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Death on the Morning Train A Miss Marple Mystery · Miss Marple Mystery

0:00
Speaker 1: Miss Jane Marbury had taken the 647 from Crewe every
0:04
Speaker 1: third Tuesday for eleven years, and in all that time
0:10
Speaker 1: the train had never once been on time. So when
0:14
Speaker 1: it pulled away from the platform, at exactly 647 that
0:18
Speaker 1: particular November morning she noticed, small things mattered, they always had.
0:25
Speaker 1: She settled into her usual seat, second carriage right side
0:29
Speaker 1: facing forward, and arranged her bag on the rack above,
0:33
Speaker 1: with the careful economy of someone who had learned long
0:36
Speaker 1: ago that overhead bags fell on people who didn't secure
0:40
Speaker 1: them properly. The Henderson's eldest had proved that quite conclusively
0:44
Speaker 1: at a church vet in 1962, though the bag in
0:48
Speaker 1: question had been a rather large canvas holdall belonging to
0:52
Speaker 1: the vicar, and the person it had fallen on had
0:55
Speaker 1: been Mrs. Henderson herself. which some people said was justice
0:59
Speaker 1: of a kind, ere Miss Jane unwound her scarf. The
1:05
Speaker 1: carriage was half full, a businessman near the door, already
1:09
Speaker 1: working through papers with the grim concentration of a man
1:12
Speaker 1: who hated his job, but loved being seen doing it.
1:17
Speaker 1: Two young women sharing earphones from a device Miss Jane
1:20
Speaker 1: couldn't name, their heads tilted together. An elderly man in
1:26
Speaker 1: a tweed coat asleep, or apparently asleep, near the connecting door.
1:31
Speaker 1: And across the aisle, two seats ahead, the man with
1:35
Speaker 1: the coffee. She noticed him the way she noticed most things, passively,
1:41
Speaker 1: then with increasing attention. He was perhaps fifty-five, well-dressed in
1:46
Speaker 1: the way that suggested money rather than taste. The suit
1:49
Speaker 1: was expensive, but the tie was slightly wrong for it,
1:53
Speaker 1: the kind of combination a man chose himself rather than
1:55
Speaker 1: with help. dark hair going grey at the temples. A
2:01
Speaker 1: briefcase on the seat beside him, open, as though he
2:05
Speaker 1: wasn't looking at it. His coffee, one of those cardboard
2:09
Speaker 1: cups from the station kiosk, sat in the fold-down tray,
2:14
Speaker 1: and he was slumped slightly against the window, the fog
2:18
Speaker 1: outside pressing grey against the glass. Nothing unusual. People slept
2:24
Speaker 1: on early trains. She'd done it herself, though she always
2:29
Speaker 1: woke with an awful crick in her neck and a
2:32
Speaker 1: determination never to do it again, which lasted precisely until
2:37
Speaker 1: the next early train. She took out her knitting. The
2:41
Speaker 1: countryside moved past, flat brown, November stripped. Miss Jane had
2:46
Speaker 1: never thought much of the landscape between Crewe and Birmingham.
2:50
Speaker 1: It was the kind of scenery that made you feel
2:53
Speaker 1: the world was mostly just getting on with things without
2:56
Speaker 1: any particular enthusiasm. Twenty minutes passed. She became aware, in
3:03
Speaker 1: that slow way of hers, that something was wrong, and
3:06
Speaker 1: the man hadn't moved. Not slightly, not at all. His
3:12
Speaker 1: coffee was still in the same position, she was certain
3:15
Speaker 1: of it, because the cup was tilted perhaps two degrees
3:19
Speaker 1: to the left. resting against the tray's edge, and it
3:23
Speaker 1: had to not shifted. People who slept on trains shifted.
3:28
Speaker 1: They breathed, they adjusted, they twitched in small involuntary ways.
3:33
Speaker 1: Even deep sleepers did. He had not. Miss Jane set
3:38
Speaker 1: down her knitting. She looked at him more carefully now,
3:43
Speaker 1: with the full attention she usually kept behind a performance
3:47
Speaker 1: of mild vagueness. His left hand was visible, resting on
3:51
Speaker 1: his knee. The fingers were slightly curled, the way hands
3:56
Speaker 1: went when they stopped holding something. His colour, what she
4:01
Speaker 1: could see of his profile, was off, not pale exactly.
4:06
Speaker 1: More the particular stillness of something that had stopped. She
4:11
Speaker 1: had seen that colour once before, beyond old Thomas Reeve
4:15
Speaker 1: at the Milford Village Fete, 1987. He'd been standing by
4:21
Speaker 1: the tombola, and then he wasn't standing at all. And
4:25
Speaker 1: everyone said how sudden, how dreadful. But Miss Jane had
4:30
Speaker 1: noticed something wrong about him twenty minutes before he fell.
4:35
Speaker 1: She hadn't said anything then. She'd been uncertain. She'd thought,
4:40
Speaker 1: don't be foolish, Jane. Not everyone who looks tired is dying.
4:46
Speaker 1: Thomas Reeve had been dying as it turned out. She
4:50
Speaker 1: stood up. The businessman glanced at her with the brief
4:54
Speaker 1: irritation of someone whose peripheral vision was being disturbed. The
4:59
Speaker 1: two young women didn't look up. Miss Jane moved across
5:03
Speaker 1: the aisle, steadied herself against the seat back. The train
5:07
Speaker 1: swayed more than it used to, or perhaps she noticed
5:11
Speaker 1: it more, and looked properly at the man by the window.
5:15
Speaker 1: Close up, there was no question. The coffee cup was
5:19
Speaker 1: still faintly warm. She could feel the heat of it
5:22
Speaker 1: without touching. That meant twenty minutes, perhaps thirty since it
5:28
Speaker 1: had been set down. His chest was not moving. His
5:33
Speaker 1: eyes were closed, which was a mercy, and his expression was,
5:38
Speaker 1: this was the thing that stayed with her later, not frightened,
5:43
Speaker 1: not pained. He looked mildly surprised. The way people looked
5:48
Speaker 1: when someone told them an unexpected but not entirely unwelcome
5:53
Speaker 1: piece of news. Miss Jane straightened up and turned to
5:57
Speaker 1: face the carriage. Excuse me, she said in her classroom voice.
6:02
Speaker 1: Not loud, but the kind of voice that arrived in
6:05
Speaker 1: every corner of a room, whether it was wanted there
6:08
Speaker 1: or not. I'm afraid this gentleman appears to be dead.
6:12
Speaker 2: An anomaly is often our first clue. A train that
6:16
Speaker 2: is suddenly on time after eleven years shifts one's attention.
6:21
Speaker 1: The next four minutes were the usual chaos. The businessman
6:25
Speaker 1: stood up too fast and knocked his papers to the floor.
6:28
Speaker 1: On one of the young women said something Miss Jane
6:31
Speaker 1: didn't catch. Probably an expletive, she thought, not disapprovingly. The
6:39
Speaker 1: elderly man in the tweed coat opened his eyes with
6:42
Speaker 1: the startled alertness of someone who had not, in fact,
6:47
Speaker 1: been sleeping. A woman Miss Jane hadn't noticed before, sitting
6:52
Speaker 1: in the far corner behind a magazine, put the magazine
6:55
Speaker 1: down with slow deliberateness, as if she'd been expecting this.
7:01
Speaker 1: A conductor appeared from the far end of the carriage, young, anxious,
7:05
Speaker 1: with the look of someone encountering their first professional crisis.
7:09
Speaker 1: He confirmed what Miss Jane had said, went pale, spoke
7:13
Speaker 1: into a radio, and asked everyone please to remain seated.
7:17
Speaker 1: Miss Jane sat down. She picked up her knitting. The
7:21
Speaker 1: businessman was saying something about ambulances. One of the young
7:25
Speaker 1: women was crying quietly, but the other had her arm
7:28
Speaker 1: around her and was looking at the dead man with
7:31
Speaker 1: an expression that was, Miss Jane noted, more calculating than grief.
7:37
Speaker 1: The elderly man in the tweed coat had not moved
7:41
Speaker 1: from his seat, He was watching the conductor. The woman
7:46
Speaker 1: from the corner had moved forward, just slightly, as if
7:50
Speaker 1: wanting to see better, or wanting to be seen. And then,
7:55
Speaker 1: a thing happened that Miss Jane thought about for the
7:58
Speaker 1: rest of the journey. The conductor, still pale, still holding
8:03
Speaker 1: his radio, turned to the carriage and asked, as they
8:06
Speaker 1: always did, it was procedure, whether anyone knew the deceased.
