Cynthia Manson (ed) (4 page)

“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.”

Fran stiffened and turned to Jim. “I
don’t think we should stay.”

“Please.” said the woman, and she
sounded close to desperation, “we did nothing wrong. I have something on my
conscience, but it isn’t adultery, whatever you were led to believe.”

They consented to stay and eat the
meal. Conversation was strained, but the food was superb. And when at last they
sat in front of the fire sipping coffee, Edith Shivers explained why she had
invited them. “As I said, I loved your father Harry. A crush, we called it in
those days when it wasn’t mutual. He was kind to me, took me out, kissed me
sometimes, but that was all. He really loved your mother. Adored her.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said
Fran grimly.

“No, your mother was mistaken.
Tragically mistaken. I know what she believed, and nothing I could say or do
would shake her. I tried writing, phoning, calling personally. She shut me out
of her life completely.”

“That much I can accept,” said Fran.
“She never mentioned you to me.”

“Did she never talk about the train
crash—the night your father was killed, just down the line from here?”

“Just once. After that it was a
closed book. He betrayed her dreadfully. She was pregnant, expecting me. It was
traumatic. She hardly ever mentioned my father after that. She didn’t even keep
a photograph.”

Miss Shivers put out her hand and pressed
it over Fran’s. “My dear, for both their sakes I want you to know the truth.
Thirty-seven people died in that crash, twenty-five years ago this very
evening. Your mother was shocked to learn that he was on the train, because
he’d said nothing whatsoever to her about it. He’d told her he was working
late. She read about the crash without supposing for a moment that Harry was
one of the dead. When she was given the news, just a day or two before you were
born, the grief was worse because he’d lied to her. Then she learned that I’d
been a passenger on the same train, as indeed I had, and escaped unhurt. Fran,
that was chance—pure chance. I happened to work in the City. My name was
published in the press, and your mother saw it and came to a totally wrong
conclusion.”

“That my father and you—”

“Yes. And that wasn’t all. Some days
after the accident, Harry’s personal effects were returned to her. and in the
pocket of his jacket they found a receipt from a Bond Street shop for a
nightdress.”

“Elaine Ducharme,” said Fran in a
flat voice.

“You
know?
”

“Yes.”

“The shop was very famous. They went
out of business in 1969. You see—”

“He’d bought it for her,” said Fran,
“as a surprise.”

Edith Shivers withdrew her hand from
Fran’s and put it to her mouth. “Then you know about me?”

“No.”

Their hostess drew herself up in her
chair. “I must tell you. Quite by chance on that night twenty-five years ago. I
saw him getting on the train. I still loved him and he was alone, so I walked
along the corridor and joined him. He was carrying a bag containing the
nightdress. In the course of the journey he showed it to me, not realizing that
it wounded me to see how much he loved her still. He told me how he’d gone into
the shop—”

“Yes,” said Fran expressionlessly.
“And after Reading, the train crashed.”

“He was killed instantly. The side
of the carriage crushed him. But I was flung clear—bruised, cut in the
forehead, but really unhurt. I could see that Harry was dead. Amazingly, the
box with the nightdress wasn’t damaged.” Miss Shivers stared into the fire. “I
coveted it. I told myself if I left it, someone would pick it up and steal it.
Instead, I did.
I
stole it. And it’s been on my conscience ever since.”

Fran had listened in a trancelike
way. thinking all the time about her meeting in the train.

Miss Shivers was saying, “If you
hate me for what I did, I understand. You see. your mother assumed that Harry
bought the nightdress for me. Whatever I said to the contrary, she wouldn’t
have believed me.”

“Probably not,” said Fran. “What happened
to it?”

Miss Shivers got up and crossed the
room to a sideboard, opened a drawer, and withdrew a box—the box Fran had
handled only an hour or two previously. “I never wore it. It was never meant
for me. I want you to have it, Fran. He would have wished that.”

Fran’s hands trembled as she opened
the box and laid aside the tissue. She stroked the silk. She thought of what
had happened, how she hadn’t for a moment suspected that she had seen a ghost.
She refused to think of him as that. She rejoiced in the miracle that she had
met her own father, who had died before she was born—met him in the prime of
his young life, when he was her own age.

Still holding the box. she got up
and kissed Edith Shivers on the forehead. “My parents are at peace now. I’m sure
of it. This is a wonderful Christmas present,” she said.

I had called upon my friend Sherlock
Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing
him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple
dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of
crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the
couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and
disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several
places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair suggested that
the hat had been suspended in this manner for the purpose of examination.

“You are engaged,” said I; “perhaps
I interrupt you.”

“Not at all. I am glad to have a
friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial
one”—he jerked his thumb in the direction of the old hat—”but there are points
in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of
instruction.”

I seated myself in his armchair and
warmed my hands before his crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and
the windows were thick with the ice crystals. “I suppose,” I remarked, “that,
homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it—that it is
the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the
punishment of some crime.”

“No. no. No crime,” said Sherlock
Holmes, laughing. “Only one of those whimsical little incidents which will
happen when you have four million human beings all jostling each other within
the space of a few square miles. Amid the action and reaction of so dense a
swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take
place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and
bizarre without being criminal. We have already had experience of such.”

“So much so,” I remarked, “that of
the last six cases which I have added to my notes, three have been entirely
free of any legal crime.”

“Precisely. You allude to my attempt
to recover the Irene Adler papers,

to the singular case of Miss Mary
Sutherland, and to the adventure of the man with the twisted lip. Well, I have
no doubt that this small matter will fall into the same innocent category. You
know Peterson, the commissionaire?”

“Yes.”

“It is to him that this trophy
belongs.”

“It is his hat.”

“No, no; he found it. Its owner is
unknown. I beg that you will look upon it not as a battered billycock but as an
intellectual problem. And, first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon
Christmas morning, in company with a good fat goose, which is, I have no doubt,
roasting at this moment in front of Peterson’s fire. The facts are these: about
four o’clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a very honest
fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was making his way
homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a
tallish man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung
over his shoulder. As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out
between this stranger and a little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked
off the man’s hat, on which he raised his stick to defend himself, and swinging
it over his head, smashed the shop window behind him. Peterson had rushed
forward to protect the stranger from his assailants; but the man, shocked at
having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in uniform rushing
towards him, dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid the
labyrinth of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The
roughs had also fled at the appearance of Peterson, so that he was left in
possession of the field of battle, and also of the spoils of victory in the
shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable Christmas goose.”