The Salisbury Manuscript (4 page)

‘A man on the line?’

‘Yes, down there.’

‘You are sure now, sir?’

The porter, a lugubrious-looking fellow whose face expressed a natural scepticism before he’d even uttered a word, was standing close to Tom. He was only an inch or so less tall than the lawyer. He sniffed the air. Tom wondered if he was sniffing for drink.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ he said. ‘I know what I saw.’

Tom spoke more sharply than he’d intended. He heard the tension in his voice and realized how much the incident had shaken him. The porter said, ‘Well, whatever happened, there’s no damage done, that’s plain. The person you saw must’ve upped and scarpered.’

‘He wasn’t alone, the man who fell, there was someone else on this part of the platform.’

‘Someone . . . else?’ said the other, drawing out the words. ‘This is a public place, sir. There is generally someone else.’

‘But this one was about to . . .’ Tom paused. He was getting nowhere. Gesturing at the closed doors and shuttered windows, he said, ‘What offices are these behind us?’

‘Storerooms and the like.’

Tom had no authority to request a search of the rooms. No crime had been committed. The worst that had occurred was a minor accident, a man falling from the station platform but sufficiently unharmed to scramble up and disappear from the scene within a few seconds. And even that simple sequence of events was not credited by the railwayman.

‘Will that be all, sir?’ said the porter, scarcely bothering to conceal his impatience.

‘Thank you,’ said Tom. ‘I am sorry to have troubled you.’

‘No trouble is too great for an employee of the London and South Western line,’ said the man, though without sounding as if he believed a word of it.

Tom Ansell walked back to where his case stood, forlorn on the platform, with the improvised repair to its strap. He picked it up and went through the ticket hall. The entire business on the platform had scarcely occupied more than a couple of minutes. Some of the individuals who’d disembarked from the London train were still milling outside by a diminished line of cabs and carriages, even a cart or two (for this was the country). Among them was the porter he’d first spoken to, who was about to assist the elderly gentleman in the shovel-hat to climb into a cab, the last in the line.

This passenger was fumbling in his coat to tip the porter before boarding but as he drew out his purse a shower of coins tumbled on to the ground. The man looked around helplessly while the porter crouched to scoop them up. The cabman surveyed the scene from his perch behind his vehicle but did not get down to assist. Tom, who was standing closest, groped for a couple of sovereigns which had rolled by his feet. He retrieved the book which had fallen from his own coat pocket as he was stooping and pressed the coins into the outstretched palm of the aged passenger, who was wearing a dog collar under a loosely tied muffler. The clergyman said, ‘Thank you, thank you.’

The porter meanwhile had completed his task of gathering up the rest of the coins which he handed back to the cleric with a rather ostentatious flourish, as if to demonstrate his honesty in returning every bit of scattered money. In return the cab passenger gave the porter a large enough tip for the man to touch his cap with a soldier’s smartness. Noticing Tom and wanting to do the world a favour, the porter now said, ‘This gentleman wants to go in the direction of the close too, I believe, sir. The Poultry Cross.’

‘Then he should share my cab,’ said the cleric.

‘I would be grateful,’ said Tom.

‘I told him it wasn’t a night for walking,’ said the porter, who’d said no such thing. Tom clambered in after the older man, and the porter stowed his case and the clergyman’s bags. He closed the small double doors, which protected the travellers’ lower limbs, at the same time calling to the cabman, ‘The cathedral close, Alfred.’

The driver waited until the vehicle in front had drawn off before he rattled the reins and the cab creaked and swayed away from the lights of the railway station. The inside space was limited and even though Tom’s companion was thin and small-boned with age, they were pressed together by the motion of the cab. They were surrounded by wet fog, interrupted by the occasional smudge of light from an uncurtained window. Even the clopping of the horse’s hooves seemed muffled by the dankness. The animal must have known his route by instinct.

‘Something is amiss?’ said the old clergyman, tapping Tom Ansell on the arm. Tom was surprised at the familiarity of the gesture and only just prevented himself from giving a start. Then he realized how his posture must be giving him away. His coat was unbuttoned and he was gripping his knees tightly. His back was rigid.

‘Surely a young man like you – a lawyer from London – doesn’t fear a spill from a provincial carriage? You can relax.’

