Bodies from the Library 4, page 33
Edna felt her temperature rushing up as though she were in a furnace. Everyone considered her slightly mad and found her antics a funny spectacle. Mocking eyes followed her as she stormed the restaurant car.
The professor sat in interested conversation with the vulture-headed man while Carr listened. When he saw Edna he looked up with a slight frown.
‘I must tell you something,’ she cried. ‘I’ve discovered that there’s a conspiracy against Miss Bird. We’ve got to help her because she’s English like ourselves. Do listen.’
The professor heard her story in stony silence and then he raised his brows interrogatively to the man with the piercing eyes. He nodded agreement when the other made some rapid explanation.
‘Will you take some advice, offered in a friendly spirit?’ asked the professor, speaking to Edna as though to a fractious child. ‘This gentleman is a famous Russian alienist, and he is of the opinion that you may be, temporarily, very slightly deranged, as a result of your sunstroke.’
‘D’you mean mad?’ cried Edna in horror. ‘Me?’
‘Nothing to be frightened of, in the least,’ the professor assured her. ‘But he is not quite happy about your safety since you are alone. If you cannot keep quiet he may think it necessary to send you to a nursing home at Milan in your own interests until he can communicate with your friends.’
‘He can’t do that to me,’ screamed Edna as England suddenly seemed very far away. ‘I’m going home. I should resist.’
‘Violence would be most unwise. Don’t you understand? You have only to keep calm, and everything will be all right.’
The professor was not so inhuman so he appeared. He believed Edna to be a neurotic specimen who was telling lies from love of sensation.
He thought he was acting for the best and had no idea of the hell of fear into which he plunged her. White to her lips, she staggered into the adjoining restaurant car, where she shrank into the farthest corner.
She dared not go back to her own compartment, because she was afraid of everyone there. The whole world seemed roped into a league against her sanity. Lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers, she tried to realize her position.
Suspicious of everyone, she imagined the alienist might be in league with the baroness, and, if she persisted in her charges, he would send her to a home in Milan.
Any opposition on her part would only be used as evidence against her, and she might be kept imprisoned until she really crashed under the strain. It would be some time before she was missed, as her friends would imagine that she was still abroad.
She knew that Miss Bird existed, and that she had been tampered with; but her rescue presented a hopeless proposition. Utterly worn out and paralysed with fear, Edna slipped into the trough of lost hopes.
She closed her eyes wearily and let herself drift on the choppy current of the train’s frantic rhythm.
She was recalled to reality by a friendly voice, and she looked up to see Carr smiling at her.
‘I’ve been thinking over “The Strange Disappearance of Miss Bird”,’ he said. ‘If you like, I’ll tell you how it could be done. But first—when you came on the train, was there one nun next door to you, or two?’
‘One.’
‘And now there are two.’
‘I know. But the other might have been somewhere else in the train. There’s such a jam in the corridors.’
‘Good,’ declared Carr triumphantly. ‘No one would be likely to notice them. Now, we’ll assume your little lady has got up against the High Hat—and it’s true about the feudal system being still in force in these remote places. So she’s got to be bumped off. And what better way than on a railway journey?’
‘Do you mean—they’re thrown her on the rails in a tunnel?’ asked Edna faintly.
‘Lord, no. Her body would be found and awkward questions asked. What I meant was that a lot of valuable time will be wasted before it’s proved she’s missing. Her people will think she’s lost a connection or is stopping for a few days in Paris. Even if they are influential and know the ropes, the trail will be cold by the time they get busy.’
‘And they’re old and helpless,’ said Edna.
‘Bad luck. In any case, when they make inquiries locally they’ll find themselves up against a conspiracy of silence … This would be a natural matter of tradition and policy. But I believe the baroness, the doctor and the two nuns are the only people in the plot. All the other passengers are local folk who would back up the baroness as a matter of course. There’s no doubt, though, there was dirty work at the crossroads over her reserved seat, so as to force her into the baroness’s compartment, which is at the end of the train and next door to the doctor.’