8:11
Speaker 1: whether anyone had been travelling with him. Silence. But it
8:16
Speaker 1: was not the silence of strangers. It was the silence
8:20
Speaker 1: of people who were deciding what to say. Miss Jane
8:24
Speaker 1: knew the difference. She'd taught children for thirty-one years. Our
8:29
Speaker 1: children were transparent about it. Their eyes slid sideways. They
8:34
Speaker 1: looked at their hands. They developed sudden interests in sealing corners.
8:40
Speaker 1: Adults were better. but only slightly. The businessman looked at
8:45
Speaker 1: his papers. The woman from the corner looked at the window.
8:49
Speaker 1: The elderly man in tweed looked quite steadily at the
8:53
Speaker 1: dead man. No, said the businessman finally. No, I don't
8:58
Speaker 1: know him. One of the young women shook her head.
9:03
Speaker 1: The other said nothing at all. The woman from the
9:06
Speaker 1: corner said, I don't think anyone here knows him. which
9:10
Speaker 1: was not the same thing as saying she didn't know
9:12
Speaker 1: him herself. Miss Jane looked at the dead man's briefcase,
9:17
Speaker 1: still open on the seat beside him. She could see
9:21
Speaker 1: from her angle the edge of a manila folder, a pen,
9:25
Speaker 1: the corner of what looked like a photograph. She could
9:28
Speaker 1: see on the briefcase's outer pocket the three letters stamped
9:32
Speaker 1: in gold, R.H.T. She filed this away. Then she noticed
9:39
Speaker 1: one more thing. the thing that would sit in the
9:42
Speaker 1: back of her mind for the next hour, like a
9:44
Speaker 1: stone in a shoe. There was no ticket. She could
9:49
Speaker 1: see the seat pocket in front of him, the tray
9:51
Speaker 1: with the coffee, his jacket. He hadn't taken it off.
9:55
Speaker 1: Unusual for a man settling in for a journey.
10:01
Speaker 2: The moment of discovery is deeply educational. Shock forces people
10:05
Speaker 2: to drop their masks.
10:07
Speaker 1: No ticket in his hand, none visible in his pocket,
10:11
Speaker 1: none on the seat. On the 647 from Crewe, the
10:16
Speaker 1: conductor had not yet come through. which meant the dead
10:21
Speaker 1: man had boarded this train knowing he wouldn't need to
10:24
Speaker 1: show one. The train did not stop. This surprised people.
10:31
Speaker 1: Miss Jane heard the businessman asking the conductor, rather insistently,
10:36
Speaker 1: why they weren't stopping at the next station, and the
10:40
Speaker 1: conductor explaining, apologetically, I repeatedly, that protocol for an unattended
10:47
Speaker 1: death on a moving train was to continue to the
10:50
Speaker 1: nearest major station with facilities, which was Birmingham New Street,
10:55
Speaker 1: approximately forty-two minutes away. Forty-two minutes, the businessman repeated, as
11:02
Speaker 1: if this were a personal injury. I'm afraid so, sir.
11:07
Speaker 1: We're just going to sit here with a... I'm afraid so, sir.
11:12
Speaker 1: Miss Jane thought forty-two minutes was quite enough time She
11:17
Speaker 1: looked around the carriage again with fresh attention, the kind
11:21
Speaker 1: she hadn't fully applied yet, because there had been the
11:24
Speaker 1: initial shock to manage, the conductor to observe, the general
11:28
Speaker 1: noise of discovery to let settle. Now it had settled,
11:33
Speaker 1: more or less. Six passengers, including herself. The businessman, mid-forties,
11:39
Speaker 1: London suit, wedding ring, the kind of tan that came
11:42
Speaker 1: from winter holidays rather than outdoor work. His papers were financial.
11:48
Speaker 1: She'd caught numbers, percentages, the word acquisition twice. He'd looked
11:54
Speaker 1: at his papers when asked if he knew the dead man.
11:57
Speaker 1: The two young women, early twenties. The crying one had
12:02
Speaker 1: dark hair and genuine distress. Her hands were shaking. The
12:07
Speaker 1: other was blonde, dry-eyed, watchful. They were friends, obviously, but
12:12
Speaker 1: not easy ones. There was some tension between them that
12:16
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the dead man. Or perhaps
12:19
Speaker 1: it did. The elderly man in tweed, seventy, perhaps older,
12:25
Speaker 1: walked with the careful precision of bad hips. He'd been
12:29
Speaker 1: watching everything with the particular calm of someone who had
12:32
Speaker 1: seen worse. His coat was good quality but old. His
12:37
Speaker 1: shoes were very well polished. Miss Jane had always thought
12:42
Speaker 1: shoes told you more than faces. Faces were what people
12:46
Speaker 1: arranged for others to see, but shoes were what people
12:51
Speaker 1: actually did. The woman from the corner, fifty, perhaps fifty-two, professional.
12:59
Speaker 1: She carried herself like someone used to being the most
13:02
Speaker 1: capable person in a room, which meant she either was
13:05
Speaker 1: or desperately needed to believe she was. Her magazine, still
13:11
Speaker 1: open in her lap, was a property investment journal. She
13:15
Speaker 1: had not read a word of it since sitting down.
13:19
Speaker 1: Miss Jane had noticed the pages hadn't turned once in
13:23
Speaker 1: the forty minutes before the body was discovered. Forty minutes.
13:27
Speaker 1: She had been on the train for at least forty
13:30
Speaker 1: minutes before Miss Jane boarded then. Or she had been
13:33
Speaker 1: watching the man, not the magazine. The conductor came through again,
13:39
Speaker 1: speaking quietly to each passenger, taking names Miss Jane gave hers.
13:43
Speaker 1: Jane Marbury, retired schoolteacher, crew, and listened carefully to the
13:48
Speaker 1: others giving theirs. Robert Ashfield, the businessman, Priya and Caitlin Doyle.
13:55
Speaker 1: The two young women, sisters then, despite the tension. Leonard Marsh,
14:01
Speaker 1: the elderly man in Tweed. And the woman from the
14:04
Speaker 1: corner said her name was Helen Cross. Said it very smoothly,
14:09
Speaker 1: without hesitation. the way people said names they had decided
14:13
Speaker 1: on in advance. The conductor wrote it down and moved on.
14:18
Speaker 1: Miss Jane watched Helen Cross settle back in her seat
14:22
Speaker 1: and thought about a woman she had known once, not well,
14:25
Speaker 1: not personally, but by reputation in the village, a woman
14:30
Speaker 1: named Patricia Darnay, who had lived for twelve years under
14:33
Speaker 1: a name that wasn't hers. Not for sinister reasons, as
14:38
Speaker 1: it turned out, but the habit of the false name
14:41
Speaker 1: had become so ingrained that she gave it reflexively, even
14:45
Speaker 1: to people who already knew her real one. She gave
14:49
Speaker 1: it the same way Helen Cross had just given hers,
14:52
Speaker 1: but smoothly, without hesitation, as though the name had been
14:57
Speaker 1: practiced until it no longer felt like a lie. Miss
15:02
Speaker 1: Jane looked at the dead man one more time. R.H.T.,
15:08
Speaker 1: said the briefcase. The coffee, still faintly warm when she'd
15:12
Speaker 1: reached him, meant he'd died perhaps twenty-five minutes into the journey.
15:18
Speaker 1: Shortly after seven-ten then. The train had been exactly on
15:23
Speaker 1: time this morning, for the first time in eleven years.
15:28
Speaker 1: She picked up her knitting again, and began to think.
15:33
Speaker 1: Leonard Marsh was the first to speak, once the conductor
15:36
Speaker 1: had retreated to the far end of the carriage. and
15:39
Speaker 1: the shock had thinned into something more like uncomfortable waiting.
15:44
Speaker 1: Dreadful business, he said to no one in particular. His
15:48
Speaker 1: voice was the kind that had once been authoritative and
15:50
Speaker 1: had softened with age into something almost gentle. Almost. And
15:55
Speaker 1: there was still the shape of command in it. The
15:58
Speaker 1: ghost of a man who had expected to be listened to,
16:02
Speaker 1: and usually had been. Absolutely dreadful. Nobody disagreed. Nobody agreed either,
16:10
Speaker 1: which Miss Jane thought was interesting. Robert Ashfield had gathered
16:14
Speaker 1: his papers back into a folder and was holding them,
16:18
Speaker 1: not reading them. His knee was moving, small, rapid, involuntary,
16:25
Speaker 1: the kind of movement that happened when a person's body
16:28
Speaker 1: wanted to leave and their mind was preventing it. Do
16:33
Speaker 1: they know who he is? Priya Doyle asked. The dark-haired one.