‘No, there is nothing wrong, sir. It’s merely that I saw something which . . . disturbed me on the station platform.’

As he said these last words, the scene flashed before his eyes again: the silhouette at the platform’s edge, the other man sneaking up to push him over. Then his mind caught up with his companion’s ‘lawyer’ comment. He turned to look at the individual beside him in the backwash from the carriage lights. Apart from a clean-shaven roundness to the elderly cleric’s face, Tom couldn’t make out much between the brim of the shovel-hat and the muffler. What he’d glimpsed moments earlier by the cab rank might have suggested a rather unworldly figure, an impression strengthened by his helplessness over the dropped money. But the impression was evidently wrong.

Without waiting to be asked how he knew about Tom’s line of work, the cleric now said, ‘Forgive me, I know it is impolite of me to claim a profession for you when we haven’t even been introduced. I am Canon Eric Selby.’

‘Thomas Ansell. And, yes, I plead guilty to being a lawyer. Is it so obvious?’

‘Well, I could say that there are not so many professions open to an educated young man who must earn his living. There is the Church . . . ‘business’ perhaps . . . the army . . . the law. I might claim, without offence I hope, that you don’t appear to be cut from the same cloth which makes a clergyman. As for ‘business’, I think not. Nor do you have a soldier’s bearing. Which more or less leaves us with the law. But, my dear sir, the conclusive proof is that I noticed you clutching a copy of Baxter’s
On Tort
when you were kind enough to pick up my scattered money just now. No sane man would read Baxter for pleasure.’

This was the book which had so comprehensively failed to capture Tom’s interest on the journey. He could feel the bulk of the thing in his coat-pocket. He laughed and said, ‘I should have packed some other reading matter for the train.
On Tort
is not very diverting at the best of times. You’re obviously familiar with it, Canon Selby.’

‘I had a friend who swore by it. Indeed I considered the law myself for a brief time before plumping for the Church,’ said the other. ‘Just as you considered the army, Mr Ansell.’

This time Tom really did start. He said nothing but waited for the cleric to explain himself. Did this man have second sight?

‘No miracle, sir,’ said Canon Selby, not trying to keep the pleasure at the success of his deductions out of his voice. ‘When I mentioned the army as a possible profession you gave a slight sigh and pulled away, which told me that the subject had . . . crossed your mind in some way. Not a very favourable way, perhaps.’

‘Then I must be more careful of my sighs,’ said Tom, feeling slightly put out and thinking how absurd it was to be having this conversation – given the oddly intimate turn it was taking – with an elderly cleric while driving in a cab through a fog-bound and unfamiliar town. ‘You are right though. I did consider the army as a career.’

‘I knew it!’ said Canon Selby. He spoke with such delight that it was impossible to feel irritated with him.

Tom said, ‘You are a loss to my profession, sir. No one in a court of law would have a chance against you.’

‘If you’ve been listening to people for as long as I have, Mr Ansell, you learn that what is said in words is only the half of it, less than half indeed. One looks at the little movements we all make, one listens for the suppressed sighs and unexpected stresses underlying the words. Now tell me what happened on the Salisbury station platform which so disturbed you.’

There was something in the man’s voice and manner which encouraged trust so Tom gave an account of what he’d witnessed. It didn’t take long. To his surprise, Canon Selby accepted his story straightaway.

‘You say that the railwayman didn’t believe you?’

‘From his attitude, no. He probably thought I’d been drinking or that the fog was making me see things.’

‘It might be worth reporting this to the authorities,’ said the cleric. ‘The police are not up to very much in this place but there is at least one good man in the force. Inspector Foster can be relied on.’

‘I am not sure there’s anything to be reported,’ said Tom. ‘No harm has been done. There was no sign of a body on the tracks – or of any assailant either.’

‘Well then, it might be better to leave it, I suppose. But remember Foster is the man to go to.’

As they’d been talking the cab had entered a more densely populated area of the town. There were passers-by, singly or in muffled groups, shifting shapes in the fog, as well as other carriages. There were glimpses of shop-fronts and chop houses and inns.

‘You are going to the Poultry Cross?’ said Canon Selby.

‘To an inn nearby. The Side of Beef, it’s called.’