‘But what’s happened to her?’ asked Edna faintly.
‘My theory is that she’s lying in the next compartment to yours, covered up and disguised with bandages and trimmings. You were an unwelcome interloper, but when you obligingly went to sleep Miss Bird was asked to render some slight service to their invalid, and I’m sure she would go like a bird.’
‘Yes,’ nodded Edna. ‘I’m positive she would.’
‘There you are, then. Directly she entered she was gripped and gagged by two of them while a third gave her an injection. When she was unconscious they bandaged her up roughly and stuck plaster all over her face to disguise it. Then the false patient, who was already dressed in uniform, would only have to put a veil over her bandages, which would look like the proper bands, and peel off her own strip to look the perfect nun.’
‘And—when they reach Milan?’ asked Edna fearfully.
‘I’m afraid the betting is she’ll be taken in an ambulance to some lonely place near a river … But she’ll know nothing of it. They’ll keep her unconscious all the time.’
Edna sprang to her feet.
‘We must do something at once,’ she cried.
‘Listen to me.’ Carr pulled her back to her seat. ‘All this is only my idea; because I was suspicious of the way the invalid is on view in order to show all is above board. If it was genuine illness I am sure they’d pull down the blind … But, remember, it is impossible to prove it.’
‘But why? Why?’
‘Because it may be a real patient. We can’t insist on examining her bandages to see if they are wound on or in correct surgical manner, or rip off her plaster to spy her face. We might start the wound bleeding and she might pass out. We can’t risk years in quod for manslaughter.’
Edna fought against his restraining arm, but he continued to hold her.
‘Don’t start anything mad,’ he said. ‘The truth is I can’t forget your sunstroke. I just showed you how things might be done. But I’m like the old lady who saw a giraffe for the first time. I don’t believe it.’
The passengers for the first dinner began to stream into the car. Feeling that food would choke her, Edna was driven out into the corridor. When Carr spoke to her she turned on him in a fury.
‘Go away. I hate you.’
After an age-long struggle through two sections of the train where the connecting passages seemed clanking iron concertinas, in which she might be caught and pressed to death, she realized that she was near to her own compartment. The brainstorm, whose symptoms the alienist had detected, now swept over in full force, so that she lost her sense of identity and actually changed places with Miss Bird.
She thought she was bound, gagged, helpless—unable to cry out or move a finger—surrounded with cruel enemies, awaiting a hideous end.
‘I must find her,’ murmured Edna confusedly.
Her fingers were touching the handle when the door opened and the doctor came into the corridor. His face looked like white wax above the blotch of his black heard, and his eyes, magnified by his glasses, were dark, muddy pools.
‘Is madame better?’ he asked.
At the sight of him Edna grew afraid. She nodded and looked out at the shrieking darkness rushing past the window. While the sinister doctor stood but a yard away she managed her own seat.
Very soon her mental and physical distress fused so that she lost all sense of time or space but seemed outside her own body, lying on the rails, while the engine drove remorselessly over her head. Clankety-clankety-clank. With every revolution of the wheels she felt a separate pang.
Her temperature rose until she was actually in a fever. Vivid pictures kept flickering before her eyes. Two old folk standing waiting in a lighted doorway. Ruff—blundering and eager eyed—waiting for the young mistress who would never come home.
They were getting near Milan. She could see scattered lights in the distance. In the conflicting reflections of the windows, walls and roofs appeared like quivering landscape and running water. She could hear movements in the next carriage. Luggage was lowered to the floor and voices called for service. The guard passed in the corridor, just as Carr came to the door.
‘We’re coming into Milan,’ he said.
‘Milan!’ As though the word were an electric needle stabbing a raw nerve Edna sprang to her feet, inflamed by a dynamic impulse. She acted with the blind delirium of fever. Ducking under the guard’s arm, she pushed into the next compartment, and—before anyone could guess her purpose—dug her fingers under the plaster, tearing it from the invalid’s face.