16:37
Speaker 1: the one who had cried. She had stopped crying now
16:42
Speaker 1: and had the slightly embarrassed look of someone who wished
16:45
Speaker 1: they hadn't. Has anyone checked his... I mean, he must
16:50
Speaker 1: have identification. That's for the police, Helen Cross said. Of course.
16:57
Speaker 1: Priya looked at her hands. I just meant, the police
17:01
Speaker 1: will handle it. It wasn't rude exactly. it was the
17:06
Speaker 1: tone of someone closing a door. Priya subsided. Her sister
17:12
Speaker 1: Caitlin beside her was looking at Helen Cross with an
17:15
Speaker 1: expression Miss Jane couldn't quite read, something between interest and dislike.
17:22
Speaker 1: Miss Jane said conversationally, I expect they'll want to speak
17:26
Speaker 1: to all of us when we arrive. Naturally, said Ashfield.
17:31
Speaker 1: He seemed relieved by the practical observation that the way
17:35
Speaker 1: anxious people were often relieved by practical things. Birmingham, he said.
17:40
Speaker 1: We'll be met at Birmingham. Have any of you taken
17:43
Speaker 1: this train before? Miss Jane asked. It was the most
17:47
Speaker 1: ordinary question in the world, the kind anyone might ask
17:51
Speaker 1: to fill silence. She watched all five of them hear it.
17:56
Speaker 1: Now and again, said Leonard Marsh. First time for us,
17:59
Speaker 1: said Caitlin Doyle. who's speaking for the first time since
18:02
Speaker 1: her single, unrepeated expletive at the moment of discovery. Her
18:08
Speaker 1: voice was different from her sister's. Flatter, more careful. Birmingham, perhaps,
18:15
Speaker 1: or somewhere near it. Priya's accent had been softened by
18:19
Speaker 1: education or effort, but Caitlin's hadn't bothered. We don't usually
18:25
Speaker 1: come this way. Which way do you usually come? Miss
18:29
Speaker 1: Jane asked pleasantly. Caitlin looked at her. Train from Wolverhampton, normally.
18:37
Speaker 1: But there was engineering works. Ah, said Miss Jane. Yes,
18:41
Speaker 1: they're replacing the signals at Bilbrook, I believe. Or was
18:45
Speaker 1: it Codsall? Somewhere along there. Caitlin relaxed slightly. People always
18:52
Speaker 1: relaxed when you matched their ordinary detail with another ordinary detail.
18:57
Speaker 1: It gave them the feeling of a normal conversation, which
19:00
Speaker 1: was its own kind of cover. What about you? Miss
19:05
Speaker 1: Jane asked Ashfield. Sorry. Do you take this train regularly?
19:11
Speaker 1: He looked faintly surprised to be asked, as if he'd
19:14
Speaker 1: expected the conversation to move elsewhere. Once a month, roughly,
19:18
Speaker 1: Birmingham office. Quarterly reviews, Miss Jane said. I... Yes, actually.
19:25
Speaker 1: He blinked. How did you... The word acquisition was visible
19:29
Speaker 1: on one of your papers, and it's the third Tuesday
19:31
Speaker 1: of November. She smiled. Quarterly review months, the third Tuesdays
19:37
Speaker 1: tend to be busy. Ashfield looked at her with the
19:41
Speaker 1: expression she had seen many times before. The expression of
19:45
Speaker 1: someone recalibrating her from harmless elderly woman to something else,
19:49
Speaker 1: something less comfortable. She had always found it slightly amusing.
19:54
Speaker 1: Leonard Marsh made a sound that might have been a laugh.
19:59
Speaker 1: Helen Cross had not answered the question. Miss Jane let
20:03
Speaker 1: this sit for a few minutes. She knitted. Ah, the
20:06
Speaker 1: train moved through grey countryside. past the backs of industrial estates,
20:12
Speaker 1: and then briefly through something almost pastoral. Bare trees, a canal,
20:18
Speaker 1: a narrowboat painted red that seemed improbably cheerful against the
20:23
Speaker 1: November morning. I travel this route perhaps once a fortnight,
20:28
Speaker 1: Helen Cross said eventually, as if she had decided to
20:32
Speaker 1: offer it voluntarily rather than appear to have avoided it. Business?
20:38
Speaker 1: Miss Jane asked. Property. How interesting. I noticed your magazine.
20:43
Speaker 1: Helen Cross glanced at the journal, still open in her lap. Yes.
20:49
Speaker 1: Commercial or residential? A pause. Brief. Controlled. Mostly commercial. Birmingham's
20:58
Speaker 1: been rather active, hasn't it? All that development around Digbeth.
21:02
Speaker 1: The custard factory area. She was not going to give
21:06
Speaker 1: more than she had to. That was all right. Miss
21:09
Speaker 1: Jane had learned more from people's silences than from most
21:14
Speaker 1: of what they said. Helen Cross knew about Birmingham property.
21:20
Speaker 1: She had been on this train route for at least
21:23
Speaker 1: a fortnight regularly. She had not read her magazine, and
21:29
Speaker 1: she was giving her information in the smallest possible units,
21:33
Speaker 1: the way people did when they were counting what they
21:36
Speaker 1: let out. The briefcase with R.H.T. on it was four
21:41
Speaker 1: feet from where Helen Cross had been sitting. Miss Jane
21:46
Speaker 1: had not yet seen Helen Cross look at it, not
21:49
Speaker 1: even once, not even accidentally. People looked at things without
21:54
Speaker 1: meaning to. That was the natural movement of eyes in
21:58
Speaker 1: a disturbed space, toward the source of disturbance, toward the body,
22:03
Speaker 1: toward the object closest to it. Everyone else had glanced
22:07
Speaker 1: at the briefcase. Ashfield twice. Priya three times, with the
22:13
Speaker 1: slightly hungry attention of genuine curiosity. Even Leonard Marsh, once briefly.
22:21
Speaker 1: Helen Cross had looked at the body. She had looked
22:25
Speaker 1: at the conductor. She had looked at her magazine, the window,
22:29
Speaker 1: her hands, Miss Jane. Not the briefcase. Which meant she
22:34
Speaker 1: already knew what was in it. or she was making
22:36
Speaker 1: a very deliberate effort not to look at something she
22:39
Speaker 1: very badly wanted to. Neither possibility was comfortable. Did anyone
22:45
Speaker 1: notice him when they boarded? Miss Jane asked. She was
22:49
Speaker 1: looking at her knitting as she said it, which helped.
22:52
Speaker 1: Direct questions closed people. Indirect ones, or questions asked to
22:56
Speaker 1: the room rather than a person, opened them. He was
23:00
Speaker 1: already there when I got on, Prius said. At Crewe,
23:03
Speaker 1: he was... I thought he was asleep. Asleep, yes, Leonard
23:07
Speaker 1: Marsh agreed. I boarded at Crewe as well. He was
23:11
Speaker 1: already settled. Miss Jane had boarded at Crewe. She had
23:16
Speaker 1: not seen Leonard Marsh on the platform. This meant he
23:20
Speaker 1: had boarded earlier, not Crewe then, whatever he said. Or
23:25
Speaker 1: he had already been on the train when it arrived
23:28
Speaker 1: at Crewe, having boarded at an earlier stop. She filed
23:33
Speaker 1: this alongside his shoes. I got on at crew two,
23:38
Speaker 1: said Caitlin. And you, Priya asked Helen Cross, with the
23:43
Speaker 1: slightly aggressive friendliness of someone who felt they'd been the
23:47
Speaker 1: only one answering questions. Helen Cross said, Stafford. There's a
23:52
Speaker 1: stop at Stafford, Ashfield asked. Apparently, said Caitlin dryly. I
23:58
Speaker 1: didn't know that. It's not on the main timetable, Miss
24:02
Speaker 1: Jane said. It's a request stop. You have to flag
24:05
Speaker 1: it when you book, she paused, or know about it.
24:09
Speaker 1: Helen Cross met her eyes for the first time since
24:12
Speaker 1: they'd spoken, and her expression was smooth, controlled, the kind
24:17
Speaker 1: of face that had been managed for a long time.
24:21
Speaker 1: But something moved behind it briefly, the way something moved underwater. Yes,
24:28
Speaker 1: she said, I know about it. twenty minutes to Birmingham.
