‘NOW WHAT?’ asked Miriam as we left the house, Morley having explained Mr Wilson’s confession to her.
Morley checked a watch. ‘Time for breakfast, I think.’
‘Breakfast, Father? How can you even think of breakfast?’
(Morley was a man with Victorian energies, Edwardian tastes, and eccentric tendencies, so he thought a lot about breakfast, but his thoughts could be rather peculiar. See ‘The Breakfast in History’, for example, in the Ladies’ Home Journal (1935), a short but commanding survey of the subject in which he recommends that the housewives of Britain adopt foreign and Oriental breakfast practices. Back in Norfolk, at St George’s, I was occasionally subject to some of his own outlandish breakfast experiments: spicy fish with mustard and Gentleman’s Relish, devilled eggs with bean curd, sour lassis, and all sorts of strange fermented concoctions.)
‘Shouldn’t we be going to the police?’ I said.
‘Mr Wilson will be going to the police himself, Sefton.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘The crash investigators would be on to him soon enough anyway,’ said Morley. ‘We’ve just speeded up the process.’
‘But what about Maisie Taylor then?’ asked Miriam. ‘You say he claims he didn’t kill her.’
‘Yes,’ said Morley. ‘“Just as if she’d disappeared,” he said, Sefton, didn’t he?’
‘That’s right,’ I agreed.
‘“Like she’d never been there?”’
‘Yes.’
‘That is admittedly a problem.’
‘Admittedly!?’ said Miriam.
‘There’s something not quite right about it.’
‘To say the least,’ I said.
‘Anyway, a cup of tea and a bun might help, I think.’ (For all his more exotic proclivities he was partial to a railway bun for breakfast.) He checked a watch again. ‘Or coffee and cigarettes, obviously, in your case, Sefton. Come on. We’ve probably got time.’
We walked the few hundred yards up to Appleby Station and to Dora’s Station Café. We’d almost made the door when a voice called out behind us.
‘Miriam!’
It was Nancy.
‘Miriam!’
‘Oh drat,’ said Miriam.
‘I’ll go on ahead here,’ said Morley. ‘If you don’t mind.’
‘Stay with me,’ Miriam whispered, tugging at my arm. ‘Please. No games this time, Sefton, I promise.’
‘Miriam? Yoo-hoo? It’s me.’
Morley went into the café and Miriam and I turned to face Nancy.
With her suitcase and beret, and dressed in a light travelling suit, she reminded me of a young Brigader setting off to Spain.
‘You’re leaving?’ said Miriam.
‘Yes,’ said Nancy. ‘I’m not welcome on the dig any more, and I heard the trains are running again. So I’m heading down to London.’
‘Right, well, goodbye then!’ said Miriam, turning to go into the café.
‘Miriam? Don’t go! I’ve got a little something for you.’
Miriam turned back. She looked alarmed. I leaned up against the wall of the station and lit a cigarette. I was intrigued. This could be interesting.
‘It’s a little gift,’ said Nancy.
‘It’s not my birthday,’ said Miriam.
‘No. But I wanted to apologise.’
‘Apologise for what?’ asked Miriam, rather nervously. She looked over towards me. ‘Really, you have nothing to apologise for.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ said Nancy. ‘I … wanted to apologise for … ringing the police last night.’
‘What?’ said Miriam. ‘You rang the police?’
‘Yes, it was me, I’m afraid.’ Nancy didn’t seem that apologetic, I have to say. But it made perfect sense. That’s why she was outside the pharmacy.
‘You?’ said Miriam.
‘Yes. I saw you breaking in with … him.’
She gave me a feline glance and I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped was a sign of detached curiosity.
‘You followed us?’ said Miriam.
‘I couldn’t help myself. After I’d seen you in the hotel, I was just so … Anyway.’ She knelt down and opened her suitcase. ‘Here you are.’ She thrust a carefully wrapped parcel at Miriam. It was thick, round, cylindrical. A jar of something? Some sort of strange electrode? A large artillery shell? ‘I was going to send it. You can open it if you like.’
‘Thank you but no thank you,’ said Miriam. ‘I can’t accept it, Nancy, sorry.’ She offered it back. ‘I’m sure you can understand why.’
‘Please,’ said Nancy. ‘I’m … You should understand … Sometimes I get so lonely and I thought you might be a friend, because … Please. I made a mistake. And …’
It seemed very likely that Nancy was about to cry. I knew there was no way that Miriam was going to put up with that and if preventing tears meant accepting the damned present … Miriam straightened herself up.
