Abigail Browining - Murder Most Merry

“Do you think it’s warmer farther up the train?”

“Want me to look?”

Jim slid aside the door. Before starting along the corridor, he joked, “If I’m not back in half an hour, send for Miss Marple.”

“No need,” said Fran. “I’ll find you in the bar and mine’s a hot cuppa.”

She pressed herself into the warm space Jim had left in the corner and rubbed a spy-hole in the condensation. There wasn’t anything to spy. She shivered and wondered if she’d been right to trust her hunch and come on this trip. It was more than a hunch, she told herself. It was intuition.

It wasn’t long before she heard the door pulled back. She expected to see Jim. or perhaps the man who checked the tickets. Instead, there was a fellow about her own age. twenty-five, with a pink carrier bag containing something about the size of a box file. “Do you mind?” he asked. “The heating’s given up altogether next door.”

Fran gave a shrug. “I’ve got my doubts about the whole carriage.”

He took the corner seat by the door and placed the bag beside him. Fran took stock of him rapidly, hoping Jim would soon return. She didn’t feel threatened. but she wasn’t used to these old-fashioned compartments. She rarely used the trains these days except the tube occasionally.

She decided the young man must have kitted himself in an Oxfam shop. He had a dark-blue car coat, black trousers with flares, and crepe-soled ankle boots. Around his neck was one of those striped scarves that college students wore in the sixties, one end slung over his left shoulder. And his thick, dark hair matched the image. Fran guessed he was unemployed. She wondered if he was going to ask her for money.

But he said, “Been up to town for the day?”

“I live there.” She added quickly. “With my husband. He’ll be back presently.”

“I’m married, too.” he said, and there was a chink of amusement in his eyes that Fran found reassuring. “I’m up from the country, smelling the wellies and cowdung. Don’t care much for London. It’s crazy in Bond Street this time of year.”

“Bond Street?” repeated Fran. She hadn’t got him down as a big spender.

“This once.” he explained. “It’s special, this Christmas. We’re expecting our first, my wife and I.”

“Congratulations.”

He smiled. A self-conscious smile. “My wife. Pearlie—that’s my name for her—Pearlie made all her own maternity clothes, but she’s really looking forward to being slim again. She calls herself the frump with a lump. After the baby arrives. I want her to have something glamorous, really special. She deserves it. I’ve been putting money aside for months. Do you want to see what I got? I found it in Elaine Ducharme.”

“I don’t know it.”

“It’s a very posh shop. I found the advert in some fashion magazine.” He had already taken the box from the carrier and was unwrapping the pink ribbon.

“You’d better not. It’s gift-wrapped.”

“Tell me what you think,” he insisted, as he raised the lid, parted the tissue, and lifted out the gift for his wife. It was a nightdress, the sort of nightdress, Fran privately reflected, that men misguidedly buy for the women they adore. Pale-blue, in fine silk, styled in the empire line, gathered at the bodice, with masses of lace interwoven with yellow ribbons. Gorgeous to look at and hopelessly impractical to wash and use again. Not even comfortable to sleep in. His wife, she guessed, would wear it once and pack it away with her wedding veil and her love letters.

“It’s exquisite.”

“I’m glad I showed it to you.” He started to replace it clumsily in the box.

“Let me,” said Fran, leaning across to take it from him. The silk was irresistible. “I know she’ll love it.”

“It’s not so much the gift,” he said as if he sensed her thoughts. “It’s what lies behind it. Pearlie would tell you I’m useless at romantic speeches. You should have seen me blushing in that shop. Frilly knickers on every side. The girls there had a right game with me, holding these nighties against themselves and asking what I thought.”

Fran felt privileged. She doubted if Pearlie would ever be told of the gauntlet her young husband had run to acquire the nightdress. She warmed to him. He was fun in a way that Jim couldn’t be. Not that she felt disloyal to Jim, but this guy was devoted to his Pearlie, and that made him easy to relax with. She talked to him some more, telling him about the teaching and some of the sweet things the kids had said at the end of the term.

“They value you,” he said. “They should.”

She reddened and said, “It’s about time my husband came back.” Switching the conversation away from herself, she told the story of the mysterious invitation from Miss Shivers.

“You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “Believe me, you are.”

Suddenly uneasy for no reason she could name, Fran said, “I’d better look for my husband. He said I’d find him in the bar.”

“Take care, then.”

As she progressed along the corridor, rocked by the speeding train, she debated with herself whether to tell Jim about the young man. It would be difficult without risking upsetting him. Still, there was no cause really.

The next carriage was of the standard Intercity type. Teetering toward her along the center aisle was Jim, bearing two beakers of tea, fortunately capped with lids. He’d queued for ten minutes, he said. And he’d found two spare seats.

They claimed the places and sipped the tea. Fran decided to tell Jim what had happened. “While you were getting these,” she began—and then stopped, for the carriage was plunged into darkness.

Often on a long train journey, there are unexplained breaks in the power supply. Normally, Fran wouldn’t have been troubled. This time, she had a horrible sense of disaster, a vision of the carriage rearing up, thrusting her sideways. The sides seemed to buckle, shattered glass rained on her, and people were shrieking. Choking fumes. Searing pain in her legs. Dimly, she discerned a pair of legs to her right, dressed in dark trousers. Boots with crepe soles. And blood. A pool of blood.

“You’ve spilt tea all over your skirt!” Jim said.

The lights came on again, and the carriage was just as it had been. People were reading the evening paper as if nothing at all had occurred. But Fran had crushed the beaker in her hand—no wonder her legs had smarted.

The thickness of the corduroy skirt had prevented her from being badly scalded. She mopped it with a tissue. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me— I had a nightmare, except that I wasn’t asleep. Where are we?”

“We went through Reading twenty minutes ago. I’d say we’re almost there. Are you going to be okay?”

Over the public-address system came the announcement that the next station stop would be Didmarsh Halt.

So far as they could tell in the thick mist, they were the only people to leave the train at Didmarsh.

Miss Shivers was in the booking hall, a gaunt-faced, tense woman of about fifty, with cropped silver hair and red-framed glasses. Her hand was cold, but she shook Fran’s firmly and lingered before letting it go.

She drove them in an old Maxi Estate to a cottage set back from the road not more than five minutes from the station. Christmas-tree lights were visible through the leaded window. The smell of roast turkey wafted from the door when she opened it. Jim handed across the bottle of wine he had thoughtfully brought.

“We’re wondering how you heard of us.”

“Yes, I’m sure you are,” the woman answered, addressing herself more to Fran than Jim. “My name is Edith. I was your mother’s best friend for ten years, but we fell out over a misunderstanding. You see. Fran. I loved your father.”