The guard gave a gasp of horror which sharpened into whistle of surprise as the adhesive strip peeled off. Instead of raw gashed flesh he saw the skin of a middle-aged woman.
‘Miss Bird,’ screamed Edna.
There followed a panic of noise and confusion, in which Edna felt herself pushed roughly on one side. At the same moment she went to bits, utterly exhausted by her supreme effort. Staggering back to her own seat she collapsed.
Shouts and sudden flashes of light told her that they were entering a large station, and she felt the jerk of the train as it stopped. The tumult in the next compartment seemed to increase … Then it died down … Other passengers entered her carriage. She heard the whistle of the engine and the slow clank of wheels as it steamed slowly on its way to Basle.
Very soon someone spoke to her, and she looked up into the eyes of an old and intimate friend who did not know her name.
‘I say, you,’ said Carr. ‘Everything’s O.K., and I’ve had the time of my life. The guard was immense and knew just what to do. The doctor and his little lot went like lambs. They know they’ll only have to stand for a charge of attempted abduction, and though the baroness sailed out—no connection—she’ll work it for them somehow. Wheels within wheels, you know.’
Edna was indifferent to their fate, one way or the other.
‘What happened to Miss Bird?’ she asked.
‘Responding to treatment, and all that. The alienist, who’s a frightfully decent chap, is looking after her, and she’ll soon be conscious. But she must stop at Basle and go on tomorrow. Will you break your journey to keep her company?’
‘Will you be there, too? Then I will.’
Suddenly Edna felt wondrously happy. At the beginning of her journey she had been bored with life and her wasted youth, but the agony of Miss Bird’s peril had wrought some change which seemed to be actually chemical. Her body felt composed of brand new cells—each tingling with the joy of life.
There was so much happiness in the world. Tomorrow would see the happiest of reunions. The carriage was crowded with fresh passengers, all shouting, smiling and gesticulating.
That night she slept like a log at Basle. When she entered the hotel restaurant the following morning, Miss Bird was taking café complet on the balcony which overhung the Rhine—green and sparkling in the sunlight. The little woman looked marvellously fresh, as though she had thriven on her experience.
‘I’m just making up my story to tell them at home,’ she said. ‘Mummy will be thrilled.’
‘Do you think it wise to tell her?’ asked Edna. ‘At her age it might be a shock.’
As Carr entered the restaurant and looked eagerly in their direction, Miss Bird gave Edna the conspiratorial look of one schoolgirl to another.
‘I’m not going to tell her that,’ she said. ‘No fear. She might forbid me travelling—and more things might happen abroad. No, I’m going to tell her all about your romance.’
ETHEL LINA WHITE
Ethel Lina White (1876–1944) was born in Wales; or rather in what is now Wales, as until 1972 Abergavenny was in the English county of Monmouthshire. It seems likely that White inherited her creativity from her mother’s side, as her father was a horticultural builder and general building contractor who made his fortune by inventing a radical new method of damp-proofing walls.
From childhood, White had written as a hobby, but it turned into a career after the family lost all its money during the First World War. After her mother died, White and her two sisters moved to London, where she eventually sold her first novel, The Wishbone (1927). The book owed something to Jane Eyre and her second, ’Twill Soon Be Dark (1929), was similarly in debt to Great Expectations. However, her third, The Eternal Journey (1930), was completely original: part satire, part fantasy, it deals with reincarnation and redemption.
White’s first attempt at crime fiction was Put Out the Light (1932) in which Anthea Vine, an unpleasant spinster, is murdered, possibly by one or all of her three young wards. In a prefatory note she explained that ‘Most stories of crime begin with a murder and end with its solution. But as the victim is the dominant character in this novel, she has been retained as long as possible.’ Pre-empting criticism that the murderer might be easy to identify, she went on: ‘Readers, therefore, may decide who is going to kill her before the murder is actually committed. They will probably reach the goal before the detective, who is built to last and not for speed.’ While it would be too much to say that White had a formula, she certainly had a particular style, similar to other writers of neogothic suspense and woman-in-peril stories like Mary Roberts Rinehart, although White’s heroines are more likely to say ‘Had-You-Believed-Me’ than ‘Had-I-But-Known’.
