Death on the Arkham Express Read online

  The dame had chutzpah. I smiled, “No one else?”

  “No one, except later, when Alvin came in,” braved Sarah feeding off Ann’s pluck.

  “And I suppose you didn’t see anyone either?” I questioned turning to Alvin ‘the busboy’ Nash.

  “Yes, your honor, not a soul.” The kid had done a good job rounding up the usual suspects, but he was also a smart aleck.

  It was a big fat dead end. The guy that committed the gruesome murder had done one helluva disappearing act. The dining car patrons proved to be equally useless. They, of course, knew less than I did. I suspected as much all along. They had been witnesses to the blood-curdling screams, never seeing the interior of the galley and never observing anybody coming or going. I yearned for the boys from forensics or a good morgue chemist to do an autopsy. I needed some clues. Right then and there I was clueless.

  ***

  Two of the porters on board had the disgusting job of removing Donald Wheatcroft’s head and torso from the galley. Coffins were in short supply, so a waterproof canvas mail sack served as a body bag. I had them put the remains in the refrigerator car. The reefer was located six cars back, and Wheatcroft was bunked down between the cumquats and radishes. It’s not a good idea, normally, to monkey with evidence but if we didn’t get the corpse out of the kitchen soon, it would stink up the joint. One of the porters, Jenkins, suggested the refrigeration and I jumped on the idea. Putting him in cold storage would preserve the remains until a coroner could have a look see.

  Alvin located a couple of lengths of rope for me, and we tied them across the front and back doors to the galley. He also made me two signs out of pasteboard which read, “DO NOT ENTER BY ORDER OF POLICE.” I hung them on the ropes.

  At the rate we were traveling it would be a while before we reached our first major stop and a big city police department. That left me time to do some snooping. It’s best to question witnesses when their memories are still fresh, even if they don’t know they are witnesses.

  ***

  “Can I have a few words with you, ma’am?” The lady in blue silk was still in the Pullman looking relaxed and cozy reading her book. There was something familiar about that shade of blue.

  “What for?” she answered suspiciously, becoming tense. Her voice was husky, not sultry though. The vocal sound you might hear coming from a hardheaded dame.

  “Small talk,” I flashed my badge.

  “Why should I speak to you?” she answered slapping the book shut with her long dainty fingers.

  “Why not? Everyone’s been speaking to me. How long have you been in the Pullman?”

  “Ever since we left the station.”

  “During that time did you see anybody suspicious?”

  “What do you mean?” getting defensive.

  I leaned closer and lowered my voice. “A short while ago a terrible and unspeakable deed was done in the dining car, and I am trying to corral all the suspects.” I thought by appearing to take her into my confidence that she’d loosen up. It had the opposite effect.

  “I’m a suspect, am I?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Why should I trust you, Mister? Anybody can carry a badge around.”

  “Just when I was beginning to like you.”

  “News travels fast on this train. I heard that someone was murdered. I have never left this seat since the train started moving, now leave me alone, or I’ll call for the conductor.”

  The dame was quick to get on her high horse. She panicked easily. “I’m not accusing you of anything ma’am. I just want to know if you saw anybody come through here from the dining car in the past hour?”

  “If I say ‘no’ that makes me a murder suspect. If I say ‘yes,’ what does that make me?”

  “Human, maybe. What are you trying to do, play the bright, hard lady? Are you afraid of life Miss and people? Give yourself a chance and assist with my investigation.”

  The lady in blue looked down at her lap, opened her book and started to read. Her lips moved silently. I was getting the cold shoulder. I decided to try an even softer approach. “Wuthering Heights,” I offered noticing the title on the cover. “You a fan of Emily Brontë?”

  “She cocked her head back and glared at me with daggers in her eyes, “Yes, she’s my favorite author. I’ve read all of her novels.”

  “Thank you,” I said. This time there was sarcasm dripping from my voice. “If it won’t disturb you, I will have a talk with this gentleman over here,” pointing to the man with the big cigar.

  “Do what you like. Don’t let him sit there in the cold all chewed up with curiosity.”

