The Case of the 'Hail Mary' Celeste Page 9

  ‘I’ll do my best. What is it?’

  ‘If . . . if you love her, Jack, take my advice, don’t talk to her about trains all the time.’

  THE BOY’S OWN RAILWAY GOSLING ANNUAL

  Vol.VII 1931 Price: 1/-

  Replies to our readers’ letters

  CEDRIC OF DUNSTABLE—Your fishmonger is right: the driver (but not the fireman) of a mainline steam locomotive on the Great Western Region is permitted under certain circumstances to perform the marriage ceremony.

  LUCY J. OF MOTHERWELL— Ignore your brother and heed the wiser counsel of your cook. Pemmican is a form of concentrated foodstuff made from drying meat such as elk, moose and buffalo, and fortifying it with lard and other fats. Its purpose is solely intended for expeditions into perilous wildernesses. For your proposed journey to Devon we suggest fish paste sandwiches, sausage rolls, jellies and perhaps an apple.

  THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF RAILWAY GOSLING CADBURY HOLT – ON THE TRAIL OF THE MISSING NUNS!

  At the Feast of One-eyed Jheg

  After the feast was over and the dancing which went on into the early hours was spent, One-eyed Jheg turned to me and expounded upon the quest that had brought me thither. He assured me that the stories were untrue. It was not his brothers the noble Jhabra that had sold the English holy sisters into slavery, but those jackals and curse-ridden fiends from the deep south, the Alhaj’abhra. With each sentence One-eyed Jheg spat into the fire, which hissed like a snake. He said, ‘The Jhabra are Lords of the Sun, they do not enslave and sell the darlings of Allah into perpetual night.’ He, One-eyed Jheg, was there that day and had seen truly with both eyes for this was in the days before the claw of the desert lion took his right eye. With two young sharp eyes he witnessed the raid on the fort when the holy sisters came in search of their lost brethren. They were armed, he said, with Bergmann M15 machine guns, Luger side arms and a flame thrower. He pulled up the sleeve to reveal the withered burn tissue where the cruel fire had consumed his arm. ‘My friend,’ said One-eyed Jheg, ‘I tried to reason with them but they were possessed by the holy fire and refused to listen. They sacked our beautiful library and stole the Great Map that showed the source of the River Pishon.’ One-eyed Jheg threw down a creased black-and-white photo. It depicted a U-boat belonging to the Imperial German navy at anchor in a bay fringed with palm trees. U-33 it said on the conning tower.

  ‘This is how they arrived,’ he said. ‘In the dhow that swims like a fish. And in this the devil’s dhow, they took away the Great Map.’

  ‘The River Pishon?’ I said in disbelief.

  ‘Indeed!’

  ‘And a river went out of Eden to water the garden,’ I said, incanting the words that I had heard so many times as a boy, ‘and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pishon: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold . . .’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said One-eyed Jheg. ‘The River Pishon. The last undiscovered of the four rivers of Eden.’

  Chapter 8

  I returned to my office to find a message from Mr Dombey at the bookshop, Master Humphrey’s Clock. Mr Dombey said he had been contacted by a lady claiming to have a 1931 Railway Gosling annual for sale and who was due to visit his shop at four o’clock. It seemed too good to be true, but there was no way I could miss the opportunity and set out shortly after three. I arrived in plenty of time and decided to take a cup of tea in the café across the Square. A young lady with a Veronica Lake hairstyle stood just inside the door. She turned as I entered, took one look at me and said, ‘I knew it!’

  ‘Jenny! How funny to meet you!’

  ‘Oh yes!’ she said in a voice that sounded a bit harsh. ‘So funny I forgot to laugh.’

  ‘Is there something wrong? You seem a bit flustered.’

  ‘Of course not, it’s a trifle warm in here, it makes me go red. What brings you here?’

  ‘I was going to pay a visit to the cobblers.’

  ‘Oh, were you, indeed? You won’t get rid of me that easily.’

  ‘Get rid of you? In what way?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean. Don’t you come the innocent with me.’

