The Victim in Victoria Station (2 page)

There was no reason why I should feel responsible, but I'd liked young Bill, and he was a fellow American, and I'd wanted to watch his face when he stepped out into glorious London. Maybe I'm a sentimental idiot, but I was near tears by the time the nurse called me in.

At least the doctor, when he had finished examining me and we were seated in his consulting room, had good news for me.

“That's looking splendid, Mrs. Martin,” he said, pointing out details of an X ray. “You have the bones of a woman half your age, save for the arthritic joints. I did not expect a break as bad as this to heal so completely so soon, particularly since you insisted on so much activity. Do you have any pain in the leg now?”

“It aches a little when it rains.” Which, in England, was a good percentage of the time, but I decided not to say so. The English can be touchy about their weather.

“Yes, well, that, unfortunately, may persist for quite a time, but on the whole I think I can send you off with a clean bill of health. Do what you want, within reasonable limits, of course. Light housework, shopping, a bit of a walk now and again. Use the cane when you need it. Apart from that”—he shrugged his shoulders—“don't fall down any more stairs!” He laughed.

I was unable to laugh with him. That fall had been one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. If Alan hadn't been there … “I don't plan to, Dr. Reynolds,” I said rather primly.

He composed his face. “No, indeed. I'll give you a prescription for the pain, if you need it, but aspirin ought to provide relief in most cases, or ibuprofen. All right, then?”

I shook his hand and left, rather glad that Dr. Reynolds was not my regular doctor. For most ailments I went to the small clinic in Sherebury, my beloved adopted town. I'd been living in England for almost two years now and had gotten used to the idea of virtually free health care. I'd even established a good relationship with one of the doctors at the clinic. But when I had broken my leg last November, Alan had thought I'd better consult a London orthopedist. I'd murmured something about the exorbitant cost of a private doctor.

“Hang the cost, Dorothy! I've only just got you, woman, and I intend to look after you. Since you insist on getting yourself into trouble, the least I can do is attempt damage control. I'm not a poor man, my dear. And you are very precious to me.”

It was the last remark that did it, of course, the words and the tone of voice in which they were uttered. We'd been married only a couple of months then. Alan hadn't uttered a word of anything but sympathy and concern when I'd fallen and broken the leg, even though I had at the time been engaged in dangerous activities of which he didn't entirely approve. I'd felt the least I could do was accept his advice.

It was probably good advice, too, and I had to admit Dr. Reynolds was competent. It was just his attitude that I found a little annoying. He seemed to feel an old lady ought to tend to her knitting.

I don't consider myself old, and I knit very badly.

I'd planned my day so as to avoid the rush hour, but the various delays had plunged me into the very worst of it. Though the Regent's Park tube station wasn't far away, my leg was aching a little, and the Underground would be crowded to suffocation point, so I waited with what patience I could muster and finally managed to snare a cab. My driver was taciturn, unusual in a London cabbie, but I didn't try to make him talk to me. He had plenty to think about, what with the horrendous traffic through which he inched the cab, making some speed in rare clear spaces, then screeching to sudden stops as the stream closed in again.

The
Evening Standard
was being hawked on the street corners; I made a mental note to buy one in the station and see what it said about the man in the train. It was so stupid that I couldn't remember his name.

“Bloody hell!” As the driver swore loudly, the cab stopped with a scream of abused brakes and an ominous crunch. I was nearly thrown off my seat.

“You all right, madam?” He craned his neck around as he was opening his door.

“I think so. What happened?”

“Bleedin' idiot come out o' Buckingham Palace Road there and turned the wrong way, right in front o' me! Naow, then”—this addressed grimly to the other driver—“wot the hell do you think you're doin'?”