24:34
Speaker 1: The conductor came through again to tell them, and also
24:37
Speaker 1: to say, apologetically, that he'd been in contact with British
24:41
Speaker 1: Transport Police, who would meet the train at New Street.
24:45
Speaker 1: Nothing to worry about, routine procedure, if everyone could just remain. Yes, yes, routine.
24:53
Speaker 1: Nobody looked reassured. Ashfield asked if he could make a
24:57
Speaker 1: phone call. The conductor said of course, and Ashfield moved
25:01
Speaker 1: toward the door between carriages, pulling out his phone, and
25:05
Speaker 1: Miss Jane watched him go and thought about the way
25:08
Speaker 1: he'd paused, just half a second, as he passed the
25:12
Speaker 1: dead man's seat. Not looking at the body, but looking
25:17
Speaker 1: at the briefcase, the same briefcase Helen Cross was so
25:22
Speaker 1: carefully not looking at. Miss Jane thought, two people, one object,
25:28
Speaker 1: two different kinds of attention, She thought about the Henderson cousins,
25:33
Speaker 1: who at once both claimed the same inheritance and pretended
25:37
Speaker 1: for three months not to know each other, meeting at
25:40
Speaker 1: solicitor's offices and speaking with elaborate indifference, quite transparent in retrospect.
25:48
Speaker 1: At the time, everyone in the village had believed them,
25:51
Speaker 1: because they wanted to. People found it easier to believe
25:55
Speaker 1: obvious lies when the truth was complicated. She looked at
26:00
Speaker 1: the dead man. R.H.T. A manila folder. A pen. The
26:05
Speaker 1: corner of a photograph. A photograph of what? A photograph
26:10
Speaker 1: of whom?
26:12
Speaker 2: When you ask a direct question, people close like oysters,
26:16
Speaker 2: offer an ordinary detail, and they reveal themselves.
26:19
Speaker 1: Priya had moved to the window seat across from her sister,
26:23
Speaker 1: and was looking at her phone. The device held low
26:26
Speaker 1: in her lap. The screen dimmed. and the way people
26:31
Speaker 1: did when they were checking something they didn't want seen.
26:35
Speaker 1: Caitlin was watching the countryside. They hadn't spoken to each
26:40
Speaker 1: other directly since the beginning, which was odd for sisters.
26:45
Speaker 1: Even difficult sisters spoke to each other during a crisis, usually,
26:50
Speaker 1: even if only to say useless, obvious things. These two
26:56
Speaker 1: weren't speaking at all, not because they had nothing to say,
27:00
Speaker 1: because they had too much, and this wasn't the place
27:04
Speaker 1: for it. Do you live in Birmingham? Miss Jane asked them.
27:09
Speaker 1: Near it, Caitlin said. Family visit? Work? Same company? No.
27:16
Speaker 1: This from Priya, without looking up. Then, as if she'd
27:20
Speaker 1: been too sharp. Different firms, just travelling the same day. Coincidence,
27:26
Speaker 1: Miss Jane said pleasantly. Neither of them answered. Miss Jane
27:32
Speaker 1: counted stitches. She'd dropped one somewhere in the last row,
27:36
Speaker 1: as she was almost certain, but she didn't pause to
27:40
Speaker 1: look for it. Sometimes a dropped stitch was just a
27:45
Speaker 1: dropped stitch. Sometimes it was the first sign of a
27:49
Speaker 1: larger unravelling. Leonard Marsh, she realized, had been quiet for
27:54
Speaker 1: some time. Not the quiet of a man with nothing
27:58
Speaker 1: to say, the quiet of a man choosing when to
28:01
Speaker 1: say it, He was looking at his hands now, folded
28:05
Speaker 1: in his lap, large hands with the thickened knuckles of arthritis.
28:10
Speaker 1: A signet ring on his right hand. Old family, or
28:14
Speaker 1: old money, or the appearance of one. His tweed was
28:19
Speaker 1: genuine Harris, she thought, not the kind sold in tourist shops.
28:24
Speaker 1: Did you know him? She asked very quietly, just to him.
28:29
Speaker 1: Marsh looked at her. His eyes were grey and rather
28:33
Speaker 1: sharp for a man she'd initially taken for drowsy. I
28:37
Speaker 1: beg your pardon? The man? Did you know him? It
28:41
Speaker 1: was not quite a question. Amarsh looked at her for
28:45
Speaker 1: a long moment. He had the particular stillness of someone
28:50
Speaker 1: deciding whether to be offended or honest. and Miss Jane
28:54
Speaker 1: held his gaze with the patient pleasantness she had used
28:57
Speaker 1: on difficult parents at school parents' evenings for three decades.
29:02
Speaker 1: Why would you ask that, he said, because you looked
29:05
Speaker 1: at him. When the conductor asked if anyone knew him,
29:09
Speaker 1: everyone else looked away. You looked at him directly. People
29:13
Speaker 1: who don't know someone usually don't hold their gaze when
29:17
Speaker 1: asked about them. There's nothing to hold, you see. But
29:21
Speaker 1: you were looking at him. as if you were thinking
29:23
Speaker 1: something quite specific. Marsh was quiet. I'm a retired schoolteacher,
29:31
Speaker 1: Miss Jane added, in case it helped. Not police, not
29:36
Speaker 1: anything official. I'm simply observant by habit. I noticed. He
29:42
Speaker 1: breathed out slowly. We were at school together, he said
29:46
Speaker 1: at last. St. Edmund's, sixty years ago. I hadn't seen
29:50
Speaker 1: him in a very long time. You recognized him immediately? Yes.
29:57
Speaker 1: But you didn't say so? No. The train was slowing
30:01
Speaker 1: very slightly, or perhaps she imagined it. The fog had
30:06
Speaker 1: not lifted. Outside, the landscape was darkening into the outskirts
30:10
Speaker 1: of something larger. What was his name? Miss Jane asked.
30:15
Speaker 1: Marsh looked at the briefcase, gold letters catching the overhead light.
30:20
Speaker 1: His name, Marsh said slowly, would... was Richard Hartley Toth.
30:25
Speaker 1: And the last time I saw him, he was the
30:27
Speaker 1: most hated man in our year. He paused. Apparently some
30:32
Speaker 1: things don't change. Richard Hartley Toth. Miss Jane turned the
30:38
Speaker 1: name over quietly in her mind, the way she turned
30:41
Speaker 1: difficult words in crosswords, not forcing it, just letting it
30:45
Speaker 1: sit until the shape of it became familiar. The Toth
30:49
Speaker 1: was an unusual name. Hungarian, perhaps, or Czech? the kind
30:55
Speaker 1: of name that got anglicized in certain schools, certain decades,
31:00
Speaker 1: shortened to something easier or mocked into something worse. What
31:05
Speaker 1: did he do? she asked Marsh. What did he do,
31:08
Speaker 1: didn't he? He said it without heat, which was more
31:11
Speaker 1: telling than anger would have been. Anger faded. This was
31:16
Speaker 1: something older, something that had been turned into fact over
31:19
Speaker 1: sixty years. He was the sort of boy who found
31:23
Speaker 1: other people's weaknesses and kept them. Like a collection. You
31:28
Speaker 1: knew he had something on you. And he knew you knew.
31:31
Speaker 1: And he never had to use it, because the knowing
31:34
Speaker 1: was enough. Blackmail? At fourteen? No. Crueler than that. Just power.
31:42
Speaker 1: The particular pleasure of it. Marsh paused. I imagine he
31:48
Speaker 1: grew up and found more sophisticated ways. Miss Jane thought
31:53
Speaker 1: about the manila folder in the open briefcase, the photograph.
31:58
Speaker 1: And as an adult, I told you, I hadn't seen
32:01
Speaker 1: him in a very long time. But you'd heard of him.
32:06
Speaker 1: Marsh looked at her sideways. She had the impression he
32:09
Speaker 1: was reassessing her again, the way Ashfield had, except Marsh
32:14
Speaker 1: seemed less unsettled by it. More rueful, as if he'd
32:19
Speaker 1: expected this eventually. Financial sector, he said. Acquisitions, that sort
32:25
Speaker 1: of thing. Acquisitions, the same word on Ashfield's papers. Robert Ashfield,
32:32
Speaker 1: Miss Jane said quietly. Do you know him? I know
32:36
Speaker 1: of a Robert Ashfield. I couldn't say if it's the
32:39
Speaker 1: same man. He looked away, which was answer enough. Ye
32:45
Speaker 1: Ashfield came back from his phone call. with the particular
32:49
Speaker 1: careful blankness of someone who had just been told something
32:53
Speaker 1: they'd hoped not to hear. He sat down, placed his
32:58
Speaker 1: folder on his knee, and looked at the middle distance
33:02
Speaker 1: with great concentration. Miss Jane gave him two minutes. Everything
33:08
Speaker 1: all right, she asked. Fine. Then, as if he'd been rude,
33:13
Speaker 1: just rearrange in the morning. Obviously, I'll be late now.