  “I’ll break it to him gently.” I wasn’t good at these parlor room mysteries. Get all the suspects in one place and at the right dramatic moment aim with my outstretched rifle barrel arm proclaiming, “and the murderer is . . .” Not happening. Cigar man was looking in my direction smiling. He was tall, slim with a slight stoop and abnormally broad shoulders. The expression on his face told me that he overheard my conversation with Lady Blue.

  “How’s it going, pal?” I asked with my partially deflated ego.

  He kept smiling. “I am truly sorry. I did not mean to eavesdrop.”

  “Think nothing of it. Since you have a clue what I’m snooping around for, did you see anyone come through here in the last hour?”

  “Possibly. Can we talk in my private compartment?”

  “Lead the way.”

  ***

  My new best friend stabbed his smoldering cigar into the Pullman’s sand ashtray, and we departed for the first-class car. Blue-ribbon passage on the Arkham Express, before time and neglect took its toll, was once a joy to behold, luxurious and fashionable. Nowadays pealed and patched wallpaper lined the hallway walls partnering with threadbare carpeting that guided you to the private compartments. Despite years of impairment the hand carved woodwork maintained its elegant style. Although dust laden, its glossy varnished surface managed to shine through, revealing intricate scroll work. A harmonious arrangement of relief sculptures of animals in foliage in a spiral form crowning the ceiling wrapped in snakes, winged things, and gargoyles peering down on all that walked the hall. The extent of color amongst the different species of dark brown wood used in the sculptures were of such minute detail and mechanical accuracy that if one stared at them long enough the figures appeared to come alive and move. The effect had me in its grasp when I walked along the hallway.

  His was the third compartment. Inside, he slid the door closed and drew the curtains. “What I need to say to you requires privacy,” taking a seat next to the window, his back to the movement of the train. “My name is Nigel Guest and what do I call you, sir?”

  “Detective.”

  His compartment was a sleeper. Soft purple well-worn cushioned seats, dark mahogany woodwork, with an overhead for luggage at one end, a pulldown bunk at the other, and a large window in between to view the passing scenery. “Your compartment appears identical to mine,” I volunteered.

  “All of the first-class compartments are identical on the Arkham Express, Detective. I take it that you are not an experienced traveler of the rails?”

  “I don’t get around much.”

  The warmth had left his demeanor, and he reached into the breast pocket of a Glasgow brown tweed. I instinctively started to reach for my gat but stopped when he produced a tan leather pouch. A weird figure embossed on the leather caught my eye: a familiar one, the likes of a tentacled mollusk. The small leather bag next yielded a hand carved skull pipe. The detail and artwork were impressive. The jawbone of the skull acted as a stand when Nigel set it on the armrest and proceeded to fill its bowl. From the pouch, he stuffed the pipe with tobacco the color of olives. I watched with fascination as he struck a wood match on the bottom of his shoe and lit the pipe’s contents. A thick leaden smoke curled around his features as he drew hard on the stem keeping the fire alive. He tossed the extinguished matchstick to the oriental rug. A musty herbal odor filled
the carriage. “This is an exotic blend, Detective. If you care to try it, I have a spare pipe.”

  “No thanks, I like my tobacco a nice shade of brown.” I removed a Lucky from the pack and lit it with my Zippo. I let it hang from the corner of my mouth. It was a counter-offensive against the strong odor given off by his pipe. “Your accent, sounds British?”

  “No,” Nigel answered with a sly grin. “I am from Ontario.”

  “Long way from home?” I sort of asked taking a drag on the Lucky.

  “I am taking in the sights of your lovely countryside.”

  “Arkham ain’t that lovely, Pal.”

  “My scheduled stop is Providence, although your Arkham sounds intriguing. I’ve heard a few interesting things whispered about it. I am a writer, Detective. Your City’s reputation could be inspiring. You see I write to please myself, in defiance of contemporary taste. I like to think my works would have delighted Poe; possibly Hawthorne, or maybe even Lovecraft. They are studies of abnormal men, abnormal beasts, abnormal plants. I write of remote realms of imagination and horror, and the colors, sounds, and odors which evoke emotional discomfort in my readers. You might have read some of my works in ‘Weird Tales?’”