We sat there in Lower Grosvenor Place, next to the Royal Mews and the rest of Buckingham Palace's back garden, for quite some time, tying up traffic while my cabbie explained the rules of the road to the other driver. (“I don't bloody care where you're from, you're in England now, and we drive on the
left!
”)

Eventually matters were resolved, to the dismay of the other driver, who was dark skinned and spoke with a French accent, and whose rental car had to be towed away. The cab had suffered no worse than a dented fender, but the cabbie was mortally offended. “I own this cab, an' I'll see that bleeder pays! Sorry, madam! It's them foreigners we get everywhere these days, don't know how to talk, don't know how to drive—that'll only be three pounds fifty, madam, never mind the meter, I forgot an' left it runnin' back there. Sorry about the delay, madam—thank you very much!”

I overtipped him out of exhaustion or sympathy and caught a much later train than the one I'd hoped for. By way of small compensation, it was far less crowded than the earlier one would have been, and by miraculous intervention it ran on time. In less than an hour I was at Sherebury station. I stumbled out, climbed into my little Volkswagen, which was looking lonesome in the deserted parking lot, and drove wearily to my house. I just sat for a few minutes in my driveway, very grateful to be home at last.

It would have been even nicer if Alan had been there to greet me, but Alan was out of the country. My husband, Alan Nesbitt (I kept my former name when we married), is a policeman. He had left his position of chief constable for Belleshire several months before to take over temporarily as commandant of the Police Staff College at Bramshill, and we'd had to move to the lovely but, to me, formidable Jacobean manor that housed the college. With that appointment ended, we were able to come back home, but we'd been there barely a month when Alan, now officially retired but still in demand as a consultant all over the world, had to go to Zimbabwe for a conference on terrorism. This was the first time he'd been far away since we were married, and I missed him enormously. Zimbabwe sounds like the end of the earth. Until I looked it up on the map, I didn't even know where it was, exactly, only that it was in Africa and vaguely associated with political problems.

It would have been heaven to have Alan there to talk to. He would have poured us some Jack Daniel's, fixed us something to eat, calmed me down, and listened with interest and sympathy to the saga of how badly my day had gone.

However, only the cats were there to greet me when I finally pried myself out of the car and went into the house, and they displayed little sympathy. They were HUNGRY! Human problems have little importance compared with the urgent needs of cats, who are the ultimate pragmatists.

I pulled off my hat and took some aspirin even before I fed the cats. My head was throbbing almost as much as my leg. By way of food for myself, once my domestic tyrants had been placated, I heated a can of soup and collapsed on the parlor sofa with it and a small jolt of bourbon.

I felt a little better with food and drink inside me and the comfort of my house closing around me. I love my little seventeenth-century cottage. Just sitting in front of the lovely old fireplace, even on a warm evening with no fire, was soothing. Tomorrow, as Scarlett tritely observed, was another day, and I could start planning a more active life now that I was released from medical restrictions. Right now all I wanted to do was sit with a cat on my lap—I reached for Samantha, my Siamese, who was handiest—and read the paper. A little later I'd blow the budget and call Alan. The sound of his voice ought to complete my cure.

But what had I done with the paper? Oh, of course. I smacked my forehead in the classic gesture. I'd forgotten to buy one. The accident in the cab had driven it right out of my head. Drat! I wanted to read about the man in the train, and by morning it might be too late—old news. Alan and I didn't take an evening paper, only the
Times
and the
Telegraph
in the morning. Did Jane, my next-door neighbor, subscribe to the
Standard
? Was I too tired to go over there and find out?

I set Sam aside and stood up. If I let myself give in to “too tired,” I'd turn into that decrepit old lady Dr. Reynolds thought I was.

Though it was nearly nine, the sky was still quite light, the long twilight of a northern country in June. I walked across my backyard and tapped on Jane's door. She opened it at once, and she and several of her bulldogs greeted me cordially.

Once we were comfortably seated at her kitchen table, she studied me critically. “Look like something the cat dragged in,” she observed. Jane seldom bothers with diplomacy.

“I feel like it, too. It's been a rotten day, Jane. There wouldn't be any coffee, by any chance?”

“Just coming. Kettle's about to boil.”

“I've always thought you were psychic.”