  ‘But, Jenny—’

  Her eyes flashed and I took a step backwards and brushed against the arm of a lady who had been raising a cup of tea to her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You should be more careful,’ she said in a sour voice.

  ‘Yes, it was clumsy of me, I’m terribly sorry.’

  ‘Well, it’s too late saying that now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is your arm broken?’ said Jenny turning sharply. The lady looked at her arm and then thought better of herself.

  ‘No, of course not!’

  ‘It sounds like it, the fuss you are making. All he did was brush your arm.’

  ‘He jumped back very sharply. Look at the mess he’s made on the tablecloth.’

  ‘That’s what the tablecloth is for, isn’t it? To mop up spills.’

  ‘I’m just saying . . .’

  ‘Say it to me then, I’m the one who made him jump back.’

  I took Jenny gently by the arm. ‘Shall we go outside, it’s a trifle stuffy in here.’

  Outside on the square, Jenny pushed herself close to me and told me in no uncertain terms: ‘I don’t believe you are going to the cobblers. You are probably investigating the missing nuns and don’t want me tagging along.’

  ‘I really am just going to the cobblers.’

  ‘Which one? I’ll walk with you.’

  ‘As it happens, I think I might pop into the bookshop for a browse, I’m a bit early.’

  ‘Early? Do you have an appointment with your shoe mender?’ She sighed. ‘Jack, I know you are going to see the chap here about a lady with a 1931 Gosling annual.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’m the lady. I knew you were only pretending when you said you weren’t going to take the case. Let’s go in and ask about the thingybob plates.’

  No bell tinkled when we walked in, but the floor squeaked so loudly it was hardly necessary. The shop felt like the inside of a ship made of books. Timber beams rose from the floor, through piles of books, towards a ceiling of yellow plaster that bowed like a lumpy mattress. Wooden shelves rose up on every side forming avenues in a labyrinth of musty books. Every space had been filled, and papers and files of documents were wedged between the book tops and the shelves above. An old man sat hunched over a desk, with snow white hair reaching down to his shoulders. He wrote into a ledger with a fountain pen. It was clear he was aware of our presence, but he took his time, mumbling softly to himself as he wrote. He finished writing with a flourish and stabbed a full stop. Then he looked up. His face was entirely covered with surgical gauze, fixed in place with adhesive tape attached to his ears. There was a thin crack, like the opening to a pillar box, where his mouth should be, two holes in the covering for his nostrils, and two perfect ellipses for his eyes, which twinkled sadly within the darkness. He wore a pair of half-moon glasses balanced on the bandaged bridge of his nose.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’re looking for a Railway Gosling annual,’ said Jenny.

  ‘I have them all.’

  ‘The 1931 edition?’

  ‘Ah!’ He tutted. ‘Except that one.’

  ‘We’ve tried everywhere,’ she said.

  ‘Everyone has tried everywhere.’

  ‘The booksellers in London told us to come here.’

  He tutted again. ‘They really have no business saying that.’

  ‘They told us it was printed here,’ I said.

  ‘Did they indeed? I spy a great desperation in your face. Do you drink tea?’

  ‘Yes, I am very fond of tea.’

  ‘I couldn’t trust a man who was not. Wait!’ He ambled to the front of the shop and let the door off the latch. He turned the sign saying CLOSED to face the street and then passed to a tiny kitchen at the back. We heard the sound of a kettle being filled. We
waited. Once the tea was brewed he returned holding a tray with a pot, three cups and a plate of digestive biscuits. He placed the tray down unevenly upon the papers, causing the biscuits to slide off the plate.

  ‘Guess how long I have worked in this shop?’

  ‘Quite a long time I shouldn’t wonder,’ I said.

  ‘Have you ever devoted much study to the phantasma we call Time?’

  ‘Only in relation to the smooth operation of the railways.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I can see I was not wrong about you. The railways of course are responsible for the unification of time on our island. Before the railways, each town had its own time, worked out from the mayor’s sundial, and each town was different. Leeds was six minutes behind London, Bristol ten. Is it not so?’

  ‘So I understand.’

