Crime at Christmas (2 page)

S
EASONABLE
weather for the time of year,' remarked
the Expansive Man in a voice succulent as the breast of a roast goose.

The Deep Chap, sitting next to him in the railway compartment, glanced out
at the snow swarming and swirling past the window-pane. He replied:

'You really like it? Oh well, it's an ill blizzard that blows nobody no
good. Depends what you mean by seasonable, though. Statistics for the last
fifty years would show—'

'Name of Joad, sir?' asked the Expansive Man, treating the compartment to
a wholesale wink.

'No, Stansfield, Henry Stansfield.' The Deep Chap, a ruddy-faced man who
sat with hands firmly planted on the knees of his brown tweed suit, might have
been a prosperous farmer but for the long, steady meditative scrutiny which he
now bent upon each of his fellow-travellers in turn.

What he saw was not particularly rewarding. On the opposite seat, from
left to right, were a Forward Piece, who had taken the Expansive Man's wink
wholly to herself and contrived to wriggle her tight skirt
farther up from her
knee; a desiccated, sandy, lawyerish little man who fumed and fussed like an
angry kettle, consulting every five minutes his gold watch, then shaking out
his
Times
with the crackle
of a legal parchment, and a Flash Card, dressed up to the nines of spivdom,
with the bold yet uneasy stare of the young delinquent.

'Mine's Percy Dukes,' said the Expansive Man. 'PD to my friends, General
Dealer. At your service. Well, we'll be across the border in an hour and a
half, and then hey for the bluebells of bonny Scotland!'

'Bluebells in January? You're hopeful,' remarked the Forward Piece.

'Are you Scots, master?' asked the Comfortable Body sitting on
Stansfield's left.

'English outside'—Percy Dukes patted the front of his grey suit, slid a
flask from its hip pocket, and took a swig—'and Scotch within.' His loud laugh,
or the blizzard, shook the railway carriage. The Forward Piece giggled. The
Flash Card covertly sneered.

'You'll need that if we run into a drift and get stuck for the night,'
said Henry Stansfield.

'Name of Jonah, sir?' The compartment reverberated again.

'I do not apprehend such an eventuality,' said the Fusspot. 'The
station-master at Lancaster assured me that the train would get through. We are
scandalously late already, though.' Once again the gold watch was consulted.

'It's a curious thing,' remarked the Deep Chap meditatively, 'the way we
imagine we can make Time amble withal or gallop withal, just by keeping an eye
on the hands of a watch. You travel frequently by this train, Mr—?'

'Kilmington. Arthur J Kilmington. No, I've only used it once before.' The
Fusspot spoke in a dry Edinburgh accent.

'Ah yes, that would have been on the 17
^th
of last month. I
remember seeing you on it.'

'No, sir, you are mistaken. It was the 20th.' Mr Kilmington's thin mouth
snapped tight again, like a rubber band round a sheaf of legal documents.

'The 20th? Indeed? That was the day of the train robbery. A big haul they
got, it seems. Off this very train. It was carrying some of the extra Christmas
mail. Bags just disappeared, somewhere between Lancaster and Carlisle.'

'Och, deary me,' sighed the Comfortable Body. 'I don't know what we're
coming to, really, nowadays.'

'We're coming to the scene of the crime, ma'am,' said the expansive Mr
Dukes. The train, almost dead-beat, was panting up the last pitch towards Shap
Summit.

'I didn't see anything in the papers about where the robbery took place,'
Henry Stansfield murmured. Dukes fastened a somewhat bleary eye upon him.

'You read all the newspapers?'

'Yes.'

The atmosphere in the compartment had grown suddenly tense. Only the Flash
Card, idly examining his fingernails, seemed unaffected by it.

'Which paper did you see it in?' pursued Stansfield.

'I didn't.' Dukes tapped Stansfield on the knee. ' But I can use my loaf.
Stands to reason. You want to tip a mail-bag out of a train—get me? Train must
be moving slowly, or the bag'll burst when it hits the ground. Only one place
between Lancaster and Carlisle where you'd
know
the train would be crawling. Shap Bank.
And it goes slowest on the last bit of the bank, just about where we are now.
Follow?'

Henry Stansfield nodded.

'O.K. But you'd be balmy to tip it off just anywhere on this God-forsaken
moorland,' went on Mr Dukes. 'Now, if you'd travelled this line as much as I
have, you'd have noticed it goes over a bridge about a mile short of the
summit. Under the bridge runs a road: a nice, lonely road, see? The only road
hereabouts that touches the railway. You tip out the bag there. Your chums
collect it, run down the embankment, dump it in the car they've got waiting by
the bridge, and Bob's your uncle!'

'You oughta been a detective, mister,' exclaimed the Forward Piece
languishingly.

Mr Dukes inserted his thumbs in his armpits, looking gratified. 'Maybe I
am,' he said with a wheezy laugh. 'And maybe I'm just little old PD, who knows
how to use his loaf.'

'Och, well now, the things people will do!' said the Comfortable Body.
'There's a terrible lot of dishonesty today.'

The Flash Card glanced up contemptuously from his Fingernails. Mr
Kilmington was heard to mutter that the system of surveillance on railways was
disgraceful, and the Guard of the train should have been severely censured.

'The Guard can't be everywhere,' said Stansfield. 'Presumably he has to
patrol the train from time to time, and—'

'Let him do so, then, and not lock himself up in his van and go to sleep,'
interrupted Mr Kilmington, somewhat unreasonably.

'Are you speaking from personal experience, sir?' asked Stansfield.

The Flash Card lifted up his voice and said, in a Charing-Cross-Road
American accent, 'Hey, fellas! If the gang was gonna tip out the mail-bags by
the bridge, like this guy says—what I mean is, how could they rely on the Guard
being out of his van just at that point?' He hitched up the trousers of his
loud check suit.

