Blood From a Stone Read online

  ‘But these are beautiful,’ said Isabelle in bewilderment. She took the necklace in her hands and looked at the shimmering deep blue. The necklace consisted of sixteen stones, in an ornate heavy gold setting. The stones increased in size from the clasp, culminating in the principle stone, which hung by itself at the front. All the stones were beautiful but the principal stone was a deep, velvety blue. It was like looking into the ocean on a still, moonlit night. Almost instinctively, Isabelle ran her fingers over the stones.

  ‘They’re sapphires,’ said the man in the trench coat in a dried-up voice. He was obviously finding it hard to speak. ‘I saw them.’ He swallowed. ‘After I saw him.’

  He held out his hand for the necklace and Isabelle noticed that, although his cuffs were frayed, his hands were clean and well cared for. He ran the sapphires through his hands, twisting them so they caught the light. ‘They’re worth a lot of money.’ There was a catch in his voice, a longing, even reverent, note. ‘A dickens of a lot of money.’

  Isabelle suddenly understood. The glittering stones weren’t just stones to this man, but a home and food and freedom from want.

  I’d have been tempted to steal them, thought Isabelle, then saw the hungry look in his eyes. He did think of taking them, added Isabelle sympathetically to herself.

  With a reluctant shudder, he thrust them into Isabelle’s hand. ‘Sapphires are meant to be unlucky. They were certainly unlucky for him.’ His voice broke as he said it. ‘Poor devil.’ He glanced down at Agathe. ‘She seems all right, doesn’t she? I was worried about her seeing that,’ he added, jerking his thumb in the direction of the compartment.

  ‘I don’t think she realised what had happened,’ said Isabelle. ‘She was more interested in the jewels. I’d better take her back to her mother.’

  ‘Isn’t she your little girl?’ asked the man. He eyed up Isabelle’s fashionable coat and wide-brimmed hat with a puzzled frown. ‘You’re not her governess or anything, are you?’

  ‘Good heavens, no. She’s French.’ She indicated the compartment behind them with a tilt of her head. ‘Little Agathe’s brother ran slap into that poor man in there – at least, I think it was him – and Madame Clouet, Agathe’s mother, couldn’t apologise properly in English. That man obviously couldn’t understand French, so I stepped in to help as best I could and got roped in for the rest of the journey.’ She bent down to Agathe. ‘Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go back to Mummy. Laisse le retour à la Maman, oui?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you wait?’ asked the man. ‘I expect all sorts of people will want to ask us questions about what happened. I’ve never been caught up in this sort of thing before but I imagine that’s the drill.’

  ‘I’ll be back. I’m Mrs Stanton, by the way. Isabelle Stanton.’

  ‘My name’s Duggleby. Leonard Duggleby.’ He gave a humourless laugh. ‘I’m a journalist, or, at least, I try to be.’

  Isabelle nodded towards the compartment. ‘You should find something to write about there.’

  Leonard Duggleby closed his eyes and clapped his hand to his mouth. For a moment Isabelle thought he was going to be sick. ‘I suppose so,’ he said at last. ‘It’s beastly though, isn’t it? I don’t know if I can do it.’ He grasped the window-frame for support. ‘I don’t think I can write about it. It’s horrible.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Isabelle gently. ‘You’ll feel better once the shock’s worn off. I’d better get Agathe back to her mother but I’ll be back soon.’

  In the event, it was a good ten minutes before Isabelle returned. The corridors were crowded with passengers in various degrees of irritation and she had to find enough French to give Mme. Clouet an idea of what had happened. She couldn’t possibly describe what had happened. That was far too horrible, so she compromised by saying there’d been an accident – which was true enough – before threading her way back along the train.

  She was greeted with frank relief by Leonard Duggleby who was besieged by the ticket inspector, guard and driver. He broke off with as she came into the coach. ‘There you are, Mrs Stanton!’

  ‘You didn’t ought to have gone, Mum,’ said the ticket inspector disapprovingly. ‘The police will have to know about this and it didn’t look right.’

  ‘We were about to search the train for you,’ added the guard. He looked grim and shaken. ‘Have you told anyone about this?’

  Isabelle shook her head. ‘I said there’d been an accident, but I didn’t give the details, of course.’

