The Norfolk Mystery

I tore open the telegram, which read simply:

‘CONGRATULATIONS. STOP. HOLT. STOP.

5.30 TOMORROW.’

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_e6f065d1-e248-5b52-ad3f-cf20048ca423)

AS IT HAPPENED, I had no other pressing engagements.

And so, the next day, I packed my few belongings – a spare suit, some thin volumes of poetry, my old Aquascutum raincoat, my supply of Seconal and aspirin – into a cardboard suitcase which I had managed to salvage from the wrack and wreckage of my life, and left my lodgings for Liverpool Street Station. There I found the connections for Holt, spent all my remaining money on the ticket and a supply of tobacco, and set off to meet my new employer, Mr Swanton Morley. The People’s Professor.

As the train pulled away I felt a great relief, a burden lifting from my shoulders, and I found myself grinning at myself in the window of the carriage. Little more than eighteen months previously I had left London – Victoria Station, the boat train for France, then Paris – for Spain, a young man full of dreams, about to embark on my great moral crusade, with justice on my side and my fellow man alongside me. Now, gaunt, limping, and my hair streaked with white, I saw myself for what I was: a man entirely alone, scared even of the roar of the steam train and motor traffic, impoverished and rootless. I had of course no idea at that moment, but in giving up on my absurd fantasies of performing on the stage of world history I had in fact unwittingly become a small and insignificant part of the terrible drama of our time. I had imagined that I was to determine the course of history, but history had taken possession of me. And if, as they say, nature is a rough school of men and women, then history is rougher … But already I am beginning to sound like Morley.

I should continue with the tale.

It had always been my ambition to travel. My father’s job as a royal messenger had meant that he had been all over Europe and further afield, scurrying from Balmoral to Windsor and to Whitehall, carrying with him letters of royalty and of state, emblazoned with the proud stamp OHMS. When I was a boy he would recount to me his stirring adventures among the Czechs, and the Serbians, and the Slovaks and Slovenes, dodging spies and brigands who tried to steal his dispatch case – tales in which he would triumph by courteous manners – and although we lived in relatively modest circumstances in a small house in Kensington, I had been introduced at an early age to ambassadors and diplomats from France, and China and Japan, and had imagined for myself a future abroad in khaki, and in starched collars, striped trousers and sun-helmet, upholding the Empire by good manners and breeding alone. In my own country I took little interest: I cared nothing for the Boat Race, or Epsom, or cricket at Lord’s. My dreams were of Balkan beauties, of Paris, Hungary and Berlin, of steamers on the Black Sea, and of adventures in Asia Minor. I imagined camels, and consuls and tussles with petty local officials. I harboured absolutely no desires to travel up and down on the branch lines of England.

Nonetheless, as we passed the houses and churches and slums of east London I felt the familiar ecstasy of departure. I took two Seconal, a handful of aspirin, and felt myself released again from the vast jaws of my ambitions, and fell into a troubled sleep – dreams of Spain confused with visions of a ruined London, flying demons dropping explosives overhead, fires raging in the streets, men slithering like beasts, every town and every city throbbing with fear and violence.

I woke thick-headed some time before we arrived in Melton Constable, where I changed quickly onto the branch railway, a little three-carriage local train done out proudly in its golden ochre livery, and which heaved its way slowly through the meadows of East Anglia. I took a window seat in the second-class non-smoker, the only seat remaining, and, gasping for air and desperate to smoke, ignoring the protests of my fellow passengers, pulled down a leather strap on the window – and was immediately assaulted by a dusky country smell of muck and manure. I quickly abandoned all thoughts of a cigarette. I hadn’t eaten all day, and the country smells, and the pathetic chugging of the train resulted in my feeling distinctly hag-ridden by the time we made Holt Station at precisely five thirty. I was the only passenger to disembark at Holt – porters hauled a couple of milk crates and packages out of the luggage van, a guard walked down the platform, closing each door, and then the bold little vermilion engine went on its way – and it was too late when I realised that I had left my cardboard suitcase on the train, with my spare suit, my poetry, my tobacco and my pills.

I looked around for any signs of help, welcome or assistance.

There was none. The porters had vanished. The guard gone.

And there was absolutely no sign of Morley.