  “Can't say that I have.” I was familiar with the magazine. My partner, Matthew Bell, read a lot of that stuff. At times his desk would be littered with dog-eared copies of “Amazing Stories, Black Mask” and the aforementioned pulp.

  “I am a true epicure of the terrible, Detective,” he professed holding in a lungful of smoke, then expelling it with a long savory flare. “I am a person to whom the thrill of unutterable ghastliness is the justification for my existence. That is why your Arkham may have an appeal to me. Tell me, are there lonely farmhouses in the backwoods; dark elements of solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance that combine to form the perfection of the hideous?”

  “You described it to the T. Can we dispense with the travelogue for a moment and tell me why we are not talking about the recent murder?”

  “Oh, I’m afraid I won’t be able to shed much light on the murder per se, but I did find part of the young lady’s testimony in the lounge car inconsistent.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She said that she never left her seat since the Arkham Express left the station?”

  “That’s correct. What of it?”

  “She did get up, Detective and leave by the back of the coach.”

  “Where did she go?” I stood up quickly anticipating a lead that I could follow up.

  “Oh, I do not know. She was gone for only a few minutes. Possibly she went to the lady’s washroom.”

  ***

  Nigel Guest was a guy headed for a padded cell. He took forever to get to the point digressing later from the matter of the moment going on and on about pale gray shores beyond time and space and other such nonsense. When he declared, “the tree, the snake, and the apple are the vague symbols of a most awful mystery! Seeds of a deed that move through angles in dim recesses.” I made my way to the door. Nigel’s eyes glassed over, and he shouted, “they are hungry and thirsty!” That was when I left the compartment.

  Nigel may be a writer of sorts and nutty as a fruitcake, but if there was a kernel of truth in his account of the lady in blue leaving the Pullman Car to powder her nose it was time that I gave her the third degree. Get out the rubber hose Detective, I told myself. Oh, hell it ain’t kosher to hit a lady, but in her case, I’d sure like to make an exception. And if what he said was accurate there was one more thing that marred Lady Blue’s credibility. My wife, Nora, is a fan of Emily Brontë. From time to time she’ll read me some of her poetry. You see Brontë was a poetess and only wrote one novel in her lifetime. So, when the dame said, “I’ve read all of her novels,” it was a bald-faced lie!

  Lady Blue became my number one suspect, but old Nigel was a close second. Anybody that nutty deserved scrutiny.

  I leaned headlong on my tiptoes in the hall outside Nigel Guest’s compartment being accelerated slightly forward by the braking train. The brakes hissed and screeched when the train slowed to a stop. Through the windows, depot lights haloed in the mist. The snowy station platform teemed with activity; a porter wheels a trolley, a woman in a suit and hat holds a girl’s hand, who holds her doll, while standing beneath a sign that read, “Pennsylvania Station.” The cook, Sarah Walker, hurriedly left a forward car leaning against the cold in a heavy wool coat. Several more passengers were leaving the Express and only a few, in comparison, got on board. I hoped that none of the departing ones was my murder suspect. Nine o’clock in the evening is an awkward time to board a train. Dawn wouldn’t be for another ten hours.

  I watched as a group of laborers slid opened a large steel loading door to a boxcar and loaded pallets of shingles inside. We were positioned by a water tower. The layover was also a stop to replenish water. The boilerman swung out the long spigot arm over the tender and “jerked” the chain to begin filling the boiler. For burgs too insignificant to have a regular train station, ones we were destined to stop at every fifteen miles, gave rise to the slang term “Jerkwater town.” A man in a black bowler and a gray topcoat, a safe distance from the splashing water, stood talking with the train’s engineer and a uniformed conductor. After a while, he walked away, and from my angle, I was unable to see if he got on board.

  The train, with a terrific jerk, moved slowly forward. The Arkham Express forged ahead with a rumbling clatter as it left the station. It made a steadily increasing chugging sound. The whistle wailed like a forlorn call in the night.

