The Salisbury Manuscript (3 page)

Alerted by the sounds of pain, the black shape which had been startig to ascend the flank of the hill twisted back on itself. Even though the man on the ground could see nothing, he felt the eyes of the other boring into the spot where he lay. He’d betrayed himself. Now the shape started to descend the slope, almost bounding down, coming straight for him.

He put out his hands as if to ward off the figure but it continued to advance directly downhill towards the sprawling man, the knife seeming to cut a slice out of the starlit sky.

And, for the last time, another quotation from Ecclesiastes 11 passed through the man’s mind:
thou knowest not
what evil shall be upon the earth
.

The Side of Beef

When he changed trains at Woking, Thomas Ansell noticed that the gas lamps in the second-class compartment had recently been lit. As the train began to move, the mantles glowed orange then white and the smell of the lamps mingled with the engine-smoke that somehow penetrated even though the window was shut fast. An old woman was sitting across from him. She was reading the
Woman’s Journal
. Thomas Ansell had hardly glanced at his book until then but he took it up now only to find he didn’t want to concentrate. Instead he gazed out of the smeared glass at the lowering sky and the bare ridge of the horizon. Despite the fug of the compartment, he hunched his shoulders and almost shivered.

He had the compartment to himself after Andover. As they drew into the station the woman opposite glanced up at the heavy case over her head. He hefted it down from the rack and stepped out after her to place it on the platform. They hadn’t spoken on the short journey. In fact he’d taken in no more than a round face and a maternal smile. She thanked him and then said some words that sounded like ‘Good luck.’ Aware of the train puffing impatiently at his back, Ansell might nevertheless have asked the woman why he needed luck but her attention was taken by a porter who took her case. He climbed back into the carriage, unsettled by her parting remark. Perhaps she’d noticed that half-shiver. Perhaps he’d mis-heard her.

The train sidled along and the gloom turned thicker. Tom Ansell abandoned the attempt to read and tucked his book into a coat pocket. At once the train jerked forward and then, seeming to fall back on itself, came to a juddering halt. There was a ledge of paler sky to the west but even as Tom looked it went out with the swiftness of a shutter. Darkness rushed at the carriage from all sides. He listened for sounds from the other compartments but there was no noise apart from the groaning and creaking of the rolling stock and the malevolent hiss of the gas-lamps.

He brought his face closer to the glass. There were deep shadows under his eyes. Helen had told him that he was looking tired when he’d said goodbye to her earlier that day.

‘You must take care of yourself,’ she said, putting out her hand and stroking his cheek. ‘You will write to me.’

‘You speak as though I’m going off on some dangerous adventure for months at a time,’ he said, rather wishing that that was what he was doing. Setting off on an enterprise which had a smack of danger. But a lawyer does not do that kind of thing. There are no shipwrecks or undiscovered tribes among dusty files and volumes full of precedents.

But, sitting in the railway carriage as night came down, Tom Ansell experienced exactly that, a presentiment of danger. He might have rapped on the wall of the compartment for the comfort of some response from the other side, assuming there was anyone there, but the fear of appearing foolish – more in his own eyes than another’s – prevented him. Instead he made an effort to get into his book but it did not engage him. His eyes kept flicking towards the smeared reflection in the window. He imagined himself as Helen must see him. Dark-haired, long-faced, a little serious perhaps.

‘You must take care of yourself,’ she’d said again that morning, as he took the hand which had touched his cheek.

‘Oh, I will. And when I come back I’ll have something to ask you.’

‘Don’t be so coy, Thomas Ansell. Surely you can say it now?’

She wasn’t being serious, he could see by the mischievous twitch to her mouth.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t ask now. It demands a more . . . propitious moment. The evening, and a certain dimness and glow which will suit the occasion. The conversation.’

‘Very well. Though, if you want to spare my blushes, it’s dim enough now.’

She withdrew her hand from his and went to stand by the window. It was drizzling and the grey sky seemed to be fixed a few yards above the roofs opposite. A man and a woman came out of a house on the other side of Athelstan Road. The man urged the woman to shelter under his wide umbrella and they walked off together.

‘Is that an image of married life, do you suppose?’ said Helen, beckoning Tom to join her by the window.