She snorted. “Saw you coming across the garden. Any fool could see you needed something. There's whiskey if you'd rather.”

I shook my head. “I've had as much as is good for me, and anyway I've got a headache. Coffee's better. Jane, a man died in the train today, on my way to London.”

She raised her eyebrows, but the kettle whistled just then, and she turned to make the coffee. As she poured hot water over the grounds, the bright, modern kitchen was filled with fragrance. (Jane's house is also old, Georgian, but like me she prefers modern convenience when it comes to cooking.) I began to feel invigorated even before she set a cup in front of me and poured out the rich brew from the French press carafe.

“Mostly decaf, this time of the day,” Jane announced. “But it tastes real.” She let me take a few hot, revivifying sips before she raised her eyebrows again and said, “The man in the train?”

I told her the story. My voice got a little thick in places, and I had to clear my throat and drink some coffee.

“Upsetting,” said Jane with masterly British understatement. “Who was he?”

“I can't remember! You know I'm never especially good about names. Bill something. That's one reason I came over. I wanted to look at your
Standard
, if you have one.”

“Help yourself. Nothing in it about a dead man in a train, not that I noticed.”

She handed me the paper. I skimmed quickly, frowned, and looked again more carefully. “No, nothing,” I said finally, disappointed. “Maybe it happened after their deadline. I'll have to check in the morning.”

“Why?”

I sighed. “I don't know, really. I guess I feel involved. I didn't even know him, but I liked him. I need to know what happened, who he was. I—it sounds silly, but I think I want to mourn him properly.”

Jane gave me a long look, and when she spoke it was gruffly. “Not thinking there was something funny about the death, are you?”

“Jane! I admit that I've been somewhat more involved in murder than most respectable women, but I plead not guilty this time. No, this is pure curiosity, with some sorrow mixed in. I simply want to know what happened, so I can stop feeling there was something I might have been able to do.”

“Glad to hear it.”

When I got home, I decided my spirits had improved enough that I didn't need to call Alan. It was really too late, anyway; he was a couple of time zones away. Tomorrow would do, when I'd read the paper and could give him a coherent account. For now, the miserable day had finally dragged itself to a close, and I'd never have to live that particular one again. And tomorrow would be a good day to make a nice cozy phone call; it was certainly going to rain, if my leg was any sort of weather prophet at all. Followed eagerly by the cats, I went upstairs, took a couple of pain pills, and fell into welcome sleep almost as soon as the three of us were comfortably arranged on the bed.

I
t was the cats who woke me. Esmeralda ran her claws into my thigh, and I jerked into semiconsciousness, glancing at the clock. It was a little after three.

“Emmy! Bad cat! What did you do that for—?” I stopped because I could see, in the dim glow of the night-light in the hall, that Sam's slender tail was bushed out like a bottlebrush, and her ears, fully alert, were turned toward the hall door. Somewhere, probably next door, dogs were barking hysterically.

I caught my breath and heard Emmy give a low growl. In the same moment I heard glass breaking, and both cats jumped off the bed and raced downstairs.

I didn't think twice. The phone was right next to the bed. I picked it up, punched in the emergency number with fingers that trembled, and whispered to the responder, “Someone is trying to break into my house.”

The four minutes that it took them to get there seemed like hours. I waited until I heard the reassuring voices of several policemen before venturing out of bed, and then I thought I'd never get my bathrobe on, my hands were shaking so.

“Mrs. Martin!” The voice that called up the stairs wasn't familiar, but it was welcome. “I'm Sergeant Drew. Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” I lied. “I'm coming down.”

“Don't forget to put on slippers. There's a good deal of broken glass in the kitchen.”

The next hour or so was a jumble of confusion. The house seemed full of people and animals. There were two policemen and one policewoman, and my cats, and Jane, and one of her bulldogs. “Brought him along just in case,” she explained gruffly. “Didn't know what was happening over here, glass breaking. Damn fool thing for me to do. Scaring the cats into fits.”