33:18
Speaker 1: Of course, these things are always badly timed. He almost smiled.
33:23
Speaker 1: Didn't quite. Were you meeting someone in Birmingham? Miss Jane asked.
33:28
Speaker 1: A colleague. Will they wait? They'll have to. He paused.
33:33
Speaker 1: Something shifted in his face. Not quite decision. More like
33:38
Speaker 1: the moment before it. The meeting was disconnected to him, actually.
33:43
Speaker 1: He nodded once toward the dead man. Ye to toth.
33:47
Speaker 1: Miss Jane kept her expression interested and mild. Oh, I
33:52
Speaker 1: didn't know he'd be on this train. I want to
33:55
Speaker 1: be clear about that. He said it the way people
33:59
Speaker 1: said things they needed on record, even in informal conversations.
34:04
Speaker 1: I had no idea. But you knew him. Professionally, yes.
34:09
Speaker 1: The acquisition. Ashfield looked at her sharply. You saw that.
34:16
Speaker 1: The word was visible on your paper. You mentioned Birmingham office,
34:20
Speaker 1: and Mr. Toth was apparently in financial acquisitions by reputation.
34:25
Speaker 1: She paused. It wasn't difficult. No. He rubbed his face briefly,
34:31
Speaker 1: an unguarded gesture that made him seem younger. It wasn't
34:35
Speaker 1: his acquisition exactly. He was opposing it. We were trying
34:39
Speaker 1: to complete a purchase. And Toth had been retained by
34:43
Speaker 1: the other side to find reasons we couldn't. Or shouldn't.
34:48
Speaker 1: He stopped. He was very good at it. Finding reasons.
34:53
Speaker 1: Finding things. On people. On companies. On... He stopped again.
35:00
Speaker 1: He had a way of knowing things he shouldn't have known.
35:04
Speaker 1: Miss Jane thought of Leonard Marsh at fourteen. He found
35:08
Speaker 1: other people's weaknesses and kept them. like a collection. Some
35:13
Speaker 1: boys grew up, some boys just got better tools. And
35:18
Speaker 1: the meeting this morning in Birmingham? Ashfield looked at his folder.
35:23
Speaker 1: Was it to discuss what he'd found? Whether we could,
35:27
Speaker 1: contain it, our legal team? He laughed, not happily. I
35:32
Speaker 1: suppose that meeting somewhat changed in nature now. He said
35:37
Speaker 1: it lightly, too lightly. The laugh was wrong, the kind
35:41
Speaker 1: that arrived when a feeling needed to be covered quickly
35:44
Speaker 1: by something that looked like its opposite. Miss Jane noted
35:48
Speaker 1: this and said nothing. Fifteen minutes to Birmingham. The fog
35:53
Speaker 1: was thinning, and she could see the city beginning to
35:56
Speaker 1: accumulate around them. The backs of terraced houses, a mosque's minaret,
36:02
Speaker 1: grey industrial shapes giving way to the particular, crowded personality
36:07
Speaker 1: of a city waking up. Miss Jane had always found
36:12
Speaker 1: Birmingham more interesting than people gave it credit for.
36:15
Speaker 2: A dropped stitch in knitting creates a ladder of looseness.
36:21
Speaker 2: Ignore it and the whole piece unravels.
36:24
Speaker 1: It had the energy of a place that didn't care
36:27
Speaker 1: what you thought of it. Caitlin Doyle stood up to
36:31
Speaker 1: use the facilities at the end of the carriage. She
36:35
Speaker 1: moved past the dead man's seat without looking at it.
36:38
Speaker 1: which took visible effort. The effort showed in the straightness
36:42
Speaker 1: of her spine, the slight overcorrection of her gaze toward
36:46
Speaker 1: the window. You didn't work that hard at not looking
36:50
Speaker 1: at something unless not looking at it cost you something.
36:55
Speaker 1: Priya watched her go. Then she leaned forward slightly, toward
36:59
Speaker 1: Miss Jane, and with the careful air of someone checking
37:03
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be overheard. Can I ask you something? she said.
37:08
Speaker 1: Of course. You said he appeared to be dead. When
37:12
Speaker 1: you found him, you said it very calmly. I've seen
37:17
Speaker 1: death before, Miss Jane said. One gets less alarmed, I'm afraid.
37:22
Speaker 1: Not less sad, just less alarmed. Priya absorbed this. My
37:28
Speaker 1: sister knew him, she said very quietly. Did she? I didn't.
37:34
Speaker 1: I'd never seen him before today. But Kate? She worked
37:37
Speaker 1: for a company he destroyed. About three years ago. He
37:42
Speaker 1: found something in their accounts. I don't know the details.
37:46
Speaker 1: She never told me the details. And used it to
37:49
Speaker 1: force them into a sale they didn't want. She lost
37:52
Speaker 1: her job? A lot of people did. That must have
37:56
Speaker 1: been very difficult. She blamed him specifically. Not the company
38:01
Speaker 1: that bought them. Him, as she said he was paid
38:05
Speaker 1: to find ammunition. And he found it, and then sold
38:09
Speaker 1: it to the highest bidder. Priya paused. She got a
38:13
Speaker 1: new job eventually. She's fine, but she never... She talked
38:18
Speaker 1: about him. More than you'd expect. Miss Jane looked at
38:22
Speaker 1: the door Caitlin had gone through. Why are you telling
38:26
Speaker 1: me this? She asked. Priya was quiet for a moment.
38:33
Speaker 1: She had the look of someone who had been weighing
38:35
Speaker 1: this question for some time, and still wasn't sure of
38:39
Speaker 1: the answer. Because she didn't tell me she'd be on
38:42
Speaker 1: this train, she said at last. I rang her Tuesday evening,
38:46
Speaker 1: and she said she was coming to Birmingham for a meeting,
38:49
Speaker 1: and I said so was I. Shall we travel together?
38:53
Speaker 1: And she went quiet for a moment, just a moment,
38:57
Speaker 1: and then she said yes. Take the 647 from Crewe.
39:03
Speaker 1: She said the number of the train very deliberately. Ah,
39:06
Speaker 1: she suggested the specific train, Miss Jane said. Yes, had
39:11
Speaker 1: you mentioned which train you were planning to take? No,
39:15
Speaker 1: I hadn't decided yet. Miss Jane set her knitting down entirely.
39:22
Speaker 1: Does your sister know what time Richard Toth caught this train?
39:26
Speaker 1: Priya opened her mouth, closed it. The colour in her
39:30
Speaker 1: face changed. I don't know, she said, which meant possibly yes,
39:35
Speaker 1: and the possibility had only just fully arrived. Caitlin came back.
39:42
Speaker 1: She moved through the carriage more easily this time, as
39:45
Speaker 1: if she'd made some internal adjustment. resolved something in the
39:50
Speaker 1: two minutes she'd been away. She sat down, glanced at Priya,
39:55
Speaker 1: caught something in her sister's expression, and went still.' What?'
40:02
Speaker 1: she said.' Nothing,' said Priya. The words sat between them
40:07
Speaker 1: like a stone. Miss Jane picked her knitting up again
40:12
Speaker 1: and looked at Helen Cross. who had been sitting throughout
40:16
Speaker 1: all of this with the self-contained quiet of a woman
40:20
Speaker 1: on a long-haul flight who had decided the strangers around
40:24
Speaker 1: her did not exist. It was a performance. The quality
40:31
Speaker 1: of her stillness was too deliberate, the way she held
40:34
Speaker 1: her magazine too consistent. No fidgeting, no shifting, no small
40:39
Speaker 1: involuntary adjustments. Real stillness looked different. This was the stillness
40:45
Speaker 1: of someone listening very hard and trying not to show it. Mrs. Cross,
40:51
Speaker 1: Miss Jane said pleasantly. Miss, she said automatic. Miss Cross,
40:55
Speaker 1: forgive me. You mentioned you travel this route fortnightly for
40:58
Speaker 1: property work. Yes. Commercial property around Birmingham? Yes. Was any
41:05
Speaker 1: of your current work connected to a Richard Toth? The
41:09
Speaker 1: magazine lowered by approximately one inch. Her eyes over the
41:12
Speaker 1: top of it were very still. Oh, that name doesn't
41:16
Speaker 1: mean anything to me, she said. Miss Jane smiled. Of course.
