Murder on the Flying Scotsman (5 page)

‘Only on Saturdays. It’s a boarding school.’

Belinda was fascinated. Popping Dolly Mixtures into her mouth, one by one, she plied her new friend with questions, until a small, thin woman came in. She had greying hair, elaborately
marcelled, and she looked cross.

‘Kitty, you’re not eating sweets again! How do you expect ever to have a decent figure?’

‘I don’t care. I’m not going to be a deb, after all. I’m going to work and make pots of money. Anyway,’ she went on hastily as her mother frowned, ‘I’m
giving half . . . most of my sweets to Belinda. This is Belinda, Mummy.’

‘I’d better go,’ Belinda said even more hastily as the frown turned on her. ‘Miss Dalrymple must be wondering where I am.’

‘Here.’ Kitty thrust the paper bag of sweets into her hands. ‘If I don’t see you before, let’s sit together at lunch.’

‘If I can.’ Making her escape, Belinda worried about lunch. She was already costing Miss Dalrymple an awful lot of money but she had a feeling even such a nice grown-up would not let
her eat liquorice instead of a good, nourishing meal.

She glanced into the next compartment. Kitty’s brother Jeremy was there, with a lady who was either very fat or going to have a baby. She was crying. Tabitha’s mummy and daddy were
there, too, but not Tabitha, so Belinda went on.

As she passed she heard one of the gentlemen say loudly, ‘Albert McGowan is a rotten blighter who’s dashed well letting the side down.’

‘Calm down, Bretton,’ said the other. ‘Slanging the old ba . . . boy won’t get us anywhere. We need to put our heads together and decide what to do.’ The noise of
the train cut off his voice as Belinda moved on.

The door of the next compartment was shut, the blinds pulled down; then there was one with strangers in it. After that came Miss Dalrymple’s. Kitty’s other brother, the nice one,
Raymond, was still there with Judith, the lady he wanted to marry. There was an old lady, too, a plump, comfortable sort of old lady who reminded Belinda of Granny.

She bit her lip. Granny must be awfully upset, wondering where she had got to. She shouldn’t have run away – but Kitty said it was a simply ripping adventure, and some bits were
exciting and fun.

The old lady was talking. ‘Father always was unreasonable,’ she said, ‘but Uncle Albert is utterly unnatural, leaving everything to a stranger. Desmond is furious. You know how
your father is, Judith, always liable to fly off the handle even at the best of times.’ She went on about Desmond’s temper.

Belinda didn’t like to interrupt by going in. As she hesitated in the corridor, Miss Dalrymple saw her and smiled. Belinda pointed forward to indicate she was going to the lavatory at the
end of the coach. Miss Dalrymple nodded.

The next compartment had its door shut but its blinds up. The three men in it all looked hot and angry. Belinda wondered if one of them was Judith’s bad-tempered father. The one nearest
the door had a red mustache almost the same colour as his face. Next to him, by the window, was a stringy man in gold-rimmed glasses with a long, thin neck and a sticking-out Adam’s apple. He
was bald as a coot and he kept wiping his glistening head with a large white handkerchief. Opposite sat a large man with a white mustache and a purple face with a big nose. Belinda could hear him
right through the closed door.

‘I don’t care if he is in the next compartment,’ he roared. ‘There must be a law to stop a bloody fool chucking away his ancestors’ wealth on a demned
native!’

The bald man shook his head and said something inaudible. Belinda moved on. Everyone was angry with Uncle Albert McGowan for leaving his money to an Indian, though she couldn’t see why he
shouldn’t if he wanted to. She hadn’t understood everything she had heard, but it sounded as if they were all afraid even to go and talk to Mr. McGowan because he said he didn’t
want to see them. He must be a real ogre.

To her disappointment, the next door was closed and the blinds down. She went to the lavatory, then started back to rejoin Miss Dalrymple.

In front of her, a small man in black came out of Mr. McGowan’s compartment. Turning back, he gave a sort of stiff little bow and said, ‘Very good, sir. I shall convey your message
to Dr. Jagai.’

He slid the door shut. Belinda stepped back into the carriage-end vestibule to let him pass. As she set off again, the train jolted, clattering over some points, and she saw the door slide back
an inch. The man in black hadn’t closed it far enough to latch properly.

Belinda promptly applied her eye to the gap. Mr. McGowan looked more like a goblin than an ogre, she decided. She must remember to tell Kitty he ought to be called Mr. McGoblin. His long, narrow
face was yellowish and covered with hundreds and hundreds of wrinkles. His yellowish scalp showed through lank strands of yellow-grey hair, but his eyebrows were even bushier than Daddy’s. He
sat hunched in the corner, a rug over his legs though the window was shut and stifling hot air wafted through the crack onto Belinda’s face.