  ‘For a while railway station clocks had two minute hands, to register the different times, but that measure was but a halfway house. It was the electric telegraph that defined the modern age of unified time. As Charles Dickens said, it was as if the sun itself had surrendered to the Great Western Railway. The station clock is a marvellous instrument, but it represents a regrettable refusal to accept the most obvious truth about Time, namely that it is malleable. You wonder, perhaps, how long I have worked in this shop, but really you should wonder how long have I not worked here, and the answer I should give would be this: there is no time that I have not worked here. I was born upstairs in the room overlooking the square, I was cradled upstairs in the back room overlooking the foundry. I was schooled in the garret and receive my clothes through the post from a man who has never met me but adjusts the size according to the passage of the seasons. Would it surprise you to learn that I have only once left this shop? And that was in 1938 when I made a journey to London, during the course of which I lost my suitcase.’

  ‘I think I would be more than a little surprised to hear of that,’ I said.

  ‘I have never met anyone who wasn’t. Even when my dear sweet mother died, I did not leave the shop; and neither did she.’ He paused and considered, then said, ‘I need hardly tell you, of course, that no copies of the 1931 annual exist.’

  ‘But were they printed here?’ said Jenny.

  ‘Yes, they were printed upstairs under conditions of total secrecy, I wasn’t even allowed to peek. When the printing was finished it was taken away in an ambulance marked “St Ignis Fatuus Hospital”. Along with the galley proofs and the original manuscript. The printing press was smashed up with hammers. The ambulance returned, but the manuscript did not.’

  ‘What about the thingybob plates?’ said Jenny.

  ‘No thingybob plates were made.’

  ‘Why did they do this?’ I said. The man turned his palms to the sky and shrugged.

  ‘Who were they?’ said Jenny.

  ‘The people from Room 42.’

  ‘That doesn’t tell me much,’ said Jenny.

  ‘It’s not intended to.’

  ‘But where is the room?’

  ‘I am unable to say.’

  ‘You mean to say the whole print run was taken away?’ said Jenny.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘How many books did they print?’ I said.

  ‘Just one.’

  ‘That couldn’t have taken very long to print.’

  ‘It didn’t. Did I say it took a long time? No, I said no such thing.’

  ‘Why did they do this?’

  He stirred the tea and then poured. It was so dark it was almost the colour of ox blood.

  ‘You ask why but I think you already know why. Because the 1931 edition was written by the only Railway Gosling to go off in search of the nuns and succeed in finding them. Oh yes, do you think I could not tell what your business was? You are the chap from the railway station to whom I sent the note. It was a simple courtesy to inform you of this development, but the same courtesy requires me to confess that you are almost certainly wasting your time. I have no faith that the lady who telephoned me was bona fide. I get such calls from time to time. Perhaps it amuses them. Yes, I knew you straightaway. I have seen so many men come here seeking the solution to this the greatest of mysteries. Each one is like you, dressed in a long raincoat that seems woven from the same material they make shadows from; his hat pulled low and beneath the brim, along the rim of which raindrops cling, there is a darkness and gaunt and forlorn shade in which the eyes peer with a bright and demented intensity. Yes, I have seen that look many times in the visage of those who seek the missing Gosling annual. To each I have rendered whatever small assistance it was in my power to give, and each has made the promise and never kept it. So, why should you be any different?’

  ‘What is the promise?’ I asked.

  ‘That they will come back and tell me of their adventures.’

  ‘We’ll come back, won’t we, Jack?’ said Jenny.

  ‘Yes, you say that now, but everyone abandons me in the end. For a time I used to receive visits from that Cadbury Holt. He was quite a chap. He used to tell me stories about the Railway Goslings and his time at the orphanage.’ He tilted his head back slightly as if trying to recall, and then laughed. ‘He told me how he and another boy had been out looking for a boy who had run away. Instead of him, they found the vicar’s daughter down by the canal and –’ he chuckled softly – ‘they offered her three cigarettes to show them her drawers. And she did! Wait! I will fetch the book on Frau Troffea.’ He stood up and walked down one of the aisles to a bookcase at the back. He searched for a book and retrieved it with a small cough of triumph. As he did, Jenny stared pointedly at me, but I refused to look her way. I could tell without looking that she was grinning and no doubt found the story Mr Dombey had just told very droll.