41:22
Speaker 1: I only ask because Mr. Ashfield mentioned that Mr. Toth
41:27
Speaker 1: worked in acquisitions in this area, and you mentioned commercial property,
41:32
Speaker 1: and the world does tend to be smaller than it appears.
41:36
Speaker 1: I don't know the name. The initials on his briefcase
41:40
Speaker 1: are R.H.T. Richard Hartley Toth. Does that... I said I
41:44
Speaker 1: don't know the name. The magazine went back up. Conversation closed.
41:50
Speaker 1: Miss Jane let it close. She had what she needed.
41:54
Speaker 1: Helen Cross had not asked who Richard Toth was. She
41:58
Speaker 1: had not asked how Miss Jane knew his full name,
42:01
Speaker 1: which she hadn't mentioned before, which meant she had heard
42:04
Speaker 1: the exchange with Leonard Marsh, and simply waited. and when
42:09
Speaker 1: the name was offered again she rejected it without curiosity.
42:13
Speaker 1: Without the natural human response of, Who is that? How
42:18
Speaker 1: do you know? What did he do? People who didn't
42:22
Speaker 1: know dead strangers asked questions. People who did know them
42:27
Speaker 1: and didn't want to went very quiet and very still
42:31
Speaker 1: and refused the name like it was something that could
42:34
Speaker 1: contaminate them. Ten minutes. The city was fully around them now.
42:42
Speaker 1: Signal lights, the elevated sections of track, the backs of
42:46
Speaker 1: new apartment buildings with their lights still on in the
42:48
Speaker 1: early morning. Another train passed going the other way, close
42:54
Speaker 1: and fast, and for a moment the windows went dark.
42:59
Speaker 1: Miss Jane looked at the dead man one last time
43:01
Speaker 1: before the police arrived, and everything became official and structured.
43:06
Speaker 1: and she lost the freedom to simply look. He was
43:10
Speaker 1: slightly built, now that she studied him properly. Slender hands,
43:15
Speaker 1: the fingers she'd noticed earlier. He looked from this angle,
43:19
Speaker 1: a less like a man who destroyed companies and kept
43:23
Speaker 1: secrets as weapons, and more like a man, just a
43:28
Speaker 1: man who had got on a train and would not
43:31
Speaker 1: get off it. Whatever he had been, whatever he had done,
43:36
Speaker 1: He had sat down with his coffee and his open
43:40
Speaker 1: briefcase and looked out at the foggy morning and then stopped.
43:45
Speaker 1: She wondered if he'd been frightened. She wondered if he'd
43:49
Speaker 1: had time to be. She looked at the coffee cup,
43:53
Speaker 1: still in its place on the tray, that slight two-degree
43:57
Speaker 1: tilt against the edge, cardboard, waxed, the logo of the
44:00
Speaker 1: station kiosk. He had bought it at the station, crew, presumably,
44:05
Speaker 1: since that was the origin, before boarding. She'd seen the
44:09
Speaker 1: kiosk herself, the queue of early travellers, the steaming machine.
44:14
Speaker 1: She had been in the queue herself. She tried to
44:17
Speaker 1: remember if she'd seen him. A man, fifty-five, expensive suit,
44:22
Speaker 1: wrong tie. Had she seen him? She thought she had.
44:27
Speaker 1: Toward the front of the queue, briefcase, paying quickly. She
44:31
Speaker 1: hadn't looked at his face. She remembered the briefcase, the
44:35
Speaker 1: gold clasp. Had he been alone? She closed her eyes briefly.
44:42
Speaker 1: The cue, the machine, the small sounds of the early
44:46
Speaker 1: morning station, the smell of burnt coffee and something sweeter,
44:50
Speaker 1: a pastry case nearby, the man ahead of her, no,
44:55
Speaker 1: two ahead, paying. The briefcase, gold clasp. He'd taken the
45:00
Speaker 1: cup and turned. and she'd looked down for her own purse,
45:04
Speaker 1: and then someone had been standing very close to him.
45:09
Speaker 1: Not in conversation, not touching, just near. The kind of
45:15
Speaker 1: near that became unremarkable in a queue. A figure beside
45:19
Speaker 1: him for a moment, then moving away. She opened her eyes.
45:25
Speaker 1: Cardboard cup, waxed, sealed lid. The kind you couldn't see into.
45:31
Speaker 1: Is the kind you accepted from a counter and carried
45:34
Speaker 1: to your seat and didn't examine because why would you?
45:39
Speaker 1: The kind that was very easy to approach. On a
45:42
Speaker 1: crowded station platform, in a queue, in the ordinary noise
45:47
Speaker 1: of morning. The kind that was already poisoned before he boarded.
45:53
Speaker 1: The train was slowing. Platform lights appeared outside. The long,
45:59
Speaker 1: bright corridor of Birmingham New Street, arriving through the fog.
46:04
Speaker 1: Miss Jane could see figures on the platform already. Two
46:08
Speaker 1: uniformed officers. A man in plain clothes with the look
46:13
Speaker 1: of someone who had been pulled from another morning entirely.
46:17
Speaker 1: She looked around the carriage. Robert Ashfield, straightening his tie.
46:23
Speaker 1: Leonard Marsh, sitting very still. Priya Doyle, not looking at
46:27
Speaker 1: her sister. Caitlin Doyle looking at the floor. Helen Cross.
46:34
Speaker 1: Magazine finally closed, hands folded, waiting. Five people. One of
46:40
Speaker 1: them had stood beside Richard Hartley Toth in a queue
46:44
Speaker 1: at Crewe Station at 6.38 in the morning and had
46:48
Speaker 1: done something to a cardboard coffee cup. One of them
46:52
Speaker 1: had known for the entire journey that the man two
46:55
Speaker 1: seats ahead was already dead. and simply hadn't arrived at
47:00
Speaker 1: it yet. One of them had got on this train
47:03
Speaker 1: knowing they wouldn't need to run. Wouldn't need to do
47:07
Speaker 1: anything at all. Just sit and wait and be a stranger.
47:13
Speaker 1: The train stopped. Miss Jane put her knitting in her bag,
47:18
Speaker 1: stood carefully, and lifted her case from the overhead rack,
47:21
Speaker 1: securing the clasp. She had thirty minutes, she estimated. before
47:26
Speaker 1: the police separated them into individual statements, and the neat
47:31
Speaker 1: contained world of this carriage dissolved into procedures and waiting
47:35
Speaker 1: rooms and separate accounts, with thirty minutes in which all
47:40
Speaker 1: five of them would still be in the same room,
47:43
Speaker 1: visible to each other before the walls went up. She
47:48
Speaker 1: thought she knew. She was perhaps eighty percent certain, which
47:52
Speaker 1: was not enough. She needed the photograph. The plainclothes officer's
47:59
Speaker 1: name was Detective Sergeant Okafor, and he was younger than
48:03
Speaker 1: Miss Jane had expected. Mid-thirties, quick eyes, the careful politeness
48:09
Speaker 1: of someone who had learned that elderly women on trains
48:12
Speaker 1: were either entirely useless or entirely the opposite, and had
48:16
Speaker 1: not yet determined which category she fell into. She intended
48:21
Speaker 1: to be useful before he decided. The briefcase should be
48:26
Speaker 1: opened before the statements are taken separately, she said while
48:29
Speaker 1: the uniformed officers were still moving through the carriage, asking
48:33
Speaker 1: everyone to remain seated. The outer pocket particularly. But there's
48:38
Speaker 1: a photograph. Okafor looked at her. And you are? Jane Marbury.
48:44
Speaker 1: I found him. I've been sitting in this carriage for
48:47
Speaker 1: the entirety of the journey, and I've had rather a
48:50
Speaker 1: lot of time to think. She paused. The photograph matters.
