’
Parsons was almost shedding tears of gratitude as Percy and Jack climbed back into their hired cab and Percy ordered Josh Babbage to drive them to Sandpool Farm.
‘We’ve got him!’ Jack muttered excitedly, then looked at the quizzical expression on Percy’s face, before he added, ‘Haven’t we?’
Percy shook his head as firmly as his persistent hangover permitted. ‘We can’t expect the guard on the train to be able to identify Ormonde,’ he cautioned. ‘It was night-time, it was raining, he saw the man side-on for a few brief seconds and he was more concerned about where his legs were going. He could give us the general “type” and that would fit Ormonde, but that’s about all.’
‘But we’ve got him travelling back from Swindon, surely?’
‘We’ll know that when we speak to the cab driver from Swindon, always supposing that we can find him. And in the hope that he can identify him. We’ll need Ormonde’s photograph for that, I imagine.’
‘But we’ve got him being taken back to the farm from Kemble,’ Jack insisted.
Percy inclined his head sideways. ‘If you’d been out visiting a lady friend late at night and Esther was waiting up for you, demanding to know why you were so late, you’d have an excuse ready, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course, not that that would ever happen.’
‘Well, don’t think that Ormonde won’t have thought up some valid reason for being out late at night in Kemble. He’ll know that he can be identified as the man getting a lift from the local carrier, remember.’
Jack fell silent for a moment and was obviously thinking deeply.
‘Go on, then — ask me,’ Percy invited him with a grin.
‘Ask you what?’
‘Ask me if I’ve ever had to invent an excuse to satisfy your Aunt Beattie. The answer’s yes, but not for the reason you’re imagining.’
Jack chuckled, then he frowned. ‘I was actually wondering why, if he already had a cab from Swindon, Ormonde needed anoth
er one from Kemble.’
‘That was bothering me, as well. But right now, let’s see if the remaining servants at the farm can shed further light on Ormonde’s movements on the night in question.’
An hour later they were seated in the summer house on the back lawn of Sandpool Farm, talking to Bert Gregson and Clarice Battersby. Clarice, a ruddy cheeked girl in her late teens who looked like a farmer’s daughter and would shortly become a millworker’s husband, had served them all home-made lemonade from a tall glass jug and Jack and Percy were each on their second glass, chasing the dehydration from the previous night, as she explained the household routine as it had been on the night that ‘Miss Marianne’ disappeared.
‘I remember the barny they ’ad while they was eatin’ the salmon,’ she recalled as her big brown eyes surveyed the middle distance. ‘The master were on about ’ow it were bad manners ter break an appointment an’ she replied that she’d done it anyway, an’ what business were it of ’is. Then ’e replied an’ said she’d ’ad no business ter do it wi’out consultin’ ’im first, an’ she fair lost the rag wi’ ’im, told ’im that she’d ’ad enough of ’im rulin’ ’er life, then got up from the table, threw ’er napkin on the floor an’ stormed off ter ’er room.’
‘What was his reaction to that?’ Jack enquired, having correctly sensed that his boyish charm would achieve more than Percy’s more formal manner, which was best reserved for Bert Gregson.
Clarice giggled and resumed her account of events. ‘He yelled after ’er that she’d regret it an’ ter think o’ the scandal, an’ she yelled back from the staircase that she’d make sure that most o’ the scandal would land in ’is lap, since it were ’is fault fer bein’ so careless, an’ then she were gone inter ’er room an’ I never saw ’er no more.’
‘Your room’s on the top floor?’ Jack asked.
She nodded. ‘The attic, more like, an’ a real cold ’ole in the winter.’
‘Do you get to hear much from up there?’ he persisted.