It was hard to tell with all those wrinkles, but she thought he looked bored and miserable. She felt sorry for him. It must be horrid having everyone hate him, even if it was his own fault.

Belinda would have liked to talk to him about India. What a pity he was an ogre! She was about to leave her peephole when the train rattled over another set of points and to her horror the door
slid all the way open.

CHAPTER 4

‘
Ha
!’ snapped the goblin in a far from feeble voice. ‘Who’re you, hey? A Gillespie? A Smythe-Pike? A Briton, or whatever the fellow calls
himself?’

‘I’m a Fletcher,’ Belinda squeaked.

‘Not family?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. Come in, then, Miss Fletcher, and close the door before I catch my death. There’s a terrible draught. Come in, come in, I don’t bite. At least, not pretty little
girls.’

He didn’t look strong enough to kidnap her, Belinda thought. Besides, he couldn’t very well on a moving train. ‘I’ll come in,’ she temporized, ‘if I can put
one of the blinds up, so if Miss Dalrymple comes looking she can see me.’

‘Very well, very well,’ he grumbled. ‘Anything for company that doesn’t come to sponge. This Dalrymple woman, she’s your governess?’

‘No, just a friend. I don’t have a governess, I go to school.’ Stepping in, Belinda wrestled the door shut and let up a blind. ‘Are you Mr. Albert McGowan, sir?’
she asked.

‘That’s right. Talking about me, are they, hey?’ He laughed, a peculiar, creaky sound. ‘And not a good word among ’em, I’ll be bound.’

Uncertain how to answer, she proffered her bag of sweeties. ‘Would you like some aniseed balls?’

‘No, thank you, Miss Fletcher. I am obliged to watch what I eat or suffer appalling consequences. Do you play chess?’

‘Sort of. Daddy’s taught me the moves. But I’m not very good.’

Pale, washed-out eyes peered at her from under the shaggy brows. He nodded. ‘I like an honest woman. Perhaps we’d better stick to draughts, then, Miss Fletcher. Can you climb up and
get down my campstool to put the board on?’

Standing on the seat, Belinda took down the green canvas stool from the rack. She opened it and set it on the floor in front of him, and he laid on it the traveling chequer-board he had had on
his knees. The pieces were round and flat like draughts counters, with inlaid pictures of chessmen so you could play either game. They had little holes in their tops, and pegs underneath to fit
into each other or the holes in the board.

‘Gosh, what a spiffing set,’ said Belinda, helping him lay out the men.

‘Spiffing?’ His hands were like claws, bony, with long yellow nails, the backs blotchy. They trembled slightly as he handled the pieces.

‘I used to say topping, but Miss Dalrymple says spiffing. It means wonderful.’

‘You like it, hey? Ivory and ebony it is, and other woods I forget the names of. I had it specially made for me in India.’

‘I’ve got an Indian friend at school. Would you, could you
please
, tell me about India? Deva’s just a girl like me, and she doesn’t remember much.’

So as they played, he told her about playing chess – with this very set – with a maharajah in a howdah on an elephant, on the way to a tiger hunt in the jungle. He described hot blue
skies, and cool marble fountains, and temples, and festivals where gleaming, glittering gods, garlanded with marigolds, paraded through streets smelling of aromatic spices. Belinda forgot to take
her turn. Soon she gave up even trying to play.

At the end of a story about a temple monkey which stole his watch right out of his waistcoat pocket, Mr. McGowan said firmly, ‘That’s enough now. I don’t want you suffering
from intellectual indigestion. The pains of the real thing are bad enough.’

Belinda wasn’t sure what he meant, but there was one more thing she really wanted to know. ‘Couldn’t you just please tell me about the Indian you’ve left your money to in
your will?’

‘Little busybody,’ he growled, but his eyes twinkled at her. ‘So they’ve found out, have they? That must have set the cat among the pigeons.’

‘Rather! They’re awfully angry, ’cause of him being Indian and ’cause of it being the family’s money.’

‘Bah! It belongs to that old miser, my brother Alistair, now, and it’ll be mine when he pops off the hooks. I’ll do with it as I please. Let them earn their own. Now
who’s this, hey?’ he went on, glancing towards the corridor. ‘One of ’em come to try to change my mind?’

