The Secret Tunnel (31 page)

“That’s enough, Thomas. We’ll have no more violence.”

“Oh, go on,” said Dickinson, “let him have his fun. How about it, Simmonds? You like picking on people who can’t fight back, don’t you?”

“Fuck off.”

“Not so brave now you don’t have your uniform on. Come on, why don’t you knock me around a bit, big man? Like your little Belgian friend. You liked that, didn’t you?”

He was goading Simmonds into a fury, hoping to provoke some kind of attack.

“That’s enough, Tom. Go to Bertrand. He needs you.”

Simmonds stood there with his great fists bunched up, his arms held out from his sides, ready to take on an army. He stepped toward Dickinson, and spat copiously between his open legs.

“When Arthur gets here, he’ll tell us exactly what you hid in the tunnel,” I said. “Now I’m going to ask you again. Why did you kill David Rhys?”

“Give it up, Mitchell. You have no case against me.”

“Sergeant Langland—would you ask one of your men to fetch Hugo Taylor? You’ll find him downstairs.”

Taylor looked superb in his evening dress, as sleek as a thoroughbred stallion, his thick dark hair swept off his forehead, his collar and cuffs as dazzlingly white as his perfect, regular teeth.

“Well! Mr. Dickinson!” Taylor said sarcastically. “I rather wondered what had happened to you. British-American really is going to the dogs. Can’t keep the staff from one day to the next.”

I said, “Perhaps you can tell us, Hugo, what happened in your carriage yesterday afternoon, when we were stuck in the tunnel.”

“After I was biffed over the head, you mean?”

“Just start at the beginning.”

“I suppose you want the truth this time.”

“That would be helpful.”

“Careful, Taylor,” said Dickinson.

“You don’t expect me to take advice from a man in your position, do you?” Taylor replied. “Now, let me see…” He held his hands behind his back and paced the room, turning every so often to emphasize a point, exactly as if he were delivering a speech on stage. “The porter brought our lunch—steak and mushrooms and potatoes, if I remember correctly. It was remarkably good, although Daisy didn’t eat a bite, poor thing. Only one thing she was interested in eating. Speaking of which, hello, Joe! You’ve been through the wars, old chap!”

Joseph scowled and growled but could do nothing, bound as he was.

“Now, something struck me as queer at the time; there
was no steak knife. Usually, they’re very good at these things—it always amazes me how they manage to cook so well on a moving train. I mean, I can barely make a sandwich.”

“The knife, Hugo?”

“Ah, yes. The knife. I had to use my butter knife to cut the steak with. It didn’t matter, as it was very tender, but I must have mentioned something because Joseph said he’d go and give the steward a bollocking. He hadn’t been gone five minutes when, bang, the train stopped and the lights went out, and I thought poor Daisy was going to choke herself. Dickinson disappeared, and I went out looking for a lantern. That’s when some bugger bashed me over the head.”

“Where were you?”

“I was moving down the train, toward third class, hoping there might be lights down there. I couldn’t see a bloody thing. I was groping along and I bumped into someone and I said, ‘Oh, I’m frightfully sorry,’ or words to that effect. We do-si-doed our way past each other and then I got the most frightful crack on the bonce.”

“Any idea who it was?”

“None, I’m afraid. Couldn’t see a thing.”

“Or what they hit you with?”

“It made a bloody awful thud when it hit me, I can tell you. Nearly knocked me out. I put my hand up and felt blood. Somehow I managed to stagger back to our compartment, where someone had had the presence of mind to light a candle. Daisy was there, looking like a frightened rabbit, feverishly chopping out lines of cocaine by candlelight. I sat down and felt pretty bloody grim, if you must know. I took a swig of wine and I passed out for a while, I think. When I came to, I saw Dickinson moving around in the carriage, looking for something, I thought. I had the impression that there was someone with him—Joseph, I supposed—but I couldn’t really see. I asked him what the fuck was going
on, and he said there had been an accident of some sort. I thought maybe that had something to do with what happened to me. I was confused.”

I turned to Dickinson. “But it wasn’t Joseph, was it, Dickinson?”

