Maxim Jakubowski - The Best British Mysteries III

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I was saying, you look a little pale, a little sickly. Perhaps that box on your lap is restricting your circulation. It does look very heavy. Here, let me take it from you.’

His loud protests, as he clutched the box even more tightly to his chest, keeping it from the outstretched hands of the man, cut through the other passengers’ indifference. Now everyone in the carriage was giving him a curious and pitying look. His moment of calm was shattered, and he pressed as far back in his seat as possible, wishing for it to swallow him up. His mind raced once more as he plotted a possible escape from the tall, thin man, who was firmly fixed once again in his mind as the destroyer of all his dreams, the thief of all his hopes.

Potter woke with a start as the train rumbled over a set of points. He had been dreaming, and couldn’t shake off the image of Le Prince being pursued by someone. A man who wanted Le Prince’s invention. If Le Prince had truly created a moving-picture camera, and solved the problem of the medium on which to fix the images, then there would be those who wanted it. Either to claim it as their own, or to stifle it and promote their own invention. Mrs Le Prince had said the American inventor Edison was working in the same field as her husband.

If Potter was to solve this riddle, though, he had to work out how Le Prince, or his supposed assailant, come to that, had disappeared into thin air. Potter had got off the train at every station on the way down from Paris to Dijon, and spoken briefly with each stationmaster. Every one had been certain – as they had during the police enquiry only weeks after the disappearance – that no one resembling Louis Le Prince had alighted at their station. Now Potter was travelling back along the same line, no wiser after his interview with Albert Le Prince than he had been at the start of it all.

As the train rumbled through the peaceful countryside, he felt more and more agitated. The carriage was gradually emptying, as at each station the train stopped, and people got up and left. Soon, he would be left alone with the tall, thin man in his voluminous cape. And he could not begin to imagine what was on the man’s mind, for his dark, glowing eyes betrayed nothing but emptiness. He felt pinned to his seat by their steely gaze, and when the train slowed for the next station, and their final two travelling companions rose to leave, he could do nothing. He wanted to leap up, grasp the elderly couple’s arms, and convince them to stay. Perhaps he could suggest they alter their plans to get out at…where was it? He spotted the station sign as the train juddered to a halt.

Sens. They were halfway to Paris already. Why didn’t they stay with him and enjoy the pleasures of the capital? If they stayed on with him to the terminus, he would treat them to a meal at Maxim’s. And pay for a stay in a luxurious hotel for the night, if only they would stay on the train. Who wanted to finish their day in dreary old Sens? He would even offer to take their picture with his new camera – immortalise them on Dr Marey’s new celluloid film. His pleas boiled in his brain, but remained unspoken, and the elderly couple descended slowly from the carriage, and were gone. The heavy camera box felt like an unbearable burden on his lap.

But their departure left him with an idea – a final defence. He surreptitiously turned the camera around on his lap until the two lenses in the front of the box pointed across the carriage at his tormentor. Though the stock inside the box was brittle, unlike the new celluloid, he had to hope it might work. He peered in the viewfinder set in the top, looking steadily at the image inverted in the little brass frame. Strangely, the intervention of the lenses between him and the man calmed him, as though the lens had captured and reduced the man to manageable proportions. He was able for the first time to look directly at him. No longer were his eyes so demonic, his posture so threatening. He was simply a tall, nondescript man sitting on a train, bored by the long journey, and anxious to return to his family in Paris.

Boldly, he began to turn the brass handle set in the side of the oak box.

The carriage was gradually emptying, as at each station the train stopped and people got up and left. He spoke to as many of his fellow passengers as possible within the limitations of his schoolboy French, and their reticence. Some of the people he spoke to travelled on the line regularly, but none could recall Le Prince as he described him – a tall, dark man with luxuriant Dundreary whiskers carrying a large box with brass fittings.

‘Six mois auparavant? Non, c’est impossible. There are times I cannot even recall my own wife’s name. Though that can be an advantage sometimes. Eh, monsieur?’

Potter was glad when the toothless and odorous peasant who wished to regale him with his amatory exploits on market days finally reached his stop. He looked out at the station, wondering if Le Prince had got this far.

Sens. An elegantly dressed man got on and sat opposite him.

The rain was teeming down now, and heavy droplets of water tracked slowly across the window. First they ran diagonally, driven by the forward motion of the train. He was only half aware of them out of the corner of his eye, for his gaze was still mainly on the inverted image in the viewfinder. He cranked the handle knowing that the film would soon be finished, fearing that the spell might then be broken. There was a burning sensation in his mouth and throat, and he craved a drink to soothe it. His heart was pounding once again in his chest, and he felt faint. He glanced up, and the man’s eyes once again glowed murderously. He had to avert his gaze, and saw that the gobs of rainwater on the window were tracking almost vertically.

The train was coming to a halt.

The binding of the brakes woke Albert Potter from a doze, and he grasped the moquette-covered arm of his seat tightly as the carriage juddered to a halt. The elegant man opposite pitched forwards involuntarily.

He held his arm protectively round his moving-picture camera as the train lurched to a stop. And in the viewfinder he saw the tall, thin man leaping towards him across the carriage, his Inverness cape flapping like the wings of a bat. There was only one more thing he could do.

Potter looked out of the window onto darkness, seeing nothing more than his own reflection. On this occasion the image was of perplexity.

‘Monsieur. Please, why have we stopped? There is no station.’

The elegantly dressed Parisian opposite, who had nearly been thrown into Potter’s lap by the motion of the train, brushed off the dust that had settled on his grey, fur-trimmed pilot coat from the rack above his head and smiled wearily. He explained with a resigned nod of his coiffured head that the train always stopped here.

‘It is for another train – where the lines cross. The driver knows he must stop, but it seems the signal always comes as a surprise to him. Hence the…’

A vague Gallic wave of his wrist finished the sentence, describing with a twirl of the fingers the abrupt stop to which they had come. Potter could well imagine that it would have thrown an unwary passenger facing the rear of the train out of his seat. He was glad his fellow traveller had braced himself, and done nothing more than steady himself with a hand on Potter’s knee.

It was as he settled back in his seat that he realised the Frenchman had said something quite important. Potter lunged for his travelling bag, and staggered to his feet just as he felt the train start up again. Under the astonished gaze of the man, he flung open the carriage door and dropped down into the darkness.