‘One of the town’s oldest hostelries. We have had an establishment called The Haunch of Venison since medieval times and the common belief is that The Side of Beef was set up in opposition to it by a disgruntled pot-man from the Haunch. Jenkins is the proprietor now. He chatters away. Well, we are all but there.’

The old man rapped on the side of the cab and they slowed. As if on cue, an inn sign proclaimed itself as The Side of Beef in light thrown from the parlour window.

‘I will not ask you your business here, Mr Ansell, but perhaps we shall meet again. Salisbury is not a large place.’

Tom was about to say that he had an appointment at a house in the close the next morning, but some lawyerly caution prevented him from doing more than returning Canon Selby’s wish and thanking him for his company and advice. The cleric lifted a hand in acknowledgement before adjusting his shovel-hat and settling back into the corner of the cab. Tom climbed down, retrieved his case and paid the driver. He watched while the cab pulled away into the fog. He looked up at the inn sign as if there might be some question whether he had come to the right place. The image of a bloodied carcass of beef hanging on a frame looked more like a sacrifice than an invitation to dine. The inn was a timber-frame building with a lopsided look and first-floor windows that projected slightly over the street.

While his attention was elsewhere, a woman walking briskly along the pavement banged into him. She was of middle height, was wearing a large hat and had her head down. Taken by suprise, Tom found himself thrown into her shoulder and well-padded collar. ‘Oops,’ she said. The word was curiously drawn out: ‘ooops’. Tom mumbled his apologies, expecting the woman to walk on, but she took a pace back. Quick dark eyes looked him up and down. She was well dressed, a little garishly too with a red band round her hat and a billow of yellow skirt showing beneath her coat, and though not young she was not so far into middle age either.

‘My fault, madam,’ said Tom quickly. ‘I was, er, looking at the inn sign.’

‘I thought perhaps you wanted to sniff at my nosegay,’ said the woman. She sounded amused.

‘Nosegay?’

‘Yes. To sniff at it.’

She raised a gloved hand towards a bunch of flowers attached to her coat collar. Tom couldn’t make out what they were, violets perhaps with a sprig of green. The woman wasn’t English, had a slight accent (almost saying ‘per’aps’, ‘sneef’), although he was unable to place it. Her voice was attractively low. Now, if such a remark about ‘sniffing nosegays’ had come from a woman in parts of central London – round Haymarket, say, or in Leicester Square in the early evening – Tom Ansell wouldn’t have had any doubts about the nature of such a meeting. Nor would the woman’s colliding with him have been an accident. But he was in a strange town on a foggy night and did not know his way round. The woman continued to assess him by the faint light from The Side of Beef. She glanced at the case he was holding and then at the inn sign. She might have been in a hurry before but seemed reluctant to move now.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No nosegays tonight. It’s too foggy.’

The woman’s mouth, wide and mobile, flickered with renewed humour. ‘Ah, no nosegays tonight because it is too foggy,’ she said, mimicking him. She dipped her head slightly and moved off down the road. Tom wanted to watch her retreating back but he was afraid she might turn round to look at him and did not want to show that much interest. Was she a judy or what his friends might have half-mockingly called a
fille de joie
? Was that her profession? He couldn’t tell. After the incident at the railway station, this encounter left him not so much unsettled as feeling a bit foolish. Why had he made such a nonsensical comment about the foggy night?

Shrugging, he climbed the steps to the porticoed entrance to the inn and pushed at the door. A small man hovering in the lobby whom he at first took for a servant turned out to be Mr Jenkins, the proprietor. Jenkins had slicked-back grey hair and a full moustache which was, incongruously, jet black. The landlord was expecting Tom, who had written on the previous day to reserve a room.

‘Ah, the gentleman from Messrs Scott, Lye & Mackenzie in London,’ said Jenkins, rolling the names round his tongue. ‘You had a pleasant journey from London, sir? I expect you’ll want to warm up. There’s a good fire in your room. And there’s hot water upstairs too. A bathroom with a geyser, no less. Nasty night out, isn’t it. Goes to one’s chest, this weather, I find. Let me show you to your quarters. Can I take your case? No, rather carry it yourself, would you? Quite understand. On business here? But then you must be on business, coming from Messrs Scott, Lye & Mackenzie in London.’