White’s other novels include several that were expanded from a short story: the creepy Wax (1935), whose plot revolves around a run-down waxworks; and The Man Who Loved Lions (1943), an extraordinary story of murder at a wartime reunion of ‘seven sullied souls’ in a private zoo. Another is The Wheel Spins (1936), which has been filmed multiple times, most notably by Hitchcock as The Lady Vanishes (1938), and continues to provide inspiration for modern films like Flightplan (2005).
The short story ‘Passengers’, which provided the basis for The Wheel Spins, was first published in North Carolina’s Raleigh News & Observer on 15 October 1933.
SIX MYSTERIES IN SEARCH OF SIX AUTHORS
In the mid-1930s, many national newspapers in Britain published short detective stories and serial mysteries, sometimes offering huge cash prizes as with John Chancelleor’s The Mystery of Norman’s Court (1923) and Anthony Berkeley’s The Wintringham Mystery (1926, reissued in 2021).
One of the most popular weekly newspapers was the Sunday Dispatch which, in 1938, commissioned two series of stories from the Crime Club, a publishing imprint created by the publishers William Collins. In his definitive and lavishly illustrated history of the Crime Club, The Hooded Gunman (2019), John Curran recounts how it evolved out of Collins’ earlier initiative, the Detective Story Club, to become the best known and longest-lived brand in crime and mystery fiction. Between 1929 and 1994, a total of 2,012 Crime Club books were published, including titles by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh and many of the biggest names of the genre.
The first series of six stories commissioned by the Sunday Dispatch was published in Volume 3 of Bodies from the Library, and included stories by Nicholas Blake, John Rhode and Ethel Lina White who, with the other three writers, were each asked to write a story on the basis of the same two-sentence plot.
For the second series, which appeared weekly between 17 April and 22 May 1938, six writers were challenged to write a short story around one of six curious drawings, which accompany the stories for their appearance in this volume. As a Sunday Dispatch journalist mused on introducing the stories, ‘What will these authors make of the strange clues on which they have been asked to build a complete short story?’
AFTER YOU, LADY
Peter Cheyney
Will you guys take a look at Rudy Scansa? This baby is a one hundred per cent he-man with all the side dishes.
His square name is Rudolfo Antonio Scancinella an’ he is a second-generation wop whose old man usta sell ice cream cones an’ think he was doin’ fine any time he got himself enough jack to eat two plates of spaghetti with cheese at one sittin’.
O.K. Well, Rudy is not all like that. He is tops in the big rackets an’ he has got three roadsters, a penthouse on Lakeside Drive, an’ dough stacked away in safe deposits in six different States.
Rudy is the boy all right. He has a lotta ambition an’ gets steamed up very easy, which a lot of guys could tell you about, only these guys are not talkin’ because they are all very nicely ironed out an’ buried. So they do not have to worry any more.
Rudy is also one hundred per cent with dames. He has a line that blondes fall for like they was bein’ hypnotized by an outsize in snakes. He has got black wavy hair, a long, handsome face, with sad eyes, an’ a nice mouth that sorta smiles all the time.
Because I gotta tell you that Rudy has got a grand sense of comedy an’ always sees the joke when the other guy gets bumped off.
It is ten-thirty one night an’ the town is just wakin’ up. Rudy is at the bar in the Club Carberry drinkin’ highballs an’ teachin’ the parrot some new words.
He looks up when Tony Rhio—who is Rudy’s collector for the North Side numbers swindle—eases in. Tony is not lookin’ so good.
‘Hey, hey, Tony,’ says Rudy. ‘How’s it comin’? What’s eatin’ you?’