‘How he walks on the outside to protect her from any splashes, even though there’s not much traffic here, how he raises the umbrella so that the woman shall be completely covered,’ said Tom. ‘Yes, it could be an image.’

‘But perhaps she doesn’t want to be sheltered, perhaps she would like to feel the rain on her face,’ said Helen. ‘And I know for certain that though the woman is Mrs Montgomery that is not Mr Montgomery.
He
always leaves early in the morning to go to his work in the City. Besides, he is stouter and older than the man who is escorting Mrs Montgomery now. Today is Wednesday and every Wednesday it is the same. The gentleman you’ve just seen arrives at her door and the pair of them set off together for . . . who knows what or where? They always return at about the same time, in the early afternoon. What have they been up to?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘And no interest in speculating about our neighbours? I can see that I’ve surprised you, Tom, and there you were thinking this was such a – such a salubrious area.’

‘You don’t spy on your neighbours, Helen?’

‘I do not set out to spy on them but I can’t prevent the servants telling me things and then, by chance, seeing them for myself. Besides it’s my duty to be curious.’

‘That couple must be innocent, surely? They wouldn’t appear so openly if there was anything to hide.’

‘What better way of diverting suspicion than by appearing openly?’ said Helen.

‘Well, it’s all grist to your mill,’ said Tom. ‘You can incorporate it into your writing. As you say, you almost have a duty to be curious.’

‘Ssh,’ said Helen, raising her finger to her lips. She blushed and Tom was pleased to see her lose her self-possession for a moment. ‘Do not mention that again or I shall regret revealing it you.’

Some time ago Helen had let slip that she was writing what she called a ‘sensation’ novel, involving an heiress who was cheated by a villain out of her property and abandoned by her husband-to-be and who was compelled to go to extreme lengths to recover both it and him. Tom was intrigued by this. He wondered just what the ‘extreme lengths’ would be. Yet every time he referred to the novel, Helen looked uncomfortable. In particular she did not want her mother to know what she was doing. Mrs Scott was a formidable woman, a bit dragonish. Tom could not work out how such a ferocious-looking lady was the parent of a girl like Helen. Now he said, ‘So what does your mother think that you are doing up in your room when you’re scribbling away?’

'
Scribbling
!’

‘Composing then. Writing. But what does she think you’re up to?’

‘Reading, or polishing up my French, or doing embroidery or something like that, I expect. But never writing. Tom, you are on no account to breathe a word to her.’

‘When will she know then?’

‘When I am published in three volumes and as famous as Mrs Braddon.
Then
my mother can know.’

‘Surely she ought to be aware she’s harbouring a genius under her roof?’

‘The time is not right, Tom, just as it isn’t right for . . . whatever it was you wanted to say to me. The
conversation
.’

He was tempted to tease her some more but seeing her expression he relented and delivered some guff about sealed lips, and in reward she stretched up and put her lips to his. He drew her closer. She was soft and her breath was sweet. But they were both aware of the door, not quite closed, and the probable nearness of servants, to say nothing of Mrs Scott herself. Besides, it was a grey morning with the drizzle coming down on Athelstan Avenue and the rest of Highbury, and Tom had to be on his way to Waterloo and before that he had to visit the office in Furnival Street to pick up some papers. So he broke away and promised to call again as soon as he’d returned to town.

Now, sitting in the train compartment, he thought of Helen in her room, scribbling (or rather composing) in solitude. He was almost sorry he’d teased her that morning. He resolved to take her more seriously. The train began to shuffle forward again and then picked up speed. Tom abandoned his book altogether, put it in his coat pocket and put his thoughts of Helen to one side too, in order to concentrate instead on his forthcoming business in Salisbury. ‘A strange business,’ David Mackenzie had called it, one requiring ‘tact and discretion’. Well, he’d see about that. Tom did not think he lacked for tact and discretion.

Fairly soon the train slowed once more and the wheels clacked over points. Looking out, Tom saw a platform gliding slowly past before coming to a complete halt. Fogshrouded lamps were burning overhead. If it hadn’t been that his compartment stopped almost opposite the sign announcing
Salisbury
with, in smaller lettering below,
Fisherton
he might have doubted where he was.