‘Well, that’s really very kind of you, thank you.’ She took the proffered package. ‘Perhaps we’ll run into one another in London.’
‘I’d like that,’ said Nancy.
‘Yes,’ said Miriam. Meaning – clearly – no.
Nancy walked round the station onto the platform and over the bridge to wait for the train.
‘Well!’ said Miriam, as we entered Dora’s Station Café. ‘The cheek of her! At least we avoided tears.’
She spoke too soon.
The café was deserted. It was a determinedly bright sort of place, though rather muggy with ancient tea and coffee fumes lingering beneath the sharp stinging rinse of recent disinfectant. Pot plants and vases and displays and posters advertising Wyman cigars and Capstan cigarettes obscured the autumn light at the windows. Rows of shiny tin teapots and thick white china were lined up behind a counter on narrow shelves, the clinically clean counter itself being framed by deep red damask curtains, giving the whole place the feeling of an intimate theatre or a fairground sideshow – or perhaps a rather opulent operating theatre providing tea, coffee, sandwiches, cakes and ‘quick lunches’.
Morley was sitting at a corner table with Dora. She was dressed in a pinny with her wild hair up tucked up under a scarf, but with a blood-red blouse and a blazing silver locket around her neck she still looked as though she might at any moment burst into her habanera, were it not for the fact that she was silently weeping. Morley held her silver-ringed and braceleted hand and was offering her his handkerchief.
‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ said Miriam.
We approached the table.
‘Father?’ said Miriam. ‘Is everything OK?’
‘Yes, I was just talking to Dora here, about her husband.’
‘I see,’ said Miriam.
‘Sefton, I wonder if you would you be so kind as to change the sign on the door?’ asked Morley. ‘We don’t want any customers coming in and finding Dora like this, do we?’
‘Thank you, Mr Morley,’ said Dora, through her tears. ‘Thank you.’
I walked over and flipped the cardboard sign. Dora’s Station Café was now officially closed.
Miriam and I pulled up two chairs and joined Morley and Dora at the table.
‘I didn’t know anything about her, Mr Morley,’ said Dora. Her mascara had run: in her bright red lipstick and red blouse she looked rather grubby and menacing. ‘Honestly. Not until after the crash.’
‘When did he tell you?’
‘Maybe the day after – when her body was discovered. He was acting so strange, you see. And at first I thought it was just the shock of the crash … But, I don’t know, a woman somehow knows these things, Mr Morley.’
‘Female intuition?’
‘That’s right. You just … know when something’s not right between you. And George is usually such a good man and a loving husband, he’s … He probably went with her more out of politeness than anything.’
‘Out of politeness?’ said Miriam.
‘You know what men are like, miss. They’re such silly buggers. They’re like children.’
‘Mmm,’ agreed Miriam.
‘But he claims he didn’t kill her,’ said Morley.
‘She was on at him to own up because of the crash,’ said Dora. ‘He knew he’d lose everything. His job. Everything. So he panicked. He was thinking of me and the kids. He didn’t want us to lose everything—’
‘He told you all this?’ I asked.
‘And so then he took the body and buried it at the dig.’
‘As I thought,’ said Morley. ‘You poor thing.’
‘How did he know where to take her body?’ I asked.
‘He heard me talking about the dig, I suppose. He must have thought it was as good a place as any.’
‘Where there were lots of people digging? Why would he bury her there? A bit risky, wasn’t it?’
‘Go easy there, Sefton,’ said Morley. ‘Dora’s upset.’
‘It’s OK, Mr Morley,’ said Dora. ‘I’m not saying it was clever of him. George is a signalman, he’s not an archaeologist.’
‘And how did he get her to Shap?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I can’t say any more.’
‘That’s enough, Sefton,’ said Morley. ‘You really don’t deserve any of this, Dora.’
There were people banging on the door of the café, keen for a cup of tea and a bun.
‘Thank you for coming, Mr Morley,’ said Dora, sniffing and wiping her eyes. ‘I appreciate you coming but I probably have to get on here. This is my livelihood, and if George is going to …’
Morley stood and put a hand on her shoulder. ‘You’re being very brave, Dora. Thank you.’
‘Thank you, Mr Morley,’ she said. ‘You’re a good man.’