48:56
Speaker 1: Once you separate everyone, the dynamic changes. People commit to
49:00
Speaker 1: their stories. At the moment, they're still adjustable. He studied
49:06
Speaker 1: her for a moment with those quick eyes. Then he said,
49:11
Speaker 1: Wait here, please, Miss Marbury, in a tone that was
49:15
Speaker 1: not dismissive, which she appreciated. She waited. He moved to
49:22
Speaker 1: the dead man's seat, spoke briefly to the uniformed officer
49:26
Speaker 1: already stationed there, and within two minutes had the briefcase
49:30
Speaker 1: open on the seat beside the body, latex gloves on,
49:34
Speaker 1: the manila folder out, and then, there, the photograph. He
49:39
Speaker 1: looked at it. His expression did not change. He which
49:44
Speaker 1: meant it had changed and he was controlling it. He turned,
49:49
Speaker 1: very slightly, and looked at the five passengers still seated
49:52
Speaker 1: in the carriage. His gaze moved across them with professional neutrality.
49:59
Speaker 1: Then it stopped, just for a fraction of a second.
50:03
Speaker 1: Miss Jane followed the line of it. It stopped at
50:07
Speaker 1: Helen Cross. She had known since the coffee cup. Or rather,
50:12
Speaker 1: she had suspected since the coffee cup and known since
50:15
Speaker 1: Helen Cross failed to ask who Richard Toth was. But
50:20
Speaker 1: knowing and understanding were different things. And she still had
50:25
Speaker 1: the why of it only partially assembled, the way a
50:29
Speaker 1: sentence made sense before its final word arrived. The photograph
50:34
Speaker 1: gave her the last word. She couldn't see it from
50:37
Speaker 1: where she sat. Okafor had it. But she watched Helen
50:42
Speaker 1: Cross's face in the moment. Okafor's gaze landed on her,
50:47
Speaker 1: and she saw the thing that happened there. Not guilt, exactly.
50:52
Speaker 1: Guilt implied surprise. This was more like resignation. The particular
50:59
Speaker 1: exhale of someone who had always known a door would
51:02
Speaker 1: open eventually, and had simply been waiting for the particular
51:05
Speaker 1: morning it did. Okafor came back to Miss Jane. The photograph,
51:12
Speaker 1: he said quietly, facing away from the others. How did
51:17
Speaker 1: you know? I didn't know what it was. I could
51:21
Speaker 1: see the corner of it from my seat. I knew
51:23
Speaker 1: it was there. She paused. May I ask what it shows?
51:28
Speaker 1: He considered her for a moment. A woman with a man.
51:32
Speaker 1: The man is Toth. He paused. The woman is approximately
51:36
Speaker 1: thirty years younger in the photograph than the woman currently
51:39
Speaker 1: sitting in the corner of this carriage. Helen Cross, Miss
51:43
Speaker 1: Jane said. Is that her name? It wasn't quite a question,
51:47
Speaker 1: and Miss Jane thought of Helen Cross giving her name
51:51
Speaker 1: to the conductor. Smooth and unhesitating, practiced. She thought of
51:56
Speaker 1: Patricia Dean, who had lived under a false name for
52:00
Speaker 1: twelve years without sinister reason. Only sometimes there was a
52:05
Speaker 1: sinister reason. I don't believe it is, she said, but
52:09
Speaker 1: I think the photograph may tell you what her name
52:11
Speaker 1: actually is. She put it together quietly for herself, while
52:16
Speaker 1: Okafor moved away to make a call. Richard Hartley Toth
52:21
Speaker 1: had been a collector of weaknesses since boyhood. Leonard Marsh
52:25
Speaker 1: had said it plainly. He found other people's weaknesses and
52:30
Speaker 1: kept them. He had grown up, and found more sophisticated methods,
52:36
Speaker 1: but the instinct was the same. Information as leverage, leverage
52:41
Speaker 1: as power. He'd done it to companies, to colleagues, to
52:45
Speaker 1: whoever Caitlin Doyle had worked for three years ago. He'd
52:49
Speaker 1: done it, presumably, and to many others whose names Miss
52:53
Speaker 1: Jane would never know. At some point, he had done
52:57
Speaker 1: it to Helen Cross, or to whoever Helen Cross actually was.
53:03
Speaker 1: The photograph was old enough that she'd been thirty years
53:06
Speaker 1: younger in it. That meant thirty years of whatever he'd
53:11
Speaker 1: held over her. Thirty years of the knowing being enough,
53:15
Speaker 1: which was how Marsh had described it. You didn't need
53:18
Speaker 1: to use it. You just needed the person to know
53:22
Speaker 1: you had it. Thirty years. That was not a business relationship.
53:27
Speaker 1: That was not a professional inconvenience. That was a life
53:31
Speaker 1: lived in the specific shadow of one person. Miss Jane
53:35
Speaker 1: thought about what thirty years of that would feel like.
53:39
Speaker 1: The weight of it, the daily accommodation, the way it
53:42
Speaker 1: would rearrange everything. Choices made differently, paths not taken, rooms
53:48
Speaker 1: not entered. Our names perhaps changed to put distance between
53:52
Speaker 1: yourself and the thing he held. And then some shift,
53:58
Speaker 1: some change. Perhaps he'd decided to use it finally. Perhaps
54:03
Speaker 1: the cost of his silence had risen. Perhaps something in
54:07
Speaker 1: her circumstances had changed, and the balance of power had tilted.
54:12
Speaker 1: And she had looked at the scales and thought, enough,
54:16
Speaker 1: just enough. She had done it efficiently. Miss Jane gave
54:21
Speaker 1: her that, with the complicated mixture of feelings she always
54:26
Speaker 1: had in these moments. Sorrow for the dead, Some sorrow
54:30
Speaker 1: for the living too.
54:33
Speaker 2: The police opened the briefcase and there it was. Photography
54:38
Speaker 2: is a fascinating invention.
54:40
Speaker 1: And the very particular sadness of seeing a long story
54:44
Speaker 1: reach its end in a train carriage on a foggy
54:47
Speaker 1: November morning. The Coffee Queue at Crewe, 6.38. A busy platform.
54:54
Speaker 1: The ordinary noise of early travellers. Helen Cross. Whoever she
54:59
Speaker 1: was had known which train Toth caught. She had known
55:04
Speaker 1: his habits, and presumably, as people knew the habits of
55:08
Speaker 1: those they'd observed for thirty years, from the necessary distance
55:12
Speaker 1: of someone being watched. She had boarded at Stafford, the
55:17
Speaker 1: request stop, the one not on the main timetable. Boarded
55:23
Speaker 1: after him, settled in the corner, watched him drink. the
55:27
Speaker 1: cup had been tampered with before boarding. Not at the kiosk.
55:32
Speaker 1: At the kiosk there were people and cameras and the
55:35
Speaker 1: ordinary accountability of public space. Before, or in the queue,
55:42
Speaker 1: the brief proximity Miss Jane half remembered. The figure standing
55:47
Speaker 1: close for a moment, the ordinary anonymous press of a queue.
55:53
Speaker 1: It would have needed only a second. A small thing,
55:57
Speaker 1: introduced into the lid's seal, or the cup's body while
56:01
Speaker 1: it sat on the counter, while he was paying, while
56:05
Speaker 1: he was looking at his change. The kind of thing
56:08
Speaker 1: that required preparation but not duration, what she had prepared.
56:14
Speaker 1: She had not rushed. She had sat in her corner
56:17
Speaker 1: and watched the fog and waited for the thing to happen.
56:21
Speaker 1: And when it did, she had not looked at the briefcase,
56:24
Speaker 1: because the briefcase contained her photograph. and she knew it,
56:29
Speaker 1: and she had decided not to know it on this morning.
56:33
Speaker 1: Not yet. The train had been on time. Of course
56:37
Speaker 1: it had. She would have timed it. She would have
56:40
Speaker 1: known the 647 was never on time and accounted for variance.
56:46
Speaker 1: And then the train, on this one morning in eleven years,
56:50
Speaker 1: had run exactly to schedule. Small things mattered. They always had.
56:58
Speaker 1: Robert Ashfield was giving his statement to a uniformed officer
57:01
Speaker 1: near the door. His voice was audible in pieces. Acquisition,
57:06
Speaker 1: professional relationship, had no idea. Birmingham office. He would be
57:10
Speaker 1: all right, Miss Jane thought. He was frightened, and he
57:14
Speaker 1: had things to account for. And some of what Toth
57:18
Speaker 1: had been doing in his direction was probably not entirely clean.
