The Salisbury Manuscript Read online

  ‘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 t
o 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.

  ‘A man on the line?’

  ‘Yes, down there.’

  ‘You are sure now, sir?’

  The porter, a lugubrious-looking fellow whose face expressed a natural scepticism before he’d even uttered a word, was standing close to Tom. He was only an inch or so less tall than the lawyer. He sniffed the air. Tom wondered if he was sniffing for drink.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said. ‘I know what I saw.’

  Tom spoke more sharply than he’d intended. He heard the tension in his voice and realized how much the incident had shaken him. The porter said, ‘Well, whatever happened, there’s no damage done, that’s plain. The person you saw must’ve upped and scarpered.’

  ‘He wasn’t alone, the man who fell, there was someone else on this part of the platform.’

  ‘Someone . . . else?’ said the other, drawing out the words. ‘This is a public place, sir. There is generally someone else.’

  ‘But this one was about to . . .’ Tom paused. He was getting nowhere. Gesturing at the closed doors and shuttered windows, he said, ‘What offices are these behind us?’

  ‘Storerooms and the like.’

  Tom had no authority to request a search of the rooms. No crime had been committed. The worst that had occurred was a minor accident, a man falling from the station platform but sufficiently unharmed to scramble up and disappear from the scene within a few seconds. And even that simple sequence of events was not credited by the railwayman.

  ‘Will that be all, sir?’ said the porter, scarcely bothering to conceal his impatience.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tom. ‘I am sorry to have troubled you.’

  ‘No trouble is too great for an employee of the London and South Western line,’ said the man, though without sounding as if he believed a word of it.

  Tom Ansell walked back to where his case stood, forlorn on the platform, with the improvised repair to its strap. He picked it up and went through the ticket hall. The entire business on the platform had scarcely occupied more than a couple of minutes. Some of the individuals who’d disembarked from the London train were still milling outside by a diminished line of cabs and carriages, even a cart or two (for this was the country). Among them was the porter he’d first spoken to, who was about to assist the elderly gentleman in the shovel-hat to climb into a cab, the last in the line.

  This passenger was fumbling in his coat to tip the porter before boarding but as he drew out his purse a shower of coins tumbled on to the ground. The man looked around helplessly while the porter crouched to scoop them up. The cabman surveyed the scene from his perch behind his vehicle but did not get down to assist. Tom, who was standing closest, groped for a couple of sovereigns which had rolled by his feet. He retrieved the book which had fallen from his own coat pocket as he was stooping and pressed the coins into the outstretched palm of the aged passenger, who was wearing a dog collar under a loosely tied muffler. The clergyman said, ‘Thank you, thank you.’

  The porter meanwhile had completed his task of gathering up the rest of the coins which he handed back to the cleric with a rather ostentatious flourish, as if to demonstrate his honesty in returning every bit of scattered money. In return the cab passenger gave the porter a large enough tip for the man to touch his cap with a soldier’s smartness. Noticing Tom and wanting to do the world a favour, the porter now said, ‘This gentleman wants to go in the direction of the close too, I believe, sir. The Poultry Cross.’

  ‘Then he should share my cab,’ said the cleric.

  ‘I would be grateful,’ said Tom.

  ‘I told him it wasn’t a night for walking,’ said the porter, who’d said no such thing. Tom clambered in after the older man, and the porter stowed his case and the clergyman’s bags. He closed the small double doors, which protected the travellers’ lower limbs, at the same time calling to the cabman, ‘The cathedral close, Alfred.’

  The driver waited until the vehicle in front had drawn off before he rattled the reins and the cab creaked and swayed away from the lights of the railway station. The inside space was limited and even though Tom’s companion was thin and small-boned with age, they were pressed together by the motion of the cab. They were surrounded by wet fog, interrupted by the occasional smudge of light from an uncurtained window. Even the clopping of the horse’s hooves seemed muffled by the dankness. The animal must have known his route by instinct.

  ‘Something is amiss?’ said the old clergyman, tapping Tom Ansell on the arm. Tom was surprised at the familiarity of the gesture and only just prevented himself from giving a start. Then he realized how his posture must be giving him away. His coat was unbuttoned and he was gripping his knees tightly. His back was rigid.

  ‘Surely a young man like you – a lawyer from London – doesn’t fear a spill from a provincial carriage? You can relax.’

  ‘No, there is nothing wrong, sir. It’s merely that I saw something which . . . disturbed me on the station platform.’

  As he said these last words, the scene flashed before his eyes again: the silhouette at the platform’s edge, the other man sneaking up to push him over. Then his mind caught up with his companion’s ‘lawyer’ comment. He turned to look at the individual beside him in the backwash from the carriage lights. Apart from a clean-shaven roundness to the elderly cleric’s face, Tom couldn’t make out much between the brim of the shovel-hat and the muffler. What he’d glimpsed moments earlier by the cab rank might have suggested a rather unworldly figure, an impression strengthened by his helplessness over the dropped money. But the impression was evidently wrong.

  Without waiting to be asked how he knew about Tom’s line of work, the cleric now said, ‘Forgive me, I know it is impolite of me to claim a profession for you when we haven’t even been introduced. I am Canon Eric Selby.’

  ‘Thomas Ansell. And, yes, I plead guilty to being a lawyer. Is it so obvious?’

  ‘Well, I could say that there are not so many professions open to an educated young man who must earn his living. There is the Church . . . ‘business’ perhaps . . . the army . . . the law. I might claim, without offence I hope, that you don’t appear to be cut from the same cloth which makes a clergyman. As for ‘business’, I think not. Nor do you have a soldier’s bearing. Which more or less leaves us with the law. But, my dear sir, the conclusive proof is that I noticed you clutching a copy of Baxter’s On Tort when you were kind enough to pick up my
scattered money just now. No sane man would read Baxter for pleasure.’

  This was the book which had so comprehensively failed to capture Tom’s interest on the journey. He could feel the bulk of the thing in his coat-pocket. He laughed and said, ‘I should have packed some other reading matter for the train. On Tort is not very diverting at the best of times. You’re obviously familiar with it, Canon Selby.’

  ‘I had a friend who swore by it. Indeed I considered the law myself for a brief time before plumping for the Church,’ said the other. ‘Just as you considered the army, Mr Ansell.’

  This time Tom really did start. He said nothing but waited for the cleric to explain himself. Did this man have second sight?

  ‘No miracle, sir,’ said Canon Selby, not trying to keep the pleasure at the success of his deductions out of his voice. ‘When I mentioned the army as a possible profession you gave a slight sigh and pulled away, which told me that the subject had . . . crossed your mind in some way. Not a very favourable way, perhaps.’

  ‘Then I must be more careful of my sighs,’ said Tom, feeling slightly put out and thinking how absurd it was to be having this conversation – given the oddly intimate turn it was taking – with an elderly cleric while driving in a cab through a fog-bound and unfamiliar town. ‘You are right though. I did consider the army as a career.’

  ‘I knew it!’ said Canon Selby. He spoke with such delight that it was impossible to feel irritated with him.

  Tom said, ‘You are a loss to my profession, sir. No one in a court of law would have a chance against you.’

  ‘If you’ve been listening to people for as long as I have, Mr Ansell, you learn that what is said in words is only the half of it, less than half indeed. One looks at the little movements we all make, one listens for the suppressed sighs and unexpected stresses underlying the words. Now tell me what happened on the Salisbury station platform which so disturbed you.’

  There was something in the man’s voice and manner which encouraged trust so Tom gave an account of what he’d witnessed. It didn’t take long. To his surprise, Canon Selby accepted his story straightaway.