Tom Ansell hoisted his case from the rack and stepped on to the platform. It was the end of the line or, rather, anyone wishing to go further westwards had to change both trains and railway companies on account of the different gauges. Only a few people got out. A trio of porters had positioned themselves at the point where the first-class carriages drew up but none approached Tom, probably seeing that he was a youngish man and not carrying much luggage. Tom put down his suitcase and intercepted one of them. He asked whether it was far to the Poultry Cross. His inn was near the Poultry Cross, he’d been told. The porter said rapidly, ‘Half a mile at least, sir,’ before scurrying off to help a small elderly gentleman in a shovel-hat.

After the best part of two hours in stuffy train compartments, Tom felt his head needed clearing and would usually have chosen to walk such a short distance. But he had no idea of the layout of the city or the direction of the centre where, he presumed, the cathedral close must be. Nor, if he was being cautious, was it a very sensible notion to set off on foot during the dark and fog in a strange town in the region of a railway station, since stations were rarely built in what Helen might have called the salubrious area of a town.

He looked up and down the platform. Wisps of fog eddied under the glass roof. The platform opposite looked as distant as a foreign shore. No one lingered in the open. The windows of the waiting room and the refreshment room were fugged over. Porters and passengers were making for the ticket hall and the exit. There would be cabs outside the station to collect elderly gents and respectable matrons. Tom bent to pick up his case and noticed that the strap securing it had come undone. He crouched down and discovered that the strap had broken. It must have caught on the rack or the foot-plate. The strap was necessary because the lock was broken and the lock was broken because the case was old and battered. Good quality hide, it had belonged to his father and been made to last by Barrets, but it was showing its age now. His father had been dead many years.

Tom improvised a knot to the strap in place of the useless buckle. As he was crouching on the platform, there was a roar at his back and a flare of light and heat while the monstrous engine trundled past him, reversing out of the station. Tom straightened up and blinked as the smoke from the locomotive mingled with the fog.

When he looked around again he saw that he was alone on the platform.

Well, not quite alone. About twenty yards away, as far as he could see before the fog became an impenetrable curtain, a figure suddenly materialized from an unlighted area of the station buildings and rushed to the edge of the platform. Tom thought that it was about to throw itself off the edge but the figure – no more than a black silhouette – halted just before, seeming to teeter there like a suicide on the brink of a cliff. Tom opened his mouth to call out but something prevented him. He did not want to draw attention to his presence. He glanced in the opposite direction, down the line. The train was still puffing on its backward course. And, at once, Tom realized how absurd was the notion that this individual was about to commit suicide since you’d hardly throw yourself into the path of a train which was retreating from you. Nevertheless, he wished one of the station workers would appear and take charge of matters. If there were any matters to take charge of.

He glanced again at the black shape and the skin on his scalp begin to crawl as a
second
figure detached itself from the station offices and started a diagonal approach towards the person who was at the platform’s edge. This one didn’t rush but nor did he move normally. There was a creeping quality to his walking like that of a stage villain. No more than half a dozen paces separated the buildings from where the silhouette stood but it seemed to take an age for the second individual to cross this space. His arms were stretched out in front of him as if he were feeling his way in the gloom – or as if he were about to give a final push to the first man teetering on the brink. This time Tom did manage to call out. Afterwards he wasn’t sure exactly what he said. It might have been nothing more than a cry or a fog-strangled yelp. But it was enough.

The creeping figure stopped and turned his head in Tom’s direction. The silhouetted man already on the brink also swivelled sharply to his right and then looked over his shoulder. The movement was sufficient to unbalance him and, with a wild swirl of his arms, he toppled sideways on to the track. Now Tom sensed a movement behind him, a uniformed employee coming out of the ticket hall. Calling out, ‘A man’s fallen on the line!’ he ran to the spot. As he did so he was aware of the second figure, the one who’d been approaching slantwise, shrinking back into the darkness of the buildings.

When he reached the place where the man had plunged off the platform Tom looked down, expecting to see a blackclad figure lying on the track, injured, perhaps unconscious or even dead. But there was no one there, no one lying on or between the rails which glinted dully in the light.

‘What is the trouble, sir?’

‘I saw a man fall on to the line here.’

The railwayman adjusted his cap and came to stand next to Tom. Together they peered down as if a more careful scrutiny might reveal what hadn’t been apparent at first glance.