  The guard, the driver and the inspector swapped looks. ‘It’s a bit more than an accident,’ said the guard heavily. ‘He was murdered.’

  Isabelle gaped at him speechlessly.

  The inspector shook his head. ‘He can’t have been, Sam. Not on our train.’ His voice was pleading.

  ‘He’s got a knife through his ribs,’ said the guard shortly. ‘I saw it,’ he added. ‘I got him back inside and I saw it.’

  There was silence for a few moments, then the driver sighed heavily. ‘What next, Sam?’ he asked the guard. ‘You’re officially in charge, but we can’t keep the train stopped for much longer. It’s blocking the line.’

  The guard took off his cap and rubbed a hand through his sparse hair. ‘I think you’re right. I don’t know what to do, and that’s God’s own truth. We’d better take her on to Turnhill Percy and telephone the police from there.’

  ‘Turnhill Percy?’ questioned the ticket inspector. ‘We don’t stop at Turnhill Percy, Sam. What about the timetable?’

  ‘The timetable’s up the spout good and proper, Arnold. You can’t worry about timetables with a murder on our hands. That’s gone west, good and proper.’ He looked at Isabelle. ‘The police will want to talk to you, Miss. To all of us, I suppose.’

  ‘We’d better get on,’ said the driver. ‘The police will know what to do.’

  He opened the door and, with a grunt, clambered down onto the track and crunched his way along the line back to his cab.

  A few minutes later there was a shout from the driver’s cab, a noisy whoosh of steam followed by a blast on the whistle, and the train chugged on its interrupted way to Turnhill Percy.

  FOUR

  Flanked by two uniformed police constables and a sergeant, Inspector William Rackham stood by the gate of platform four, Charing Cross station. He raised a hand in greeting as Arthur Stanton and Jack Haldean walked through the barrier.

  ‘Thanks for meeting us, Bill,’ said Jack, raising his voice above the noise of the station.

  ‘It’s a pleasure. It’s a bit tough on your wife, Stanton, being caught up in something like this. Was she very upset?’

  ‘She said she was all right in her telegram,’ said Arthur, ‘but you know what Isabelle’s like. She doesn’t like to make a fuss.’

  Isabelle had telegrammed Arthur from the station master’s office in Turnhill Percy. Arthur telephoned Jack and Jack immediately contacted his old friend, Bill Rackham, who, after talking to Sir Douglas Lynton, the Assistant Commissioner, was despatched to Charing Cross.

  ‘It sounds,’ said Jack, ‘a horribly messy sort of murder.’

  ‘I understand it was,’ agreed Bill. ‘It doesn’t sound as if there’s much of what you might call the doings inside the compartment, but the bloke is plastered fairly liberally across the coachwork and window.’

  ‘That,’ said Jack, drawing his breath in sharply, ‘is revolting. It makes you realise the thinking behind those notices you get on the train. Passengers Must Not Lean Out Of The Window. Granted that our victim is spread across a fair bit of Sussex, I don’t suppose the Railway Police have identified him, have they?’

  ‘No, they haven’t. They’re leaving that to us, God bless’ em.’

  ‘Whose responsibility is it to investigate the murder?’ asked Jack curiously.

  Bill clicked his tongue. ‘That’s a nice question. Strictly speaking, the Railway Police have the authority, but they’re more than happy to hand it over to us at the Yard. Their chief concern is to en
sure the railway runs smoothly. They can deal with most incidents, but a murder investigation is a bit more than they want to bite off.’

  ‘So you’re in charge?’

  ‘When the train arrives, I will be. Ideally, I’d like to have had the coach uncoupled and all the passengers detained at Turnhill Percy, but it wasn’t practical, I’m afraid. Turnhill Percy is a one-horse place with a single platform and no facilities to speak of, so they kept the compartment coupled to the train. The police sealed off the compartment, stuck a canvas sheet over the outside, took a note of the names and addresses of everyone who was on the train and that’s about it.’

  ‘Couldn’t the murderer have left the train before the police did their headcount?’ asked Jack. ‘I think I might be tempted to make a jump for it if I found myself with a corpse on my hands.’