“Of course it was,” Dickinson sneered. “Nobody else was allowed in the compartment.”

“I think it was David Rhys,” I said. “Was that where you killed him? While Hugo was semi-conscious, and Daisy was doped out of her mind? Murder by candlelight.”

“Ridiculous,” said Dickinson.

Taylor continued, “Now that you come to mention it, there was a struggle, and someone fell to the floor. I didn’t really know what was going on. When I came round, you were there, Mr. Mitchell, and the porter. I made up some yarn about how I’d hit my head on the bar.”

“Why did you lie?”

“Because I was frightened, if you must know. I had reason to believe that someone was out to get me.”

“Had you received threats?”

“I receive threats all the time.”

“From whom?”

“Well, they don’t sign them, dear boy. But I know who they’re from. Rotha Lintorn and her gang of thugs.”

“And you knew that they were on the train?”

“I’d seen Lady Antonia, yes. Not that I suspected her.”

“Then who?”

“Well, I hate to say this, old chap, but I did rather wonder about…you.”

I was rather stung by this, as I’d taken great care over dressing Taylor’s wound.

“Please don’t be offended. I quickly saw I was wrong. But you get into a habit of telling lies when you’re in my position.”

“And you’re lying now,” said Dickinson. “You’d do anything
to protect your meal ticket. You’re a fucking parasite.”

“I don’t deny it.” Taylor replied. “But you must admit, I do it with a certain amount of style.”

“You make me sick.”

“Oh, Mr. Dickinson, in your position—and what an interesting position it is, really—I would be very careful about what I said. You wouldn’t want anyone to lose their temper, would you?”

Behind his urbane façade, Taylor was reaching the boiling point.

“Thank you, Hugo. You can return to the party if you want.”

“What, and miss the fun? Not on your nelly.”

“So, Dickinson—you murdered Rhys in the private compartment, and then dragged the body to the toilet, where it would be discovered. You cut his finger off and removed the ring to make it look like robbery. And then you planted the ring in Daisy Athenasy’s luggage, to throw suspicion on her, make it look like a conspiracy.”

“Mitch…” It was Bertrand, his voice weak. “When we were in the toilet together… You know… In the dark…”

“Yes, I remember.”

“We tried to get out. The door was stuck. Do you remember?”

“Someone wanted to keep us out of the way, to make sure we didn’t see something. That would have been when the murder was taking place. Dickinson took Rhys into the private compartment. Someone else jammed the door.”

“Joseph, I imagine,” said Taylor. “He wasn’t with us.”

“Of course. Who else would be strong enough to hold a door against two people pushing from inside? And then, when the coast was clear, he let us out.”

“That’s when I found you,” said Simmonds. “You were—”

“Yes,” I interrupted. Nobody needed to be told what we’d been doing when Simmonds found us. “And the door was not locked.”

“No. It was open. I couldn’t understand why you thought you were trapped.”

“So you didn’t need to use your key.”

“No. He must have stolen it from me.”

“Exactly. Dickinson needed the key so he could lock Rhys’s body in the toilet, make it look like a classic closed-room murder. You laid too many false trails, Dickinson. As murders go, this was not well planned.”

“Still in the realms of fantasy, Mitchell. Now let me go.”

“I thought your boys in blue would have arrived by now, Dickinson. I was rather looking forward to that.”

He shut his mouth in a grim line.

“It’s all starting to make sense, isn’t it, Dickinson? First of all, you blackmailed the engineer to stop the train in the tunnel. That was easy; you knew he had something to hide, and you were quick to take advantage of it. In the chaos and panic, it was easy to get Rhys into the compartment, with a little assistance from Joseph. You killed him—how, I wonder? Lethal injection? That seems to be your favorite method. You made sure we were well out of the way, and then you dumped the body, covering your tracks with a false scent.”

“It’s an amusing theory, Mitchell, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. One thing you are right about, though. Rotha Lintorn, and her British Fascists. They were on the train, and they wanted to get rid of Mr. Taylor.”

“Seems I’ve had a lucky escape,” Taylor said.

“You’re not seriously suggesting that Lady Antonia and Mary Chivers were responsible?”

