4_50 From Paddington - Agatha Christie [2]
“Well—madam—”
“You’re going to do something, I suppose?”
The ticket collector sighed reluctantly and glanced at his watch.
“We shall be in Brackhampton in exactly seven minutes. I’ll report what you’ve told me. In what direction was the train you mention going?”
“This direction, of course. You don’t suppose I’d have been able to see this if a train had flashed past going in the other direction?”
The ticket collector looked as though he thought Mrs. McGillicuddy was quite capable of seeing anything anywhere as the fancy took her. But he remained polite.
“You can rely on me, madam,” he said. “I will report your statement. Perhaps I might have your name and address—just in case….”
Mrs. McGillicuddy gave him the address where she would be staying for the next few days and her permanent address in Scotland, and he wrote them down. Then he withdrew with the air of a man who has done his duty and dealt successfully with a tiresome member of the travelling public.
Mrs. McGillicuddy remained frowning and vaguely unsatisfied. Would the ticket collector report her statement? Or had he just been soothing her down? There were, she supposed vaguely, a lot of elderly women travelling around, fully convinced that they had unmasked communist plots, were in danger of being murdered, saw flying saucers and secret space ships, and reported murders that had never taken place. If the man dismissed her as one of those….
The train was slowing down now, passing over points and running through the bright lights of a large town.
Mrs. McGillicuddy opened her handbag, pulled out a receipted bill which was all she could find, wrote a rapid note on the back of it with her ball-pen, put it into a spare envelope that she fortunately happened to have, stuck the envelope down and wrote on it.
The train drew slowly into a crowded platform. The usual ubiquitous Voice was intoning:
“The train now arriving at Platform 1 is the 5:38 for Milchester, Waverton, Roxeter, and stations to Chadmouth. Passengers for Market Basing take the train now waiting at No. 3 platform. No. 1 bay for stopping train to Carbury.”
Mrs. McGillicuddy looked anxiously along the platform. So many passengers and so few porters. Ah, there was one! She hailed him authoritatively.
“Porter! Please take this at once to the Stationmaster’s office.”
She handed him the envelope, and with it a shilling.
Then, with a sigh, she leaned back. Well, she had done what she could. Her mind lingered with an instant’s regret on the shilling… Sixpence would really have been enough….
Her mind went back to the scene she had witnessed. Horrible, quite horrible… She was a strong-nerved woman, but she shivered. What a strange—what a fantastic thing to happen to her, Elspeth McGillicuddy! If the blind of the carriage had not happened to fly up… But that, of course, was Providence.
Providence had willed that she, Elspeth McGillicuddy, should be a witness of the crime. Her lips set grimly.
Voices shouted, whistles blew, doors were banged shut. The 5:38 drew slowly out of Brackhampton station. An hour and five minutes later it stopped at Milchester.
Mrs. McGillicuddy collected her parcels and her suitcase and got out. She peered up and down the platform. Her mind reiterated its former judgment: Not enough porters. Such porters as there were seemed to be engaged with mail bags and luggage vans. Passengers nowadays seemed always expected to carry their own cases. Well, she couldn’t carry her suitcase and her umbrella and all her parcels. She would have to wait. In due course she secured a porter.
“Taxi?”
“There will be something to meet me, I expect.”
Outside Milchester station, a taxi-driver who had been watching the exit came forward. He spoke in a soft local voice.
“Is it Mrs. McGillicuddy? For St. Mary Mead?”
Mrs. McGillicuddy acknowledged her identity. The porter was recompensed, adequately if not handsomely. The car, with Mrs. McGillicuddy,