  ‘He might have done,’ agreed Bill. ‘An examination of the tickets will tell us if there’s any tickets issued that can’t be accounted for. The Railway Police don’t have a great many options. We can’t detain people indefinitely while we ponder over the niceties of who did what. I imagine there’ll be enough complaints for the railway company to deal with as it is. There’s a limit to how long a train can block the rails.’

  ‘Do you know when it happened?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Just after West Hassock, apparently. The passengers – including Isabelle – felt a terrific jerk just before the train ran under the West Hassock road bridge. The Railway Police checked the permanent way back from where the communication cord was pulled and found fairly unmistakable evidence on the wall of the bridge. That means we’ve got a definite time for the murder, which is something, I suppose.’

  ‘A definite time for when the bloke got his head knocked off, anyway,’ said Jack thoughtfully. ‘Not that there’s any reason to think there’s much difference. The murderer wouldn’t want

  to hang around with his victim longer than he could help.’

  ‘Do you know when the train’s due?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘It should be here soon,’ said Bill Rackham with a glance at the clock. ‘The railway people said it shouldn’t be long.’

  As if on cue, there was a deafening squawk from the public address system above their heads as the arrival of the delayed Two Fifteen from Hastings was announced, followed by a series of puffing wheezes as the train grunted its way into the station. There was a final burst of steam, a long sigh from the air brakes, and then, with a slamming of doors, the passengers alighted.

  Two of Rackham’s constables walked down the length of the train and took up guard beside a compartment draped with a green canvas sheet. After listening to Bill’s account of the murder, Jack was heartily glad it was covered.

  A uniformed police inspector stepped down from the train and, extending his hand, helped Isabelle onto the platform. A tall man in a shabby trench coat alighted next, followed by two Railway Police constables.

  ‘Isabelle!’ called Arthur, striding towards her.

  Isabelle’s shoulders sagged in relief.

  ‘I’m so glad to see you,’ she said, kissing him on the cheek. ‘Poor Arthur, you must’ve been worried silly when you got my telegram.’

  She turned to the inspector beside her. ‘Inspector Whitten, this is my husband, Captain Stanton, my cousin, Major Haldean, and this is Inspector Rackham of Scotland Yard. And this,’ she added, turning to the man in the trench coat, ‘is Mr Leonard Duggleby.’

  Jack rather liked the look of Duggleby. He had a lean, scholarly face, dark hair flecked with grey at the temples, mild blue eyes and a hesitant, slightly shy, manner.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Duggleby. ‘I could wish the circumstances were different, though. I didn’t,’ he added with an ironic lift of his eyebrows, ‘intend to get caught up with the police.’

  ‘I hope we won’t have to detain you for very long, Mr Duggleby,’ said Bill in a reassuring sort of way. ‘We appreciate your help.’ He raised his voice to carry over the clamour of the disgruntled group of passengers who had formed a knot round the harassed official at the gate. ‘Have you any urgent business you need to attend to?’

  ‘Unfortunately, no. I only wish I had.’

  ‘I wish those people were as cooperative,’ muttered Rackham. He jerked his head in the direction of his sergeant. ‘Sort that lot out, will you?’

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said the sergeant. He strode forward accompanied by the two constables. ‘Move along there, ladies and gentlemen,’ he intoned in an official bellow. ‘Move along there, please!’

  ‘It’s an absolute disgrace!’ thundered a lady in a feathered hat and a black-beaded dress to the accompaniment of rumbled support from her fellow travellers. ‘Not only has our journey been disrupted, we have been compelled – yes, compelled – to give our names to the police!’

  ‘Shockin’, I call it,’ agreed a bowler-hatted tradesman, hooking his thumbs into his expansive braces.

  ‘Absolutely,’ fumed a man who looked like a bank manager, emphasising his point by striking his furled umbrella on the floor. ‘Outrageous!’

  Mme. Clouet favoured everyone with an outburst in French, bewailing her late arrival. Isabelle broke away from Inspector Whitten to retrieve a straying Michel and presented him back to his mother. ‘That poor woman,’ she said, with a grin to Arthur. ‘She’ll never want to get on a train again.’

  ‘Come on, ladies and gentlemen,’ intoned the constable in a patient way. ‘The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll be home.’