  He returned and laid the book carefully on the desk. It was a leather-bound quarto, with gold edges on the pages and green mildew in the text. He searched carefully with a familiarity that suggested he had done this often. ‘Cast your mind back to 1518 if you will. Strasbourg. Ah yes, here, see!’ He laid his fingers as if in a caress on a woodcut of medieval peasants dancing in the street. ‘They dance! See! They called it the Dancing Plague or the Dance of St Vitus. In 1278 a bridge across the River Meuse collapsed under the weight of the dancers. In 1374 an outbreak began in Aix-la-Chapelle and spread to Cologne, Flanders, Franconia, Hainaut, Metz, Strasbourg, Tongeren and Utrecht. This is Frau Troffea. In July 1518 she began to dance. She could not stop, she danced all day and all night, all week. Soon she was joined by others, until by the end of the month there were more than four hundred. The priests fulminated against the depravity from the pulpit, physicians went among them, but nothing could stop it. They danced until their poor hearts gave way and they fell down dead in the dust. And see here, the Chronicle of Kleinkawel written in Strasbourg in 1625:

  Amidst our people here is come

  The madness of the dance.

  In every town there now are some

  Who fall upon a trance.

  It drives them ever night and day,

  They scarcely stop for breath,

  Till some have dropped along the way

  And some are met by death.

  ‘And they do not simply dance, they squeal and howl, as if in torment, they lash out and leap into the air.’

  ‘How does this relate to the nuns?’ said Jenny.

  ‘I was just coming to that.’ He turned a page. ‘Look! The Dancing Plague of Strasbourg is closely associated with an even more famous event, one that you will be familiar with from your schooling, namely the disappearance of more than a hundred children from the small German town of Hamelin in 1284, led by a mysterious piper in clothing that was . . . pied. Or piebald. Derived from the word for magpie. You see? Black and white, like a nun. Is that a coincidence? I think not. You must examine the legend of the Pied Piper. Three children were left behind. One because he was deaf and could not hear the instructions; one who was blind and could not follow; and one who was lame and could not keep up. There are always some left behind. You m
ust seek the nun who missed the boat. Or perhaps I should say “missed the train”.’

  ‘Did one miss the train?’ said Jenny.

  ‘Yes. Sister Beatrice.’ He turned to a page that held two newspaper cuttings. He handed the first to me. ‘The nuns were from the Lacrismi Christi convent in Povington. Sister Beatrice was left behind.’

  The clipping showed a photo of a nun with thick spectacles dominating her face, under the headline ‘Lucky escape for Sister Beatrice’. The story told how Sister Beatrice had responded to a call for astigmatic nuns to take part in a special top secret War Office mission. However, it transpired that she had been the victim of a clerk’s typing error and the call had, in fact, been for stigmatic nuns and so Sister Beatrice was rejected. She said she had been very disappointed at the time, and had always regarded her astigmatism as a burden, but now she gave thanks in her prayers every night for her deliverance and never ceased to marvel at the ways of the Lord.

  ‘El Greco was astigmatic, too,’ said Mr Dombey. ‘Although I have discovered no connection between these two facts.’ His voice became distant as he pondered that mystery. ‘And here, see!’ He pointed to the second cutting, which had a picture of a circus strongman flexing his biceps, wearing nothing but a paper fig leaf over his private parts. The headline read ‘Daughter of Russian Bear among missing nuns’. ‘You see? This is the famous Greco-Roman wrestler Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, from Estonia. They called him the Russian Bear. Before the First World War he used to wrestle five men a night and one bear. His daughter Ludo was a novice at the priory. They say she was the biggest nun the world has ever known.’

  We thanked Mr Dombey for his help and left. Outside the shop we stood and faced each other on the pavement.

  ‘I think we have a clue,’ said Jenny.

  ‘But, Jenny—’

  ‘It was my aunt and if you think you are going off looking for the nuns without me, you’ve got another thing coming. If you don’t want my help, I’ll just carry on on my own. I expect I’ll solve it before you.’