  ***

  I went back to the Pullman Car. Lady Blue was not there, but the guy with the hipflask was still seated where I last left him. I decided to take a different approach to question him. “Hiya Pal, mind if I pull up a chair?”

  “Be my guest,” he shivered back.

  It wasn’t cold in there. It was hot and stuffy in the overheated car.

  “Earlier I couldn’t help but notice that silver flask of booze you keep in your back pocket.”

  “I know you are a policeman. Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Nah! I leave that up to the Feds. Never been a fan of the temperance law. I wanted to drink to your health.”

  Some of the shivers left him, and he smiled. “Absolutely!” he exclaimed, a little too friendly for my taste, but a shot of decent whiskey right then would do me a world of good. I smiled back.

  It was a classy flask for two he presented. I had only seen one like it once before. He yanked off a cap that became shot glass number one and then unscrewed the top that had been concealed underneath and voila the second jigger. His right hand shook while he poured. My stomach churned for a second time that evening. He had six fingers on his hand or more accurate an extra thumb. A sixth digit as a rare and separate abnormality was enough in itself to ponder, but what made it additionally weird was that the Lobo I extradited to the Big Apple, also displayed the same affliction. I tried to maintain my composure, but I don’t think I did a good job of it. “Salute!” I braved and downed the amber liquid in one gulp. It had a different flavor than the cheap stuff I normally drink. “What kind of whiskey is this?”

  “It’s brandy, Officer, Courvoisier.”

  “Different, but tasty, thank you. What’s your name, my friend?”

  “James Fraley, Officer.”

  “He was awfully damn polite. After the verbal abuse I suffered from Lady Blue, it was a welcome relief. “You know that there was a murder committed on the train this evening?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard.”

  “Did you observe anyone enter this car during that time?”

  “No.” he answered resuming his shaking.

  “I don’t see how that’s possible, James. I have it on authority that the murder suspect hightailed it through here.” I lied. “And from where I sit you had a clear view of that door,” I jerked a thumb toward the connecting door to the dining car.

  “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t paying attention. You see I
was playing solitaire most of the evening and I was caught up concentrating on the game.

  On the little table next to where he sat was a pack of playing cards. The cellophane seal had not been broken. He lied. So far, nobody was giving me any straight answers. It was either obfuscation from the lady in blue or mystification from nut job Nigel, and then there was this guy. I was about to press James Fraley further when she strolled in; Lady Blue. I seriously considered asking James for another belt but thought better of it realizing that too much liquor on an empty gut would make me the dumbest man in the room. “Stick around; we’ll talk later Pal,” I directed and left my chair.

  “Hello, Sweetheart,” I said with a forced grin approaching my suspect number one, anticipating another brawl. This time I wasn’t going to pussyfoot around. She lied to me twice; first about not leaving the Pullman and second about that Emily Brontë thing. She started to open her yap when the sound of the train’s wheels contacting the rails increased in volume interrupting her. A breeze blew in. The door to the dining car connecting platform opened and bowler and topcoat entered.

  He was a stocky fella, broad-shouldered with a pot on him signifying too much food and too much libation in his fifty-some years. “I’ll be asking the questions from now on,” he declared.

  ***

  “Finding a corpse is a crime?” I complained. We sat in the abandoned dining car. He wanted to question me in private.

  “In my jurisdiction it is.”

  “And just what is your jurisdiction, Pal?”

  “Pennsylvania.” Bowler hat said exhibiting a cool manner.

  “The entire state?” I challenged hoping to get his goat.

  “Hardly,” he answered appearing bored. “Pennsylvania Station Police,” he added flaunting the badge he kept inside his hat exposing a bald noggin.

  “A railroad detective,” I almost laughed out loud. Then thinking better of it I handed him the notes I took from questioning suspects. The sooner I dump this on someone else’s lap, the better. Then I could get on with my vacation. It was my turn to flash my badge. “Arkham Constabulary. I’m returning to my jurisdiction after extraditing a prisoner to the Big Apple.”