  A bright-looking man in wire-rimmed spectacles stopped by the other side of the gate. ‘I say, what’s happened?’

  ‘Hades,’ groaned Bill. ‘That’s Burgess of the Monitor. That’s all we need.’

  Burgess had caught sight of Jack beyond the barrier. ‘Haldean! What’s the story?’

  ‘It’s too long to explain,’ called Jack. ‘I’ll catch up with you later.’

  ‘There’s been an incident on the train,’ said Bill soothingly. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  The feather-hatted lady looked at him in acute disgust. ‘Since when has murder been nothing to worry about, young man?’

  ‘Murder?’ echoed Burgess in delight.

  ‘Get these people off the station,’ said Bill in tight restraint to the sergeant. ‘Now.’ He turned to a man in railway uniform who edged his way through the throng.

  ‘Inspector Rackham? We’re going to shunt the compartment with the body in it over to the sidings.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Bill and plunged into a discussion of details.

  Beyond the barrier, Burgess, notebook in hand, had buttonholed a group of passengers.

  ‘I ought to be doing that,’ said Duggleby to Jack, looking wistfully at the busy Burgess. ‘Interviewing the passengers, I mean. I’m a journalist,’ he added, in response to Jack’s enquiring look.

  ‘Freelance?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Very free, unfortunately.’ His rather melancholy face lightened. ‘You’re Jack Haldean, the author, aren’t you? Mrs Stanton told me about you and I could see you knew that reporter. I suppose I’d better try and write something but I can’t tell you how beastly it was. It’d be different if I wasn’t involved.’

  ‘You might as well give it a go,’ said Jack. ‘A first-hand account of discovering a murder must be worth something.’ He paused. ‘You did discover the body, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Duggleby gloomily. ‘I suppose that means I’m suspect number one, but all I actually did was walk into a railway compartment.’

  Bill, accompanied by Inspector Whitten, walked back along the platform to them. ‘I suppose I should be grateful to Burgess,’ Bill said with a laugh. ‘All the passengers are pouring out their woes to him, which lets me off the hook for the time being, at least. Mr Duggleby, if I can take your statement, one of my constables will accompany you back home.’

  ‘I can make my own way home,’ began Duggleby, then stopped. ‘You’re checking up on me, aren’t you?’ Bill didn’t reply. �
�Do you think I murdered him?’ he asked wearily. His mouth quivered. ‘If you knew me, you’d realise I simply couldn’t do it. Even if I wanted to, I’d be bound to make a hash of it. I can plan things but something always goes wrong. Like journalism,’ he added, with a wistful look at the crowds surrounding Burgess.

  That, thought Jack, showed an uncomfortable degree of self-knowledge. Duggleby struck him as a man who would be a fish out of water in the hurly-burly of Fleet Street.

  ‘You’ll appreciate there’s a routine to follow in a case of this sort, sir,’ said Bill smoothly. ‘The railway authorities have placed a room at our disposal, so if I could trouble you to come along, we’ll get it over and done with as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Bill,’ broke in Isabelle. ‘Have you got the jewels? The jewels that were on the train?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said Rackham. ‘Inspector Whitten’s just given them to me.’ He put a hand in his jacket pocket and drew them out. ‘That’s an interesting little collection to find kicking about on the floor of a railway carriage.’

  ‘Good God!’ Jack took the sapphires from Bill’s outstretched hand and looked at them wonderingly.

  ‘Nice, aren’t they?’ said Bill. ‘Especially if they’re real.’

  ‘They’re real enough,’ broke in Duggleby. ‘I used to work for a jeweller. They’re absolute beauties.’

  ‘Where on earth did they come from?’ asked Arthur, wonderingly.

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Isabelle excitedly. ‘I’ve got an idea. Jack, you know Celia Leigh, don’t you?’

  ‘Celia? Of course I do.’

  Isabelle hesitated. Jack had been rather smitten with Celia Leigh at one time and she felt she might be on dodgy ground.

  He seemed to know what she was thinking, because he suddenly grinned. ‘There’s no need to look like a stuffed frog. I’m not going to break down and start sobbing at the mention of her name.’ He turned to Bill. ‘Old girlfriend,’ he said in explanation. ‘She’s engaged to Ted Marchant, isn’t she, Belle?’