“They attacked Taylor,” said Dickinson. “They would have killed him if they could. And they were after Rhys as well, but they got the wrong man.”

“Andrews?”

“Exactly. They found them together in the dark, and attacked.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“But they weren’t the killers, much as they’d like to have been. It was Andrews who did in David Rhys. Of that I am certain.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I saw it.”

“What? How?”

“Untie me,” said Dickinson, “and I’ll tell you.”

“YOU MAY RECALL, MITCHELL, WHAT WE WERE DOING JUST before we stopped at York station.”

Dickinson was sitting upright on the couch, rubbing his wrists; the rope had bitten deeply into the skin. Sergeant Langland stood guard beside him.

“I remember well enough,” I replied. Oh, what a fool I’d been to let my desire for that man betray me into such a compromising position! Bertrand with his ass exposed, Dickinson pushing his fingers inside him…

“When the train stopped, I went back to our compartment to make sure that everything was in order. On the way, I came across Andrews and Rhys having a heated exchange in the corridor.”

“You mean they were fighting?”

“If you like. I didn’t catch what they were talking about; I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time. I had a job to do. Getting those reporters off the train.”

“More witnesses you wanted out of the way.”

“Witnesses, yes—but not to what you think. They were
snooping around after Hugo and Daisy, and I had to put up a decent pretense of protecting their privacy—that’s what I was supposed to be there for.”

“We rather imagined that you’d tipped them off in the first place,” said Taylor. “They seemed to know exactly where to find us.”

“On the contrary. When I work undercover, I pride myself on doing my job properly. That’s why I threw those reporters off at York. Very convenient, that stop. I couldn’t have organized it better myself. Oh, but you think I did.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Hugo and Daisy were all for getting out and stretching the legs. I think we know what the attraction was, Hugo, don’t we? Our friend Langland here, and his kilted comrades. Were you going to share them between you?”

“It did occur to me, yes,” Hugo replied.

“I tried to dissuade them, but they were out before I could stop them. I went up to the dining car to make arrangements for lunch, and I saw Andrews and Rhys again, disappearing into the toilet together.”

“We know why that was,” I said. “They were lovers.”

“You’re a romantic fool, Mitchell. Andrews is a crook. He’d been stealing from the bank he works at, investing money in stocks and shares and creaming off the profits for himself. But he got greedy, and he invested heavily in a diamond mine in South Africa that, unfortunately for him, didn’t actually exist.”

“You don’t say,” said Taylor.

“Rhys was the con man who sold him the scheme in the first place. Andrews was desperate; he followed him to Edinburgh in an attempt to get his money back, but Rhys gave him the slip. So Andrews caught up with him on the train.”

I said, “You don’t seriously expect us to believe that he dragged his wife and children all the way up there just to chase some phony investment?”

“That’s exactly what he did. What better cover for getting leave from the bank? Taking the family on holiday. The perfect disguise for a man with something to hide. Wouldn’t you say, Simmonds?”

Simmonds glowered at him but said nothing.

Dickinson continued, “When Andrews realized that he wasn’t going to get his money back, he panicked. He realized it was only a matter of time before the bank found out about the missing capital, and there was a trail of transactions that led straight back to him. That’s when he decided to kill Rhys—the man who knew exactly where the money had gone. And then—who knows? A quick flit across the Channel. There were investments all over the place: Switzerland, Norway, Holland. We knew all about him.”

“Is that why you were on the train?”

“Actually, no. I was genuinely investigating a drug smuggling operation. We thought that someone was using Daisy Athenasy as a kind of courier.”

“Daisy? You must be joking,” I said. “She wouldn’t know how to spell the word.”

“Daisy Athenasy isn’t as stupid as she looks,” said Dickinson. “She had her finger in a lot of pies—as Herbert Waits would tell you. But you know all about Mr. Waits, don’t you, Mitch? I heard about your performance. Very impressed, was Bertie Waits. You want to watch out, Taylor. You’ve got some competition. Mr. Mitchell here is an up-and-coming screen idol. With the emphasis on coming.”

Heads were being scratched around the room, and I thought it better to change the subject.