Nor was there anyone in the station office – though a set of dominoes set out upon a table suggested recent occupation and activity. Outside, in the gravelled forecourt, was a car with a woman leaning up against it, languidly smoking, chatting to the young man who, I assumed from his uniform, should have been manning the station. I could see that the young lady might prove more of a distraction than a solitary game of dominoes. She wore her dark hair in a sharp, asymmetric bob – which gave her what one might call an early Picasso kind of a profile – and she was wearing clothes that might have been more appropriate for a cocktail party down in London rather than out here in the wilds of Norfolk: a pale blue-grey close-fitting dress, which she wore with striking red high-heeled shoes, and buttoned red leather gloves. It was a daring ensemble, deliberately hinting, I thought, at desires barely restrained; and her crocodile handbag, the size of a small portmanteau, suggested some imminent, illicit assignation. She struck one immediately as the kind of woman who attended fork luncheons and fancy dress parties with the Guinnesses, and who had ‘ideas’ about Art and who was passionate in various causes; the sort of woman who cultivated an air of mystery and romance. I had encountered her type on my return from Spain at fashionable gatherings in the homes of wealthy fellow travellers. Such women wearied me.

‘Well!’ she said, turning first towards and then quickly away from me, narrowing her eyes in a glimmering fashion. ‘You’ll do.’ There was a tone of studied boredom in her words that attempted to belie her more than apparent perk.

‘I’m sorry, miss, I do beg your pardon.’

She threw away her cigarette, ground it out theatrically under her foot, and climbed into the car. ‘Bye, Tommy!’ she called to the station guard, who began sauntering back to his office.

‘Goodbye, miss,’ he called, waving, red-faced, placing his cap back upon his head.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, addressing him. ‘I need to ask about my luggage. It’s gone missing. I wonder if—’

‘Well, come on, then, if you’re coming,’ the young woman interrupted, impatiently, patting the smooth white leather seat beside her in the car.

‘I’m awfully sorry, miss,’ I said, ‘I’m waiting for someone and—’

‘Yes! Me, silly!’ she said. ‘Come on.’

‘I’m afraid you’re mistaken, miss. I’m waiting for a Mr Swanton Morley.’

She cocked her head slightly as she looked at me, in a way that was familiar. ‘Sefton, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m here to collect you, you silly prawn, come on.’

‘Ah!’ I said. ‘I do apologise. It’s just, I was expecting … Mr Morley himself.’

‘I’m Miriam,’ she said. ‘Miriam Morley. And wouldn’t you rather I was collecting you than Father?’

It was an impossible question to answer.

‘Well,’ I said, extending my hand. ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss Morley.’

She raised her fingers lightly to my own.

‘Charmed, I’m sure.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting a moment I need to see if I can arrange for my luggage, which I’m afraid I’ve left on the—’

‘Tommy’ll sort all that out, won’t you, Tommy?’ she said.

‘Certainly, ma’am,’ said Tommy obediently.

‘There,’ she said, her eyes flashing at me. ‘Now that’s sorted, hop in and hold on to your hat!’ she cried. I did as instructed, having no alternative, and as soon as I’d shut the door she jerked off the brake, thrust the gearstick forward, and we went sailing at high speed through the deserted streets of Holt.

‘Lovely little town,’ I said politely, above the roaring noise of the engine.

‘Dull!’ she cried back. ‘Dull as ditchwater!’

We soon came to a junction, at which we barely paused, swung to the right, and headed down through woods, signs pointing to Letheringsett, the Norfolk sky broad above us.

I felt a knotted yearning in my stomach – a yearning for cigarettes and pills.

‘Since we’re to be travelling together, miss, I wonder if you might be able to spare me a cigarette?’

‘In the glove compartment,’ she said. ‘Go ahead. Take the packet.’

I took a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled hungrily.

‘Manners?’ said my companion.

‘Sorry, miss? You’d rather I didn’t smoke?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! Do I look like a maiden aunt?’ She did not. ‘But I would expect a gentleman to offer me one of my own cigarettes. Unless of course you are not a gentleman …?’

I lit another cigarette from my own, and passed it across.

‘So,’ she yelled at me, as we screeched around a sharp corner at the bottom of the hill, barely controlling the animal-like ferocity of the car. ‘You’re not one of Father’s dreadful acolytes?’

‘No. I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I—’