57:23
Speaker 1: But he hadn't killed anyone. Caitlin Doyle had her hands
57:28
Speaker 1: folded in her lap and was looking at the floor
57:32
Speaker 1: with the expression of someone who had come prepared for
57:35
Speaker 1: one kind of morning and arrived at another. She had
57:39
Speaker 1: reasons to hate Richard Toth, genuine ones, view, the kind
57:45
Speaker 1: that settled into a person and became part of how
57:48
Speaker 1: they understood the world. But she had been on this
57:52
Speaker 1: train by coincidence. or by her sister's nudging suggestion, and
57:58
Speaker 1: she had watched a man die who she despised. And
58:01
Speaker 1: she had said nothing, because she was not certain whether
58:05
Speaker 1: saying something made her complicit in something she hadn't done.
58:10
Speaker 1: It didn't. Miss Jane could have told her so. She might, later.
58:15
Speaker 1: Mupria was watching her sister with a helpless expression. Love
58:20
Speaker 1: and suspicion and relief tangled together. in a way that
58:24
Speaker 1: would probably take them several difficult conversations to unravel. Perhaps
58:30
Speaker 1: they would manage it. Sisters usually did, eventually. Leonard Marsh
58:35
Speaker 1: sat quietly, as he had sat for the entire journey.
58:40
Speaker 1: He had known Richard Toth for sixty years, had not
58:44
Speaker 1: seen him in most of those years, had recognized him
58:47
Speaker 1: immediately and said nothing, and had felt something when he died.
58:52
Speaker 1: Not grief, something older and harder to name. The way
58:58
Speaker 1: you felt when a thing you'd thought about for a
59:00
Speaker 1: long time finally simply stopped mattering. Not satisfaction. Not quite.
59:08
Speaker 1: More like the ending of a sound. you'd stopped hearing
59:11
Speaker 1: but had been there all along. He caught Miss Jane's eye.
59:16
Speaker 1: She gave him a small nod. He gave one back.
59:19
Speaker 2: Thirty years is a heavy sentence to serve under someone
59:22
Speaker 2: else's control. Blackmail creates a psychological prison. The coffee cup
59:26
Speaker 2: was tampered with before he even boarded.
59:28
Speaker 1: Okafor came to her last, in he had the efficient,
59:32
Speaker 1: slightly compressed energy of someone managing several things at once,
59:37
Speaker 1: and managing them well. He sat across from her, Toth's seat,
59:42
Speaker 1: the body now covered, the briefcase sealed in an evidence bag,
59:46
Speaker 1: and opened his notebook. Miss Marbury, you found the body.
59:52
Speaker 1: I noticed him, yes. I was sitting across the aisle,
59:56
Speaker 1: He hadn't moved for approximately twenty minutes, and his colour
1:00:00
Speaker 1: was wrong. And then you alerted the carriage. I did?
1:00:05
Speaker 1: Did you touch anything? The body, the briefcase, the... I
1:00:10
Speaker 1: felt the warmth of the coffee cup. I didn't touch it.
1:00:14
Speaker 1: I touched the seat back when I stood to look
1:00:16
Speaker 1: at him. That's all. He wrote this down. You mentioned
1:00:20
Speaker 1: the photograph before we'd opened the briefcase. You said it mattered!
1:00:25
Speaker 1: I said it should be opened before statements were taken separately.
1:00:29
Speaker 1: I thought the photograph would clarify something. And did it?
1:00:34
Speaker 1: I believe so. Though I expect you'll confirm the details.
1:00:39
Speaker 1: She paused. The woman in the corner. Her name isn't
1:00:43
Speaker 1: Helen Cross. Or if it is now, it wasn't always.
1:00:48
Speaker 1: The photograph will tell you who she was. I think
1:00:51
Speaker 1: you'll find she and Mr. Toth had a long history.
1:00:55
Speaker 1: Thirty years or more, and that history will explain the rest.
1:01:00
Speaker 1: Okafor looked at her steadily. You worked this out during
1:01:04
Speaker 1: the journey. I had forty-two minutes, she said, and not
1:01:09
Speaker 1: much else to do. He almost smiled. You said you're
1:01:13
Speaker 1: a retired schoolteacher. Yes, from Crewe, St. Agatha's primary. I
1:01:19
Speaker 1: retired in 2003. And you just noticed things. I've always
1:01:26
Speaker 1: found people more interesting than they expect me to, she said.
1:01:30
Speaker 1: It's a habit, mostly harmless. He did smile then, briefly,
1:01:34
Speaker 1: as he wrote something in his notebook that she suspected
1:01:38
Speaker 1: was not entirely procedural. They let her go at half-past nine.
1:01:46
Speaker 1: Birmingham New Street was fully awake by then, the morning
1:01:50
Speaker 1: rush in full noise around her. Announcements, crowds... the smell
1:01:55
Speaker 1: of coffee from the franchises lining the concourse. Miss Jane
1:02:00
Speaker 1: stood for a moment in the middle of it all,
1:02:03
Speaker 1: and let it move around her. Helen Cross, she would
1:02:08
Speaker 1: always be Helen Cross in her mind, the name the
1:02:12
Speaker 1: woman had chosen, whatever the real one was, had been
1:02:15
Speaker 1: taken separately, quietly, by Okafor and another officer, while the
1:02:21
Speaker 1: rest of them were still giving statements. She had gone
1:02:25
Speaker 1: without drama. That was the thing Miss Jane kept returning to,
1:02:30
Speaker 1: on the train home that afternoon, in the window seat
1:02:33
Speaker 1: facing forward. No drama, no protest, no tears, no last-minute
1:02:39
Speaker 1: story constructed to explain everything away. Just the quiet of
1:02:44
Speaker 1: someone who had reached the end of something and knew it,
1:02:48
Speaker 1: and was, in some way, she wouldn't be able to
1:02:51
Speaker 1: articulate to anyone, ready. Thirty years was a very long
1:02:57
Speaker 1: time to carry something. Miss Jane thought about Richard Toth,
1:03:02
Speaker 1: who had collected weaknesses the way other boys collected stamps
1:03:05
Speaker 1: or conkers, and had never apparently considered that keeping a
1:03:10
Speaker 1: thing didn't mean owning it. You could hold something over
1:03:14
Speaker 1: a person for decades and believe it made them yours,
1:03:17
Speaker 1: when in fact all it made you was theirs. Their preoccupation,
1:03:22
Speaker 1: their fixed point, the thing every decision circled back to.
1:03:26
Speaker 1: He had owned her and been owned in return, and
1:03:31
Speaker 1: neither of them had been free of it.
1:03:35
Speaker 2: Police procedure is necessary, but it forces people into rigid stories.
1:03:40
Speaker 2: I prefer the messy truth of.
1:03:42
Speaker 1: She took out her knitting. The dropped stitch from earlier
1:03:46
Speaker 1: was there. Halfway down the row, a small ladder of
1:03:51
Speaker 1: looseness in the otherwise even work. She looked at it
1:03:56
Speaker 1: for a moment, then took out a crochet hook from
1:04:00
Speaker 1: the bag's side pocket and, with the careful patience of
1:04:03
Speaker 1: long practice, drew the stitch back up through each loop
1:04:08
Speaker 1: until it was level with the rest. It left a
1:04:11
Speaker 1: slight difference in the tension. You could see it if
1:04:14
Speaker 1: you knew to look, but it was sound. It would hold.
1:04:20
Speaker 1: Most things did. if you caught them early enough. She
1:04:25
Speaker 1: looked out the window at Birmingham, falling away behind her.
1:04:29
Speaker 1: The city giving way again to the flat brown November countryside,
1:04:34
Speaker 1: the canal, the bear trees. Somewhere ahead was Crewe, and
1:04:40
Speaker 1: her house, and the particular silence of a Tuesday afternoon
1:04:45
Speaker 1: that had been stranger than most. She thought about what
1:04:49
Speaker 1: she would have for lunch. Soup, she decided, definitely soup,
1:04:54
Speaker 1: something with leeks. The train was three minutes late. Normal then,
1:05:01
Speaker 1: everything more or less back to normal. She knitted, and
1:05:05
Speaker 1: the countryside moved, and the morning slowly became the kind
1:05:09
Speaker 1: of thing that would be, in time, simply a story
1:05:13
Speaker 1: she sometimes told, carefully and not in full. to people
1:05:18
Speaker 1: who asked how she always seemed to know things about
1:05:21
Speaker 1: people she'd only just met. I just notice, she said
1:05:26
Speaker 1: when they asked. That's all. I just notice. And she'd
1:05:31
Speaker 1: smile in a way that suggested this was modest, when
1:05:34
Speaker 1: in fact it was entirely accurate. Noticing was everything. It
1:05:38
Speaker 1: always had been.
1:05:42
Speaker 2: A woman walked away quietly today, her thirty-year burden finally lifted.