'You've got something there,' said Percy Dukes. 'What I reckon is, there
must have been two accomplices on the train—one to get the Guard out of his van
on some pretext, and the other to chuck off the bags.' He turned to Mr
Kilmington. 'You were saying something about the Guard locking himself up in
his van. Now if I was of a suspicious turn of mind, if I was little old
Sherlock H. in person'—he bestowed another prodigious wink upon Kilmington's
fellow-travellers—'I'd begin to wonder about you, sir. You were travelling on
this train when the robbery took place. You went to the Guard's van. You
say
you found him asleep. You didn't by any
chance call the Guard out, so as to—?'

'Your suggestion is outrageous! I advise you to be very careful, sir, very
careful indeed,' enunciated Mr Kilmington, his precise voice crackling with
indignation, 'or you may find you have said something actionable. I would have
you know that, when I—'

But what he would have them know was to remain undivulged. The train,
which for some little time had been running cautiously down from Shap Summit,
suddenly began to chatter and shudder, like a fever patient in high delirium,
as the vacuum brakes were applied; then, with the dull impact of a fist driving
into a feather pillow, the engine buried itself in a drift which had gathered
just beyond the bend of a deep cutting. The time was five minutes past seven.

'What's this in aid of?' asked the Forward Piece, rather shrilly, as a
hysterical outburst of huffing and puffing came from the engine.

'Run into a drift, I reckon.'

'He's trying to back us out. No good. The wheels are slipping every time.
What a lark!' Percy Dukes had his head out of the window on the lee side of the
train. 'Coom to Coomberland for your winter sports!'

'Guard! Guard, I say!' called Mr Kilmington. But the blue-clad figure,
after one glance into the compartment, hurried on his way up the corridor.
'Really! I
shall
report that man.'

Henry Stansfield, going out into the corridor, opened a window. Though
the coach was theoretically sheltered by the cutting on this windward side, the
blizzard stunned his face like a knuckleduster of ice. He joined the herd of
passengers who had climbed down and were stumbling towards the engine. As they
reached it, the Guard emerged from its cab: no cause for alarm, he said; if
they couldn't get through, there'd be a relief engine sent down to take the
train back to Tebay; he was just off to set fog-signals on the line behind
them.

The driver renewed his attempts to back the train out. But, what with its
weight, the up-gradient in its rear, the icy rails, and the clinging grip of
the drift on the engine, he could not budge her.

'We'll have to dig out the bogeys, mate,' he said to the fireman. 'Fetch
them shovels from the forward van. It'll keep the perishers from freezing, any
road.' He jerked his finger at the knot of passengers who, lit up by the glare
of the furnace, were capering and beating their arms like savages amid the
swirling snow-wreaths.

Percy Dukes, who had now joined them, quickly established himself as the
life and soul of the party, referring to the grimy-faced fireman as 'Snowball,'
adjuring his companions to 'Dig for Victory,' affecting to spy the approach of
a herd of St Bernards, each with a keg of brandy slung round its neck. But,
after ten minutes of hard digging, when the leading wheels of the bogey were
cleared, it could be seen that they had been derailed by their impact with the
drift.

'That's torn it, Charlie. You'll have to walk back to the box and get 'em
to telephone through for help,' said the driver.

If
the wires aren't down already,' replied the fireman
lugubriously. 'It's above a mile to that box, and uphill. Who d'you think I am?
Captain Scott?'

'You'll have the wind behind you, mate, any road. So long.'

A buzz of dismay had risen from the passengers at this. One or two, who
began to get querulous, were silenced by the driver's offering to take them
anywhere they liked if they would just lift his engine back on to the metals
first. When the rest had dispersed to their carriages, Henry Stansfield asked
the driver's permission to go up into the cab for a few minutes and dry his
coat.

'You're welcome.' The driver snorted: 'Would you believe it? "Must
get to Glasgow tonight." Damn ridiculous! Now Bert—that's my Guard—it's
different for him: he's entitled to fret a bit. Missus been very poorly.
Thought she was going to peg out before Christmas; but he got the best surgeon
in Glasgow to operate on her, and she's mending now, he says. He reckons to
look in every night at the nursing home, when he goes off work.'

Stansfield chatted with the man for five minutes. Then the Guard returned,
blowing upon his hands—a smallish, leathery-faced chap, with an anxious look
in his eye.

'We'll not get through to-night, Bert. Charlie told you?'

'Aye. I doubt some of the passengers are going to create a rumpus,' said
the Guard dolefully.

Henry Stansfield went back to his compartment. It was stuffy, but with a
sinister hint of chilliness, too: he wondered how long the steam heating would
last: depended upon the amount of water in the engine boiler, he supposed.
Amongst the wide variety of fates he had imagined for himself, freezing to
death in an English train was not included.

Arthur J Kilmington fidgeted more than ever. When the Guard came along the
corridor, he asked him where the nearest village was, saying he must get a
telephone call through to Edinburgh—most urgent appointment—must let his client
know, if he was going to miss it. The Guard said there was a village two miles
to the northeast; you could see the lights from the top of the cutting; but he
warned Mr Kilmington against trying to get there in the teeth of this
blizzard—better wait for the relief engine, which should reach them before 9
p.m.

Silence fell upon the compartment for a while; the incredulous silence of
civilized people who find themselves in the predicament of castaways. Then the
expansive Mr Dukes proposed that, since they were to be stuck here for an hour
or two, they should get acquainted. The Comfortable Body now introduced herself
as Mrs Grant, the Forward Piece as Inez Blake; the Flash Card, with the
over-negligent air of one handing a dud half-crown over a counter, gave his
name as Macdonald—I. Macdonald.