‘No, it’s my Miss Dalrymple. Oh dear, I’ve been gone an awfully long time,’ Belinda said guiltily.

Peering through the window, Daisy wondered what on earth the child was doing in there with the misanthrope. Good gracious, it looked as if they had been playing a game together! She opened the
door.

‘Come in,’ he said at once, glaring at her beneath peetling brows. ‘Come in, don’t stand there letting the draught in. So you’re Miss Fletcher’s friend,
hey?’

‘Miss Dalrymple, this is Mr. McGowan. Mr.
Albert
McGowan, not Alistair He’s nice.’

Daisy pulled the door to behind her. ‘How do you do, Mr. McGowan. I must apologize for this young imp’s intrusion.’

‘Not at all, not at all. It’s been a pleasure making Miss Fletcher’s acquaintance. Won’t you sit down, young lady? I don’t dislike company, only that tribe of
would-be spongers I’m forced to acknowledge as relatives.’

With a smile, Daisy returned frankness for frankness. ‘They believe you
don’t
acknowledge them, sir.’

He cackled. ‘As little as possible,’ he admitted. ‘The way they treated me when I was in India. No “Dear Uncle Albert, How’s life and is there anything we can send
out to make it easier?” They didn’t even bother to notify me of weddings and births and such.’

‘The mean beasts!’ Belinda said indignantly.

‘Their loss, my dear. I didn’t have to send wedding and christening presents. Of course, when I came home they found out I wasn’t the indigent younger brother any
longer.’

‘I suppose they camped on your doorstep,’ said Daisy.

‘Descended like a flock of vultures. All of a sudden I was “dearest Uncle,”’ he spat out, his lined face twisted. ‘That was when I decided I wasn’t going to
leave much, and what I did leave was not going to my beloved family.’

‘Mr. McGowan was just going to tell me about the Indian who’s going to get it all,’ said Belinda.

‘I was, was I?’ The old man sounded amused. ‘I don’t remember agreeing.’

‘
Please
, Sir.’

‘Oh, as you please. It all started a long, long time ago. I fell in love with an Indian girl, which wasn’t as easy as you might think, for they keep their women shut up out of sight.
But she was the daughter of a man who had adopted many English ways and among his friends she went unveiled.’

‘Was she very beautiful?’ Belinda asked, all agog.

‘Very beautiful, and charming, and intelligent, too. Just as my little friend Miss fletcher will be when she grows up.’

‘Did you marry her?’

Daisy frowned at this impertinence, but McGowan was unoffended. He sighed.

‘No, my dear, I did not. For a start, I was more than twice her age. Still more important, life is very difficult for Asian women married to white men. Belonging to neither side they are
despised by both, and I could not allow her to suffer so, though she and her father were willing. So she was married to one of her own, a good enough fellow. They had one child, a boy. I was
invited to be his godfather, or as near as their religion comes to that office. Though they prayed for more children, perhaps it is as well their prayers were not answered. He was five when his
parents and many of his relatives died in a typhoid epidemic.’

‘Poor little boy,’ Belinda cried, wide eyes filling with tears. She held on tight to Daisy’s hand, and Daisy knew she was thinking of her own mother.

‘Not so poor,’ said Albert McGowan dryly. ‘I took him into my house, and when he was seven I sent him to school in Scotland. He did well, went on to university, and he has just
finished his medical training. He’s a houseman now at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. He is my heir.’

‘Naturally,’ Daisy approved.

‘I set aside funds enough to see him through his education and to purchase a partnership in a medical practice when he’s ready. I see no reason to change my Last Will and Testament
merely because my penny-pinching brother Alistair seems to be about to pop off before me after all! Chandra Jagai is . . . Where is the boy?’ he interrupted himself fretfully. ‘I told
Weekes I want to see him.’

Daisy was afraid Belinda’s visit, however welcome, had tired him. He was very old, eighty at least she thought, since Peter Gillespie, his younger sister’s son, was in his fifties.
She was about to take leave of him when the door slid open a few inches and a round, dark, serious face appeared.

‘Sir? Weekes told me . . . Oh, I beg your pardon, you have company.’

Chandra Jagai spoke English with a slight Lowland Scots accent. Only the faintest hint of a foreign lilt suggested it was not his native tongue. A stocky man in his mid-twenties, he was neatly
dressed in a dark suit, buff waistcoat, dazzlingly white shirt, and maroon tie. Catching Belinda’s disappointed look, Daisy smiled. She recalled her own disillusionment when Alec took her to
the Cathay for dinner and the Chinese proprietor wore tails and spoke with a Cockney accent.